The Hunt for White-tailed Deer

Hunting is kind of a big thing in our family. My husband grew up hunting, and I started hunting gophers at the age of 14. We did quite a bit of deer hunting this year. It was my fourth year hunting deer.

My thoughts on hunting? Well I'm a bit torn morally I guess. My belief system really lies in Buddhism so really I should be practicing kindness to all living things and causing no harm. I don't really practice Buddhism though, I just believe in all of the theory behind it if that makes any sense. As another example, Buddhists are also supposed to avoid consciousness-diminishing or altering substances -- i.e. alcohol or drugs.  Well, I drink almost every day now.

So back to hunting. Typically people think of humans as the top of the food chain. Depending on how you look at things, that may be true or untrue. Not very many humans are killed by other animals. However, without all of our tools for hunting and protection from other animal species, this would not be true. It would be difficult to co-exist with say lions or grizzly bears out in the wild with no supplies. We would not be at the top of the food chain under those circumstances. So maybe we're cheating. Or maybe our ability to think, reason, and construct are natural assets that rightly put us at the top of the food chain the same way lions and grizzly bears are naturally fast, and have large sharp teeth and claws which are assets that put them near the top of the food chain.

Depending on how you look at it hunting may seem unfair. Perhaps if we wanted to kill a deer we should run around in the woods with no weapons and if we so happened to catch one (unlikely) we should try to kill them using only our bare hands. If that were the case for all animals, it seems people would be mainly vegetarians. Cows are slow and dumb, but even if you could catch one, how would you kill it? And if you did manage to catch a cow and somehow beat it to death it would suffer more than being swiftly slaughtered. Okay I know that sounds strange and mean, but these are the facts of life. If we wanted to play fair with other animals we would likely have no beef, no meat. It would be possible, though much more difficult to get enough protein in our diet. We would actually be very low on the food chain if we lived in the wild with no tools or weapons.

Okay, I bet you've never broken down the topic of hunting and killing animals to that extent, but that is naturally how my mind works. It sometimes drives me crazy, but I break down and analyze pretty much every aspect of life.

So back to hunting again. Okay, I admit that hunting gophers probably isn't very moral since we don't use any part of the animal for anything. It's been forever since I've hunted gophers anyway, and I'm not sure I would want to anymore. I don't mind hunting for food supply though, and everything else I kill I utilize the meat. So deer hunting? Buddha would probably disapprove, but then again, I don't really practice Buddhism, I just believe in it. I really don't have any other moral objections to it, but I think you should be a good shot with an appropriate firearm to minimize suffering of the animal. I have shot three deer and so far have dropped them all in one shot. I use a .243 Remington 700 series in Mossy Oak camo for any of you who know about firearms and were wondering.

So like I said, hunting is kind of a big thing in our family and I think it's fun. This year I shot a buck that was barely a 2 point. I have yet to shoot a trophy buck, but that's fine with me. Next year I might try elk hunting. Speaking of elk, not long ago there was an entire herd of elk swimming across the lake. It was quite a sight seeing about 25 elk heads just cruising through the water. Just a little side note there. This year we saw a beautiful (and cute) brown bear that we could have shot, but neither my husband or I had a bear tag. He was awfully cute to shoot anyway, but it was fun to see one.

So there are my ramblings on the subject of hunting, and here is a picture of the buck I shot this year:

Good times in the usually boring state of Montana :)

From Abused to Abusive

Since I have moved back in with my husband, there has been a shift in power. When I was reading all about domestic abuse there was one article that talked about how abused women often become abusers in future relationships. I didn't really think much of it at the time. I mean, I know how awful it feels to have someone treat you terribly so I obviously would never do that to someone. Or so I thought.

While I was gone, all my husband wanted was for me and our son to come back. He even told his lawyer that. When his lawyer was asking what he wanted out of the divorce my husband said all he wanted was his wife and son back. His lawyer told him he was an idiot. My husband would do anything to get me back. He knew his manipulative ways weren't getting me back this time. He said while I was gone he spent a lot of time looking in the mirror and hating the person he saw. The person he had become. How could he treat the person he loved more than anyone in the world so badly? He has admitted 100% without a doubt that he was abusive to me. He quit smoking pot because he realized that had a lot to do with it.

