I’ve had plenty of time to think of this, especially during the first year of my time as a stay at home mother. I loved my job. When Aidan was small and the challenges of new motherhood seemed so much bigger than I was capable of handling, I wondered if I wasn’t a little crazy to give up my much-beloved career.

After all, what did it say about me that I was willing to trade in an engaging career for a never ending river of spit-up?

Don’t get me wrong, staying at home with Aidan has been and will always be the right move. It’s in line with my goals and priorities as a parent, it fulfills me in ways no career ever could, and I can see the benefits of it every time Aidan decides to behave himself.

The writing certainly helps. I have a stimulating hobby that manages to not only give me a creative outlet but also makes me feel like I’m still doing something tangibly worthwhile with my time. It helps. And it’s fun.

Now that I’m pregnant and have let my writing simmer on the back burner, that old post-feminist pestering is back. My ambitious nature goads me daily, telling me I should be working, not napping. That I’m willingly letting my dreams get hijacked by two little people who don’t even realize it.

Someone I follow on Twitter recently asked whether it was always necessary to choose between kids and goals, and why that was. I notice a lot of my peers struggling with this same frustration. They have goals, dreams, and ambitions and feel stymied by the limitations incumbent to a mother with young children.

I struggle with this myself. I hesitated to get pregnant again because I had so much I wanted to do first. Finish another book, get another book published and out there, maybe attend another writer’s conference.

Instead, I got pregnant again because it was important to us that our children be close enough in age to be able to relate and enjoy a relationship with each other.

All that to say, what ultimately made the decision for me was having a hard discussion with myself about my priorities. My kids are my most important priority. Everything else comes second. Not because I think my darling precious angels are the be-all end-all of my existence, but because they deserve to be my focus right now. I am half responsible for bringing them into the world so I darn well owe them the best I can possibly offer.

If that means my writing will have to wait until they’re both in school to really get going, I’m cool with that.

There. Struggle over.

The disservice I think post-feminism does women my age is it makes us feel like choosing our children is weakness of character. Like if we settle for anything less than running ourselves ragged trying to raise great kids and have ambitious careers all while wearing the jeans we wore in high school, we’re doing it wrong. Settling for less.

And what I think it’s producing is a lot of guilty women who are at war with their circumstances. If you only have a set number of hours in the day and trying to fit everything in is making you crabby and miserable, prioritize and let things go.

That’s my take on it, anyway. Maybe I’m just a big ol’ quitter. If so, at least I’m a big ol’ quitter who’s happy. I’ll take happy over stressed out and miserable any day of the week.

My goals and ambitions will still be there waiting for me when I have time for them again. My little kids, however, who need love and attention and guidance? Won’t be.

In general, even if I agree with a person’s viewpoint, I would strongly prefer that person to keep it chained behind their teeth unless I explicitly ask for it. Why?

I don’t know, exactly. Maybe I just think it’s rude to talk about politics unless asked. Maybe it’s because very few people are informed enough for me to consider them credible. But I think mostly it’s because strong opinions make a lot of people sound nuts, and that can be upsetting.

I checked in with my Twitter feed yesterday while the GOP debates were going on and read wave after wave of irritation, outrage, and incredulity. It annoyed me so I closed Twitter and moved on with my evening. Sharing these opinions didn’t do anything but turn me away from reading more.

And that, I think, is the crux of the problem. In this day and age of self-published thoughts available at all hours of the day, people have gotten the horrible misapprehension that every single thought they have is worth publicizing.

This is a lie. No one cares that you are eating pizza, or that you think such-and-such a candidate is crazy. Unless you are a political pundit whose job it is to analyze and synthesize data in an effort to distill it into an expert opinion when asked, chances are excellent that no one will listen to you anyway.

This being said, it would be my strong preference for people to realize this and just hush already. If I could, I would ban political ads as well but even I’m not naive enough to think that’ll ever happen.

