I’m going to allow myself to be conceited, because this is my blog and I’m my own editor and I can have an ego if I want to. Neener-neener.

You know how everyone sits down at a job interview and says, “I’m a people person”? Well, I really am a people person. I’m an extrovert, a talker, a social butterfly, if you will. I love people.

And, I hate ignorance.

I have friends of all different races and colors and beliefs. I love them, not despite our differences, but sometimes because of them. I am doing my best to teach my children the same thing.

This likely wasn’t evident when my son called two Muslim woman “pirates” and it surely wasn’t apparent yesterday at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants.

Because it had to seem that we are breeding nothing but intolerance when my son heard a woman speaking Chinese to her child, looked at her and said, “Uh, we’re not in China.”

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One way I can be sure that summer is coming to its beautiful end is the addition of socks to the laundry.

My son has run around in Crocs since school let out. Actually, they’re the same pair of Crocs he wore last summer. He’s a slow grower. He wore a pair of 3T shorts the other day. He’s eight.

My daughter wore her black, hand-me-down sandals all summer. She most definitely did not wear the cute, brown-leather flip-flops, for which we went back and forth to the store because the size wasn’t quite right. You know, the ones that cost actual dollars.

I get used to laundry sans socks when the kids are out of school; other than softball and baseball socks, which are knee-high and black or knee-high and red. Meaning…the pair is easy to make.

My kids wear uniforms to school and their ankles have to be covered. So now, I will be carrying around a lot of socks until next June. I tote them up and down the stairs because I can’t find the mate and keep waiting for it to turn up. This is my laundry basket and the socks I carry around week to week.

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My 76 year old mom is well known for her mispronunciation.

But, I think she topped herself today when she called my niece’s car a “Vulva“.

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I didn’t even realize it at the time, but my last blog post was my 500th. I had another post prepared for today, but as I logged in to type it, I saw the big 5-0-0 was hit a few days ago.

Five hundred posts and over three years of my life spent here at my home away from home. Momo Fali’s isn’t just a blog for me; it has been my journey through time. Even if most of that time was spent as an insomniac in an Ambien-induced haze.

You might think that I would be looking forward to my 500th post. Anticipating it, planning it and crafting each word carefully. Umm…nope. I haven’t even planned dinner lately.

As I have come to realize, anticipating and planning don’t necessarily mean that things will turn out the way you intended. I didn’t anticipate having two premature kids. I didn’t plan for a child with health and behavioral problems. My husband and I didn’t craft our (legitimate) careers in the mortgage industry, only to have the housing market come crashing down around us.

I know I’m not alone. Life throws curve balls at everyone and, sometimes, you just get blind-sided by a hit that you never even saw coming.

When my son was an infant, things were such a struggle that I continuously told myself, “Don’t take it day to day, or hour to hour…just take it minute to minute”. I knew I could do anything for a minute, so I taught myself to function for 60 seconds at a time.

This is probably why I didn’t see my 500th post coming. I have learned not to look too far ahead because what appears isn’t usually painted like the picture in my head. As a matter of fact, I try to imagine the worst so that I end up pleasantly surprised. That’s right. The worst. I can paint some seriously ugly pictures up in here.

This doesn’t mean that I am negative, just anxiety-ridden. I am a worrier. I am helped by medication, but I am still the woman who goes to therapy with her son and has the psychologist spend a quarter of the allotted time discussing my cuticle picking.

Given the course of my life, filled with twists and turns and sinkholes, I think it’s fitting that I am, instead, celebrating my 501st post.

In my case, it is truly something to celebrate when there was no fretting involved whatsoever.

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