“The challenge is not to be perfect, it’s to be whole.”

Did you happen to catch Jane Fonda on Oprah last week?  At 72 she is absolutely fabulous!!  Seriously, I was inspired by every thing she said and when the hour was over, I wished she was coming back the next day.

Although the entire interview was fascinating, there was one part that really spoke to me.

Jane says she used to struggle with the idea of perfection.

“It’s a toxic desire to try to be perfect,” she says. “I realized later in life that the challenge is not to be perfect. It’s to be whole.”

For Jane, the entire third act of life is about “becoming whole.” This sparks an aha! moment for Oprah.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if everybody … was able to make the shift to not have your life be about being successful or getting ahead?” Oprah says. “What if our entire culture rested on, ‘How do I become more whole?'”

“It would be a completely different world,” Jane says. “You can’t be trying to be perfect and be whole. You have to know what’s wrong and say: ‘It’s okay. It’s all right.'” taken from http://www.oprah.com

Isn’t that the truth??  That’s what the past year and a half has been about for me.  Soon after I started therapy, my counselor asked me what I envisioned when I thought about getting better and I said I wanted to be whole and healthy and happy.  I love being a wife and mother, I really do, but when that’s all I was, I wasn’t really there.  I was meeting the needs of my family and doing what I thought I should be doing, what society expected, what so many of my friends were doing, but I wasn’t being me, I wasn’t bringing my whole self to the table.  Don’t get me wrong, I was doing what I had always wanted to do, so I never felt cheated or that I was making any kind of sacrifice to take care of them.  What happened to me was gradual.  I became so focused on having the perfect family and being the perfect stay-at-home mom, that I forgot there was a whole woman buried somewhere inside…a woman who had opinions, who was smart, who was funny, who loved to learn, who was interesting and who was interested in finding meaning and purpose in this crazy life.  I had become a woman who didn’t believe she had any special gifts or talents and that all she had to offer the world was wrapped up in how she raised her children.

So now everything I do is with the intention of becoming whole and healthy and happy.  To me that means living a balanced life, finding ways to take care of myself…mind, body, spirit.  It means truly getting to know myself, the good and the bad, and sharing the real me with the people I love.  It means searching until I find my passion, trying new things even when I’m afraid, being willing to fail or get my feelings hurt for the sake of standing up for myself.   It means being thoughtful and careful about things I do and decisions I make.  It means I can be a better wife, mother, friend…a better person.  Being perfect leaves no room for improvement, and I like to believe I’ll be getting better until the day I die.

Until later…

 

So, Why Do I Write This Anyway?

Lately I’ve been feeling kind of stuck when it comes to my blog.  Every once in a while something happens and I know it will make a good story, but a lot of days I don’t know what to write.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the summer and especially over the last couple weeks, now that the girls are in school and here is what I realized.  I have information and ideas I want to share, new things I’m doing and learning, stories I want to tell, goals for the immediate future, and of course things in my life that aren’t going as I hoped or planned, areas where I’m still struggling and trying to find balance.  The problem is that I’ve gotten scared again.

When I started this, it was because I wanted to write.  I wanted to write honestly about my life, the good and the bad.  I wanted to share some of my difficulties and insecurities in the hopes that someone out there could relate and I wouldn’t feel so isolated, that maybe I could even help someone else to not feel so alone.  It was also meant to be part of my own therapy and healing.  Sometimes just saying something out loud or writing it down, no matter how crazy it is, makes it better.  Those things that we hold inside for fear of being judged often lose their power over us once we share them with others.  I’ve worked so hard over the past year to be healthy and happy and peaceful and I wanted to share some of the things that work for me and hopefully learn from others how they do it.  Obviously, I knew when I started that other people would read it and comment and make judgments, but my intention was for it to always be a place where I could say whatever I wanted, express however I was feeling, a place where I could be me.

In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure if I would share it with people I know, mostly because I was insecure about my writing.  I told my sister first, then gradually shared it with a few close friends.  It took me three months to find the courage to publicize on facebook.  At that point lots of people I knew would read it.  I was ready.  I was feeling more confident about my writing and I had lots of ideas.  What I didn’t expect is that it would be more difficult for me, once there were 260 potential readers, (some very good friends, some family, some casual acquaintances, some people from my past who I really know nothing about presently).

Nothing bad has happened since I did it, in fact it’s all been really good.  Some of those facebook friends have commented and sent me messages and shared with me how much they relate.  People that I see regularly now leave me comments and talk to me about things I’ve written.  Really, no one has done or said anything at all to discourage me.  What is happening is all in my head.  I find that I’m censoring myself.  I’ve started to worry about how my words, thoughts, and feelings are going to be interpreted.  I’m Catholic and I am very active in my parish and in the school.  A lot of my facebook friends are people from church and school.  What if I say something that goes against the teachings of the church?  Am I going to offend anyone?  Are people going to decide they don’t like me (God forbid) when they realize I’m actually fairly liberal on a lot of issues?  I would hate for something I shared on my blog to adversely effect my children at school in any way.  Sometimes I’m frustrated about an interaction my child has had and I’m afraid to write about it.  I worry that people will wonder if I’m talking about them or their child.  I get overwhelmed at times with all the “jobs” I’ve willingly volunteered to do, but I don’t want anyone that I work with to think I’m complaining about them personally, or think that I don’t want to help, or worst of all, worry that I’m incompetent and can’t handle it.  I hate when my crazy, paranoid self gets control!