I guess I could unfollow and unfriend anyone on Facebook or Twitter who says stuff that annoys me, but I’d lose an awful lot of friends who, other than during election years, make me think, smile, and laugh.

The election is important. So important. But I think we really ought to focus more on being well-researched, informed voters than on sharing our opinions as loudly as we can. Unless, of course, it is your job to have opinions on this sort of stuff.

There are a lot of social customs and manners from earlier last century that are antiquated, but I think not discussing politics in public is one that is still apropos. I could be wrong, though.

What about you? Do you find the political opinions of your friends and family edifying? Do they actually influence your voting in any way?

Not that I’m talking about any toddler in particular. Ahem. AIDAN.

Seriously though, I always feel such joie de vivre when I’m fully recovered from a bout with illness of any kind. While watching my bathrooms grow grubbier day by day as I lay on my sickbed (i.e. the couch) I wished for energy. I wished for health. I wished for Netflix to just skip to the next episode of Thomas the Train already instead of making me get off the effing couch every half hour.

Yes, I let the TV entertain my child when I’m incapable of breathing through my nose. Judge me silently if you must.

Now, though? In the cold light of a winter’s day to which I awoke without a horrible hacking cough and sore throat that made me feel like I swallowed a wire grill brush?

I AM SUPERWOMAN.

Thanks to my newfound amazing health and also the second trimester (my favorite of the trimesters, indisputably the very best one) there is nothing I can’t do. Clean bathrooms, windows, hardwood floors, counters, and clothes? Check. Vacuum all the carpets I have access to? Check. Polish the tables, thus freeing them from the scurf of the thrillion and a half meals we served and ate on them over the holidays? CHECK.

I may already be missing some crucial pieces to my son’s Christmas toys, but gosh dang it I am back! I am alive! I can now set to work removing the imprint of my sad, sorry self from the cushions of my couch!

That is, until Aidan inevitably picks up yet another illness from the Sunday school nursery (or, as I’ve begun to call it in my bitter little head, The Pandemic Breeding Ground). I love the ability to sit through church knowing Aidan is playing with trains and loving his life, but I really wish he didn’t come home with his very own edition of the Pestilence Plague every week.

Oh, well. It’s building a good immune system for my boy, yes? I am capable of looking at the bright side of this situation, because I can breathe through my nose.

I think this is why: A year is a long time. A lot can change, from jobs, to health, to living circumstances, to obligations. I think it’s prudent to avoid picking fights I can’t win (one of my favorite parenting axioms, actually) and, as such, refuse to set myself up for failure.

Why make a resolution I know I can’t keep? If I can’t control the circumstances surrounding my commitments, I see little value in taking them on unless there’s value in the attempt.

Like, for instance, the infamous weight loss resolution. It’s a cliche, but for good reason. I can’t imagine the people who make this resolution only recently decided they needed to lose weight, so why the arbitrary timeline? Why give yourself a year to lose weight? That just seems like license to backslide to me.

When I lost a whole bunch of weight last year, I borrowed a motto from AA: Yesterday’s history, and tomorrow’s a mystery. I can’t change what I ate yesterday, and I have no idea what kind of temptations will assault me tomorrow, so all I have is today. And I can eat well for one day. It worked.

And I suppose that’s the heart of my problem with New Year’s Resolutions. They seem destined to fail unless they’re coupled with a plan and some steely resolve. And you can’t give yourself a year to execute a plan. Steely resolve isn’t self-replicating.

You have to push the execute button every single day, from the moment you wake up, and shore up your resolve with the little victories you earn along the way. A year is too much time, it gives you every excuse and obstacle in the world.

A resolution is, by definition, determination. Why set yourself up to fail? If you’re going to make goals, or big life changes, take them on one at a time. Pick the time and place of your battle and then win it. January and the advent of a new year don’t factor into it.

That’s why I set out my hopes for the new year instead. It’s fun to think about what I want to accomplish in the new year, but it also gives me space and room to accommodate whatever challenges might sneak-attack me along the way.

