Category: Uncategorized

Against All Odds… The Garage Is Clean

Guys.

I did it.

I used my grown-up words and told Matt, “We need to clean the garage.”

No elaborate presentation. No passive-aggressive hints. No setting things on fire and claiming it was an accident.

I simply said the words.

Then I walked out to the garage and started moving stuff around.

And you know what happened?

HE FOLLOWED ME OUT THERE.

Not only did he come outside, but WE ACTUALLY CLEANED THE GARAGE.

Together.

As a team.

Like one of those couples you see in commercials who somehow enjoy organizing storage bins.

I am still processing this shocking turn of events.

The garage is now in a condition I previously believed existed only in mythology.

✔ I can comfortably fit my car inside.

✔ There are no visible dead, crusty spiders staring at me from the corners.

✔ There aren’t random loose nails and screws scattered across the floor waiting to find a bare foot or a tire.

✔ I no longer feel like I need a tetanus booster just for opening the garage door.

I have the overwhelming urge to stand in the doorway and make everyone come look at it, just like I did with my room when I was a kid after cleaning it.

Is it perfect?

No.

Will it stay this way forever?

Also no.

But for this brief, glorious moment, I can pull my car into the garage without performing an obstacle course worthy of an Olympic event, and I don’t have to wonder if I’m about to discover a new species of spider.

So if anyone needs me, I’ll be standing in the garage admiring our work and forcing visitors to come look at it.

It isn’t perfect, but it’ll do, peeps.

Chronic Illness Is a Master Class in Having the Rug Pulled Out From Under You

Dealing with lifelong chronic health issues sucks.

There. I said it.

Some days I feel guilty even complaining because there are people out there dealing with so much more. But the truth is, chronic illness has a way of wearing you down in ways that are hard to explain to people who have never experienced it.

The worst part isn’t always the symptoms themselves.

The worst part is the hope.

You know those stretches of time when you start feeling better? Maybe not perfect, but better. You wake up with a little more energy. The pain isn’t screaming quite as loudly. You start tackling projects you’ve put off. You make plans. You begin to feel like you’re getting back to normal.

You start trusting your body again.

And then one random Tuesday morning you open your eyes and immediately know.

Nope.

Not today.

It’s like your body held a secret meeting overnight and forgot to invite you.

The exhaustion is back.

The pain is back.

The brain fog has rolled in thicker than a Nebraska winter storm.

Suddenly, all those things you were planning to accomplish today get shoved back onto the “maybe someday” shelf.

Again.

What people don’t always understand about chronic illness is that it’s not just the physical symptoms. It’s the constant uncertainty.

Healthy people wake up and assume their body will cooperate with them that day.

People with chronic illnesses wake up and negotiate.

“Okay body, what are we working with today?”

It’s exhausting constantly having to adjust expectations, cancel plans, reschedule appointments, and explain why yesterday you seemed perfectly fine but today you’re struggling to get through basic tasks.

The good days are wonderful.

The bad days are frustrating.

But the hardest days are the ones that come right after you’ve convinced yourself you’re finally turning a corner.

Those are the days that break your heart a little.

Still, if there’s one thing chronic illness teaches you, it’s resilience.

Not the motivational-poster kind of resilience.

The messy kind.

The kind where you cry, complain, get angry, get discouraged, and then somehow get up and keep moving anyway.

The kind where you learn to celebrate small victories because sometimes getting out of bed, taking a shower, or making it through the workday deserves just as much recognition as climbing a mountain.

Living with chronic illness means becoming an expert at starting over.

Sometimes every year.

Sometimes every month.

Sometimes every single morning.

And while I wouldn’t wish this journey on anyone, I am proud of every person who keeps showing up for their life despite the challenges their body throws at them.

Some days survival is the victory.

And that’s enough.

How Do I Tell My Husband to Clean Out the Garage Without Starting a Domestic Incident?

I have a question for the married people.

How exactly are you supposed to approach the topic of cleaning out the garage with your husband?

Do I just walk in there, point dramatically at the chaos, and say:

“Get in there and clean it, bitch.”

Because that seems aggressive.

Do I quietly wait until he’s gone and clean it myself?

Also no.

For several reasons.

First of all, I don’t want to touch his stuff.

Second, I don’t know what half of it is.

Third, there are dead bugs in there.

And spider webs.

And things that were once alive and are now part of the garage ecosystem.

At this point, the garage isn’t a storage space. It’s a wildlife preserve.

Every time I open the door, I feel like I’m entering a low-budget episode of National Geographic.

