I am tired. I am sick and I have a husband and a child at home that I homeschool and I don’t sleep well and my body hurts and I AM TIRED. So, “make my life easier in any way humanly possible” is my motto. Ask and ye shall receive! The internet provides and it provides in the form of hacks.
You may be asking yourself, what exactly are hacks, Christine? Well, I’m glad you did. Hacks, as defined by Urban Dictionary (the site that gave us 453 phrases for sex acts that will send you straight to hell), are clever solutions to tricky problems. Hacks make life simpler.
Well, at least that’s how it was supposed to be, but as the internet provides, the internet also taketh away. The term hack is now everyone’s favorite overused buzzword. It’s clickbait. So, even if that clever idea in the latest internet article has more steps than an IKEA bunk bed instruction manual, they’re still calling it a hack. Case in point, Zooey Deschanel.
No, she’s not the hack, but according to the internet she has a genius parenting “hack” to get her kids to eat their veggies. She’s grown a garden. See, it’s just that simple to get your little Suzy or Tom to like okra. Grow a fucking garden. Warm up the tractor, put on your best overalls, till the soil, fight plague and pestilence, overcome locust swarms, water, weed, repeat, and grow a motherfucking garden.
And I’m not hating on Zooey for growing a garden. Bully for her and her two spawn, Elsie Otter and Charlie Wolf. No, I didn’t make those names up. Those are the actual names of her actual children that came from her actual body. She named them that, and not ironically, I don’t think. I could hate on her for that, but not for growing the garden.

I tried. I really, really tried.
I’m hating on the internet for calling something as labor and time intensive, as complicated, as backbreaking as growing a motherfucking garden a hack. It’s not. Now, perhaps I’m bitter because I have found it impossible to keep the one houseplant I have in my possession alive. But, counterpoint, growing a garden is not a hack. So there.
Unless the definition of hack has been changed to now include any idea, no matter how convoluted and complex. If that’s the case, baby have I got some hacks for you. The first one is, don’t name your children Elsie Otter and Charlie Wolf. Go big or go home. Don’t hide the good stuff in the middle name. They should be called Otter Elsie and Wolf Charlie or nothing at all.
And here are some other hacks you never knew you needed because, the fact is, you didn’t.
Teaching your child to tie their shoes has never been this easy!
Raise cattle from calf to full grown cow. Slaughter and skin them for their hides. Soak the hides overnight. Now begins the arduous task of scraping fur and flesh from those hides. Get the kids involved! They’ll look back fondly on this step and feel grateful that they wear shoes and aren’t cows. Tan the hide. Dry the hide. Become an old timey cobbler and craft a pair of shoes for your child. Don’t give up now. What kind of mother are you? Then, go to Target, pick up some shoelaces and find a YouTube video on how to tie those shoelaces. If that doesn’t work just make them wear slip ons until they move out of the house.
Made a mess with glitter? Clean it up the easy way.
Sell the house or burn it down and collect the insurance money.
It’s the only way.
Keep wrapping paper neat, organized, and wrinkle free.
Forget fancy and expensive single use plastic containers! Use a clean wastebasket and stand your tubes on end inside one. You can tuck all your wrapping paper out of the way and keep it neat in the back of any closet to keep for later use. Except here’s the thing, you’re going to forget that you have it because it’s tucked out of the way in the closet.
So, one time you’re going to need to wrap a present for that stupid friend of your kid who decided to have his birthday at the germ factory known as Chuck E. Cheese and think you have no wrapping paper. You’ll go out, buy more wrapping paper, find a clever way to store that wrapping paper on Pinterest, buy another garbage can and then discover your hidden stash of wrapping paper in the back of closet. Now you’ve got an extra garbage can and one more damn roll of wrapping paper to store. This will continue each and every month for the duration of your life until you have to claim bankruptcy because you’ve gone into debt buying wrapping paper and garbage cans.
Use Command Hooks for everything!
