Austin to Barcelona

As usual, I've put the cart before the horse.

I told you all about all about the shippy parts of the cruise, and even told you about our first port, Villefranche, but I didn't even tell you about the first leg of our trip and how we even got there, yet. 

Isn’t life just the craziest thing sometimes?

We got to the Austin airport and ran into my son’s friend from high school, who also happens to be his college roommate! We had some fun chit chat about the odds of running into them there, and got to even have lunch with him and his mom before we boarded our flights.

How freakin’ random is it that they then headed to the same gate as us?

Y’all! We were on the same flight!

Prepping For A Disney Cruise And Beanie Weenies For Life

Mark and I haven't always had our head screwed on straight, when it comes to priorities (I'm thinking of one incident in particular to share with you as Exhibit A: we'd bought a massive fish aquarium that spanned the length of a wall in our new (to us) house, and then filled it with a bunch of fancy, expensive fish, maxing out our one little baby credit card and we couldn't even afford groceries.

It was so sleek and tacky, with its blue LED lighting and the shiny black pebbles at the bottom, it looked like the backdrop for a budget porn.

This was "back in the day," before we had kids and we made about three dollars too much to qualify for the government cheese line. 

We paid more for that damn fish tank than we did for our honeymoon to Mexico, and I am dead serious, y'all.

Learning From the Mistakes We've Made

Learning From the Mistakes We've Made

This week’s big task is packing for a ski trip to Telluride, Colorado, that Mark and I are leaving for on Saturday.  By “ski trip” I mean that he will be skiing, but I’m opting out this time, and will instead spend my days curled up in front of the fireplace reading and writing.

The truth is, most of our rockiest marital moments have happened on the ski slopes.

Small Steps to Big Change: My Interview with Carla Birnberg

Back in November I attended the Texas Conference for Women and I had the greatest pleasure of meeting and interviewing Carla Birnberg, author of Mizfit and What You Can When You Can, the latter creating its very own movement on social media through the hashtag #wycwyc. 

I was excited about the opportunity to talk with Carla because What You Can When You Can was perfectly written as if it were just for me.  It might as well have been handwritten on spiral notebook paper, folded into a paper football, and signed, “Lylas.”

This Year Has To Be Different

Y’all.  I’m just so freaking behind.  I feel like in 2016 - while it was a great year for me personally, and I met a few really important goals - there were some hard things, too, and I fell behind on a lot of stuff, and basically just let my house and myself go.  

My house right now looks like one of those you’d see in the TV show, "Hoarders," with newspapers and boxes piled to the ceiling and when the UPS guy comes to my door with my daily Amazon delivery, I answer it wearing my duster and slippers, my hair in pink foam curlers, with a cigarette hanging out the side of my mouth and I don't even smoke.  

I’m tired of it.  This year has to be different.  

This Is The Worst-Case Scenario

I’m blaming the fact that I’m running late on Christmas prep on the fact that I was still wearing shorts until just last week, and I just cannot force myself to get in the mood until I have to wear fuzzy socks and pajama bottoms when I take my dogs out back to potty (I apologize to any neighbors who can see in my backyard when it’s warm outside, because I tell myself that wearing a t-shirt and undies is no different than wearing a swimsuit and coverup.)  

We just got our first cool snap last week, so it was in the upper 70’s until then.  Now it feels like winter, but this weekend it’s going to be almost 80 degrees.  

Texas weather is a box of chocolates, y’all.

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Dirty Laundry, Doing Less, and Idiots' Guides

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Not to air out my medical dirty laundry, but I have a mental condition that you may have heard of:  I have ADHD.  I haven’t been diagnosed by a doctor, but trust me: it’s obvious.

I fill my days with all the hundreds of things I want and need to do, trying to cram it all in, rushing around to keep the house together, letting dogs in and out and in and out and in and out, writing words for this very blog, with the hope of making other moms realize we’re all dealing with the same B.S., and that, yes, they are “doing it right,” whatever that means, and that it’s totally okay that their kids think their name is “Ja-Co-Li-Coo-Dammit!” because - by the end of the day, our brains are just piles of slop.  

