The Lost Years: In Which I Discuss Cutting Food Up Into Tiny Pieces and Superhero Origin Stories

When that brilliant journalist-turned-biographer whom you haven't heard of yet finally writes my riveting biography, you'll find that there are some details missing in the middle of the book which may cause you to wonder just what was going on during the years 2009-2018. So, I thought I'd go ahead and jot down a few notes so that when you do get to that portion of the fascinating read that my biography is sure to be, you can refer back to this blog post to be reminded of what I was up to during what I'll simply term The Lost Years.

To be clear, The Lost Years aren't exactly what you might expect. They aren't sad or depressing or ominous or any of that. They're just more or less unnoticed. These are the years when most things that are said and done happen here inside our mildly chaotic home (between the hours of 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., depending on whether or not someone can emotionally handle bedtime at the usual hour or not).

When you finish the chapter on The Single Years: Good Times and Excessive Journaling, you'll make your way into Married and Discovering How to Deal with Conflict and then into Let's Move Five Hundred Times and then there's the lovely chapter detailing our first babe and his love for juice, Curious George and Legos. Soon after you'll have arrived at The Lost Years in which you will read a simple timeline explaining where we lived and any public records goverment websites made the author privy to. There will be a brief mention of a sweet second babe being born and a few notes on her excessive and possibly even gratuitous levels of adorableness, which my biographer will have had full knowledge of based on her research into Facebook Archives.

So, let's talk about those lost years which my biographer will be mostly in the dark about, unless she happens upon this post, in which case, this post will possibly make less sense.

The Lost Years: All the Details You've Been Wondering About

I spend my days cutting food up into small pieces for small people who are inclined to stuff forty-four marshmallows into their mouths if not watched without blinking and at very close range. I drive small people places and buckle and unbuckle and buckle and unbuckle and buckle and unbuckle their carseat belts over and over and over. I fix and deliver snacks to said small people throughout the day and then go on to fix meals for small people who are less inclined to eat them because I've made the parenting error of giving out too many snacks. Argh.

I spend drive time in the car attempting to tell the origin stories of superheroes to my five-year-old who demands more and more superhero information, which has taxed my brain to it's absolute superhero limit. And also, when I said Superman was from Krypton, he heard Crouton. It's possible that I actually said Crouton, considering the state of mush my brain was in after trying to detail how Spiderman got his spidey powers from a spider in a research facility who was there for some reason that I do not have an answer for.


Most of the hours during which I'm awake are spent picking things up and then putting them away and then finding same said items underfoot again within fifteen-twenty minutes. It's possibly the definition of insanity and also gives much more credence to what Abraham Lincoln said about how "cleaning a house with children in it is like brushing your teeth while also eating Oreos."

Lastly, I do a boatload of laundry and I have determined that this task is quite similar to Sisyphus's punishment for whatever it was he did to make the gods mad. That particular punishment, according to the internet, was chosen because the gods "thought, with some reason, that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." And to this I say, LAUNDRY.

And these things, my dear readers, are the magical things which make up The Lost Years. Hopefully, this post has cleared a lot of questions up for you. 

I'd also like to note that while this mama feels a teensy bit lost in the midst of her own story during these [insert adjective depending on what kind of day we're having] days of raising little people, oddly enough there isn't anywhere else I would choose to be. Except for possibly Maui. But, not really. I love my job even if my five-year-old doesn't think it really is a job and is confused about why some mamas work and I apparently do not. Sigh. 

And now I'm off to brush up on Flash's origin story because I had nothing to offer during yesterday's discussion and I'm pretty sure I'll be quizzed again on the way home from school.