Somebody Stop Me. Or Shop With Me.

I have a problem.

I cannot stop buying my kids things to drink out of. Cups. Thermoses. Water bottles. Jugs. If it’s cute and can hold liquid, I have to have it (um, for the kids). Major bonus points if it looks like it won’t leak (which is a fantasy because they ALL leak, but I fall for it every time anyway).

My armchair analysis as to why is twofold. One, I love me a cool cup. My cabinets are stuffed with every kind of bottle imaginable, both the free ones I pick up from whatever business has be-logoed them and the fancy kinds I just can’t leave at the store. Every single time, I think that this is the one that will make me drink more water, will go with me everywhere, will keep me from lusting after that 20 ouncer of Diet Dr. Pepper. Do they work? Well, there’s a can of DDP sitting right in front of me as I type, so what do you think? (Actually, I do drink water, as much as possible, currently with the trusty, giant, bladder-testing vat I got from the hospital when I had Sabrina, so score one for the freebies. But I’m sure it’s not nearly as much as the experts say I should, because I’m afraid my eyeballs might really float out of my head. But sometimes, a girl just needs a little caffeine pick me up right around the time nap time comes to a close, you know?)

Part two is the no-leak dream. I swear, someday I really will find the holy grail of glorified sippy cups that won’t drip apple juice on the carpet in some kind of mother-crushing Rorschach spatter. Someday has not yet arrived, but a tiny piece of my soul will not give up.

And so I foist my obsession onto my children. It gets worse though. To mitigate potential fighting, I have to have 2 matching vessels, each made distinctive by some color or pattern that the kids can use to claim their own. And if one of the set happens to crack, melt, or otherwise break, my impulse is immediately to run out the door to replace it so I can maintain the balance of the cup collection. There must be a balance.

You think I’m crazy, right? Clearly.

Even though every nook and cranny around here is housing some kind of drink holding-and-carting container, I still picked up 2 more go mugs, as I call them, for my kids for our next road trip. They’re pink and blue! They have extra straws included! They say they won’t leak! Surely these will be perfect!

That is, until I have to refill them in a car moving at 70 miles per hour. So much for the upholstery.

My name is Julie, and I’m a mugaholic.