Life Laughs: The Naked Truth about Motherhood, Marriage, and Moving On Read online

  Watching your potato grow old is yet another joyous ritual in marriage. Some potato’s skin might become a little more dingy and his “parts” might not be as fun as they used to be. He might also start to stink. Your potato used to have that “new car smell,” but he now has the aroma of stinky sock. You might start to say, “What’s going on with my potato? It never used to be like this. Now I’m running around trying to find his parts and having to put them on for him.” You soon begin to realize Mr. Potato Head couldn’t exist without Mrs. Potato Head. They would honestly cease to exist. And to make matters worse, their parts would not only start disappearing but would eventually start wilting and breaking. Your young, energetic, fun potato is now slowly starting to move toward the sofa and filling his starchy self with beer and refusing to let go of the remote. Your dreamy Mr. Potato Head has slowly reincarnated into Mr. Couch Potato Head! I should really let the toy company know to start adding a couch and a remote control to each set. Then new generations of young girls can practice different ways of telling their Mr. Potato Head to get off his fat ass and unload the dishwasher.

  So if you’ve experienced these joys already in marriage or any relationship, I hope you can take a sigh of relief knowing that you are not alone. And if you’re a newlywed, just be aware that even though you might think you married a stud, in all honesty, he’s just another SPUD!

  The First Poo

  Oh, in the beginning…when chivalry was at its peak. What a wonderful time it was. I have finally come to grips with knowing I probably will never see chivalry again. Maybe, just maybe, when I’m eighty and have to be wheeled to a car in my wheelchair, my husband might open the car door for me, but that would be it. Okay, he might remove my dentures and brush them for me, but I can’t see him doing anything else.

  In the beginning, I was really good at playing the “pretending to be polite and perfect” game. After only about two months, though, I was losing speed and began unraveling. My first struggle was trying to hold in my farts after dinner. We’ve all been there, driving home; you’re pretending to giggle at his conversation when the whole time you’re clenching your butt cheeks together, praying for green lights so you can run out of the car. Then once you get out of the car you run like hell, screaming, saying you just saw a spider—and you run behind a tree and blow your ass out.

  What about the first poo at his place? Remember that? Trying to tuck it away for a different day but you can’t, so you go in his bathroom and spray his aftershave like crazy, trying to cover the smell of death. And I’m sure a few of you have experienced the “Oh, SHIT, it won’t flush” scenario. I HATE it when that happens. I’ve been guilty of the scoop-out-and-toss-out-the-window a couple of times in my lifetime.

  But my absolute worst one happened when I was only in seventh grade. I went to my new boyfriend’s grandma’s house because she wasn’t home and we needed a place to make out. I had to go number two so bad and made my way to the bathroom. I kept flushing so he wouldn’t hear any accidental farts come out during the process. When my mission was completed I flushed the toilet for the last time and watched it circle and circle and circle and then violently shoot out of the toilet with gallons of water and poo poo coming out. Before I could even grab a towel the floor was flooded and it washed into the living room, which of course had to have WHITE f*cking carpet. I couldn’t say anything. I just looked at the damage done, including the look of horror on my twelve-year-old boyfriend’s face, and ran like hell.

  To this day I still have a problem “dropping it like it’s hot” at anybody else’s house except mine. Even in my own house I still blame smells on my poor maid: “Damn, honey, don’t use the kitchen bathroom because Rosa must’ve had burritos again last night.” It worked until the smell seemed to reappear on Rosa’s days off. The ultimate test, when you know you both have made it to a certain “comfort” level, is when he’s forced to plunge for you. Now, that’s love!

  I always thought it was funny to hear men bitch that they are grossed out by their women farting or going to the bathroom. I mean, yes, we’re ladies, but it’s not like God made our back alley plumbing any different from theirs. Most of the time we’re eating the same meal, so if their belly is yodeling, chances are ours will too. Hey, at least we don’t take two hours to get it out!

