Baby Made Me Do It

Hi everybody! I haven’t written in over 6 months. You know why? ‘Cause I had a baby. Yep, the excuse that superwomen like CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer would never dare use, but smart women like myself do. Why not make use of it? I suffered through hours of what felt like two gigantic hands digging into my flesh and pulling my bones apart, a week with my downstairs blown-out and endured a new mom sentence of six weeks without sex. I earned this excuse card and shame on me if I don’t use it!

The excuse I HAVE A BABY covers everything from forgetting birthdays, to not contributing anything to potlucks, to flagrantly violating traffic laws. And unlike your usual rotating list of cop-outs that don’t involve saving for college–work, sick, sick cat–I HAVE A BABY can be used over and over again with your friends and you will never look like a dick. And don’t worry about coming up with an explanation either–no one wants to know because singles and single couples are afraid of babies. They believe as I once did, that newborns are a plague which, once contracted, wipes friends out from existence and prevents them from doing what those without spawn assume is prized above all else: hanging out with them.

Now that I’m on the other side, however, I’ve discovered that the whole thing is a sham. Sure babies deprive parents of their sleep and give them new problems to solve every day, but the thing new parents don’t share with the public is that newborns give them massive amounts of baby love hormones which make them perfectly capable of going out and seeing people. Thing is… they just don’t want to. Babies don’t turn parents into the walking dead, they turn them into selfish, socially undependable lying a**holes.

For instance:

• You think your friends couldn’t make it to your party because little Aiden was taking an extraordinarily long nap? Wrong! They’ve always hated your parties and are glad they finally don’t have to go.
• You invited your friends to see your band play on Saturday night but they couldn’t go because babysitters cost too much and they need to save for a house? Nuh-uh. Look on Facebook the next day to see what they’re doing. That’s right…checking in at a pricey mimosa brunch and spending money on friends they think are worth spending on a babysitter.
• You tried calling your mom-friend to cry about your boyfriend AGAIN but she said she couldn’t talk because darling baby Mackenzie was crying to be fed? BS! That little bitch Mackenzie cries all the time. EVEN WHEN SHE’S HAPPY!

Of course when I first joined the club I was dumb enough to prove everyone wrong about what it meant to be a new mom. I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t do it all even when I didn’t want to do it all. I posted photos like this one:

You know what that got me? Friends inviting me to work out with them when all I wanted to do was sleep in and eat pizza… at the same time. But after several mornings of Burpees, ab exercises on furniture sliders and jumping lunges, I smartened up. Who cares if taking on the public’s perception of being a parent makes me look like a shut-in slob. When else will I be able to not do all the things I’ve never wanted to do? I took inventory, held a meeting with my internal Board of Directors, saw what others in my field were doing…

Oh no she didn’t! Pretending to be exhausted with perfectly side swept bangs and make-up! Good for her.

Where’s momma heading to after this photo?

…and immediately posted my own version of this common mommy and me pose:

Do you think this image would tempt anyone to bother us with any invitations or obligations? Of course not. That’s because when you see photos like this splayed across Facebook and Instagram, you might comment, “Oh how sweet. Momma and child sleeping, Exhausted from so much love,” but subconsciously the photo makes you think, “F’ing stoner roommates.” Instantly this new look brands me as undesirable and totally useless. Success! A new parent through and through! As a result, guess what this pic has been getting me? Days and nights of doing nothing but sleeping and eating pizza. At the same time.

Be Positive

Everyone needs to be positive; if you don’t you die – just ask Andy Rooney. Which is why we as a country need to start turning that frown upside down. With so much depressing talk about government bond ratings getting downgraded, stocks sinking, and high unemployment rates, it’s no wonder no one feels confident enough to make the kind of inappropriate purchases that got us here in the first place. It’s time that we take some lessons from followers of The Secret and every positive person your grumpy friend has ever wanted to punch.

When things are going bad never let people know.  No one likes to be with a downer ’cause downers are no fun.  But if you feel like you really need to talk about what you’re going through just make sure you turn your negative experience into something like A Challenge or Life Lesson. Just look at how Sharon Bialek, one of Herman Cain‘s accusers, made her allegations more agreeable on CBS’ Early Show this week:

“I don’t despise the man. I actually did it because I wanted to help him. I wanted to give him a platform to come clean, to have to tell the truth. And he still hasn’t done it, and it’s really a shame because he could  he could have switched it. He could have, you know, come forward, and I was trying to be nice about it, too. And it just didn’t work.”

See-she wasn’t coming forward because according to her Cain was a slimebag that she wanted to take down, she was just lending a helpful hand. If she went with the whiney negative Oh I’m such a victim angle, no one would have listened because people don’t like people who can’t t help themselves.

So be positive and make your own life awesome! Imagine yourself accomplishing your goals and being where you wish to be. Put together a collage of everything you want and say it out loud to the universe or to a mirror and…voilà – magic – it all comes true. Don’t believe me? Just ask any professional athlete who has won a championship what they did to prepare for the big game. Sure they sacrificed those precious hours better spent in front of a TV to training hard everyday, but what really matters is that they envisioned winning the game in vivid detail, replaying that victory over and over so on the big day… voilà – magic. That’s what professional winners do. Of course we don’t know what losers do because we’re America and America is always #1 even when we’re not. So let’s be that America and focus on our strengths and desires and ask the universe for anything that can be represented by a really pretty picture from a fashion magazine so we can get over this lame time and have fun again!