Marriage Deal Breakers

Last May, Husband and I celebrated/mourned our 13th anniversary. 

Just kidding.
We 100% celebrated.

Our celebration consisted of Subway sandwiches and having midday sex in the laundry room hoping our kids wouldn't walk in on us.
#truelove

Let's be honest here. Like, I hate my Husband sometimes. HATE.

And also, he hates me sometimes.

You wouldn't believe how pissed off he gets when I let the gas in my car get under 1/4 of a tank (which is 90% of the time) or when I let my cell phone battery run out (which happens all the time too.)

I know I'm awful.

I can self-assess. I can look inside myself.

I accept it.

But more importantly, my husband accepts it. 

Last week I was thinking, what would be some deal breakers for me in regards to my marriage.
I need to start setting rules so I can keep him on his toes. 

For instance, if he lost all his teeth or ever exhibited poor oral hygiene...

DEALBREAKER.

If he ever participated in musical theatre...

DEALBREAKER.

If he ever took longer than me to get ready...

DEALBREAKER.

Refused to have sex with me on my timeline...

Took up a side job in the porn business...

Sold one of our kids on the black market (unless its my 4 year old, then that's totally cool with me)…

Started crying during movies...

Bleached his butthole...

ALL. DEAL. BREAKERS.

Luckily Husband has never committed any of the above atrocities. 

If he ever did though, things would be 100% over, no questions asked.

I totally married for looks and not money. Not sure how fiscally responsible that was on my part.

BUT... He builds stuff and is super sexy when he does, so I'll likely stay just for that.

 I'm a solid 92% sure I will be married to him forever.

Questionable Kids Shows On Netflix

I'm knocked up with my 3rd child. I hate being pregnant and am sick the entire 9/10 months.
Because of this, I am apathetic about my kids TV consumption.

They have been watching SOOOOOO much TV these past weeks months.

I still feel like I am an awesome mom because every once and a while I make them watch shows about smart people stuff, like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ultimate Animal Fights. I also let them out of their kennels once a week.

But....  we need to talk about Netflix.

I love Netflix. I love how cheap it is.
We don't have cable or normal TV, so Netflix is all we use. 
I love that there a a ton of wholesome kids shows.

I love that I can sit my kids in front of the TV for hours at a time without annoying commercial breaks.
I don't need my kids to be bugging me to buy the latest sugar cereal and Nerf guns.


However, there are a few shows that I'm a little concerned about.
Which is unfortunate since I am already concerned about my children in general.

Ryan knows how to turn on any show he wants by himself.

That explains why I walked out and saw a talking cartoon butt on the TV screen one day.

Now, I am a person that can appreciate a well illustrated butt.
However, what I cannot appreciate, is my 5 year old appreciating cartoon butts.

The is a show actually called, The Day My Butt Went Psycho.

It's about a dude who is a junior butt fighter and his butt.... that went psycho.

The butt even has a name, and that name is Deuce.
For those of you that are as well-versed in all things poop, Deuce is another name for the number 2.
The number 2 is also a common nickname for poo. As in #1 is pee and #2 is poo.

So the butt's name, Deuce, means poop.
It's actually pretty clever.
But ultimately, I have way too much poop and butts in my life right now.



Then there is a little animated show called StoryBots.

It's a cute show that is educational and fun.
What concerns me is the freaking weird stuff that randomly pops up while you're watching it.

My kids were just hanging out, tryna learn about animals when this freaky camel song came on and creeped them out.

 

Were you aware that camels made that sound? 
You can see it for yourself in Season 1 Episode 4: Animals and Emotions

I don't need extra creepy things keeping my kids up at night. They already have to deal with images of me throwing up and peeing my pants every day.



You may be surprised to find out that Little Einsteins is another show I have problems with.

First of all, whoever thought of calling a kid show something with Einstein in it is brilliant.
Who doesn't want their kid to be an Einstein?