Because when I make a goal, when I resolve to do something, it’s getting done. If I have to move a mountain to do it, it’s happening. I don’t care how many cups of decaf or cupcakes get hurt along the way, stuff is going down.

Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Don’t dream it, be it. Be a force to be reckoned with, and Heaven help anyone who stands in your way.

Look! Clothes! And ears! We all win!

I’m a huge prude. There’s no getting around it. I see teenage girls strutting through Safeway in bathing suits and all I can think of is, “PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, YOU HUSSIES!” I write a scene in which my characters might be, um, intimate, and I get all blushy and flustered and must avoid describing what they’re doing entirely.

Seriously? Even writing the word “intimate” makes me uncomfortable. It’s a wonder I ever managed to get pregnant, huh?

It’s ok, for the most part I’m fine with my prudishness. I figure it’ll come in handy when I want to torture my kids someday (especially if I have a daughter. I look forward to using the word “hussy” as often as possible).

I did have occasion to wonder about my modesty, though, when I stumbled across a Lady Gaga music video. It was…Umm…What’s a nice way to describe it? Well, let’s just say I was shocked I didn’t have to buy her dinner before watching it. I actually had to turn it off, and check that it was really her music video and not some kind of lascivious wormhole that reached out and swallowed me whole.

Am I behind the times? I mean, even some network shows seem, to me, to be rather more, um, lubricious than I’d always assumed the censors who protect us from naughtiness would be ok with. I mean, Janet Jackson’s boob was a national incident, and yet there’s just as much boobage on some episodes of Mad Men.

I mean, yeah, Janet Jackson was on the Superbowl and Mad Men is a show intended for adults. But it’s not as though kids evaporate after 8 pm and never have access to this stuff. So, really, I see little difference.

Is anyone else shocked by things like how so many music videos resemble soft core pr0n nowadays? Just once I’d like to see a music video where all the people wear clothes.

I mean, isn’t that Lady Gaga’s thing? Wearing crazy clothes? Her music isn’t so bad that she needs to feign relations with people to get us to listen to it, so why bother? Why not just film a tour of your closet, stick a music track behind it, and call it good?

An upside to the Prude’s Guide to Tasteful Music Videos is that you have to diet a lot less if the whole world doesn’t see you naked all the time. Truffles for everyone! We all win!

Then, I ran across this post on Mama Pop. It’s perfect. It sums up so perfectly why I was confused by the VF interview. To wit:

[Angelina Jolie is] making her screenwriting and directorial debut with the upcoming film  In the Land of Blood and Honey.  She tells the magazine that the screenplay was the result of trying to cope with a two-day stint with the flu.

“I had to be quarantined from the children for two days,” Jolie says. “I was in the attic of a house in France. I was isolated, pacing. I don’t watch TV and I wasn’t reading anything. So I started writing. I went from the beginning to the end.”   Alright.  I’m calling shenanigans on this one.

1. Who paces while they have the flu?
2. Can we just cool it with the self-righteous “I don’t’ watch tv” claims?  WE ALL WATCH TV.
3. Really?  A first screenplay in TWO DAYS?  Either the story sucks or she has a really talented ghostwriter with a rock-solid non-disclosure agreement.
4. The attic?

These were my thoughts exactly! I have no doubt (or, well, maybe a little doubt. I don’t know her personally, so I can’t vouch for her integrity) that Ms. Jolie poured a ton of time and effort into bringing this movie into existence. I applaud her efforts. It’s good to have a mother accomplishing such lofty goals. Yay moms!

On the other hand, the longer I work on my writing and the more I learn about the craft of storytelling, the more annoyed by celebrity memoirs, novels, and what-have-yous I get. That Angelina claims she hammered out an entire screenplay in two days with the flu is insulting, really.

I mean, maybe it happened. Maybe she’s some kind of a screenplay-writing savant, like a Mozart for screenplays, but I think it far more likely she wrote down a few ideas and scenes while she was sick. Either that or she hallucinated the whole thing (she had the flu, remember).

