A picture of me teaching children to read in Uganda. Wait, no, it’s just my wine glass again.

My kid?  She kills me.

No, I mean she’s feasting on my soul and I feel like I’m aging a mile a minute.

But that’s neither here nor there.  The real point to this post is to remind myself that if I never had her, I would not be teaching children to read in Uganda like I mistakenly tell everyone within a three mile radius at least seven times a day:

“You know sweet, darling child of mine, if you didn’t just break off my nose to feed it to the dog, I’d probably be teaching children to read in Uganda right about now.  And I’d be sporting a killer tan.  And I’d be wearing gold-plated jorts.  And Brooke Shields would be my best friend.”

My kid?  She’s frustrating.  She’s got a spine stronger than mine and she is, in fact, literally stronger than me.  She’s smart and confident and often makes me wonder why I thought I was fit to raise a volatile Furby-sized ninja.

But she motivates me.  That’s the most surprising part.  How she keeps me wanting to do my best AT EVERYTHING no matter how hard she smacks me in the face with our metal spatula.  If it weren’t for her, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now.  Oh wait.  I do:

CHILDLESS ERICKA’S AWESOME RESUME OF FUN

Ericka graduated with honors from the University of Awesomeville and then immediately quit trying.  She’s written a dozen half completed short stories that she keeps stacked in her bathroom in case she runs out of toilet paper and isn’t up for a good old fashioned shame waddle.  Nobody likes the shame waddle. 

When she’s not manufacturing emergency toilet paper, she sponsors a nightly wine club in her home where members sample an assortment of bargain basement wines and a jug of moonshine she concocted that one day when she sniffed too much glue in a Wal-Mart parking lot when attempting to give her seat belt some semblance of safety.  How was she supposed to know glue smelled so good?

When she’s not asking fellow Wal-Mart patrons if they’d be interested in drinking a shit ton of booze at her place (she likes Wal-Mart.  A lot), you can often find her drunkenly stumbling through the Fiction aisles at Barnes and Noble, throwing loose coins and dried balls of chewed gum at any books written by Jersey Shore cast members or curled up with various copies of Harry Potter, asking an imaginary J. K. Rowling what her secret is and wiping her tears with their pages.

When she’s not hard at work locking herself out of her house or calling the Accidental Glue Sniffers Anonymous hotline, she’s watching reruns of The Office on Hulu and casually mentioning the characters in every day conversation with her husband until he catches on that these are not, in fact, friends she met at her church group.  Who want to drink wine at her house in the evenings.  From 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.  Her mom lets her borrow her Wii.  So email her if you’re interested…please.

Anyone that keeps you from accidentally sniffing glue or begging Wal-Mart strangers to drink wine in your place of residence is worth their weight in gold.  So life with a preschooler is no slow motion beach jog with Brooke Shields, but at least I have someone in my life that makes me a better person.

Even if nothing in my closet is gold plated.

Eh.