One day I would like my kids to understand physics and do their hair super sexy.

I was a fan of Little Einsteins until I saw how the red spaceship thing bounces around.

A boner shaped spring. That's how it bounces around. A boner spring.

You can watch this pseudo-porn in Season 1, Episode 5: Pirate's Treasure.



Oh, and there is a coloring page online if you want to cement that reality in your kid's head:

 Print it at: coloringsky.com

Or you could buy them this suggestive toy spaceship.
I'm not here to judge you're parenting decisions.

Anyway, I just want all you other negligent moms - who let their kids watch too much TV - to be warned about the potential dangers of Netflix. 

Let's just focus on protecting the children.

5 Problems I Have At McDonald's Playplace

I would write an intro to this post, but I'm feeling a little rebellious.
Anyway, here are some of the problems I have everytime I take my kids to McDonald's. 


1. Getting kids to eat their food before they play.

When I was a snot-nosed kid and there was an extra special occasion, my parents rewarded us with a trip to McDonald's.
They didn't love us enough to buy us happy meals.
Actually, it probably had more to do with the fact that there were 7 kids in our family and $50 worth of happy meals didn't sound like a fun way of spending money.

We had to eat everything we ordered before we could play.
I thought my parents were such jerk-offs for this.

I swore to my 10 year old self, that I would never be such a jerk-off to my kids. never.

Fast forward 22 years, and I'm sitting here in McDonald's at 6:45pm verbally threatening my children to eat all their food or we will leave without playing and I'm not joking around one bit mister.

Funny thing is, all the other bad mom's here are having the same threat session with their little angels. 
I just made eye contact with one and we nodded to each other in mean mom solidarity.

You know how you make mom friends just by a single look that acknowledges the struggle is real?
Yeah, we did that. And now her and I are BFFs.

I don't know her name and will probs never see her again but we are still best friends.

I rewarded her by taking a creepy picture when she wasn't looking so I can scrapbook it.


2. When a bunch of teenagers come in to play.

I am all for teenagers having their fun. Just not around a bunch of small hyper children.
Someone is going to get hurt. (I can't believe I just typed that.)

Everyone knows: If you have pubes, you can't play on the Playplace.
They obviously didn't read the rules.

These cute girls rolled into the Playplace and chaos ensued.
They were running around and screaming louder than the kids were.
I helped them take a group pic under the condition that I may also take a picture and talk trash about them on my mom-blog.

 
3. Finding used Band-aids.

Remember this?
I still find used band-aids all the time. 

4. Every time a little girl screams I think it's my 5 year old boy.

One time, a shrill scream came from the slide. A dad who was there with his 3 girls got annoyed, yelled out for the screaming to stop.
Right then, Precious little Ryan crawls out of the slide, shrieking, like a girl with huge grin on his face.
 #proudmommy

5. Dirty black feet.

It's filthy there.



I really should just stop taking my kids there.

But we all know I won't, because now McDonald's sells breakfast all day and I regularly make bad parenting decisions.
Oh yeah, McDonald's has free wifi too.

And I like when my hair and clothes smells like fried animal giblets after we leave. <3

Fasionable Pictures of Myself From The 1990's

I don't know how wise it is to post these pictures.

Now they will be available for anyone to blackmail me with.
Plus, I'm probably going to attract a lot of stalkers because of how incredible I look.

Thankfully, I am not burdened with wisdom.


I re-found these photos last week and cannot believe how stylish and good looking I was a kid.

I wonder what my mom was thinking when she bought me this catastrophe of a dress. Was she mad at me that day? Was I being punished? We may never know.

Look at this fine young specimen of a 4th grader.

That bow on top of my head would have been cute if I was 6 months old.
I remember this day well. It was my first day of 4th grade at a new school.

I thought I looked so awesome, and I was right.

I had picked this outfit out myself and styled it with a chic black belt so my shorts would stay up as high as possible. I did my own hair and hair-sprayed my home-permed hair thoroughly because I wanted to look this good even after recess.



