I’ve been working my way through a “back log” of emails (a few), Facebook updates (a few more than a few), and hundreds of Twitter Tweets I’d missed last week while Ben and I drove back from Mexico. Some of you out there may be wondering, Meredith couldn’t you have accessed that from your car on your cell phone? Actually, no I couldn’t, because I don’t have a cell phone. As in: I. DO. NOT. HAVE. A. CELL PHONE. I know there are those of you who’d be less shocked if I said, I’d lost my ability to hear and see and now solely rely on my cat to translate all communications by rhythmically rubbing up and down against my leg than to openly admit I don’t have a cell phone.



It’s not like I’ve always relied on pay phones and land line phones. In my last life (back when I had a job selling real estate and wore dry clean only clothes), I was tethered to my BlackBerry. Literally tethered. As in, I had my phone holstered to my hip in a phone clip I wore on my belt, otherwise known as the “poor man’s” Bluetooth. The relationship my phone and I shared was so intimate even now there are times I feel what can be described as phantom limb pains; a tingling in my thumbs and an urge to text on a non-existent miniature keyboard. Sort of like air guitar, but for my thumbs. I was connected to my clients’ every living, breathing, second of my life. My kids don’t miss it. Lets just say they’ll have their first Christmas without mom opening gifts under the tree while checking for any new messages.



So I’m sitting in front of my computer going through my Twitter account and I come across this Tweet from a funny, funny woman I follow:

"We got a puppy."

Then I scroll up to see if she’s posted any updates like puppy just piddled on my new plush carpeting or puppy made boom boom on my kid’s bed – but no, nothing. I’m feeling all smug and self-important like why would you EVER get a puppy unless you lost some kind of bet? Then I remembered that I am the cruelest mother of all time and should keep my indignation to myself. I am the meanest, cruelest, baddest, mother-effing mother of all time and can prove it. The story goes something like this: No, you can’t have a dog from a puppy-mill, I mean yes you can, no, I mean no you can’t...

Read the rest of Meredith Groenevelt's story at BuenoBaby.