Tag Archives: life

Dear Mom,

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Dear Mom, #funny | creativeliar.com

EVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sleeping has become a thing that doesn’t interest me.  That’s what I keep telling myself.

It’s pretty much the same mantra I repeated while watching the royal wedding except I replaced “sleep” with “Prince William” and instead of saying it quietly in my bed at night, I yelled it down my street in a tear filled rage wearing the wedding gown I had made for myself in sixth grade while tearing at the sky with his royal highness’s dog eared poster that he signed.  And by “he” I mean my mother.

The thing is, I have a child, and apparently children are pretty evil.  You are the reason I was previously unaware of this, and by “you” I mean my mother.

Dear Mom,

Remember that time you decided to have one kid who was all things perfect and routinely entertained you by saying things like “Why are you obsessed with culottes?” and “Are you sure orange is your color?”

Well, guess freaking what.  Apparently not all children are helpful fashion critics because yesterday I dropped my daughter off at school and she didn’t even have the decency to tell me my pants had a hole in the crotch.  And that I had forgotten to put on pants.

Do you know how easy you had it?  Do you??  I’m over here dealing with Shirley McScreams a lot because I forgot to coat dinner in chocolate again while you could have made a side of string freaking beans and I would have eaten it.  As the side to my prime rib.

How was I to know children are terrors that think sleep is the archenemy of the human race?  There I was at twenty-four, reliving all the gorgeous times I allowed you to be seen in public with me, thinking how wonderful it would be to spend precious moments like that with my child when little did I know I was harboring a trained sleep assassin in my uterus.

Really, I blame you and TV and the parts of the Internet that feature unglittered cats and that guy at the Steak and Shake who said I can put the shake in his steak any time (what does that mean, Mom??  What does that even mean???) and hair spray.  For the love of unglittered cats, I just do not understand hair spray.

So this is what we’re going to do.  I’m going to start wearing orange culottes and burning pot roast like it’s my freaking job and you’re going to dress like Princess Kate on Wednesdays and Fridays and regale my neighborhood with your “blue blood ankles.”  And yes, you have to say “blue blood ankles” or they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Maybe if we switch places then we’ll see what it’s like to be in each other’s shoes which from where I’m currently sitting, is just lovely.  Your daughter is intensely attractive and I’d make out with her if she weren’t me.  Plus I just tried and hit my head on my night stand.  It hurts.

So have fun wrangling a pint-sized war lord who doesn’t even know how to apply eye liner properly.

This pot roast won’t burn itself.

Yours in this life and in the next as long as the next life consists of talking roosters who compliment me on my posture,

Ericka Wilhelmina Clay

PS – Wilhelmina?  Can you imagine???  Haha, no but seriously, please stop wearing orange.

I just sent it to her.  Let’s just hope this puts us back on good terms.  Now to take a nice nap on that lady selling suede handbags.  No, wait.  That’s just my dog.

I am so tired.

The Real Ericka Clay

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The Real Ericka Clay | creativeliar.comToday I want you to know who I really am.  Here’s the thing: almost nobody knows.  My husband knows, my parents, a few friends.  Okay, just one knows, really.  Sometimes I don’t even know because I’m too busy living inside my head.  It’s warm here.  There are so many books, they curl upward, canvas the ceiling.  There are words, beautifully gritty words that almost hurt to touch.

It’s wonderful.

