Marla Jo Fisher - Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Motherhood

ADVANCE PRAISE

If youve ever heard yourself say, No officer, that is not my son, or had to explain to your kids that Led Zeppelin is not a mineral, Fisher is your kind of gal. Even if youve never said either of those things, Fisher is still your gal. This book has laughs on every page, and as a parent of teenagers, I know you will desperately need every one. I loved it!

W. BRUCE CAMERON, New York Times-bestselling author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter

Now I know why mothering should come with an instruction manual. Marla Jos take on being single with children is pure geniusand I know genius.

CATHRYN MICHON, bestselling author, The Grrl Genius Guide to Life

If you miss the real, everyday-life observations of Roseanne (which I do), you will welcome Fishers true and hilarious new book. In fact, youll probably devour it like a double-stuffed Oreo.

CHRIS ERSKINE, humoris and author of Daditude and Lavender in Your Lemonade

Marla Fisher, aka the Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom, writes us into adventures so real we cannot help but be carried along. Her piercing descriptions of places and people evoke the work of Mark Twain if he were alive today and living in Orange County, California. Her writing style sails across the page, though I find myself occasionally having to pause to giggle over something hilarious before I can continue reading. As a comedian, I appreciate laughter when someone else serves it to me, and Marla is a brilliant hostess of humor. Her book is a feast for us all.

VICKI BARBOLAK, comedian and television personality

Copyright 2020 by Marla Jo Fisher

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Prospect Park Books 2359 Lincoln Avenue Altadena, California 91001 www.prospectparkbooks.com

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

www.cbsd.com

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The following is for reference only:

Fisher, Marla Jo | Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom

Humor; parenthood/motherhood; essays; family life

ISBN 978-1-938849-66-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-938849-67-1

Edited by Samantha Dunn and Rebecca Allen

Cover design by Mimi Bark

Page design and layout by Amy Inouye, Future Studio

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

HELLO. Welcome to my book, in which I endeavor to impart my vast store of knowledge about how to be a bad mother, travel cheaply, avoid feeling guilty, and have cancer without fear.

Okay, Im lying about that last part. I am afraid of my cancer, but that doesnt mean it isnt occasionally funny and even usefulfor example, when I dont want to stand in a long line behind other people who dont have cancer. Cancer has made me bold, because once youre staring at death, what else could scare you? Certainly not an annoying guy who wont let you cut the line.

This book is a collection of my columns that I started writing twelve years ago, originally to amuse myself and later for the Orange County Register, where I work as a reporter. Then my columns went into national syndication, and, lastly, were written for the Southern California News Group, where I still work today.

The column really started when I adopted two little kids out of foster care at the ancient age of forty-six, after I woke up one morning and realized I forgot to have children.

I was a workaholic journalist, whod covered every beat imaginable in my newspaper career. I typically worked from 9 a.m. to as late as 10 p.m. because thats just how much I loved my job and my colleagueswho tend to be a group of poorly groomed yet lovable goofballs determined to make the world a better place through journalism.

Since Im also a poorly groomed goofball, I fit right in, so it took me quite a while to realize that, oops, I was suddenly middle-aged. Not only had I never been married, I also never had kids. This wasnt so much of a concern, because my mom was raised as an orphan in hardscrabble Texas during the Depression, and she was separated from her sisters and literally farmed out to pick cotton, clean houses, and do other things on farms as a child. After hearing her many horrendous stories, Id already determined that I wanted to adopt siblings in foster care and keep them together.

The only problem was that I had no idea how to be a mother. Even though the state makes you take parenting classes before they hand over kids to you, I never got the manual. Everything was new and terrifying, and, in the beginning, I had no faith that I could keep these kids alive long enough to formally adopt them, after they moved into my house as foster children.

Since I already had fallen madly in love with them, this was stressful. Every day I worried that the social workers would notice how badly I stank as a mother, and take them away from me.

Then, I saw a stand-up performance by a housewife named Roseanne Barr (yes, in those days she had a last name). She snarled at the audience, If the kids are alive at 5 p.m., Ive done MY job.

I decided this was my new mantra. Maybe I fed them Kraft Macaroni & Cheese instead of kale and quinoa, and maybe an inappropriate curse word flew out of my potty mouth a little too often, and maybe I shouted too much when I should have been quiet, but damn it, I kept them alive ALL DAY LONG.

When I talked to my friends about this, I was amazed to learn that the ones who (unlike me) actually were good moms were constantly tormented with guilt that they werent doing enough, just like me.

Every article, TV show, and website exhorted parents how they could be better caregivers, better dressed, better at their jobs, better home cookswell, you know the drill.

There wasnt a single source to be found recommending how to be just ordinary, how to drag yourself and your kids through the day without a single injury or incident.

Thats when I decided to become the Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom, and to show the world how to be mediocreor even badat parenting, adulting, and all those other things that people seem to expect of you when you reach a certain age.

And you know what? People responded, because the more you care about being a great parent, the more susceptible you become to the massive guilt factory that is our lot today.

Im happy to say I kept them alive until 5 p.m. every day. I also took them to Egypt and Thailand, Costa Rica and Europe, mostly against their will.

Then a funny thing happened while I was planning the rest of my life and our future adventures together as a family: I was diagnosed with a particularly nasty version of uterine cancer. In the first of a couple of last-ditch efforts to save my life, I allowed the charmless surgeon at my HMO to cut me open and extract items Id never actually used. My kids were adopted, after all, so all that female equipmentuterus, ovaries, Fallopian tubes, and suchwas only used peripherally, as in to produce enough estrogen to keep me from growing hairs on my chin.