Thank goodness for tomorrow. 

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Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

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A week or so ago, a young man that goes to my son’s high school was arrested for graffitiing a terroristic threat on the school’s bathroom wall.  I texted a picture of the kid’s mug shot to my son and asked if he knew him, and he said that, yes, he did - that they even worked together, and that he’d given him a ride home from work a time or two, and that he’d told me about him several times.

I’ll tell you what irritates me more than the itch of a growing-out bikini area, it's finding out my son’s been talking to me, and I haven’t been listening.

I immediately searched all the local news media posts about the arrest, not just to fulfill my need for juicy gossip (but that, too), but also because - now that I was paying attention - I realized how close to home it hits:  the guy's being my son’s age, going to the same school, working at the same place, and **gulp** riding in my son’s car.  

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Problems With My Uterus

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Sorry I’ve been off the grid for the last week or so.  You may remember that we’ve been prepping for a new addition to our family, and last week, Mark and I drove the six hours (one way!) to pick up our new little puppy-nugget.

We argued for the entire six-hour trip over what her name would be.  

Me:  I love the name Ivy.

Mark:  **Crinkling his nose up in disgust**  But that's a plant.  No.  What about Rio?

Me:  Ew, no.  Rio Braziel?  No.  That sounds like a strip-dancer.  What about Birdie?  Or Bunny?

Hypocrisy & Other Life Lessons For Your Kids

My teenager asked if he could stay home from school this morning because - get this - he didn’t have any clean clothes, and he even went so far as to say, “...because you didn’t do my laundry.” 

Before you get all judgy about me as a mother and housekeeper, let me say this:  he’s been responsible for doing his own laundry since he was about 13.  

But yesterday - as a favor - I offered to throw some of his things into the washing machine, and he of course jumped on-board.

Why We Stay Married, Even When We Hit Our Lowest Lows

Why We Stay Married, Even When We Hit Our Lowest Lows

There was a time - about 15 years ago - when I threw my bags into the trunk of my car, tears streaming as I vowed through gritted teeth to myself that I wouldn’t spend another night with this man I called my husband.

I don’t remember what we were fighting about, I just remember we were about to leave to go to a holiday party and I had just put a casserole dish filled with baked beans I’d made using my mom’s scrumptious recipe into the trunk, carefully sitting it on a layer of towels to keep it from moving around.  

In a huff, I yanked the trunk open, snatched out the hot casserole dish, trading it for my packed bags.

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I'm Struggling Here, But I Guess It Could Be Worse

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I promised my youngest last night that we’d go for a jog this morning, and I immediately regretted making that promise when I woke up because I had a screaming headache.  Since I get them almost daily, I figure I might as well plug on through.  I’d never get out of bed if I waited till I was headache-free*.  Besides, I'm trying to be a role model of health and responsibility to my kid.

We’ve been thinking of cancelling our gym membership because we’ve been paying for a family membership for years, and we suddenly realized:  that gym doesn’t freaking work.  

We’re still not healthy, and we’ve paid that place thousands of dollars. 

“To the Mom in the Dark Blue Sedan...”

Last week I was about to make a left into the driveway of my kid’s school, and the lady opposite me was making a left, too.  She and I started going at the same time, which would have been perfectly fine, except that the lady behind her didn’t want to wait, so she cut around, putting her car and my car nose-to-nose before we both slammed on our brakes, puckering us both up in the anal region nice and tight.

I realize this would have been my fault, if we’d actually collided.  

I waved in my, “Omg, I’m sorryyy!” at her, dropped my child off, then raced home to get on Facebook and make sure she hadn’t posted something in our neighborhood page about me and what a horrible person I am.

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We're Expecting!