And yes, she’s been an actress for many, many years. Terrific. I’ve been an avid reader since I was seven, but that doesn’t mean I can write a first-draft novel in two days. Telling a story gets a lot more difficult when you factor things in like story arc, character development, and research. I’ve got to assume she wasn’t able to just wing this one spur-of-the-moment because she had the flu. Otherwise, I might cry.

I mean, if celebrities are more attractive than us, and wealthier than us, what is the freaking point if they’re able to do things we find difficult quickly and while impaired? Am I to assume Angelina doesn’t dissolve into a miserable, feverish pile of nausea when she gets sick?

I agree with Kristen from Mama Pop. I call shenanigans on this claim. I have to. For my own sanity.

Man, think of all the writing I’d get done if I didn’t have the Internet. Still, I’d be limited in my research so the writing would probably be a tad shallow.

Anyway, the thing I’m so mad at myself for having an opinion about is the whole stupid Kardashian wedding thing that happened last weekend. Ugh, even just typing in that name makes me feel like bleaching my brain and then reading some Tolstoy.

Angsty teenage Erika (who read Tolstoy for fun) would write some scathing poetry indeed if she knew I knew about anything relating to a reality TV family.

As much as it pains me to admit, I’m curious about the wedding only so much as it pertains to pretty things. I do so love pretty wedding things. It’s a holdover love from my job at Bottle Your Brand, when it was my job to research weddings and pretty things.

This wedding, where money was no object, is bound to be full of pretty things. But in order to see them I’m going to have to watch an episode of the reality show it was filmed for. And that will ramp up the self-loathing to a dangerous place. So that’s annoying.

I don’t really care anything for the people involved. Yes, I think it’s awfully vain to talk about your own wedding as the wedding of the century, and then go on to say you’re American royalty. Then again, they seem awfully good at talking about nothing but themselves, so in that way I suppose they are American royalty.

But insomuch as they seem well-known, they’re well-known for being reality stars. And that makes me uncomfortable. Because people who are famous for having no shame are not the people I want associated with the reigning royalty of where I live.

And yet, as much as my mind quails in horror that I care, I do. Not about the people involved in the wedding, but about the pretty things. And that’s not really much different than caring about the people, because when you get right down to it, it all boils down to being interested in pretty things, doesn’t it? Pretty things, pretty people. None of it’s going to help me write better, or be a better mother or wife, or change the world.

And yet and yet, I still care. Feeling-superior Fail.

As for my favorite thing so far? It’s a toss-up. Cover design is a lot of fun. I don’t have graphic design skills, so I’ve had the pleasure of working with several graphic design students who have blown me away so far.

Seriously, it’s incredible to watch these people work. How their brains can take a concept and turn it into a cover that makes your heart beat faster because it’s so cool looking. And what’s even cooler is they’ve all done something different with the design. I’ve told them all the same thing about the book, and they’ve all come up with different cover design ideas.

I’m going to need help picking a cover, and that’s where you folks come in. As soon as all the drafts are done, I’ll post the final versions here with a poll. Y’all can eyeball the cover designs and tell me which one you think takes the cake.

Speaking of cake…

This weekend, one of my friends is taking my official author photo for me and I’m excited, nervous, excited, terrified, and excited (making me want to eat cake, because I enjoy eating my feelings). I don’t mind having my photo taken as a rule, I’m just nervous because I don’t know how to “act.” You know, like an author.

Author photos vary so widely. Some are grave, others are happy, some are awkward, and still more are posed. I don’t know poses!

How do I look relaxed?! What if my smile looks all weird and stiff and people looking at the photo think I look crazy and then don’t buy the book?!

Speaking of that, why is it even necessary to put a photo of the author in the book in the first place? Is this some kind of bizarre torture for writers? We write. We sit behind computers and tells stories. If we wanted people looking at our faces, we’d be in a different business.

What this post basically boils down to is the following: Cover art contest coming soon, you guys are the judges. Author photo coming soon, gulp.