  All in all, even though it’s gross, I still find it all funny. Maybe because it’s such an awkward thing, but knowing that everybody poops just makes me laugh. Tom Cruise poops, Brad Pitt poops, even Oprah poops. Ahh, that makes me laugh. So the next time you make a stinky and your husband gets grossed out, tell him to relax, because if Pamela Anderson can still shit and look hot, so can you!

  The One-Uppers!

  Fighting in marriage is about as common as having sex. Well, some might argue there’s more fighting than sex, but you get the idea. If arguing is done in a healthy way and away from the children, I think it can be a very good thing in a relationship. Sure, Dr. Phil might say “talking things out” is more beneficial than fighting, but we are not all married to Dr. Phil. Sometimes we argue because that’s what we are used to.

  I’ve noticed a certain type of argument that has happened in my relationships and I’m sure in some of yours, too; I call it the “one-upper.” If you don’t know what that means, let me give you an example.

  “I’m so tired. The baby was teething all day and then the toilet overflowed, so I had to clean it all up.”

  He replies, “Oh yeah? I couldn’t sleep last night and then got up at four A.M. to go to work and had eighty people asking me questions and I could barely drive home because I was so tired.”

  Or…

  “I have the worst stomachache. I feel like I might throw up.”

  He replies, “Oh yeah? I have the worst headache. I feel like my head is going to explode.”

  Now, why the hell does this happen? The only thing I can think of, because I do it too, is that we want to be acknowledged for our hard work and get sympathy for our pain. But for some reason we all play this one-upper game about who has it harder. My absolute favorite one was when John would announce that he had washed the dishes. Or if I walked in the door on a special occasion he would make me look around at what he had cleaned up. Men seem to need an instant reward for what they SHOULD do and it drives me crazy. John would say, “Did you see I cleaned the dishes?”

  I would reply with…“Yeah.”

  Then he would stand there, dumbfounded, waiting for me to leap into his arms, saying, “WHOOPEE! Thanks, BABY!” I don’t care if I was married to Brad Pitt. That would NEVER happen. I never got “WHOOPEE, thanks for doing the laundry” from him. Which is the reason why we one-up each other. How do you fix this? I don’t know. Remember, this isn’t a self-help marriage book. I have no idea what I’m talking about and need help too. But I do know that this is a very common thing in marriage.

  In most relationships there is usually one who is the “I want to talk about this RIGHT NOW” person and the other who is the “I don’t feel like talking about this right now” person who usually leaves or does the silent treatment. I’m the person who doesn’t like to talk about things right away. I need time to digest an argument and process it before I can really let him have it. John, on the other hand, would follow me around the house until he was blue in the face, wanting to get the issue on the table and deal with it. This was a HUGE challenge in our relationship because it would make our fights turn into “why I run away” instead of the topic at hand. So a friend told us to do a very L.A. thing and go see a marriage therapist to give us the tools to get through our arguments. I was so intrigued by this that I dragged John and myself to see her and it was AMAZING. I highly recommend even a one-stop therapy shop in your lifetime. The therapist discovered that I was the one in the relationship who had to have a time-out. I was the runaway and John was the discusser, so the compromise she came up with was that if John and I started arguing I got to say “Time out” and he had to leave me alone for fifteen minutes. I could go in a
nother room and he couldn’t bother me about the topic for a whole fifteen minutes. The shitty part for me was that I only got fifteen minutes when I usually like three days. So when my time was up I had to go back into the room, BUT amazingly in that fifteen minutes we had both calmed down considerably and had new clarity about the situation. I was amazed that this shit worked. If this sounds like you, I highly suggest trying it.

  So the next time you’re in a pickle, scream “Time out!” or give him some time to digest it. I guarantee it will make the makeup sex a lot more fun!