So here’s a glimpse of me.  Of what it’s like inside my head:

  • When I look at men I see little boys.  I don’t mean that in a derogatory way.  I mean I see their faces before life dug into them, etched away the excess.  When they smile, laugh, I can see them when they were simple and pure.  It’s nice knowing what the “before” was like.
  • I sense things sometimes.  Evil.  I’ve seen a demon before, heard my dead dog barking.  I’ve passed out because of the spectral tension in a haunted hotel.  It was the same hotel where my husband proposed to me.  And I can’t wait to go back.
  • I jumped into the pool at my wedding reception.  It was my main goal for the day.  Besides getting hitched and what not.  I was not arrested and in fact the entire wedding party decided to join me.  They all passed my test.
  • I have an extreme fear of the dark, a phobia actually.  I can’t explain it but if a room goes pitch black I feel utterly devoid of life like I’m slowly being suffocated.  I have to see light, even it’s just a little to revive me.
  • I have depression.  It’s a part of me and on the days it scuttles out the door, I miss it a little.  I feel it feeds me, gives me the root of every word that leaves my fingertips.  I generally stay a little sad for this reason.  Not that I don’t know how lucky I am.  But the superstitious side of me thinks this is why I’m so lucky in the first place.  I don’t take anything for granted.
  • I used to suffer from exercise bulimia (and yes, that’s apparently a thing).  I used to be obsessed with my body.  My past had a way of focusing on the outside and refuting the in.  But I made a decision before I got pregnant that I wouldn’t be this way anymore and with a will stronger than I was used to harboring, I started to eat for health, for life, for her.  I never want her to know the bad side of me, my weaknesses.
  • Everything overwhelms me: writing, wifedom, motherhood, work, life.  But it does so in such a delicious way that I could never deny these things.  They make me peaceful even when there’s chaos right outside my eyelids.
  • I’ve kissed more girls than boys.  College.
  • I don’t tend to trust people who deal in extremes.  There’s always a middle.  That’s usually where you find love.
  • I know my husband on an all encompassing level.  He is the greatest thing I’ve ever accidentally won.  And I won a goldfish at a carnival once that lived four years.
  • My greatest role model is Mother Teresa.
  • I’m Catholic, I guess, but sometimes I don’t really know.
  • I can tell people have a hard time pinning me down.  I wish I could make it easier for them.
  • I am not insane.  I mean not the insanity you generally tend to find on my blog.  Just the insanity that is this post.

All right.  Your turn.

How to Be a Girl, Part I

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Like glittered cats? Who doesn’t! Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram so you can sign up for my glittered cat giveaway! I’m just kidding. That’s illegal according to Texas state law. I checked. Twice. But follow me anyways. Because Dave Coulier said so. That’s why.

How to be a Girl #funny | creativeliar.com

Being a girl means wearing shoes that look like a drunk ass garden gnome took a dump on them. So pretty!

If there’s one thing I know how to do in this life, it’s to be fully and completely myself until someone not so politely asks me to stop.  Seeing that I am, in fact, a girl (despite what Brendon Schufflemier yelled out during our sixth grade assembly on proper hygiene) and that I’m pretty freaking good at it, I’ve decided to give you a step-by-step run down on what it’s like to be given the privilege of embarrassing yourself on a monthly basis by buying sticks designed to stick up your hoo-ha.

First, you should know that I’m fully qualified.  I’m so good at being a girl that I actually do research by watching one of the most notably awesomest shows to ever grace my television set: Girls on HBO.  This show is what it would be like if instead of one Alf, there were four and all of them had vaginas and instead of eating cats, they talked about how awesome it is to live in New York and barely wear clothes.  The fact that I’m not doing either of these things at this particular moment is making my heart break into tiny baby hearts that won’t stop crying.  It is so loud inside of my chest right now.

So seeing that I’m a certifiable CEO of girldom, let’s get busy.

HOW TO BE A GIRL

1.  You’ll need some boobs.  I know, I want to be all like “No, no you don’t need boobs.  Boys like the fact that you have a working limbic system and a penchant for not randomly pooping in public,” but let’s face it, boobs are the world’s currency plus pooping isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you in public.  Trust me.  Also, if I told you that you didn’t need boobs to be a girl, I’d be channeling my mother circa 1995 who wouldn’t let me shave my legs like the rest of my friends because a razor is, and I quote, “the devil’s match stick.”  Okay, she didn’t actually verbalize it but she did say it in the way she’d accidentally (and frequently) called me by my poodle’s name.  Fifi.  Seriously.  They let this woman have children.  So boobs and you.  How can you amplify what God/Buddha/nothing/thatmagicaldragoninthesky gave you?  Here are a few tips:

* Become friends with flat chested people.  But not real friends.  Their love of sports bras and book learning may rub off on you and you may start saying things like “I don’t know about you but I could really go for a venti latte and a shit ton of poetry right about now.”

