All Your Towels Are Belong To Us

I frequently think what could only be characterized as UnMotherly Thoughts to myself. I then mentally half-retract them out of guilt; then rally against my self censorship; then ultimately end up justifying my thoughts with the half-arsed rationale, "Well, I'm surely not the only person who thinks that! Totally normal!" and carry on with my day until the next UnMotherly Thought arises. Whole process takes about half a second, and repeats approximately every 5-7 minutes.

Don't worry, it's not very much guilt - just the briefest, weakest of twinges, swiftly followed by a slightly stronger twinge of guilt-for-not-feeling-too-terribly-guilty. Then I talk myself out of it. Very healthy approach, overall. But it occurs to me that others (you know who you are!) have waaay more guilt problems than I do. Wherever you happen fall on the innate guilt spectrum, I figured that perhaps hearing that other apparently more-or-less totally normal people have UMTs** might help strengthen your own inner rationalizations.

** A small caution that my use of "totally normal" and "people" is pure inference: I haven't actually ever confirmed that any other humans have these kinds of thoughts. However, I have been telling myself about it for a really long time so there's a legit patina of truthiness to it if you'd like to latch onto that.

I've been posting blogs here since Small Fry was an infant so if you've been reading along you've probably seen plenty of my UMTs before. Something I didn't realize at first is that they would grow and change right along with my children. (If you're a new/er/ish parent, now you know that, too - it's not just a lack of sleep and you're not growing out of it. I recommend starting a blog.) I used to gripe about super standard stuff like leaky diapers, but now I have a whole suite of both generic and highly individualized complaints about my kids. Those little wonders just never cease to amaze!

Currently, my big thing is dry towels. How are ALL the towels ALWAYS wet? I have no fucking clue. But I sincerely want to experience a dry towel against my skin again before I die. Oh, and a dry bath mat under my feet, too. Plus a toilet paper dispenser with actual toilet paper already on it and not just an empty roll sitting there mocking me with its three wispy, glued-on remnants. And oh my gawd, a dish towel that does not have chocolate/ketchup/mystery grease hand prints on it like my kids are secretly employed as heavy-duty mechanics in their spare time; and windows without more choco-mystery-grease; and STOP TOUCHING THE WALLS WITH YOUR FILTHY HANDS ALREADY.

I could go on. (Like, really. I could really go on.) But I need to come back to my thesis: I'm not the only person who thinks UnMotherly Thoughts. Neither are you. That must mean we're okay.

And if anyone tells you that you will miss having disgusting little filth generators in your house when they grow up and move away one day, those people are liars and you have my express permission to throat-punch them and steal their dry towels.