Life with Liz: 527,040 minutes of laughs and tears

This is my one-year anniversary of sharing my family’s adventures with you. Fifty-two weeks of mayhem. 365 days. Or to quote a famous song, 525,600 minutes. And, since 2016 was a leap year, it’s actually 366 or 527,040 minutes.

That doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as easily.

I’m not going to lie, last year, when I was approached about writing a weekly humor column on the trials and travails of being a working mom, navigating the ins and outs of parenthood and life, I got a little bit of an ego boost.

It felt good to know that someone felt like I had something worthwhile to say on the subject.

As 2015 drew to a close, I was feeling pretty good about where my family and I were in life. Jobs were going well, school was going well for the kids, things seemed pretty even keeled.

As they say, “man plans, and God laughs.”

2016 became a year of having the rug pulled out from under me. Continuously. My “real” job started a series of changes that ended with us becoming a new company. The kids’ school closed, unexpectedly. The Wonderful Husband also faced changes and a new position within his company.

Sometimes, sitting down on the floor and crying with the kids as our world changed and felt beyond our control seemed like the only thing to do. One thing I have learned about our family is that we don’t adapt to change very well.

Through it all, though, I’ve had to rally and try to find something to laugh about every week. This column has become a way to find a ray of sunshine in what has been a chaotic and unrestful year.

Some weeks, it has been easy and the words have flown onto the page. Other weeks, I’ve found myself silently screaming at the kids to do something funny already! Of course, they rarely comply in a timely manner, so I have to go down the rabbit hole of old pictures and Facebook posts for inspiration.

The column has also affected my relationship with the WH. There have been times when I’ve written what I’ve felt was the best thing ever and he’s shot it down.

Then, there have been times when I’ve been feeling “meh” about my writing and he sees something in it that he thinks is great. I’ve come to appreciate times when he’s said, “It’s good, but I think you can do better.”

There have also been times when I’ve silently screamed at him to do something funny already, too.

Has the column affected my family? At one point, I did overhear A and G discussing some nefarious plan, and A’s advice to G was to “be careful, because you know mom is going to write about it, if she catches you.”

So, perhaps they’ve developed a little bit of a moral compass: Don’t do it, if you don’t want to see it in print. They also help me decide what to include and what to leave out based on the tone in which they ask “You’re going to write about this, aren’t you?”

If I can make them laugh, though, I know I have a winner.

There are also times when I find myself writing about the bigger picture and entering into the fray of political or social commentary. I try not to get too involved in that. Goodness knows there are enough other blowhards out there, offering opinions. It’s a good way to stay grounded and focused on my family’s priorities, when the rest of the world becomes too overwhelming to bear.

This column has also become a good way to remind myself to not take myself so seriously. Most of the hilarity that ensues in our family comes from me being able to admit that I’m woefully underqualified for whatever the task at hand is.

A, G, and E frequently outsmart and outwit me, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call it a battle, they do keep me on my toes. Like every other parent before me, I wonder if I’m failing miserably at this thing call parenting.

Taking an incident that at the time was stressful for everyone involved and turning it into something we can all laugh about gives me a modicum of hope that I’ve actually got this.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if I spend too much time navel gazing, or if anyone really cares about my deep thoughts, and it has been so gratifying to hear from people that I’ve made them laugh, or that I’ve brought back memories of when their children were small, or when something just like one of my stories happened to them.

The WH’s friends frequently thank me for providing them some good restroom reading.

In these trying times, common ground seems more important than ever to find, and knowing that I’m not the only mom who has worn a shirt covered with snots and “Frozen” stickers into a very high-level meeting helps ease the mortification level when it does happen.

So, whether you’re reading this over a cup of Saturday morning coffee, or clicked over from my Facebook post, or you’re settled in on the “throne,” thanks for sticking with me.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.