Want to keep your necklaces from tangling? Command Hooks! Hanging a wreath on your glass door? Command Hooks! Toothbrush holder? Command Hooks! Hanging curtains in a dorm? Command Hooks! Want to impeach a president? Command Hooks! Marriage falling apart? Command Hooks! Need a new kidney? Command Hooks! Have to hide a body? Command Hooks!
Command Hooks! Command Hooks! Command Hooks!
Don’t waste money on a Slip and Slide! Try this hack instead.
Simply purchase an inexpensive tarp and stake it into the ground with uh, I don’t know, nails. Or maybe large screws? Twigs? Bricks? I have no clue. Something completely unsafe that will cause bodily harm and certainly guarantee at least one trip to the E.R.
Up the ante by slathering your tarp with dish soap so the kids really go flying down that hill and snag their flank on a few screws going down. And place it on the steepest hill in your yard so after they almost sever a limb they can sustain a head injury by slamming into the fence at a high rate of speed. Make the injuries count so you can also face the threat of lawsuits from the parents of your children’s friends.
See, parenting hacks can really make the job just that easy! As easy as it is for Zooey and her motherfucking garden and her broccoli eating kids, Dances with Wolves and Dead Man Walking. Or whatever their names are. Peppa Pig and Dame Edna? I don’t know. Something like that.
[…] via The Top Five Parenting Hacks You Never Knew You Needed — I’m Sick and So Are You […]
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Giggling!!! Nothing is ever that easy, eh!
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My new tagline will be, it’s as easy as growing a garden.
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😁🤪😂
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I like the glitter hack. In fact I think I’ll suggest it myself every time Mrs Bryntin asks that I do the vacuuming. Well, any chores really. What could go wrong?
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I see no problems ahead for you.
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That glitter hack I’m still laughing!
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I spilled a little bit of glitter in the kitchen for the IG pic to this post. I’ll be finding it for the next century.
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Definitely – glitter always has a way of getting into nooks and crannies!
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Haha I second the glitter hack, we’ve got a wonderful plastic fantastic Christmas Tree with glitter on it and despite repeated vacuuming we are finding glitter from it now even in August XD
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We haven’t been in this house for too long so my glitter trail is missing here. Can’t wait for Christmas to infect this house too.
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Dear SC
Having burnt my house down as advised, I find the command hooks that held it together have escaped and are now massing off the Florida coast preparing to invade Cuba. Is there anything I can do?
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More Command Hooks!!
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They are the answer to the answer. What marvellous symmetry…
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Oh, you just really cheered up my Monday! Hilarious!
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So glad! Thank you!
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Growing a garden? That not a mother effing hack! For reasons above and it doesn’t fekkin work, because God knows I have tried. A ‘hack’ might be tell them to hold their nose and eat it, but even that cuts no butter if the little darlings don’t like the ‘feel’ of it. Can I slap her if you are too tired?
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I’ll definitely slap the person that came up with the headline. You can slap Zooey for naming her kid Otter.
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Deal
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I am laughing my ass off over here, screaming into a pillow so I don’t wake the husbandbeast from his sleeping in on a rain day, wiping my tears with my dog’s blanket, and choking on coffee that snorted out through my nose. Now, I gotta go to the bathroom before I piss my pants
#thisiswhyiloveyou
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These are the comments I live for!
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😘😘😘😘😘
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I’ve just watched the digital clock turn over to the dreaded 7, and now I’m fully aware of the fact that it’s Monday morning and I need to wake up my boys within the next 30 minutes. My “alone time” for the day is quickly depleting and – during the last few moments of something-like-bliss (aka personal procrastination) – I scanned this blog for no better reason than the fact that your headline spoke to me with solemn understanding (yet again proving that I should always trust my instincts!)
Well, somewhere between hacks number two and three… ‘burn the house down, it’s the only way’… I found myself laughing aloud, and then cursing myself aloud when I heard my son stir in the next room. And then I laughed again at the realization of how wonderfully awful parenting is. Your wise words have made my morning and now I am forced to spend another of my final moments on following your blog. Not so bad, for a Monday.
Hope yours goes well 🙂
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So far so good. Thank you.
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