He really has changed which surprises me. I came back waiting for him to slip back  into having no respect for me. I'm still not considering it an impossibility and I'm watching for it. I still have my lawyer on retainer. We haven't dismissed the divorced. We have filed an abatement which means the divorce proceedings are just on hold right where we left off and can be continued at any time if one of us so chooses.

Anyway, since I've come back I can't help but feel like he owes me something. I mean I could have stayed where I was and left him broken-hearted, but I did what he wanted me to do. I came back. That's all he wanted anyway right? At any cost right? As long as I'm back I should be able to do whatever I want because the point is that I'm back and that's what he wanted right?

Well, no solid relationship can be built on feelings like that. I shouldn't feel that way. I want to get along with him, but he would never know it. I have begun to treat him the way he treated me. I have no patience with him. I snap at him all of the time. When he tries to hug me I usually try to pull away. I don't think at all of his feelings. I offer him no support when it comes to the stress of daily life. I yell at him. I blame him for everything. I hurt him all the time. I have rarely seen this man cry until lately. He cries now because he is so nice to me and I am just plain mean to him. I have no regard for his feelings. I expect him to do what I want to do all of the time and if he doesn't I make his life hell. I withhold my love while he is giving his freely. And on top of the way I treat him, I still expect him to be the opposite. To pay attention to me. To show me love and affection even while I'm being a complete bitch.

I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. It really isn't fair to him. Deep down I know I am completely unfair to him. We  get in fights and I tell him to just go find someone else. I say it in a mean way, but I'm half serious. Everyone deserves someone who loves and respects them. I'm sure there are plenty of women out there who would. The thought of him with someone else makes me sick though. I've actually thrown up just at the thought of it.

I'm not sure what the hell is wrong with me. It seems it may have been better for everyone involved had I just stayed where I was and never came back. I really don't know why I do it though and I am terrified that perhaps I just don't know how to have any kind of relationship besides an abusive one. Perhaps I am so used to unhealthy relationships that I really could never manage to have a healthy relationship. I don't know how healthy relationships work. I am used to one person having all the power and the other person having none. Tides have turned. I am the bad guy.

Wasting My Time Wasted

Lately the voice in my head has been too much to handle. For those of you who don't know the voice I'm talking about, don't worry, I'm not talking about the kind of imaginary voices shizophrenic people hear. I'm talking about my own voice that is constantly analyzing my life inside my head. It makes me crazy. It never knows when to shut up and just let me be. It is exhausting and stressful to constantly, all day, every day, think about, analyze, and question my life. Always trying to decide if I'm making the right decisions in my life, trying to figure out the future and what I really want out of life, and how to get what I want out of life. It keeps my head spinning and my stress level high.

I already have high blood pressure, so adding all of this stress has been taking its toll. I'm beginning to be concerned about my blood pressure because it has been crazy high for years now. By this point it is probably doing irreversible damage to my heart, arteries, and who knows what else. I know the risks of long-term hypertension. I got straight A's in Anatomy and Physiology and worked in a hospital for a year. I've seen a doctor here and there about it, but I hate the side effects of the medications I've tried for it. Anyway, I'm a bit off topic.

I can't deal with the constant analyzation of my life anymore. It is making me crazy. Especially since I'm feeling a bit stuck with my situation in life right now and I'm out of ideas for what I should do about it. I'm feeling a bit helpless right now. Without an income, or any way to make an income I don't have the power to do anything I want with my life. I learned that the hard way.

I do have a plan for the future though. Since I'm always thinking about my life, I'm also always coming up with new ideas for directions to take my life. Right now I really want to learn to do metal work and start a business crafting things from metal. Eventually I want to get into high end home decor like lighting fixtures and chandeliers, smaller things too, but here's an example of what I'm thinking about:

These are all custom made for the mansion my husband built. For all of the metal lighting fixtures in the mansion, the owner paid somewhere around $250,000. Now I'm sure I would never find a mansion owner to buy a large amount of custom metalwork, but chandeliers and wall sconces and things would bring in a lot of money even for regular houses. Now I know I'm not going to pick up cutting torches, plasma cutters and welders and just start building intricate chandeliers. It will take a lot of practice and experience, but I think I'll learn quickly. And I have an artistic and creative side, along with a good sense of design which I think will be major assets. I'm going to get everything set up in the garage to start working on things one of these weekends coming up. We have all of the equipment around here already since they were used while the mansion was being constructed. I think it will be fun, and I'm excited to try something new, have a new challenge, have something to practice and get better at. Without that kind of thing in my life I'm lost. I'll keep going with photography too. I have a lot of fans of my photography but I need to get back in the habit of picking up my camera and actually taking pictures, because I haven't done enough of that lately.

