Back to Daily Blogging aka Getting Real

My blog for the last while has been more of a photo album of What We Did This Month. It's had no real content, just pictures and with captions. That's about it. So much for Real Life. That's about as real as a Norman Rockwell painting. I've just been sharing the rosy bits that I've tweaked up in Photoshop, all blemish free and corrected lighting. Which is fine, if this was Mommy in Real Life-like. I'll still bring in the pictures, and yes there will be some photoshop touching up. But I'm going to have some more real content to. What it's like day in and day out to be a single mom of 5. Cause that is definitely NOT all rosy.

I'm sitting in bed right now, in sweats with socks on, seriously contemplating getting up. And yet, it's cold out there. Last week I paid an insanely high electric bill. It wiped out my bank account (ok, that doesn't really take much!) And that was from the last warm days of summer. We don't have A/C, and I have no explanation for the bill being so outrageous other than PG&E rates just went up, AGAIN. But we are also a family that tends to leave all the lights on. And tvs (and yes, we have several... like seven) and usually have at least three or four on at any given time. Often in empty rooms. And I can get up at 4 a.m. to a fully lit house with multiple tvs blaring. And at least one gaming platform on pause (we have 'em all: Xbox360, PS2, Wii, Gamecube...)

So I had a talk with the kids. This has GOT to stop. I can't afford it. And it means THEY can't afford it. If the family money is going to PG&E, then it's not going to clothes, movies or Christmas presents. They understood that. And when I got up in the wee hours of the morning today, it was to a dark and quiet house. Not a light was on, not a single tv... except mine. Yes, hypocrite that I am, I HAVE to sleep with the tv on. I need the white noise to drown out the sounds of people breaking in my house to murder me in my sleep. I've tried sleeping with it off, but THAT is all I hear. Every sound is the sound of Hannibal Lecter/Jason Voorhees/Michael Myers (no, not the guy from Austin Powers. The slow walking one from Halloween.) It doesn't help that my bedroom is at the front of the house, and so I hear all the noise from the street. I am a Mom and I'm allowed to have a double-standard.

So the house is freezing cold right now, because we've had some sort of bizarro world cold snap and Marin County now thinks it's located in Canada instead of California. Can I just tell you how impossible it is to get out of a warm bed when you can see your breath. Normally that only happens when I'm camping. And then I get to have eggs and bacon for breakfast. Mmmmm.... bacon.... But there will be no eggs and bacon today. And so there is no incentive to get out of bed. And now it's 8 and I'm running late. And I'm cold. And it's Monday. And there is no joy in Whoville.