* Speaking of bras, get one.  Fill it with boob-like substances like pudding or nacho cheese and put it on.  Then put another bra on top of it.  Then wonder why your parents decided to have children.

* Constantly cross your arms in front of your chest.  This says things like, “Under these arms are boobs bigger than my Uncle Victor’s head and he once drank an entire six pack of beer while yodeling the national anthem” and “I don’t like it when people hug me.  Also, people in general.”

 2. Care about things that don’t make sense.  Things like men who never call you back, men who think you need to lose weight, men who think you need to gain weight, men who have no clue how much you weigh even after you sent them a copy of your medical records because you were just being polite and thought the reason he was wearing that brown sweater when you first saw him at the library was a sign that he was deeply invested in your triglyceride count.  Basically, men. 

3. Don’t learn too good.  The great thing about being a girl is being able to do silly things like accidentally glittering the wrong cat (Trick alert: there is no such thing as “the wrong cat”) or filling your bra with too much nacho cheese and then rectifying the situation by screaming “I AM ON MY PERIOD MINIONS!!  BRING ME MY HOO-HA STICKS!!!!”  So it’s absolutely just fine and dandy if learning ain’t your thing.  I SAID SUPER ABSORBENT!!!!  Ahem.

Well, that’s all the time we have for today.  I have to go on a cat finding mission (don’t worry, it’s not too difficult.  After all, they live in other people’s houses!), but stay tune for the next installment when I break Brendon Schufflemier’s spirit once and for all and let you know what else makes you a girl.  Psst…it involves badly written novels…and not even the ones I write!

One and Done

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Like glittered cats? Who doesn’t! Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram so you can sign up for my glittered cat giveaway! I’m just kidding. That’s illegal according to Texas state law. I checked. Twice. But follow me anyways. Because Dave Coulier said so. That’s why.

Here’s a post from an old blog explaining my whole “I’m just gonna have one child so I have plenty of time to glitter these two cats who I’ve named Sybil and Harmonica for Dave Coulier’s birthday” theory.  It’s also been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  I mean the DSM IV.

***

One and Done | creativeliar.com

Ava, taking a break from tying me to this chair. Can one of you bring me a glass of water? Thanks.

my husband and i want only one child. you may not know this (especially if you’ve been able to survive the baby epidemic up until now) but having or wanting only one child makes you a bit of an anomaly. in fact, sometimes i feel as if people treat me like i’m contagious, as if my willingness to allow my uterus to shrivel up will most certainly send theirs into early menopause. i assure you i’m not that powerful (sorta).

so why be so selfish and have only one bundle of joy? easy: there’s more i want to do with my life than be a mother. i’ll take a second for you to catch your breath after choking down your mild (or not so mild) disgust. i know what you’re thinking. you’re wondering why the state would allow someone like me, someone who wants to do something more than just stare at her baby and crochet all day, to raise an actual human being. i promise you i’m not as evil as i seem (in fact i’m usually too gracious for my own good no matter how much of a badass i pretend to be. ask my husband. he does this killer impression of me answering the phone where my voice goes up ten octaves higher so i sound like a little school girl. i can’t stop doing it).