So for now I am biding time, and I've resorted to distraction to quell the constant barrage of thoughts and questions about what I am doing with my life and whether I think my marriage will last, whether I think I am happy or ever could be happy. All the analyzations that keep me from really just living in the moment and maybe enjoying life. I've returned to the same habit that distracted me from my empty, unfulfilled life in high school and my young adult life. My good old friend alcohol. Is it healthy to ignore my life and fill the emptiness with drinking? Probably not. Do I care right now? Not really.

Since I have moved back in with my husband, a little over a month ago now, I think I have gone one night without drinking. I have a history of drinking problems. I started drinking daily my senior year of high school. My university days were even worse. Alcohol became a way of life. I had a bunch of money from investing the life insurance money my dad left me when he died. I had an income of $30,000 a year for doing nothing back before the economy was broken. I supplied myself and all my friends with plenty of alcohol. Drinking alone is never fun, so I always managed to get them all drinking with me. I bought liquor by the gallon. If we were going to drink beer, I'd buy 3 cases per night. You could have called me a bad influence I guess. I rarely went to classes. I knew every way to drop classes, withdraw from classes, and take leaves of absence. My friends still had to go to classes to keep grades up for financial aid and their parents. I was basically parentless paying for college completely out-of-pocket. I could do whatever I wanted. So I partied every night and got my friends to party with me. I had a lot of friends during that time. Yes, I kind of bought most of them, but I had a damn good time. Once I got to bar age, forget it. I was always at the bar. I started my day with what I called "morning drinks." Things like hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps, coffee and Kahlua, apple cider and peach schnapps. I thought nothing of drinking beer during the day and even when I worked I had a beer with lunch. After work I went straight to the bars. Every night I drank until blackout. My life basically continued on this way until I got pregnant. I had always been termed an "alcoholic" so when I quit drinking while I was pregnant, I never went back to drinking. I lived years pretty much sober with an occasional drink every 6 months or so.

Now my husband and I drink every night. Without drinking, I just dwell on the feeling that something is really missing from my life. Without drinking I question my marriage and whether I really love my husband and whether I want to spend forever for him. I get stressed out thinking about what I would do if I left again, where I would go, whether I could support myself and my son. The bottom line though is that right now I'm just not in a position to do anything about much of anything right this minute. I need to build a business or something before I even think about doing anything different with my life. So I need the voices to shut up. I can't deal with thinking about everything all day every day. When I drink, I can live in the moment and my worries and anxieties go away. It's a nice break from life. There are bad things about drinking every night though. The calories are killing me for one. My favorite drink has always been White Russians. After the first week of drinking them every night I gained 10lbs and realized that each drink has somewhere around 450 calories. So I was drinking probably somewhere around 8 drinks per night. That's 3600 calories a night. Ouch. So I've been trying to find the lowest calorie options. So far Vodka and Sprite Zero is the lowest calorie drink. One shot of 80 proof vodka contains 64 calories and Sprite Zero is calorie free. I drink that a lot. I only really like Grey Goose though which gets expensive. Even more so since my husband will only drink Jack Daniels. When I'm drinking vodka, together we go through at least 2 bottles of Grey Goose and 2 bottles of Jack per week, sometimes 3 of each.

But I prefer drinking beer. For some reason I get a better kind of drunk feeling from beer. I get happy drunk on beer most of the time. It makes me feel like life is all good, none of the little stuff matters. I have fun drinking beer. I do however get way worse hangovers from beer. Also, I have a high alcohol tolerance so I have a hard time drinking beer fast enough to even get feeling much more than a buzz. I mean forget a 6 pack. I like to drink a 12 pack per night if I'm drinking beer. Now here come the calories again. I was excited to see that Miller Genuine Draft came out with a 64 calorie per bottle beer, but here is a little known fact about beer: The lighter the beer (in calories, not color obviously) the lower the alcohol content. So I got these MGD 64s to try. After drinking one beer I knew it couldn't have much alcohol in it, so I looked up the alcohol content online. An average beer is around 5% alcohol and around 140 to 150 calories. Light beer is usually around 4.2% to 4.5% alcohol and around 99 to 105 calories. MGD 64? 2.8% alcohol and of course 64 calories. Might as well be non-alcoholic beer. Yeah, MGD is fooling a lot of people. I also was surprised to find that beer no longer lists the alcohol content on the label or the box, so you have to find it online.