  The Goldfinger

  Eighth grade. That was really the year I started having fun with boys. I made out with Mike in the back of an alley, and he shoved his tongue so far down my throat that I gagged, ran home, and then scrubbed out my mouth. It didn’t matter if it was gross. It was my first kiss. I sat on my porch that day with flushed cheeks, thinking about myself as his bride and hoping the fairy tales in my head would come true.

  When I was a little girl the idea of simply being touched on the hand was more powerful than when a boy squeezed my boob. If our pinkies were connected, the butterflies in my tummy would spin out of control. I was content with this. Kissing and holding hands was climactic enough, but little boys are much different. Their emotions have nothing to do with their actions. They will have feelings of wanting to be around a girl, but all that consumes them from an early age is how in the hell they are going to get us in our underwear. First base is kissing, second is squeezing a boob, third base is dry humping, and the home run at this age is the finger. I remember thinking, in some boy’s grandma’s basement, This is gross. They have no idea what they’re doing, and the look on their face is like they just found the biggest pot of gold in history. This is where little girls realize that our “gold” is more valuable than we had thought. It should be treasured. And we shouldn’t let too many people tamper with it, because we don’t want our “gold” to get dingy. I was careful from that point on about who got to touch my “gold.”

  As years passed, getting to home base was no longer simply having a “goldfinger.” They finally got us to give in and let the gold digger do its thing. Yet the whole goldfingering thing manifested into foreplay and to this day is widely used as the only foreplay we get sometimes. What men need to realize—and what we need to tell them—is that goldfingering is foreplay for THEM. After getting used to a penis, why in the hell do we want to be warmed up with a finger?

  It’s not eighth grade anymore!! Why men think this is our preferred form of foreplay, I have no idea. Sometimes it feels like he’s checking a turkey to see if it’s done.

  Personally, I think it’s a lazy man’s foreplay. When they’re too tired to actually go check out the mine face-to-face, they send in the troops to do the work, usually that soldier called the index finger. I’m sure your man has sent the same troop member down there many times. The hard part is when you’re working so hard to get aroused and he starts with that, you don’t want to have to say stop because then that will completely take away any morsel of sexual energy that was barely there to begin with. So we tough it out and get through it. If he ever does it when I’m PMSing, I usually have no problem telling him to stop it because he has completely dried up the gold mine. Which totally happens when they’re doing that quick goldfinger mining that seems to be on high speed where, for some reason, they think the faster the better. Um, NO!!!

  Now I don’t want you to think that any fancy finger work is being looked down upon, because it’s not. If they can use the troops while going down to the mine face-to-face, then that’s good stuff. Then it feels like a whole army is having a party down there. It’s only when it’s the one soldier trying to do the work for all of them that it just doesn’t work.

  So, if you have a hard time explaining this to your man, have him read this chapter so he can get the hint. Otherwise, tell him to send his soldier to HIS OWN DARK COAL MINE. That should do the trick!

  Honey, Your Friend’s a Bitch!

  Remember when you met your potato for the first time and you told all of your friends about him? They were so excited for you. They would ask you if he had any friends for them and bla bla bla. Then weeks would go by and you really wouldn’t talk to your friends that much anymore. All you wanted to do was spend every waking moment with your man. He was in every thought of every part of the day. If women could attach themselves to their man with Velcro during this time, they would.

  As time passes, you’ll notice that your single friends don’t mind not hearing from you anymore. You’re not on the hunt anymore, and until they can make a nest like yours they’re still flying around picking up different-sized sticks to help build that nest. All it takes is one friend in that group to get hitched and panic sets in among all the birds. I’m sure you and your friends all had weddings within a year of one another. And I’m sure you can name at least one friend who settled for less just so she wouldn’t be the last Brady married.

  Once you become officially married, going out and partying is much different. Now you have to find a couple you both like. It wouldn’t be so tough if you were friends with the bride and he was friends with the groom, but it doesn’t happen that often. You have to open your circle to allow new people in. Which, I gotta tell ya, I’m so not into. My friends will even talk about how stubborn I am about my circle. I have a waiting list to get in. I just don’t feel like getting to know anybody new. I’m old and happy with my handful. I’m sure you can relate in some way. But to be a good wife, you should at least try and get to know some of the women your husband’s friends married. One of them might just turn out to be a new best friend.