I bet you never thought I was such a cool kid.

My pose here says, "I may have stole this shirt from my brother but I know I'm looking hot, and by the way, I have an attitude."

These cool contemporary backdrop pictures were not included with the normal school pictures.

I begged my parents to buy them since I thought I looked so awesome/radical. They bought them for me because I think they felt bad about the red polka dot dress.

I cut up the photos into the little individual squares, wrote personalized notes on the back, and handed them out to literally everyone I knew.

I was pretty satisfied with myself and looking back, I can see why.


Then I pulled out this treasure:

DAAANNNNNNGGGGGGG.

This picture is majestic.

Notice, if you will:

1. Large bow in my crunchy permed hair.

2. My bangs combed to the side because I was too cool for bangs that day.

3. Necklace made from a rolled up bandana and painted wood pieces from Micheal's.

4. FANNY PACK.

5. Fashion-forward modeling pose to show how cultured I am.

I even wrote on the back of this picture  -  You in you moddiling stage!  -  like I knew my 32 year old self would find it one day and wonder what was going on and why I was such a good model.

I hate myself so bad right now.

Bear Skull Apology

Bears are my spirit animal.
I love them. I like them even more than I like Mountain Goats, and I like Mountain Goats a lot.

 

• Bears will rip you apart if you mess with their cubs.
• They like to hang out by themselves.
• Polar Bears have black skin under their white fur. Kind of how I wish I was Black even though I am undeniably white. 
• Bears can walk on their hind legs for short distances.

• Grizzly bears have awesome highlights in their fur.
• They Hibernate.
• Bears are also majestic. 

I was still pretty pissed off at Husband from an earlier argument when he came home with a present for me.
Thankfully it was not a 10" Classic Dong because I already have one of those from a previous gift giving incident.

Instead of a Dong, I came face to face with a real Bear Skull.
And yeah, I will capitalize the words Bear Skull because Bear Skulls are awesome and deserve some Respect.

I love skulls but not in the creepy Jeffery Dahmer/Ed Gein way.
I love them in the stay-at-home-mom who like science-y stuff way.

Anyway, I mostly forgave Jared for his trespasses because the Skull is pretty cool.

Blame it on the Kids

I don't know what kind of time-machine trickery is going on in my life.

Baby Tyler is doing the exact same things Cryin Ryan did as a 2 year old.

You know that old saying - "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?"

Yeah?
Well screw that. I will not accept that shame.
I am still going to blame my children.

It is not my fault that they don't know how to handle themselves around permanent markers. 

I can't be responsible for keeping sharpies out of their reach all of the time.

 I also can't be blamed for stupidly buying $18 Lancome lipstick while I have feral children in the house.
It's clearly their fault for not respecting how moisturizing, smooth, and what a great color this lipstick was.

And yes, after Ryan ruined an entire tube of it in 2011, I went and bought a couple more of the EXACT color, because it's my favorite, and Tyler ruined the same ones.

They need to learn the difference between my $1.50 Lip Smackers chap stick and my Sephora investments. I keep them right next to each other!!!

Why do kids always ruin the expensive stuff!?!?!?

I'm sick of this.
They need to grow up and be adults.


Look at them running around in their best white trash costumes - messy hair, diaper with pee in it, and an Eggo waffle.
I don't know why they think it's ok to act like that.






Fine. Maybe their behavior is a little bit my fault.

Like just a really tiny bit.

Booger Munching

Ryan is surprisingly not a booger eater.

I know most kids eat their boogers but it's freaking nauseating so Husband and I have always encouraged our spawn to use a tissue. We don't want our kids to be snot munchers.

Ryan is disgusted that some kids eat their boogers. At church he saw another kid slurp down some snot and he freaked out. It literally blew his mind. I had to take him outside and calm him down.

