Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Clearly, I Am A Hot Mess!

     It is always a hard thing for me to admit I am not perfect-I'm not sure why as I am so profoundly not.  Still, it would make me happy to run around in a delusional bubble that allowed me to believe that all of the people I know think that I have got it SOOO together.  I mean, I do realize that no one is perfect; but we all know those people, those women who look like they just stepped out of the beauty parlor in the car line at school.  The ones who post things like, "Just finished cleaning the whole house after my 5:00 am 5K, now I'm off to take homemade cupcakes to Trevor's class and then to volunteer at the nursing home, so happy"  I bet those people would never post something like, "Spent two hours cleaning some truly scary crap out from under Conner's bed, sure hope I get the rest of the room clean by Friday (on a Tuesday.)"  Maybe I shouldn't post those things either but I am coming to a realization.  I figured out that I was never going to be perfect a long time ago but I have finally realized that if I just fess up, if I just tell all of the horrible, goofy, gross stuff that happens to me, I feel better and my friends tend to feel better too and maybe share a few tales of their own.  In light of this epiphany, I submit the following confessions with the eternal hope that some of y'all will throw in your own at the end:
     1.  Let's start with those car line women, the ones who get up and get dressed and put on make up to drive their kids to school, (I am NOT talking about the ones who are heading to work after drop off.) Confession number one starts a little like this: Not only do I not get dressed for morning drop off, I often have on my pajamas.  In fact, on bad days, I haven't brushed my teeth yet and I almost never have on a bra.  Oh yes friends, I am that gross.  It gets worse, even when I am all dolled up and feeling really great about how I look to go out with friends, if you look really really close, one of my kids probably stuck a booger in my hair on the way out the door.  I am never, ever completely free of the gruesomeness that is motherhood. 
    2.  To the 5 am jogger moms:  The only time I am ever up at 5:00 am is if I have not been to bed yet.  I know that our culture is all in love with early risers and John Tesh swears that I will be so much thinner if I exercise earlier in the morning.  I don't CARE!!!  I am a night person.  I can write, read, clean, paint, whatever, until ridiculous hours of the night.  I would make a truly productive owl.  I don't require as much sleep as most people, (although I really need more than my kids sleep on their rotating sleep schedule!) and I like to be up late.  Part of the reason I like it is because the other people who live here are not up but mostly, I am just built that way.  HOWEVER, if I dare to sleep for even a few hours and have to get up at a crazy hour of the morning, I am a zombie, I would likely eat a brain if it was cleverly disguised as some sort of caffeine delivery system.  I used to get up that early to get from Lexington to Anne Mason every morning, it sucked.  I never got used to it.  I was an idiot until 7:30.  Not admirable, but true.  
     3.  Confession number 3, I'd rather muck horse stalls than clean my house.  Truth is, I love to muck horse stalls.  It's good work, there are horses there. Your muscles burn, your back hurts, but it smells like sweet hay and there aren't any broken toys that have to be hidden in trash bags.  The horses aren't crapping in the stalls you just cleaned while you're working on theirs.  Fact is, if there is a person out there that will come clean my house in exchange for me mucking their house stalls, I am totally in.  Don't get me wrong, my house is okay, we aren't going to appear on Hoarders any time soon.  The older the kids get, the easier it is getting.  Still, given the choice, house or barn-BARN BABY BARN
     4.  There are probably a billion other things that I could confess about why I am the farthest possible thing from perfect, or even mostly together.  Still, this one is the kicker-it was the real inspiration behind this whole blog-I AM NEVER SATISFIED  If my house is clean, I want to redecorate.  When I am redecorating, I hate having the house in an uproar.  If the weather is too cold, I get achy and don't want to go out in it.  If it's too hot, I hate that too.  Mostly, as tired as I get, as much as I think, if I could have just ten minutes to myself, I'd be truly happy; I don't want my babies far from my reach.  I am broken hearted that school starts next week and they'll be going off into a world outside of my control.  If I could go sit silently in their classrooms and still care for the littles, I would do it.  I don't care how tired I get, how much they eat, what they get into, I really just want to wish fall away and have more summer.  See-I am a basket case.

So, there you go.  If you ever thought, even for a minute, that I have it together, you are so very wrong.  I have nothing together.  Next Thursday morning, I'll shine up my bigs and send them off to school in their new outfits.  I'll be wearing pajama bottoms and flip flops.  We'll pray in the van and we'll have argued at least once.  I'll gag as I prepare their breakfast (which I never eat before 7:30) and I'll smile as they get out of the car.  Then I'll tote the littles straight off to therapy and we'll go back to the school year grind but on the way, with the radio up in the car, I'll cry.  Clearly, I am one hot mess.
    

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