I am starting this blog as an anonymous sketch of my life. I am a mother of three kids and probably the only time I will have to write is late late at night when my baby girl wakes me up and I can't get back to sleep, which is actually something that happens pretty regularly.

Right now my life is quietly crazy. Very ordinary. Very human.

First of all, myself. I'm 25, 167 pounds, an ex-blond, married with three kids. I got married when I was 18. Came home from a two week honey-moon when I was 19. My husband jokes that I married him to get out of the house and sadly it is kind of true. My mother is... well... I can't quite describe her in twenty words or less. Let's just say she loves me very, very much. I feel like I am her best friend, but she's not mine. A woman who is a little smothering and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I guess the thing I could never figure out was how she could put so much guilt on me for wanting to be independant and have my own life and my own friends when she never put our family before her work. I guess in a way she probably felt she was simply by working all the time, but I wanted my mom. You see, I grew up in a very... um.... conservative community. I went to a really strict church and a church run private school. Nothing wrong with that. I send my kid to a church run private school now. Anyhow, all and I do mean ALL of the other families had a dad that had a full time day job while their mom stayed at home. Well, my dad drove truck and was gone for 3-4 weeks at a time and mom cleaned houses from 8am to 5pm. My dad's truck driving job brought in more bills than it paid and mom compensated by working. I didn't mind being a latchkey kid at nine years old. It was safe where we lived and I looked at it like an adventure. But I was pushed into being independant even then. I figured out how to cook and clean on my own. My friends became my family. I went shopping with them and learned how to drive with their sisters. I asked my friends mothers how to sew, and asked their dads about religion and theology.

When I got married, my fiance and I planned most of the wedding ourselves. Mom came home and would say something like, "I guess we need to plan this wedding now." I felt like she was probably too tired and busy to be bothered so Loren and I did it ourselves. When she realized how much we did without her she accused us of "conspiring" to keep her out it. So I let her be part of it. And she started changing stuff. I wanted rose colored roses. She got red because red means deep love. I wanted grape juice for the fountain, but that can stain if it's spilled, so we got some kind of pale punch.

Deep down, right now I'm not sure if I wanted a wedding. I didn't have that many friends and we could have easily carved off about 150 people off the guest list if we didn't include all the relatives that you see once a year at the Christmas family-get-together. But I knew that it was important to throw a bash so everyone could come and ooh and aaw over the beautiful wedding. And not just to my mom. There were unspoken requirements in the family and in our church that you could get called on the carpet for if not met. If I had to do it over again I'd do a home wedding with about 10 families. Friends and immediate family ONLY. Not all the extra crap. It's not worth the stress.

Stress. That's what the problem was. Is. I was my mom's best friend, probably only friend, for so many years that when I left, she had no sounding board. All alone with my dad. Empty nest syndrom, BIG TIME. I'm surprised they didn't kill each other. They would have never gotten divorced. That's against their beliefs, and mine; although if they had told me that they were getting a divorce when I was nine or ten, I would have been relieved. I grew up thinking that whoever screamed the loudest was probably the most wrong. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I wasn't. The doctors blamed her migraine headaches on stress. She blamed them on my dad and how his trucking caused all this debt that she had to pay for.

I never wanted to be like my mother. I was so busy trying not to be like my mother I never thought to be careful not to turn into my father.