But then #2 came along and insists on eating his own mucus.
Tyler refuses to just be an adult and use a Kleenex.

Anytime Tyler has snot all over his face, which is all the time, I go grab a tissue. Once he sees me walking towards him he rushes to pick his nose and eats it before I get there. Then he smiles at me, very satisfied with himself.

He even laughs sometimes like eating boogers is delightful.


Here is my dilemma though.

Ryan will pick his nose in random places and yell out that he has a huge booger on his finger and needs a tissue.
Then he holds it out to me like it's a gift and I have to wipe it off.

Ryan also is partial to wiping his nose on his sleeve. If he has a cold, his sleeves are sure to be covered in thin layers of crust.
He also likes to wipe snot on his car seat. 

I find his used tissues throughout the house.
Sometimes I find snot wiped on top of the toilet paper roll and left there for an innocent bystander to discover.


I don't have to deal with any of that nastiness with Tyler since he just eats them.

(Dude. I just realized that since Tyler eats boogers, he also digests them, which means when I change his diapers I am actually wiping up booger-poop. I hate my brain. I can't un-think that.)


So which habit is grosser? Kids eating their boogers or leaving snail trails everywhere they go?

I think this is one of those no-win situations.

(Source)

A Thoughtful Post About Farts

It has recently come to my attention that my entire blog is devoid of fart jokes.

I was surprised and disappointed. I didn't purposefully avoid the subject on moral grounds or tactfulness. I am no stranger to gross things.

I began a serious introspection as to why farts have never made an appearance here. I even went on a hike in my backyard to sort my feelings out.

After walking 14 feet I realized it is because I am deeply scarred emotionally by farts and farting.

I grew up with the 3 grossest brothers in the world.

My young life was filled with rancidity.
All 3 of them practiced the low art form of "butter-cupping".
Do you know what that freaking is?!?!?!
It's when you fart into your hand then release it under someone's nose.

Crop dusting was also routinely practiced.
Where you fart while walking, misting your stench on innocent people.

There was a lot of of the boys simply sitting on top of you and farting in your face or in your lap. Like an unwelcome birthday gift.

Farts were regularly lit on fire, my pet kitten was regularly buttercupped, and if you pissed one of the boys off, they would fart on your pillow and tell you the next morning.

One of my little sisters was dating this total douche bag named TY. They were both 18 years old and in the teenage stage of claiming they were Vegetarian, because that is the trendy thing to do these days.
Our whole family hated this car-less, jobless, college-less, smug little pipsqueak. TY loved telling people that he was going to be a professor of theoretical physics. He didn't really know what that meant, but it sounded good.

My sis and Professor Douche were over for a family dinner at my parents house. My mom had made beef stew, so they sat at the table eating nothing since they were vegetarian and too cool.
TY was a self satisfied little idiot the whole dinner while my family played along.

After TY bragged about not eating the beef stew because he's vegetarian, my little brother Matthew stood up to get more food.
He walked by TY and literally bent over and farted in TY's mouth.
Then Matthew said, "How do you like that beef stew?"
My family loved it.
TY never had dinner with them again.

I guess the moral of the story is if you don't like someone coming to dinner at your house, just fart in their mouth?


Clearly nothing is sacred in the Barlocker house.

Oh yeah, Matthew was like, 27 years old when he farted in that dude's mouth. 

And now you know why my blog isn't littered with fart jokes.
It's too painful.
I wonder if LDS Family Services runs any support groups for this. I could really use the help to overcome these painful memories.

P.S. The beef stew story totally counts as a fart joke.

Hooray for Mommy Wars!

You know how the new thing is to "stop the Mommy Wars"?  How we should all respect each other's parenting decisions and support each other as Mothers, blah, blah, blah?

While that's a nice sentiment, I'm secretly hoping the Mommy Wars rage on, because I love arguing and judging.

How am I supposed to feel confident as a Mother without the belief that other Mom's are screwing their kids up worse than I am?

