The Daily Chai Just Got in Shit From Her Mother

I didn't get a Chai Latte today because I'm feeling guilty about lying to my mother when I was ten. It's my punishment. JUST KIDDING, it was frothy and foamy and went down like the sweetest dream you can imagine.

Read this and you will know why I am in shit.

I just got a text from my mother that said, "You need to call me!" Drama queen that I am, I immediately call her expecting the worst, that she's fallen and needs an ambulance or been in a terrible car accident (although why she wouldn't just 911 herself never occurs to me). Unbeknownst to me, my mother, having enjoyed my Daily Chai posts, has decided it would be a good idea to read all my posts, right from the very beginning, starting in 2006, shortly after Kate was born.

"Hello Megan. Are you somewhere that you can talk to me? I need to speak to you about something that has shocked me to my very core. I just read your blog post from July 27, 2006." My first thought is, "What the fuck is she talking about?" but then she begins to read it out loud to me. She gets about three sentences in and I say, "Oh shit." But I can't help it, I begin to laugh like crazy. After all these years, she's found out my big, dark secret all because of a stupid blog post I wrote nine years ago!

Oops. Forgot about that.

I kept my blog a secret for a long time because I wanted to write honestly about my life and didn't think I could if people I knew read it. Clearly, I have gotten over that little foible. Many of my earlier entries seem fatuous to me now and I can hear my younger self so clearly in them, it's almost scary. But I haven't re-read them all, I don't even know what most of them say anymore, it was almost nine years ago that I wrote them after all.

My mother and I had the most hysterical conversation about my deceitfulness and now she's asking me to think very carefully about anything else I might need to tell her, that I might have lied about to her years ago and if it's suddenly going to come to light in another blog entry. I'm wracking my brains and reading previous entries as fast as I can.

The things we lie about to ourselves...

1) That graham crackers are better than cookies and therefore not a "guilty food" and you can eat as many as you like
2) That if you eat the suggested serving portion each time you help yourself to said graham crackers, the calories don't count as much
3) That if you buy something on sale that you didn't really need in the first place, you are actually saving money
4) That if you have a cigarette when you're drinking, you're not really smoking
5) That fat-free foods are better for you when in actuality they usually have more sugar in them to make up for the lost fat
6) That if you weigh yourself with your clothes on, you can take 5 pounds off the total
7) That people are staring because you are so good looking when it's really because your underwear is showing, you have toilet paper stuck to your foot or you have spinach in your teeth
8) That you didn't really just spend the entire evening watching reality television, that you maybe watch an hour of television a night or every other night when in actuality you just watched it straight, without moving, from 6:00 until 11:00 (that is 5 hours a night in case you don't feel like doing the math because Survivor just came on and you're not really reading anymore)
9) That you enjoyed that weird artsy film when really you just don't want to admit you didn't like it, didn't get it and you want your money back
10) That you don't eat that many sweets or junk food...
11) That you have nothing to wear in your closet
12) That you totally just biked for an hour when it was probably about 30 minutes
13) That when you were biking, you were absolutely going hard-core fast, for-all-you-are-worth pedaling
14) That you really do need a new pair of shoes because you hate every pair you own when secretly you love all your shoes immensely
15) That you named your phone because you thought it was funny, but now you really think of it as another person
16) That you love every, single second of being a parent and never, ever want to tear your hair out by the roots in frustration or move very far away from any place that allows children to exist.
17) That Kraft dinner is a good lunch because it has milk in it, but you are too damn tired of saying no not to make it
18) That if you just quickly glance at a text message but don't reply then you aren't really texting and driving
19) That you studied for hours and hours and it was not broken up with painting your nails, surfing the net, job searching, playing with a new app, eating graham crackers or writing in your blog