There’s a lawn mower.

Three extension cords.

Seventeen mysterious containers.

A box of random screws that apparently cannot be thrown away because one day—ONE DAY—they might be needed.

For what?

Nobody knows.

Not even him.

Yet somehow if I throw away a rusty bolt that hasn’t been touched since the Obama administration, he’ll notice within three business days.

Me: “You haven’t looked at this thing in ten years.”

Him: “Where’s the bent Phillips screwdriver with the blue handle I was saving for a project?”

Sir.

What project?

What PROJECT?!

The garage itself has become a project.

And let’s talk about the spiders.

I don’t care how tough you are.

Once a spider gets big enough to have opinions, that’s its garage now.

I am merely a visitor.

Honestly, I think the safest approach is to casually bring it up.

“Hey babe, I think the garage could use a little cleaning.”

Then immediately leave the area before negotiations begin.

Because somehow a simple cleaning project turns into a six-month strategic planning meeting.

There will be discussions.

There will be categories.

There will be explanations about why every single object is critically important.

There may be diagrams.

Meanwhile, all I wanted was enough room to park the damn car.

Marriage is wild.

Because after years together, I’ve learned one important thing:

The garage is never actually cleaned.

The garage merely evolves.

One day it is boxes.

The next day it is shelves.

Then it’s “organized.”

Then somehow it’s full again.

It’s the circle of life.

So if anyone has successfully convinced their husband to clean out the garage without causing a household crisis, please share your wisdom.

Until then, I’ll be inside where there are fewer spiders and significantly less mystery hardware.

Sincerely,

A woman who just wants to park in the garage she pays for. 🚗🕷️😂

Well… peeps. My dudes. Homeslices. My home SKILLETS! I think I’m actually going to try this influencer/blogger/content creator thing.

At the moment, I’m deep in the research phase trying to figure out how it all works, who my audience is, what I’m supposed to post, how often I’m supposed to post, and whether there’s some secret meeting where everyone learned this information except me. Also, when did I get old?! Like I used to just “KNOW” this stuff….now i research it… Right now, I am basically a confused 40-year-old woman with Google and Bing, determination, and approximately 37,000 open tabs. I am STRESSED dudes.

I’m researching, learning, and trying to find my lane, so I’ll let y’all know the details when I know the details! Doesnt matter if YOU LIKE MY VOICE OR NOT, you’re gonna KNOW em!!

In the meantime, thank you to everyone who reads, likes, comments on, and encourages my completely unfiltered ADHD brain-scramble ramblings! Apparently some of you actually enjoy the random thoughts that leave my head at 2 a.m. and somehow end up on The Facebooks.

Honestly, that’s both flattering and slightly concerning!

So who knows? Maybe this turns into something. Maybe it crashes and burns spectacularly. Maybe I accidentally become famous for comparing myself to a feral house cat and complaining about being broke. I wont forget you OG’s who encouraged this nonsense when im famous!!!

Either way, if nothing else, we’re all going to be entertained!

Stay tuned…or don’t

Public Service Announcement:

I will not answer my phone.

I will not answer my door.

If you need to see me, please text me and schedule an appointment for a future date and time. Showing up unannounced is a bold strategy, but I can assure you that neither of us will enjoy the results.

I am essentially a scared little woodland creature that somehow acquired a job, and adult responsibilities. If spotted unexpectedly in public, I WILL get spooked and behave abnormally.

Please do not mistake this for rudeness. I am simply running a highly advanced operating system called Socially Awkward 4.0, which immediately crashes when faced with surprise human interaction.

Also, I promise I am not giving you dirty looks.

First of all, I’m blind as a damn bat.

Second, I genuinely do not know what to do with my face at any given moment. While you’re having a perfectly normal conversation, I’m busy wondering if I’m making eye contact, making too much eye contact, accidentally staring through your soul, or looking like I’m plotting your downfall.

If you catch me squinting at you from across a room, I’m not judging you. I’m trying to figure out if you’re a person I know, a complete stranger, or a decorative plant.

In fact, if you look up the definition of “socially awkward” in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me desperately trying to decide whether to wave, smile, say hello, pretend I didn’t see you, or just slowly back away into nearby shrubbery.

Thank you for respecting my boundaries and allowing me to continue existing comfortably as the weirdest person you know.

Sincerely,

The Human Equivalent of a Feral House Cat

Just my random rant for today…

I am CONVINCED rain is sentient.

No matter what I do to protect myself—umbrella, hat, jacket, hood, newspaper, sacrificing my dignity to the weather gods—the rain sees my plan and immediately goes:

“Nah bitch.”