I like when my bratty sister Feg-Feg's baby wakes up every hour at night for the entire 6 months he's been here.
I feel like I'm kicking butt because both my babies slept 8 hours at 2 months old.
Clearly I'm the better Mom.

I'm way better at breastfeeding than she is too.

See? We need to judge other mom's so we have a frame of reference.

Like when almost all my friends potty trained their kids at age 2 - 2 1/2, and my kid wasn't potty trained until after three and I had to bribe him with a bunch of toys to do it.

I needed to know that I was lacking in the peeing-in-the-potty department and veiled judgments from other Mom's put me in line.

Also, I need to be the recipient of dirty looks and judgment when I let Ryan do whatever he wants, like splash in oily puddles in the middle of a parking lot, or run with scissors.

Also, when Ryan wandered out naked at our friend's pool and tried to skinny dip, I knew the other Mom's were watching me and condoned my actions when I gave him a "thumbs up" and proud smile.

I love how different opinions and ideas keeps the world interesting.... especially when mine are mostly right.

Plus how awesome is it when you see someone doing something blatantly stupid with their kid and you know they'll be paying for it later? (Mostly because you did the same thing and you're currently paying for it.....)

Hooray for Mommy Wars!!!

Rape Prevention Tips

 I am slightly obsessed with socio-cultural articles, especially when they have anything to do with Mormonism.

An article I recently read, was mainly about how Mormonism may have affected Elizabeth Smart's actions while in captivity.
I want to focus on one of the minor points in the article. It outlines how our culture accepts Rape as an inevitable part of life.


We accept that men are naturally sexually aggressive, women are usually the target, and it is a women's responsibility to avoid rape. 

If women dress revealing they are "asking for it".
Rape victims are judged and blamed based on if they fought back hard enough.
We repeatedly excuse men's actions.

Most Rape Prevention organizations have tips to stop Rape.
We have all seen them. They circulate through facebook and group emails.
For example:

• Never go out alone at night
• Stay in well lit areas
• Carry pepper spray and a rape whistle
•  Say "No" firmly instead of using phrases such as "I don't think so"
  
•  Be. Repetitive.  Repeating "No"
•  If someone grabs you, yell, scream, kick and make a lot of commotion

Recently, a few people have started getting to the root of the matter.

Rape Prevention Tips should focus more on men, as they make up the majority of rapists.

The new tip sheet should look something like this:

• If you see a girl who is dressed slutty, don't rape her
• If a girl is walking in a dark alley alone, don't rape her
• If you are feeling rapey, stay at home for the night
• If you see a drunk girl passed out at a party, don't rape her
• If you want to have sex with someone and they say "NO", don't rape them
• If you are at a bar and have some GHD (date rape drug) in your pocket, don't use it to rape anyone
• Don't hide in people's homes with rapeful intentions
• If a girl is in her car at night in a parking garage, don't rape her

Hopefully the more we talk about this problem and hold men accountable, rape statistics will be lowered and rape victims will not have to deal with the embarrassment and blame that too often comes with it..

amen.

Hey Jared, Thanks for the Pictures

I finally sat down and organized all the picture files on my computer. Organizing 8 years of pictures took longer than I expected, but at least I won't have to do it again until 2021.

I was going through all the folders when I noticed all the pictures Jared takes of me are gross and/or embarassing.   

It's nice that I can look back and remember how disgusting I am. 

The most common themes included:

Breastfeeding in Public:

Sleeping During the Day:

Licking Batter out of a Mixing Bowl:

 Playing Video Games Instead of Being a Mom:

This is just a small sampling of all the lame pictures Jared took over the years.
What makes it even better is that Jared has all these amazingly cute/sweet pictures. Obviously I am a little more thoughtful when it comes to photographing my spouse.

My scrapbook is going to be incredible. Great.

Well.... at least Jear-Bear is attractive. I didn't marry him for his brains or thoughtfulness anyway.