Hi friends! Did you miss me? I’ve missed you. I really need to detox from the insanity of the past few months. First Christmas and New Years, then the long slog through January, three weeks of my husband being out of town, snow days, other stupid random days off of school, apocalyptic polar vortexes of doom…If hear the sounds of 16 horse hooves galloping down the street, I’m ducking for cover.

I think all of this end-of-the world weather has completely broken the filters on some people. The other day the Warrior Princess and I stopped in at Subway for a quick bite. While we were watching the sandwich artist assemble our gourmet meal, WP got super excited and did her happy dance when we came to the big tub of tomatoes (her favorite food…yeah…if she didn’t look just like me, I’d question her DNA.)

The guy at the register thought she was a hoot and asked me, “Is she your granddaughter?” Oh yes he did, friends. Yes. He. Did.

The lady assembling the sandwich went wide-eyed, sucked in air and looked at me in horror. I blinked a few times and said, “No. She’s my daughter. I’m just old.”

The mortified lady hurriedly clobbered my sandwich together, hurled it at the guy who was still fumbling around and muttering embarrassed gibberish. (I think she may have kicked him in the shin while she gave him a really good death glare.) Just to torment him some more, I scrounged around for awhile in my purse for a crumpled up coupon and took extra long to find the Subway MyWay Rewards app on my phone. Then I paid in cash with exact change just so he had to count it all. Then I cheerfully thanked him, and WP and I made our way to find a table.

As we were sitting there, I heard a heated conversation going on in the back room. Since I don’t speak Hindi, I wasn’t sure what was being said, but I imagine it was something like this:

“What the hell?!? Why would you ask her that?!?!”

“What?? I mean did you look at her? She looked like the lettuce when it’s time to throw it away!”

“Really, dude? You’re an asshole. She looks like she needs a good night’s sleep and a new eye cream. Why don’t you just ask the next customer if she’s pregnant while you’re at it!”

When I got home and told my dear husband, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world and proceeded to pepper me with old lady jokes for the rest of the evening. Later I was rubbing his back and said, “Hey. You marry a cougar, you better expect to get scratched.”

He replied, “Hah! Try saber toothed tiger!” And then he couldn’t breathe. I don’t know if it was from laughing so hard, or me knocking the wind out of him.

A few days later, I was filling out some paperwork at a doctor’s office and the lady behind the desk asked if I had kids. I replied, “Yes. Two boys who are 10 and 7 and a 3 year old daughter.”

“Wow! You’ve got your hands full! That’s quite an age spread. Were they planned that way?”

Yes. She. Did.

I did my blinking thing for a moment and answered, “Well, my husband travels to China a lot. When his trips were three weeks or longer, he tended to miss me and we ended up having another kid 9 months after he got back. He keeps his trips to two weeks or less now.”

She blinked back at me as she processed, “Ohhhh….”

Seriously folks. What is it about me that people just completely toss away their filter whenever they talk to me lately?? I think I must have an invisible tattoo on my forehead that only clueless people can see. It must say, “Come hither and talk to me. I love a good insult. Please tell me what’s on your mind.”

I mean I get it when my kids say things that are innocently unkind. Recently WP was in the bathroom with me (because why not? I mean I need my personal toilet paper dispensing assistant and morale coach every time I’m in there you know…) “Hey Mom. Your legs look funny,” as she pointed out the hail damage on my pasty white thighs. *sigh*

And then she gave the final blow to my already brittle ego. This weekend, Dear Husband said, “Hey Warrior. How about today you try and do a really good poop and pee on the potty for Dad?” Now mind you, I’ve been begging, bribing and badgering her forever trying to get her to use the big girl potty. But nope. Not on her agenda. Not now. Not ever. She will walk across the stage and accept her diploma while wearing a Pull-Up, thank you very much. So you know what that punk did? She did four pees and a poop on the potty that day and proceeded to run around showing off her cute squishy tushy in her Paw Patrol undies the rest of the day.

Yep. I quit. Finished. If you need me, you can find me in the corner of my closet curled up in the fetal position quietly whimpering. Until someone has something nice to say to me, I’m done here…or until my phone dies and I can’t play Boggle and scroll through Facebook anymore…but then after I’m charged up again, leave me alone!