Anyway, my father-in-law is an alcoholic, the kind that drinks all day every day. We were there for Thanksgiving so I had a conversation with him about beer. You know that awful hangover I get? Well it turns out beer is based on one of two major ingredients. Rice, or wheat. Budweiser products as well as many others are rice based. Miller, Coors, Keystone, and others are wheat based. Apparently rice based beer gives you a worse hangover for some reason. My father-in-law refuses to drink them. I trust his knowledge on the subject of alcohol. All he drinks is Coors Light, so that has become my beer of choice as well. With an alcohol content of 4.2% and 102 calories per bottle, it's not a terrible option. Still though, if I drink a 12 pack per night, that's 1224 calories per night. That's a lot considering I also have been eating like the average American, eating a couple thousand calories a day. In the summer I used to eat around 500 calories per day and not drink at all in order to keep my rockin' bikini body.

Bottom line, drinking is making me gain weight. That along with bipolar medications that have common side effects of increased appetite and weight gain. Oh, and I haven't had much time or motivation to exercise. So yeah, my body is no longer perfect, but I'm choosing not to care for now. I still look good, just added some curves to my body. I'm not a huge cow or anything. I've been weighing between 115 to 117 lbs.

So against all better judgment, and at the cost of my perfect body I'm just going to go with the drinking and see what happens. Yes, for now I'll take my drinks and deal with the extra weight and any health problems I may develop from the extra wear and tear on my body, because even if it puts more weight and stress on my body, it takes the weight of the world off of my shoulders. And right now I really need that.

"The One"

I am plagued by chronic existential thought processes. That is to say, I can't seem to go a minute without thinking, analyzing, and questioning my life. These thoughts always drift back to one subject. My marriage. My marriage that was almost dissolved a month or so ago.

I must admit when I was young, I was pretty obsessed with Disney movies. The kind where the girl goes through a struggle, but still ends up finding her prince, her one true love, and living happily ever after. Now I always imagined my life would be this way. It was the focus of my entire life for a long time. There were many times along the way that I thought I found him, only to be disappointed when he turned out not to be the one. I've pretty much always been the heart-breaker in a relationship. I always let him go when he didn't live up to my expectations of all consuming love.

There's always this talk of "the one" the "one true love, the "soulmate." I have a hard time thinking I could ever be totally and completely happy with one man for the rest of my life. I'm the kind of person who has to try all the options before I choose one. When I'm in the car listening to XM, I flip through all the channels before I choose a song to listen to. Even if I find one I like, I have to check the other channels to see if there is one I like more. I do this with everything in my life. I've rarely finished anything I've started because I get tired of it, and decide to move on to something else. Every school program, every hobby, every project I try turns out this way. I mean everything. I thrive on novelty, and when the novelty wears off of something and it becomes routine, I no longer enjoy it, and I move on to something else.

That being said, I'm not sure I could ever find "the one" and live happily ever after. I'm always curious and want to try new things. Had I not had a child, this might be an acceptable way to go about relationships, but being a mother is something I can't quit. And I can't drag my kid from one man, one life, to another, and another and another. I like my husband. Things have changed dramatically since before I left. He is loving and nice and considerate even when I am not. We have been interacting with each other every day, working together to get things done, and even having a good time while doing most of it. But love is a sore subject. He tells me he knows that I am the one for him. That he could never ever love another person as much as he loves me. I am honest. I tell him I don't feel the same way. I tell him I love him, but how could I possibly know if he is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with? I don't know what the future may hold. I have a hard time thinking I could ever commit to anything for the rest of my life, besides my son of course, but even with that I know a day will come when he has his own family and I won't need to be a daily part of my life. I can't imagine the thought of doing anything on a daily basis for the rest of my life. The thought scares me.

So keeping one person in my life every day for the rest of my life? I can't honestly commit to that. Does that mean he's not "the one" for me? Maybe. Or does it mean I'm just afraid of commitment? Maybe. I'll just have to take this relationship as I do everything else. Day by day. With the thought that I could someday change my mind at any time if I felt I needed to.

