Since becoming a mother and my children got big enough to be interested in eating and drinking things other than milk, my water is never mine. I try to drink a lot of water. I keep bottles and cups with me all the time. My children cry and beg for a sip of my water. Henry just screams, “Ice!” Charlotte sometimes asks for sips, or just takes it. They chew my straw. They put their grubby little hands in it. They back wash into it. It’s gross.

I got a cute water bottle from a friend for Mother’s Day. I announced that “This weekend, my water is mine! It’s my Mother’s Day present! Ya’ll are not drinking my water all weekend!” I just wanted a cup all my own. No preschool ickiness. No snotty baby germs. Please!

That lasted for about 12 hours. I caved. They climbed on my lap and begged to share sips from the pink straw. They took it from my hands, shook it around and splashed cold drops on their clothes. Charlotte took a drink, “Your water is the best, Mama!”

Sigh. I thought of all the times I took my mother’s food or drink and she let me have it. I stole fries off her plate at the seafood restaurant we took her to yesterday. She let me. She didn’t say anything. That’s the kind of selfless thing mothers do, even if they want to be selfish on “their day.”

I think these pictures perfectly sum up my life and Mother’s Day 2015.

I am sharing with you now a great weakness and constant source of shame in my life. This is my car on a Thursday. Oh, full disclosure, this is the clean car my husband left on Monday. Never mind my actual SUV, the one I destroy drive most weeks when he’s not away on business.

My husband calls me a “car hoarder.” At the end of a week, my SUV feels like a vehicular landfill. It’s like a dirty old purse on wheels. Crumbs, crumpled receipts, granola bar wrappers, Hot Wheels, jackets, muddy socks, nearly dried lip gloss tubes and empty wipes packages litter this rolling shrine to my perpetual mediocrity.

I will say, it is SLIGHTLY better now that I don’t have a breast pump in there all the time. Occasionally it’s become a point of contention in our marriage. My mom has even said she doesn’t like to ride with me. I see the looks on the faces of the preschool teachers when we go through carpool. They help my child out of her Goldfish encrusted car seat and watch her stumble over toys that have become buried on the floor for at least two weeks. That’s next to the half-filled water bottle graveyard. Sometimes I squeak out a meek “Excuse our mess!” I cringe whenever someone helps me load something in my car.

That’s when they see my shame. They see my nastiest, sloppy habit. Our house is nice. It’s not pristine by any means. A 4-year-old and 1-year-old live here, but it’s not terrible. But my car…it has always been a problem. In college I drove an old 1992 Toyota Camry. My sister always said I “smelled like my car.”

I see moms with their immaculate minivans and sparkling SUV’s. How do they do it? I do clean it out, sometimes. At least every other week I have to overhaul and take everything out. I have reflected on this flaw and have figured out why my car becomes an auto wasteland every week.

• We are always in the car- We are out the door every morning. I like to consider myself an “In The Car Mom” instead of a “Stay At Home Mom.” Oh! Look out Twitter! I’m gonna start #ITCM. Oh, that’s already been taken by a seemingly fine international educational institution. Never mind.
• We eat in the car- I only let the 1-year-old eat the applesauce pouches in the car for fear of choking, but the 4-year-old can down an Egg McMuffin or some Chick-Fil-A Icedream in the good ol’ Peg Perego Convertible seat any time. I half-heartedly scold her for tossing the spoon on the floorboard when she’s done. What can I say to her? I know it lands on car mat where empty Starbucks cups go to die. She knows it too.
• I let my kids take toys in the car- I try to hurry them out the door and I hear, “Wait! I gotta get my My Little Pony-Sofia The First-book-ball-figurines-or-whatever! Please! I just want to play with them in the car!”
• I don’t take everything out everyday- When we pull in the garage in the afternoon after preschool, a workout, errands, lunch, pickup and a play date, my kids are wiped. I drag them in, often hungry and tired. I grab my keys, my phone, the baby and the kid. I leave the rest. We tumble into the house only to find a dog ready to be let out before they run to the pantry for a snack. Unless there are groceries in the car, I rarely go back out there.

I guess I’m writing this to hold myself accountable. This is my confession that will hopefully spur me to clean up my automobile act. I’m getting my stuff out of the car each night. Starting tomorrow.

I was with a group of moms recently when someone asked for “practical advice” for a first-time mother. This woman was compiling ideas for an “advice book” or something for a baby shower to give to the mom-to-be. Practical advice. Okay. Advice on diapers and milk supply went around the group. I suddenly blurted out, “Pajamas! Buy more pajamas than you think you need.”

Everyone paused and looked at me. One said, “Oh yeah. Totally.”

Right now I am literally going to air my dirty laundry. Take a look, this is the inside of my washing machine this week before I ran it.

These are just the pajamas that are visible. Every load of laundry I do has at least one set of pajamas in it. Think about it. What is your kid often wearing when they do the following?

• Leak through their diaper
• Wet the bed
• Puke
• Get a bloody nose
• Eat pancakes with syrup
• Eat popcorn and chocolate milk while watching a movie
• Smear chocolate candy from their Easter basket or Christmas stocking on them

That’s right! Their pajamas! My mom asked me what I should get the kids for Christmas. “They both need pajamas,” I replied. My daughter got some Hello Kitty pajamas and (shocker) some “Frozen” pajamas. That’s another thing. Are you a mom who hates tacky character shirts for kids? Well, let them get their Lightning McQueen-Dora-Ninja Turtles-Doc McStuffins-Sponge Bob fix with pajamas! You’ll get the satisfaction knowing your kid will likely barf and pee on the tackiness. The satisfaction will wane when you realize it’s just more laundry. Here’s to more sleep!