We should all brace ourselves.

In between birthday parties and other uxorious activities, Wes found the time and childcare to take me out for dinner and a movie. This is noteworthy because this was our first dinner-and-a-movie date since my birthday. Which was in May of last year.

We had a fantastic time eating dinner at an Italian restaurant, where our waiter was hysterical and more than happy to crack inappropriate jokes with us. Wes has a special kinship with waiters, as he worked in the food service industry for seven years. That’s actually how we met, when he was just my hot waiter and I was just the jail-bait chick making doe-eyes at him from one of his tables.

Anyway, as we’re getting ready to leave our waiter told us that we were his best table of the night. I replied, “I bet you say that to all your tables.” He refuted this strenuously.

According to him, and later corroborated with my husband, Sundays are the worst days to work in restaurants because of the church crowd. Apparently my fellow Christians suck as restaurant patrons. Bad tipping, demanding, discourteous, and inconsiderate.

Wes said that, during his days at Red Robin, he would recognize some of the people sitting as his tables and acting like jerks from the church we go to. How sad is that?! He even said some of them left Bible tracts in lieu of tips, leaving notes that they were giving him something more valuable than money.

I am a huge fan of the Bible, but that kind of behavior really ticks me off. What a bad example to set for people! I doubt any waiter or waitress who’s gotten stiffed for a tip is thinking charitably about the patrons who stiffed them, and if you then try to proselytize? What do you think will happen, other than that they’ll think Jesus is a jerk because the people who believe in Him are inconsiderate cheapskates!

Maybe I’m overreacting. Regardless, I don’t think my opinion is unwarranted. It is embarrassing when people judge what you believe, and then you later come to find out that their judgment is completely justified because there are some people who share your faith and act like jerks in restaurants.

So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t be a jerk. Don’t put a Jesus bumper sticker on your car and then cut people off. Don’t go to a restaurant after church and then mistreat the waiter.

I just feel like Christians should be the most awesome people out there. That they should be associated with random acts of kindness, generosity, considerateness, and awesomeness. If we’re representing what Christ has done in our lives, people should see that as extraordinary love, patience, and joy, not stinginess and rudeness.

I was just getting going this morning when DING DONG! The sound of the doorbell shattered the perfect quiet of my house. I crept to the door to behold not a person holding a giant check with my name on it, nor a stranded motorist looking for help. No, I saw a dude with a clipboard who wanted us to sign up to buy his lawn care.

I nearly lost it with the guy. I usually try to be patient and kind to solicitors, it’s neither a pleasant nor an easy job and I never want to be the person who makes someone’s life harder, but come on. There are only a few reasons why someone would be home at 11 am on a Tuesday.

1. The person’s sick, which means that you just dragged that poor person off the couch and made them pause their silly movie so they could shuffle to the door and tell you that no, they’re not interested in whatever stupid thing you have the misfortune of selling that day.
2. The person works from home, which means you’ve just interrupted whatever it was they were working on so they could dash over to the door to say that no, they would not like to buy new windows/prepay for cremation/have you treat their lawn with mushed-up leprechauns.
3. The person is a stay at home mother, which means you not only interrupted whatever household projects she’s trying to cram in while her child’s sleeping, you also risked waking said child from said sleep all so she could tell you in no way will she ever be interested in buying crap from you and please go away before the child wakes up you heinous time-wasting wastrel!
4. The person’s unemployed, in which case they’re in no position to buy stuff right now, so maybe don’t remind them of all the stuff that needs to be done on their house, okay?

Yikes. I sound like a crazy person, but I don’t think that makes my point any less valid. Solicitors should leave people alone from the hours of 8 am until 5 pm. If they want to come bother me at dinner time, I don’t care. I’ll probably just use my fresh hot dinner as an excuse to send them on their way anyway.

But they should leave the precious mid-day hours alone. For all our sakes. So that the next time they wake up some housewife’s name that shall not be mentioned, said solicitor doesn’t end up with a toilet brush in the eye.