To Myself Ten Years Ago

Combing through old posts, I found this one, and it is still SO true! Here's a little laugh for your Tuesday!

Taking the time to comb through my calendar detail by detail gave me a little chuckle. I wish I could go back ten years in time and tell myself what I had on the agenda, and just how I felt about it. For example, this week I have three lunch outings planned - a picnic lunch with a friend and our kids, a country club lunch with my aunt, and tea time with my niece and daughter. Now, this is actually what I envisioned for myself when I had children. The difference is how I VIEW it. Am I baking bread for the picnic, combing through dresses for tea, or setting my hair for the club? NO! I am frantically searching for a way to get my kid to stop eating playground sand BEFORE our picnic, figuring out a way to explain away my screaming son before lunch, and finding a cute dress that wont stain but still sparkles before tea time. And what would I tell myself ten years ago? This week, you will most look forward to your trip to Sam's Club.

Actually, there are many things that I wish I would have known as I stepped into the parent world. So, to myself ten years ago:

• Wal-Mart is proof for you that there is a real Hell. It may seem cool to you right now, to be silly and push your friends around in carts in the parking lot and try on the costumes in the aisle at Halloween, and to pick out junk food for your boyfriend's party - but there will come a day when you will actually consider a night without toilet paper over the horror of dirty linoleum floors, harsh lighting, screaming teenagers, and putrid smelling meat department. Your motto ten years from now will be "Publix: It's worth the extra $1.79"
• Sam's Club is your favorite weekly outing. It was actually designed by a woman to give your husband the illusion that you are accomplishing something while you stuff your children with over sized ice cream cups and greasy pizzas so that they pass out on the way home. As he carries the sleeping children upstairs, he will forget that, once again, you came home with nothing other than a package of paper plates and some water bottles.
• Two words: Bath Bombs. Actually, one word: LUSH. Get to know that store. A delivery from that store means you just bough yourself another week of baths, and a box from there will make you kiss the UPS man square on the lips. Oh, and your husband will be the UPS man. You're not a tramp.
• You will panic every time you hear silence in the car, and no, it is not because you have lost your Hanson CD, it is because unless you are physically bleeding to death and driving yourself to the hospital, you are not ever going to be alone in a car, and therefore you have probably left a child at home. And they are probably eating the gummy snacks. Which brings me to this...
• Gummy snacks are the devil. You will spend the majority of your day teaching your child that gummy snacks are not in fact 100% fruit, that apple sauce is NOT considered part of the food pyramid and is in fact dessert, and that chocolate milk is a treat reserved for Sunday afternoons IF they finish their eggplant. Baked, not fried. You are now that mom. Again, it brings me to my next point...
• You are THAT mom. You suspect non organic dairy farmers of secretly trying to poison your children, mainstream diaper manufacturers of trying to pump your kids full of chemicals, and you will spend over an hour in the Target Valentine's day isle on the phone with your sister because you feel bad that you are choosing the Barbie valentines for your daughter's class party over the recycled rain forest ones. Speaking of Target...
• Invest some stock in it, or just keep a bed in aisle seven, because that is now your fortress. You no longer care about jumping the fence to run at the good track after hours, about the perfect Starbucks latte, or about squeezing back into last year's skinny jeans. All you care about is Target. You consider it gym time for your daughter's home school day, you wouldn't know of the existence of some holidays had they not hung giant ADORABLE signs from their ceilings, and it will cause more strife between your husband and you than the classic ESPN vs. QVC argument. That is because...
• You don't have cable. I know, I know, exactly what I was thinking. Well, technically what YOU were thinking. It's so weird. YOU'RE SO WEIRD. And at first, you were REALLY sad without your morning cup of coffee with Regis and Kelly - oh, and it's just Kelly now by the way. You care more about the dirty commercials melting your children's brains than about who won the bachelor. PSYCHE! You still stay up super late until your husband goes to bed and put on the ol' pair of headphones to secretly be whisked away to St. Croix by The Bachelor Sean. You love every last minute of it. And by the way, in the morning, when you see Sean on the cover of Us Weekly, you will pretend you have NO idea who he is. You love your husband. Again, you are not a tramp.
• Planning two week long Disney trips in a six month period makes you sad. You know Disney better than your own town. You can navigate their bus system better than your own neighborhood, and you basically know the gift shop workers by name. As long as your children are under the age of 8, your days of globetrotting across five of the seven continents are over. That is why you must keep The Bachelor Sean in your life. 
• Laundry detergent will make you happy. The new smell will make you happy. Making your own will make you happy. New packaging will make you happy. Coupons for your favorite brand will make you happy. Folding it will suck. It will always suck. 
• Yoga is no longer weird to you. At this point, yoga and K-Cups are the only things that can get you out of bed before seven. K-Cups, by the way, are little tiny angels sent to you by God himself to remind you that He loves you.