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We’re expecting! Not a human, good God, no.  I’m almost 47 years old - my eggs are like the crusty old raisins you find when you pull your oven out to clean behind it once every five years, surrounded with fur and dust bunnies so big, they require vaccinations.

No, no.  The baby we’re expecting is a Goldendoodle!  A petite one so freakin’ cute, I want to eat its little face.  

A String of Disappointments, and I'm Still Here

Several months ago I posted about an upcoming event called "Listen To Your Mother," a live event where authors read their work on stage in front of a live studio audience.  I asked my subscribers to vote on which of my most popular articles I should use in my audition.  

I was a little nervous auditioning, but I was pretty sure I’d get in.  

I'm not bad looking, and I don't mean to brag...

I’m not bad looking.  Let's get that out of the way at the very start. 

Not to sound all braggy, but I’ve got a mouthful of straight teeth (and I never had braces!), tiny ankles, and naturally thick, healthy nails.  I only recently started seeing a few gray hairs, and I have cute little Fred Flintstone feet.

But I’m embarrassed to say that I stepped on the scale this morning and I’m exactly 100 pounds heavier than the day I graduated high school.  

I'm going to let that sink in for a sec.

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A Day in the Life of My 12th Grade Self

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Scrolling through all the First Day of School pics in my Facebook feed a few days ago made me think about how different life is nowadays than it was when I was a kid.  Not that I’m a cane-wielding geriatric, but I’m no spring chicken, either.  

And, let’s face it, if you’ve got kids in high school, you aren’t either.

When my kids come home from school, they’re sucked into the zombie-creating arms of technology.  My 8-year-old doesn’t even put his iPad down when he goes to the bathroom.  

He takes it with him, which launches me into a full lather, because I’m worried the child has addictive tendencies - what starts now as an addiction to his tablet, will surely progress to a full-on addiction to booze and heroin later in life.  

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Back to School: How the 504 May Be Keeping Your Kid From Adulting

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Back to School: How the 504 May Be Keeping Your Kid From Adulting

Let me start by first saying that the title of this post is not meant to discourage you from putting a 504 Plan into place for your child. In fact, we have one in place for our son.

The purpose of this post is to help parents understand “the system” and become aware that these services exist.

But also to make sure you & your child understand what the Plan’s purpose is: to give them equal access to an education, and what its purpose is not: to give them less work or to get them out of certain classes or assignments. Although the accommodations might cut their work load down or allow them out of certain classes or assignments.

It can be confusing.

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Back When ISIS Was A Good Thing

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I've gotten into what some would view as being a very bad bedtime routine with our youngest son.  At his bedtime, I go upstairs with him and we snuggle up together in his bed, and read a story.  Then it's lights-out, but instead of me tucking him in and leaving the room, I continue lying next to him reading on my phone or iPad until he falls asleep.

Isn't it funny how people will give you their opinions on this?  "Oohh, you're going to regret that!" they'll say.  

But I haven't regretted it, yet.  

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The Good News Is, My Foot Still Fits In My Mouth

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If you've followed my blog for any length of time, or if you've read my book, you know that the battle between me and my mouth is very real.  

From cliche's, which I slaughter to pieces like some sort of harebrained butcher, to awkward small-talk exchanges that are so heavily wrapped in social anxiety, I invariably say something that earns me a furrowed brow and a silent look of confusion.

And sometimes I just get my words all jumbled up.  

We went to Florida last week for a family vacation, and on the way there, I pondered whether I'd fit in my swimsuits or not (I did, but only the super-stretchy ones.)  

I didn't wonder whether my foot fit in my mouth.  But, alas, it does.

Kristan Braziel LeBaron.jpg

Kristan (Braziel) LeBaron is an author, writer, marketing professional, and the voice of the blog, Bring Mommy A Martini. Mom to two hilarious boys: one in college and the other in middle school, she writes “real mom” stories on life with anxiety & depression, and choosing happiness as a daily practice. She lives outside of Austin with her two sons and two lavishly kept dogs.

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