The other thing that holds me back is that I want it to be good, and I want people to be entertained.  I like to laugh and I really love to make people laugh, so I find myself trying to decide if what I want to write is going to be funny enough, and if it’s not funny is it interesting enough, is it smart enough?  What if I share something that I’ve done and everyone thinks I’ve really gone nuts.  All of this worrying surely isn’t helping me at all, and it’s definitely not what I intended to happen when I began.

Of course none of those things I’m worried about are even in my control.  People might decide they don’t like me whether I write the blog or not.  I could get into a civilized debate with a friend at Bible Study and they are going to realize that I question the Church’s teachings on certain issues.  Truthfully, when I get frustrated, I don’t hide it well, so if you are lucky enough to volunteer with me, I won’t need to blog about it, because I will have said it out loud.

So, I’m going to get back to writing whatever I feel like writing on any given day.    I want to talk about how I do everything for my kids and don’t really let them have any responsibilities in our house because I know I can do it better and I lack the patience to teach them.  I want to vent about how frustrated I am with myself for being over-committed at school so quickly when I really wanted some time to myself.  I plan to tell you about the “21-day Meditation Challenge” I have nearly completed (even though it may sound crazy to most of you), why I think it is important, and how I want to incorporate meditation into every day.  I want to share books that I love and quotes that inspire me.  I want to write about gratitude and forgiveness and finding a passion and living a life without regret.  Mostly I want to continue talking about taking care of myself (mind, body, spirit), and how important I know it is for everyone.  If there is one thing I know for sure, we are better people when our own souls are being fed…better mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, friends…and isn’t that what life should be about anyway…being better tomorrow than we are today?

Until later…

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Calgon, Take Me Away!!

This is the God’s honest truth…I am never more irritated with my husband and kids than when I am trying to get a picture of the five of us for the sole purpose of showing everyone we know how freaking happy, perfect, and adorable we are!!

Seriously people, it’s just wrong.  By the end, I’m screaming and cursing like a truck-driver, Tom’s threatening all kinds of random punishment, the girls are crying and fighting, and all I want is to get away.  I know I’ve said, “Stand still and smile dammit,” at least 432 times.  I’ve learned that I can’t even look at the pictures until at least the next day.  I need time to calm down.  Amazingly, I almost always catch at least one shot that is Christmas card worthy, but I admit, I feel a bit dishonest using it, because I know the pure hell we went through to get it.  That’s not to say I don’t truly believe we are a happy family and my girls are adorable, I’m just thinking I should go with candids and never put us through this tortuous process again.

This Just Screams "Happy Family"...Dont You Think?

On the last evening of vacation, we decided to get dressed up and head out to the park and the beach to get some pics of the girls and hopefully get at least one decent shot of the five of us.  Our friends were out with us, trying to accomplish the same thing.  It was disastrous and hysterically funny all at the same time.  Steve knows a thing or two about photography so he was doing his best to pick the spots.  Of course, it is best for the subjects to face the sun, but that led to a lot of squinting and scrunched up faces and constant complaining by the kids, and there are at least a half-dozen shots where I appear to be winking at Steve.  Kate was in charge of the posing, and she was working so hard to keep everyone in place and make the baby smile that she was sweating her ass

Really Tom...WTF?

off before a single picture of her had been taken.  Tom was so frustrated by the kids lack of cooperation that he basically gave up and just started making faces at the camera.  We may have actually had a decent shot of all of us, if Tom had stuck it out a little while longer.

We finished up at the park and headed down to the beach.  Addy was crying because she was sure she had ruined all the pics, Avery and Reilly were fighting over a bottle of Sprite, Tom was wanting to skip phase 2 altogether and head back to the house, and I was barely speaking to any of them because I was afraid of what I might say.

When we got to the beach, our friends were already working hard on their shots…again with the screaming, fighting, sweating, squinting, pouting.  At that moment I made a decision to change my approach.  I wasn’t going to put myself or my kids through that for another minute.  I let go of the desire to keep their dresses clean and told them to play, and tried to capture some

Avery Playing in the Water

real, happy memories.  The results were instantaneous.  Addy was no longer clenching her teeth and giving me what I like to call her “constipated smile”.  We were all laughing and actually having fun.  I have some beautiful pictures of them walking in the water.  We did actually attempt a few more posed shots of the girls and our family and even managed to squeeze in a few of the whole group, but it went a whole lot smoother since we had relaxed a little.

After it was all said and done, Steve had taken over 900 pictures and I had over 300.  I would love to show you more of the outtakes, but I don’t want to bore you.  I’m pretty hopeful that there has to be some jewel of a family picture still undiscovered in the midst of the 1200 shots that will make it onto our Christmas cards later this year, but I have yet to find it…

For today anyway, I think the picture below is my favorite, but that could change many times before December.