  I don’t know why this is, but there is always one girlfriend of yours that your husband hates. I don’t get it. He says she’s either a slut or a bitch, and when you tell him you’re going out with her, he rolls his eyes or makes some kind of comment. This is really funny. Why do they care so much? And if “that” friend is part of girls’ night out, watch your husband get crabby and make you call him during the night. It’s almost as if he doesn’t trust you around this girl and he worries that bad wife behavior might slip off this girl’s skin and accidentally enter your body. What does he think is going to happen? A runaway dick is going to be flying through the air and your friend is going to catch it and shove it up your vagina? Guys need to understand that when we go out with our friends we don’t give a shit about guys. We just want to drink, make fun of what others girls are wearing, and bitch about our marriages. We’re not looking to see if we’ve still “got it.” We know we’ve “got it.” We’re just having a good time with the pussy posse.

  When guys go out with their friends they seem to lose brain cells and all concept of reality. Unlike girls, men still try to go out to a club to see if they’ve still “got it.” Not to cheat (hopefully), just to see if their feathers are still as alluring to the opposite sex. They’ll even talk to some other birds just to show off to their friends that they’ve still got it. It’s so stupid, but I guess it’s in their genes to try and attract women until the day they die.

  You can’t really get jealous of them doing it. It’s gonna happen whether you like it or not. Know that penises in numbers equal stupidity and that even if a vagina came flying through the air they would all just stare at it because their brains don’t work fast enough to figure out what to do with it.

  If We BOTH Bring Home the Bacon, We Should BOTH Fry It Up in a Pan!!!!

  If I had been born centuries earlier, I would have been burned at the stake. I don’t consider myself to be a hard-core feminist. I just believe in equally pulling the weight. For instance, if I were a stay-at-home mom, I would keep the house running and in order, cook, and bring up my babies, and I would expect my man to work his ass off providing for the family. If I were to work nine to five along with my husband, I think we should both be responsible for the duties at home. He should not be allowed to kick off his shoes and let his stinky feet smell up the room while I run around frying up the baco
n we BOTH paid for. Even though I say this, it didn’t happen in my home as often as I’d hoped. But you can be damn sure I’ll try and make it a reality next time.

  The problem I run into when trying to implement this is that men can’t do as good a job as we can of taking care of the house. In fact, they just plain suck at it. I know a few husbands who do the cooking, but let’s get real…not enough. I’m not sure if men purposely suck at home responsibilities or if they’re just genetically incapable of doing them. It has to be something in their genetic makeup, because when we both would come home from work, I would run to the baby and hug him and take care of his needs. The other half would go check his e-mails and then come see the baby. I think the male species is still stuck in the caveman days. They know how to go out and hunt for food, come home, have sex, take a dump, pat their kid on the head, and go to bed. It’s just not fair. Then they actually are upset that we don’t want to have sex after the baby goes to sleep. Sometimes I used to purposely not shower just to keep him away. I am physically too exhausted by the end of a hard work day to try and fake orgasms.

  The only way I was able to finally show John how much extra work I was doing was to completely stop doing all the extra work. I stopped cooking, I stopped doing the dishes, and I stopped doing the laundry. He couldn’t understand what was going on. He thought I was going through some sort of depression. I realized that he couldn’t possibly have known how much I was doing simply because I was always doing it. It worked! Well, sort of. When he ran out of jeans to wear he actually went to the store and bought five more pair. I was so pissed, but he definitely got the hint. He started washing the baby and taking the clothes to the laundry room (note how I say taking the clothes to the laundry room, not actually washing them). This is also where “Bribing for Blow Jobs” can really help you out.