Then it changes directions like it’s in the damn Matrix and finds the ONE spot I’m trying to keep dry, MY GLASSES.

Which is exactly why I need LASIK. I’m tired of my glasses getting wet bruh!

And can we discuss KASHMIR?

Every single morning:

Me: “Go potty.”

Kash: sniffs one blade of grass for 14 minutes

sniffs another blade of grass

investigates a leaf that has clearly committed a crime

Me: “Please. It’s raining. Just find a spot, ANY SPOT go pee bruh.”

Kash: “I need to gather more evidence.”

Then she sprints back to the door, runs inside, and immediately pees downstairs.

Ma’am. We JUST held a business meeting outside specifically for this purpose.

But the true crime happened when I finally dragged my wet, annoyed self back inside, dreaming of coffee.

The coffee machine looked me dead in the soul and said:

🖕 “Not today. I ain’t brewing SHIT, bitch.”

Honestly, if you see a news story about a woman fighting a coffee pot at 6:17 AM, mind your business. You don’t know what I’ve been through.

Anyway… that’s my morning.

How are y’all doing? 😂☕🌧️🐕

Matthew Miller Happy 19th wedding Anniversary to the man who has seen me at my absolute hottest… and also crouched on the bathroom floor at 2am praying to god that “I will never drink again just please make the puking stop!”

Nineteen years.

NINETEEN?! What?!

That is nearly two decades of us somehow surviving on sarcasm, caffeine, inappropriate humor, stubbornness and love.

We started this marriage as babies pretending to be adults. We had no clue what we were doing. We were basically just two feral people in love saying, “Yeah sure, forever sounds manageable.” “we can plan a wedding for less than that! How about we do that?!” -Matt (literally how he proposed folks!)

And somehow… it has been manageable and we indeed planned that wedding for less!!!

We have built a whole life together. Three incredible kids who are literally different fragments of our personalities running around in separate bodies causing chaos ALL OF THE TIME! A home full of noise, laughter, stress, dirty laundry, inside jokes, and at least one of us asking, “huh” until death do us part!

You have loved me through every version of myself: the confident one,

the exhausted one,

the overwhelmed one, the sad lonely depressed one, the “I’m reinventing my entire life at 11pm on a Tuesday” one,

and the one who says she doesn’t want fries then eats half of yours with absolutely no shame.

And somehow after all this time, you still look at me like I’m the hottest woman in the room even when I’m wearing an oversized T-shirt, no bra, hair looking like I lost a fight with a ceiling fan, ranting about groceries costing seventeen thousand dollars and about how much work stresses me out!

Marriage after 19 years isn’t constant romance and soft music. It’s surviving life together. It’s dirty jokes in the kitchen! It’s laughing so hard we can’t breathe. It’s surviving stress, heartbreak, teenagers, work exhaustion, and still finding time to smack each other’s ass walking through the hallway like hormonally unstable teenagers!

Matt, You are still my safest place.

Still my favorite person.

Still the one I want beside me when life gets hard.

And still the only man alive who can annoy me so deeply I consider arson… while also making me laugh five minutes later.

Thank you for loving me through every beautiful, messy, complicated year.

I’d choose you again every single time. ❤️

I am so unbelievably sick and fucking tired of being broke.

I work my ass off. I show up exhausted. I push through pain, illness,depression, crippling anxiety, stress, burnout, and the kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix… just to barely break even every single month!

Tell me how people are supposed to survive when groceries cost a kidney, rent acts like it owns your soul, and somehow working 40-50+ hours a week still leaves you staring at your bank account like it personally betrayed you.

At this point, payday feels less like “making money” and more like briefly holding it before every bill in America forms a conga line straight through my checking account.

And the worst part? You’re expected to smile through it. Stay positive. Hustle harder. Drink water. Manifest abundance.

Sir, I cannot manifest my way out of paying $8 for butter.

I don’t want luxury. I want to buy groceries without doing math like I’m cracking the Da Vinci Code. I want one month where nothing “unexpected” happens. I want to rest without feeling guilty for not being productive every waking second of my existence.

Because this constant survival mode? It’s exhausting.

And honestly, if hard work alone made people financially stable, half of us would be millionaires by now.

It’s genuinely fascinating how some people look at my husband and immediately decide he must be a clueless toddler because he learns differently or expresses himself differently than most people. Like congratulations on your Olympic-level mental gymnastics, I guess! 🤷‍♀️

Meanwhile, this “idiot child” y’all keep underestimating has helped me build a life, raise a family, survive hard things, problem solve through chaos, and somehow tolerate ME on a daily basis — which honestly deserves its own award!