i’m not evil, i’m just ambitious. when i was younger i never thought about marriage or weddings or babies. i thought about this: graduating college with my creative writing degree, getting my MFA, publishing a couple of novels, becoming a professor at a small new england college, living in a bungalow with my dog who i never got around naming but for our purposes here let’s call her midge. i’ve accomplished one of those things – i have my undergrad in english/creative writing from the university of arkansas. check and check. so imagine my surprise when a husband, two dogs and a baby fell into my lap (and i swear to you it happened exactly that way. one day i was minding my own business trying to be all free and single and what not and then this jackass had the audicity to introduce himself to me and change my life for the better. douche. bag.). so some might say i’m clinging to the future i thought i’d have, the one where midge and i play ball for hours on end before heading into the bungalow to grade a crap load of papers. but i’m not. i just know what i want and i’m tailoring my life to achieve it.

i see nothing wrong with this. i see nothing wrong with having one child because i know i’ll be able to concentrate on my writing and raising my kid (emphasis on the singular). i see nothing wrong with knowing you’re not equipped to take on more than you can handle. in fact, i sometimes wish other people would adopt the same mentality.

now don’t get me wrong. i’m not hating (oh hell, let’s go with hatin.’ it just feels right) on people with more than one kid or those who want more. as long as i don’t end up paying for them knock yourself out! if you respect my decision i will most certainly respect yours (unless you decide to kick puppies. then you shall fear my wrath).

i must go and pay attention to my child now and the incredibly tall pile of laundry i must conquer. oh and by the way, i totally know i’ve just jinxed myself by posting this. i should probably add “study up on baby names” to my to-do list.

Seventy Years

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Seventy Years #poem | creativeliar.com

Photo credit: Neil Moralee

You sit in the car, sit with an engine
grumbling and rumbling like the sounds
your stomach makes and you lay an
unconscious arm across your seemingly
pregnant paunch. You think to launch your thought
in the air, a rocket in your pocket, the elephant
in the car. Her hair is leaking. She had it colored
while you were “wasting the pension” painting
the shed. A horrible copper color, hair, not shed,
weaving its way down the side of her face.
But you say not a thing and she doesn’t squeak
a sound in the seat next to you, not even the
“Did you remember to fill up the tank?” like
she’s ever pumped gas in her life. So you
don’t mention a thing on your mind as is almost
always the case. You see things etched in the soft
of her skin that didn’t exist forty years before
but she still scares you like the moment you first met.

You press the gas, and glide down the avenue, seeing
what you’ve seen before. She comments on
Mr. Henderson’s door, that “ooky” red, she says,
whatever the hell that means. She taps the tips of four
fingers on the armrest to the tune of some song
in her head. You catch yourself thinking “Heartbreak
Hotel.” The copper river has created a personality,
with invisible eyes, nose and mouth. If only you could smudge
holes for it to see, smell, and speak in the side of her head.

She didn’t believe you when you said she looked beautiful,
choking on the chalky horse pill of a syllable, the “be”
in bea-u-ti-ful, losing its footing. And your sentiment
tumbled down, settled on the ground and she had the
audacity to walk all over it. She starts in, as is to be
expected, and lists the things she’s accomplished this
morning while you were “wasting the day away” in bed,
like a common house cat. You tune her out, spin
the invisible volume notch down with yellow tobacco tinged
fingers, her prune mouth sounding shallow
noise and you catch every other word. Something
about an appointment, doctor’s appointment and a funeral,
always a funeral. She talks about it like it’s a wedding,
listing the blazer, skirt, shoes, she will wear until each
piece of clothing dances before your eyes, a warped
parade. You give up and put her on, full blast,
until her voice rings fierce and ricochets off
the windows. There’s something different
in that voice and it’s not the fact that it’s grainy,
a pile of pebbles. You wonder how she swallows.
No, it’s not the quality, or lack of clarity, it’s the fact
that after all these years of wear and tear, you can no
longer hear her innocence. And at this time, like every
other time she looks at you, waiting for a word, for
something tangible to taste, then critique. But you only
smile, feel the creases gathering at your lids, and wish to
drown in her copper creek.

© 2010-2013 Ericka Clay All Rights Reserved