The only problem, and the one that has me confused the most, is that somewhere along the way, I gave a piece of my heart away to another man. I can't seem to get it back. I think he will always have it. So I may never be able to give my whole heart to my husband or anyone else. And if that is the truth, then my husband couldn't possibly be the one right? But then again, a love that could never possibly be, is somewhat like a fantasy. I can imagine living happily ever after with a person whom I don't spend every day of my life with. Someone who could be as perfect as my imagination can create. So perhaps I am just drawn to the fantasy. The possibility of falling so in love that the rest of the world fades away. But seriously, who feels that way every day. When there are bills to pay, money to be made, a home to keep clean, a child to raise, and for me, a life to pick apart day after day with no success of making any sense of it. Perhaps the perfect love for me is the one I can never have. The one I can only dream about. The one who isn't here with me for me to pick apart. The one I am left with a lingering thought of.

Weight a Minute

I've always been obsessed with my weight. My body. So I'm not sure how this has happened. I'm fat. I mean I have fat on my body which I am not used to, and I don't like it. I went from eating maybe 500 calories a day to thousands. I haven't even been keeping track.

I'm supposedly in the healthy weight range now, whereas I was always underweight before. I'm afraid to step on the scale, but I'm guessing I have hit 120lbs. Much heavier than my goal weight of 100lbs. The thing I can't understand is how I gained the weight so fast. A few weeks ago I was down to 105lbs and my favorite 24 inch waist jeans finally fit. I looked good. I had a flat tummy and a tiny waist. My thighs didn't rub together when I walked. In fact, when my knees touched, my thighs didn't.

I no longer could pull off looking like a bikini model. Jeans don't seem to fit right anymore. I'm not used to being so huge. I feel like a whale, yet I am still smaller than most women. Carrying around this extra weight makes me feel depressed and sluggish. It has ruined my confidence and self-esteem. I know what I need to do to fix it. I need to watch what I eat and get some exercise. I used to exercise every day and now I sit on the couch eating candy and wishing I wasn't so fat.

I don't need to be skeleton skinny again, but I would like to at least get back to an athletic body instead of just having fat piled on me. I hate winter because I hate going outside in the cold, so I sit around inside eating. I never used to even care for eating. I remember the days where I had to choke down some applesauce just so I didn't pass out from not eating all day. I never liked food. Now suddenly it is just about all I think about. I'm guessing it is tied to depression, but I've never had this problem before even when I've been depressed.

I've tried to embrace this new physique and not stress about it or obsess about it. Actually without clothes on I look pretty sexy like this. Curvy like a woman should be, but my clothes are tight on me and they cut into my fat making me feel huge and embarrassed. Though I'm sure people don't look at me and think I'm at all fat. It is all in my head. It is all me being overly critical of myself like I always am. I want to be perfect, but nobody is perfect. I won't look like this by the time summer comes. I can't let myself get any bigger. I will starve myself if I have to. I know that isn't healthy, but being tiny is part of who I am, and I feel like I'm losing my identity again. I need to get back to being me, and I don't look like me. I don't feel like me. I don't like this.

Weather or Not

There is snow on the ground today and suddenly the idea of forever is once again scaring the shit out of me. I really try to be a positive person, but somehow the negativity just seems to keep creeping in. I hate Montana. I hate it here. I hate the weather. I hate that it's extremely boring. I hate that there is very little cultural or racial diversity.

The biggest thing I miss that I had when I was separated from my husband is the feeling that my life could be whatever I wanted to make it. The possibilities were endless. I had the freedom to decide what kind of life I wanted to live and go about doing so. Now I am back here with my future all laid out for me. I married a Montana man, and now I've failed to divorce him twice. Yes, I will be stuck here forever. That is if I stay with him forever. The idea is already freaking me out again. I feel pressure to recommit and I don't know that I'm ready to do that.

When I came back it was supposed to be a trial period to see if things would work out this time. Now my son is back in school and dance classes and I'm trying to get out of the lease I signed on my house. On top of that, now my husband has said that if I want to leave again he will just quit his job and move to Alaska and never be sseen again, and would just send me checks in the mail because he hates it here without me and our son. So already it would be hard to leave again, and that's not the way this was supposed to work. Yes, I'm feeling the pressure.

I've been getting depressed again. It's sometimes hard to distinguish bipolar related depression from lifestyle depression, but this time I don't think it's from being bipolar. I think it's the thought that just a few weeks ago I had a blank future. Anything could happen and it was exciting. Now my future is once again laid out for me and I'm not sure I like it. When I had a blank future with nothing but possibilities, I did have someone special in my life who I saw possibly having a place in my future. I thought it would be easier to give that up than it has been. I miss him. I miss the thought of him. I miss the possibility of him. I'm wondering whether I have made the biggest mistake of all by agreeing to give my marriage one last chance.

