The best parts of Why Moms Are Weird

A couple weeks ago, Maliavale posted her Year in Books, complete with the passages she loved in each. I've seen this format elsewhere, too, and it makes me realize that I'd like to keep better tabs on not just what I've read, but what I liked about it as well. (Assuming, of course, that I liked something about it. I'm sorry, Neil, but if I'd cooked up this plan around this time last year, you'd have gotten no love from me.)

I would also like to do something clever like M. Kennedy does with her reviews-in-five-words-or-less. But we all know I'm a habitually verbose and rambly gal, so five words is likely never going to be enough for me. My less-than-ten-word synopsis of Pamela Ribon's Why Moms Are Weird, however? That would go something like this:

Not as hilarious as Girls, but amused me nonetheless.

Here are a few passages I loved. You know, in case you might love them too.

In the end, he didn't miss me enough. He didn't say that, not exactly. But that's what it means. I thought he needed me more than he did. I don't know where he is now. I don't even look him up, even in my most depressing moments in the middle of the night when I'm drunk and alone with the Internet. I failed at making someone love me like I loved him, and I don't need a reminder that life goes on for other people. I don't want to think of anyone surviving me.

* * * *

Jane sits up and claps her hands, bouncing in her seat. "Let's make a list!"
"No, Jane. We aren't making a list."
She pouts. "Lists are important. We'll find out if you love him."

* * * *

There is a difference between a house that's gone a little messy and cluttered and this. My mother's house looks like the inside of a disturbed mind. This is beyond unsettling.

My mother is a woman who used to walk around her house Saturday mornings with gym socks on her hands, dusting every wooden surface. Her idea of a relaxing day was settling down with a good junk drawer and getting it inventoried.

* * * *

My spoon is stuck in my hardened oatmeal, but I've liquefied. If Zack wanted to, he could drag a finger down my arm and leave a mark, forever, on my body.

* * * *

This feeling I have, this yearning and sorrow, this is the exact feeling I don't want to call love. Because if it is? Why the hell do we do this? This doesn't make any sense.

Why has evolution let us down? Thousands of years ago if something was dangerous to our bodies, we'd find a way to change our instincts, our bodies, our language, to keep each other and ourselves safe. We stand upright. We have thumbs. We have eyelashes and eyebrows. Human beings change their internal and external structure to shelter themselves from harm. So why do we still let ourselves feel this misery?

I am constantly nauseated. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I am aging years by the second. This isn't love. This is serious illness. This is when I should see a doctor. Or, at the very least, a therapist.

* * * *

I considered also typing out the entire chapter titled Decisions (it's only a single page), because it documents basically the exact same thought process I agonize over myself every time the airport counter lady asks, "Window or aisle?" But it is a whole page (and a whole chapter, after all), so I probably shouldn't do it. If you read this book, however, when you get to that part, feel free to think of me and think, "Oh. So that's what it's like to be inside Stefanie's brain? Man, that's sort of exhausting..."