Side Note: I used to be a mom that didn’t like tacky character t-shirts. That ship sailed when the S.S. Princess Everything docked at our house awhile back.

The past few days I’ve only wanted to spend my time with the women in the Litchfield Women’s Correctional Facility in New York. You know, the new season of “Orange Is The New Black” premiered on Netflix after a long wait. We got together with a group of our best friends to listen to a little Regina Spektor and catch up with Chapman and company this weekend. We admonished one couple for being the traitorous assholes who watched ahead an episode. If you’re not watching this show, start from the beginning and watch. It’s fantastic and lives up to it’s critical accolades.

We joked around and said which character each of our friends are. You would think that I would be Alex Vause. Tall, dark hair, big boobs and dark rimmed glasses. Obvious, right? No. My friend Sam said it best. She looked at me and said, “Amy, you’re Piper Chapman. You think you’re too pretty to go to prison.” I said, “Oh, I know I’m too pretty to go to prison!”

Let’s be clear. I would never get into a salacious love affair with an international drug trafficker like Chapman did. I would listen to my attorney’s advice and never lie under oath, that’s for sure. However, like Chapman, I would ask my husband to keep my blog updated while I’m locked up and I would read up on prison life before turning myself over.

mrgolightly.tumblr.com

piperchapman.tumblr.com

Seriously. I don’t think I’d make it in prison. Since watching the HBO series “OZ” during the height of its popularity I am convinced we are all one bad decision away from being locked up. I think any teens needing to be scared straight should be forced to watch “OZ.” As a teen I tried to steal one time just to see what it was like. I took a pack of gum from a hotel gift shop while on an overnight trip with my church youth choir. I got 100 feet into the lobby and felt so guilty I turned around and told the clerk I accidentally walked out, forgetting it was in my hand. I paid the $1.50 and vowed never to try to steal anything again. The only rush I ever got from shoplifting was rushing back to pay for something out of guilt. Clearly I never needed to be scared straight.

It’s no surprise that the story lines in “Orange Is The New Black” that have stuck with me at this time in my life are the ones about the mothers. Seeing the pregnant woman come back to prison with empty arms after delivering her baby was awful. I look at my babies’ faces and think what it would be like if I didn’t see them everyday because I was behind bars. I realized millions of families around our nation deal with that daily.

You could say that I drive safer, and continue to live right so I don’t become even more like Chapman. Now I have to run and go pick up my child from school on time. I can’t even handle being admonished by the preschool teachers, imagine how I would handle prison guards.

I definitely feel I am devoting most of my time to my family, now. (That’s a nicer way of saying I just use the hashtag #SAHM.) But, I have a confession. One member of our household is neglected.

Poor Ginger. She used to be head bitch around here.

Ginger protecting Baby Charlotte in 2011.

We got Ginger Christmas 2005 as newlyweds. She was our original baby. We doted on, worried about and basically fell all over ourselves for this dog. A rescue group found her on the side of the road. You would never know it after she came to live with us. She was spoiled rotten. She found us. She found the biggest suckers she could find to buy her designer dog food and pick up her poop.

We were good dog owners, but nothing like my friend Trish. Trish is an all around better person than you and me. Seriously. She’s a nurse who helps operate on people. That alone gets you into heaven, but she also volunteers for a pet rescue group and is often a foster mom for dogs before they are adopted. Ginger would probably rather have her for a mom than me.

Sadly, Ginger didn’t get as many snuggles, walks and pets after Charlotte was born. Now that Henry is here? Psh! I feel like she’s downright ignored among the chaos some days. The worst was about a month ago. I feel so guilty about this, it’s taken a month to write this confession.

At the risk of sounding like the cheesy start of a suspense novel, it was a cold and rainy night. It was about 3:00 am. I was expecting to be woken up by the cries of a little milk lover in need of my boobs, but it was a different sound. It was a tapping and scraping. I felt like I was still dreaming when Greyson sat up and said, “Is the dog still outside?!” “The sound was Ginger jumping and scratching the front door. We both jumped up and ran downstairs. Every step I thought, “Oh, God! Poor baby! What have I done!? I left her in the rain! I am a horrible person!”

Her collar and harness were missing. That means she got herself caught on a tree or bush while attached to her long tether. We put her out there and let her enjoy our large yard. She loves it. Ginger can now get out of the collar and harness if it gets caught on something. It’s doggy contortion at its finest. She bounded in the door, tail wagging, dripping with the rain of abandonment. We grabbed towels and dried her off. In my sleepy deliriousness I looked up at Greyson and said, “We can’t tell Trish about this!”

Well, she knows now. Ginger got loose yesterday morning too as I was trying to get out the door to be the parent volunteer at the preschool class party. I haven’t put her on the tether since yesterday. I just strap Henry in the baby carrier and have Charlotte walk with me as I have her on the leash. I have to remember to be a good dog mama too. Ginger deserves to be head bitch.

Why are dogs with sunglasses always funny?