It's complicated though. I found it was going to be extremely difficult for me to be able to get a good job to be able to provide for myself and my son. Either way, staying or leaving, I need to start finding a way to make some sort of income. So I've decided I would like to maybe take up welding. I pretty much have all the tools I would need right here at my disposal. I think I would be good at it. I have a good steady hand for using cutting torches, plasma cutters, and welders. If I was good at it, then someday if I needed to I might be able to get a job at a machining shop, or a construction site. I mean it's not much job security, but if I have everything here that I need to be able to learn and practice, I figure why not. It's always interested me. My dad was a certified welder, my ex-boyfriend Ryan was a welder at a machining shop and I would hang out at the shop with him and the guys after hours when they would build things for themselves like steel bumpers for their trucks. Deerstopper bumpers.

All in all, life is okay, but wintertime in Montana always makes me feel depressed, and I'm still not sure whether or not this life here as a happy family is going to work out for me.

Just Another Housewife

I've always had this terrible fear of the world seeing me as "just another housewife." I am beautiful, intelligent, and an extremely talented person at many things. I thought if I was deemed a "housewife," somehow that would define me. I think that's the biggest reason I always wanted a big career or profession. Because I've always thought my job title would define me. It would tell people whether I was respectable or not. It would give people the power to judge me by what I did and not who I was. People do that all the time, and I never want to be stuck with the "soccer mom" identity. Yes, I am a dance mom, and I've written a post about that a long time ago, but I'm also not just any other dance mom. I am the mother of a preschooler, but that doesn't describe me either.

What I think I'm trying to get at here is that I'm not the woman you would expect me to be if I just met you and told you I'm a stay-at-home mother and housewife with a preschool aged boy who is in ballet classes. I don't know about you, but to me, an image of a slightly overweight middle aged woman with mom clothes and a mom haircut and a freakishly fake friendly facade pops up in my mind when I hear about stay-at-home-moms and housewives. I've always been afraid to be put in that category.

I'm thinking about this because here I am fulfilling these roles that I've always been so scared to be associated with, so scared to be defined by. I am so much more complex and unexpected than the "happy housewife" image portrays. I'm starting to think that in the past I've been hesitant to embrace these roles of mother and wife because I was afraid if I did, then I would turn into that simplistic stereotype. What about the rest of me? There is so much more to me than that. How will people recognize my beauty, intelligence, and talents if they are hidden behind the image of a mother and wife?

Yet still, here I am. I am cleaning the house, vacuuming, doing laundry, doing dishes, picking up after other family members, organizing the house and making sure there is a place for everything and everything is in it's place. I am cooking meals while giving time-outs and listening to how my husband's day at work was. I am sitting down with my son and coloring with him, reading him books, and teaching him about letters, numbers, days of the week. I am taking my son to dance classes and visiting with other dance moms. I am doing a damn good job at the stay-at-home-mom and housewife thing.

So do I fit the stereotype yet? Not even close :)
I can still drink with the best of 'em. I still cuss all the time. I still look damn fine in a bikini. I'm still sexy, don't matter if I'm "domesticated" or not. I roll up to pick my son up from preschool with the Acura bumping. I want a speedometer that maxes at 160mph over an SUV that's nice and "roomy." I wouldn't be caught dead in public wearing "mom" clothes. I'm always stylish and makeuped and put together in a hot, gorgeous sort of way. I'm 28 and I still get eyed suspiciously and asked for my ID right away when I order an alcoholic beverage. I'm not into "playdates" so please don't suggest arranging one. If you're a mom, you should be warned that I like my kid, but don't confuse that for me saying "I like kids." I don't. I probably won't like yours. I might pretend I do for a minute or two. I graduated college with a 3.94 GPA. I will beat you at trivial pursuit and then tell you to kiss my fabulous ass. I keep it real with my kid. He's a 5 year old, not a homeless animal, he doesn't need to be "sheltered."

I'm also a talented writer, photographer, artist, and model, among many other things, and though I'm not currently getting paid for those things, I don't need a job title to tell me who I am anyway. And as far as I'm concerned, if you see me as just another housewife, then you're the simple-minded one, not me.