The amount of people who talk to us like we accidentally wandered out into society unsupervised is wild. But, because I understand my husband and “get” him people also assume that I too am a complete and total idiot!!! That I am the exact same as Matt!! That we are both “idiot little children that its ok to talk down to them” The amused little smiles. The nasty digs, the “haha funny jokes” The condescending explanations. The fucking DOUBLE STANDARDS for the rules that only seem to apply to US! The assumptions that we’re somehow too dumb to manage our own lives. I see the dirty looks, i see the eye rolling, I pride myself on being able to read people and what kind of person they are within SECONDS of meeting them….dont think I DONT NOTICEA your shitty pissy attitute!!!! Ma’am. Sir. We are not confused, we are in fact NOT STUPID. We are just not performing intelligence in the exact flavor YOU recognize. We just dont do things YOUR way. YOU may not like us or hell you may like only one of us… i really dont care. BUT SERIOUSLY peeps stop assuming we are dumb and stop underestimating us… its making you look dumb at this point!

And honestly? Watching people confidently underestimate us has become one of my favorite forms of entertainment. Because karma LOVES an overconfident spectator. 😌

One day y’all are gonna realize the very people you treated like idiots were actually just minding their business while you auditioned for “Most Judgmental Human Alive.”

Anyway. Stay humble. Or don’t. Karma’s on her way regardless! 💋 😘 I guess we will keep our “dumbass, fatass” selves doing what we do best

I would just like to formally question the vetting process for adulthood!

At what point did society collectively agree, “Yes, she seems stable. Give Heather a fully developed frontal lobe, a checking account, and authority”?

Because I am, without exaggeration, the most unserious 40-year-old in circulation!

On paper, I am thriving. I pay bills on time. I keep a calendar. I use phrases like “logistically” and “that’s not sustainable long-term.”

In practice, I am one minor inconvenience away from googling “can I run away and be mysterious, or is that frowned upon after 35?”

And then there’s my 17-year-old daughter—my personal co-author in chaos. Our text thread reads less like a parent-child dynamic and more like two coworkers who absolutely should not be left unsupervised.

The level of openness? Concerning.

The humor? Ruthless.

The mutual roasting? Olympic-level.

Meanwhile, I also have a 15-year-old daughter who scares me quite honestly. (She is like the emo preteen version of me) and a 13-year-old son (thats self explanatory…he is a mini Matt) …which means I just realized I accidentally split my entire personality into three separate humans at three completely different phases of my life!

One of them has my sarcasm in its purest, most weaponized form.

One of them has my attitude but with better comebacks and fewer consequences.

And one of them is the exact chaos I tried to outgrow…now living in my house, eating my snacks, and calling me out with unsettling accuracy!

It’s like living with three versions of myself: past me, slightly improved me, and “who let this happen” me.

When I was 17, communicating with my parents required an emotional risk assessment, strategic timing, and occasionally a written proposal.

And even then, the answer was still probably NO!

Also, there was one phone. Singular. Mounted to the wall like a monument to accountability. With a cord that stretched just far enough to give you false hope of privacy while your entire family listened like it was a live broadcast. No cell phones!

Dudes ALSO, If I had spoken to my mother the way my children speak to me, I would not have been grounded—I would have simply ceased to exist.

And yet, here I am. Raising three humans. Offering guidance. Modeling behavior.

While simultaneously texting, “If we all fake our deaths, do you think we could start over somewhere coastal, or is that too much paperwork? WE WOULD GET CAUGHT HUH? Prolly be Jaxins fault he would forget his new name!”

Adulthood, as it turns out, is less about having your life together and more about maintaining the illusion of coherence while eating snacks over the sink in your underwear at 3:47am and hoping no one asks any follow-up questions.

I genuinely thought there would be more oversight. A panel, maybe. A quarterly review.

Instead, it’s just me.

In charge.

With Wi-Fi.

And three walking, talking fragments of my own personality keeping me humble on a daily basis!

Anyway, I have to go be a responsible adult now. F*CKING LAUNDRY!!!!!!!!!! AND DISHES!!!!!!—JUST….right after I send my kids a picture of me flipping them off and demanding respect in the same sentence. I know…. Im a confusing being….just let it be man! This is all new to me….I never imagined what my life would look like beyond 30 honestly!!! Unexplored territory for me, if you know me this is gonna get weird!