Rainy Days and Mondays and Rachael Ray

Every once in a while I feel like doing nothing.  That’s a lie.  I feel like doing nothing a lot.  I rarely get the chance to actually do nothing.  As cold weather sets in, I have to think of interesting places indoors to take my son on our outings.  There's the library, the play area at the mall, some place called "Monkey Joe's."  These are all great.  I am a stay at home mom but I really don’t want to actually stay at home all of the time.  When the weather is nice it’s easy to get motivated to go out into the real world.  We take walks, we go to the park or the petting zoo, or we just play in the backyard.  The possibilities of filling up a random Monday are endless.  My son will find a leaf, or a stick, and this could entertain him until lunch.  He absolutely loves to be outside.  But when cold weather hits and the elements descend, it becomes increasingly harder to come up with things to productively fill our day at home.  I can only teach him his ABC’s or count to twenty so many times in one day.  We can play with every toy he owns before 9 o’ clock.  We color, read books, sing a few songs, eat, play some more and make a few phone calls.  And don’t forget if we’re having a rough day we take a few time outs, we have a few lectures and a few power struggles.  These are average days. 

Mondays are especially hard in the cold months.  Sometimes they seem like they should be free days when I should be able to just phone it in.  And sometimes I do.  Sometimes I’ll keep my son in his jammies because if we’re not leaving the house, why bother putting on nice clean clothes?  He’s going to nap in five hours anyway.  Sometimes we’ll eat breakfast in the living room on the couch while we watch our PBS morning cartoons like the Cat in the Hat and Super Why and I’ll take my time drinking my coffee while he spills Cheerios all over the carpet.  Hey, it’s Monday.  Who cares?  I’ll clean up on Tuesday.  And sometimes after breakfast I’ll send him on pointless errands by saying “Hey buddy, go find all of your blocks” which will take him quite a long time since his blocks are scattered around the house like wild oats.  If we are both feeling especially tired after about the, oh, fifth power struggle of the morning, I’ll give in and let him watch Nick Jr. in my bedroom.  This special time and during his nap time is when I’ll do my own bit of zombification by indulging in my guilty pleasure, daytime television.

Now as the title of my blog suggests, these are my confessions.  So hold your oh-so-shocked, holier-than-thou gasps of disbelief.  Be honest with me and yourself.  You so do the same thing.  You know there are days when you don’t put normal clothes on Junior and you let him do pretty much anything he wants to that day.  And since we are keeping it real, I have to confess something that even sounds terrible in my ears.  I secretly love Wendy Williams.  She is so ghetto-fabulous.  She actually took out a Slim Jim on her show one time and burned it with her cigarette lighter. She called it “cracklin’.”  Then she ate it.  It was ridiculous.  She reminds me of those girls at my high school who used to burn the ends of their braids in the back of Social Studies class.  I don’t know why they did it but it was impossible not to watch. Her face and her voice and that “oh we know that’s not real” weave, it’s like the producers of that show thought, “You know who would be the best train wreck to put on t.v.?  That girl.”  I don’t think anyone had aspirations of Wendy Williams becoming the next Oprah and I don’t think Wendy Williams takes herself too seriously.  Now she’s keeping it real.  So crackle on girl.

Daytime television was created for me.  No really, it was.  They know that their target audiences are older people like my mom who will watch Matlock, The Price is Right and the news all day or stay at home moms who will watch just about anything to escape the craziness of their lives, even if it’s other people’s craziness.  Speaking of escapist craziness, Jerry Springer now comes on in the middle of the day.  Remember when it used to only come on at midnight, when respectable people who were rightfully ashamed watched it?  No, it’s on in the middle of the day now for when you think you’ve got it bad.  There is seriously a talk show for every mom out there.  Tyra wants you to think she lives her life like you do.  Oprah knows there’s no way you will ever live like her but at least she can relate to you because she has weight problems.  (That is the only way you will ever relate to Oprah by the way.)  Ellen is a lesbian who dances.  There’s The Doctors now, and Dr. Oz, because we are increasingly concerned about our health in this country even though childhood obesity is at its all time high.  Of course, at the bottom of the list is Rachael Ray.  She is a terrible interviewer.  I get her having her own cooking show and all but who gave this woman a talk show?  Oh yeah, Oprah did.  I don’t get it.  She sounds like my cousin Laurie when she’s drunk, very difficult to listen to in long spurts.  She talks with big gestures of her meaty Italian hands and I guess this makes her endearing.  She ends each show with a “special” recipe and after a few episodes you realize all she’s making are salads, sandwiches or soups every time.  Watch it, you’ll see.  Against my better judgment, I really like her.  She is endearing.  But not as much as Wendy.  Wendy is the queen of daytime in my heart.

Now I am telling you the truth here, I don’t watch soap operas.  I can stomach a lot of things, but watching a soap is where I draw the line.  I know some of the characters’ names on Days of Our Lives but that’s because my mom used to watch it when I was growing up.  No kidding, they have the same characters and basically the same story lines after twenty years.  I could start watching it and pick up right where I left off without missing a beat.  For a while after my dad died, I indulged in the most extreme form of escapism, I escaped to the shows of my youth.  I watched Who’s the Boss on Hallmark channel about three times a day.  It was my own diversion therapy, if there is such a thing.  I gave that up when I realized that I will never have a hunky Italian housekeeper and because they discontinued the Hallmark Channel on U-Verse. 

I want women everywhere to unite with me and do this one thing, let’s forgive ourselves.  When you’ve had that supremely awful day and you’re loading Finding Nemo for the fifth time in the DVD player because your child just won’t stop screaming, when you’re too overwhelmed with life to do anything productive like do the dishes for the second time that day or do the never ending cycle of laundry or think of new and interesting ways to stimulate your brain.  Maybe you don’t want to clip coupons today.  Maybe you don’t want to read parenting magazines today.  Maybe you don’t want to read at all.  Maybe, just for today, you just want to let your brain turn to mush and indulge in the purest form of escapism known to man, daytime television.  It’s okay.  You have my permission to go ahead and do it.  Do it.  I won’t tell.