Until later…

I Love Their Dirty Little Feet!!

Are You Kidding Me?

Really people, is there anything more stressful than preparing for a relaxing vacation?  I’m heading to the beach tomorrow with my girls and it’s not easy getting ready to spend two weeks doing nothing but swimming, sunning, and sleeping…lists to make, stuff to buy, errands to run, reservations to be made, directions to be printed, it’s exhausting!!

As if all of that isn’t enough, I was getting my iPod ready for the trip and it seems to have crashed.  I downloaded and installed a new software update and it froze.  I’ve been messing with it for the past two hours and have gotten nowhere!!  I did all the normal tricks and searched the internet to see if this was happening to others with the new software and I found nothing!!

So I’m going to go to sleep and take a look at it in the morning.  Maybe it will have miraculously fixed itself, but I doubt it.  Thank God my husband is nicer than I am.  He said I could use his and he will take mine to the Apple store while I’m gone (he isn’t joining us at the beach until next week).  Anyway, I know I wouldn’t do the same for him, so I am extra appreciative.  Thanks Sweetie!!  I simply can’t imagine my 12+ hour drive without it…but it’s like I’ve always said, “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine!”

Wish me luck!!  I’m sure I will have lots to tell you from the road!!

Until later…

37 Rocks!!

The girls and me with my loot!

I’ve been 37 for two days now, and so far it’s been pretty awesome.  The presents were great!!  I got a zoom lens for my Nikon D60 digital SLR camera.  I’ve been wanting one for a while now.  It was great at the girls’ soccer games over the weekend and I’m anxious to try it at Addy’s next track meet.  I’m extremely amateur in my photography and someday hope to actually understand the camera and use it to its full potential, but for now, the memories I am capturing are enough.  I also got a beach towel, a shirt, some new towels for the master bath and another Swatch.  The new one is solid bubblegum pink…I love it!!  I did get to run and have dinner out with my family and my cake was to die for.  It was a great birthday…and so far the week has been fantastic too!!

I had to get my driver’s license renewed this year, so I went Monday morning.  I was done in 5 minutes.  That is not an exaggeration.  There was no line, the girl waiting on me was super-quick and get this…my picture is

actually good!!  There really are few things more depressing than a bad driver’s license photo.  You see it every time you open

Reilly at her 1st game

your wallet for four whole years and there is nothing you can do to change it (short of moving to another state).  Then, today I went to the liquor store to buy tequila for my upcoming girl’s weekend (far too many margaritas will be imbibed…blog posts with pics to come later) and I got carded!!  (that is a boost for the ego, I must say) And, to top it all off, “Glee” was back last night.  I’m Jenny and I’m a “Gleek”.  Really, if you aren’t watching this show, you should be.  I’m a sucker for a good musical, which is what brought me to watch it in the first place.  The song and dance routines are fantastic.  I’m not going to lie, I’ve downloaded 1 or 2 or 10 from iTunes.  But what keeps me coming back are the story lines and the  characters.  It is absolutely hysterical…in a dark, twisted, completely inappropriate and totally irreverent way.  I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t watched yet, but suffice it to say, the Spring Season Premiere did not disappoint.

Avery Stopped Playing to Smile for the Camera

I guess having a birthday has me thinking about things again.  What do I want out of the next year?  What did I learn from the last?  I can honestly say that the year of being 36, was the most difficult of my life, and I have big hopes for being 37.  For a long time, I’ve just been going through the motions, taking care of the kids, the house, my husband.  Doing things because they were on my calendar or they just needed to be done.  Taking on projects that didn’t really excite or motivate me.  I was busy, but the busy kept me from being me.  If I was busy, I didn’t have time to really examine my life and figure out what I needed.  If I was busy, it felt like I had a purpose, I was doing things for other people, so I must be needed, my job must be important.  I would have undoubtedly told you I was happy, and that was the truth.  It’s still hard for me to identify exactly what happened last year to change all that.  I think it boils down to this…our lives were getting bigger and busier, the economy was tanking which put a huge burden on my husband who is in sales and financially responsible for five people, I was feeling the strain of constantly monitoring the mood in the house and doing my best to keep everyone happy.  I was exhausted and I was bored and I was feeling alone…and I had a wake up call.  So the last nine months have been about making sense of it all.  The biggest lesson I have learned is that I have to take care of me first.  I have to be healthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually if I want to care for the people I love.  I am not responsible for any other person’s physical, emotional or spiritual health.  I can still care for the people I love.  I can still be kind, generous, encouraging, and do things for them because I want to, but I can’t make them happy and I can’t make them healthy.  Those are things every person has to do for themselves.  I have a vision for the next year.  When I’m quiet and thoughtful and reflective this is what I focus on…

I want to be physically healthy – to continue exercising, to maintain a healthy weight, to eat better and cook better

I want to be emotionally healthy – to continue therapy as long as I need to (maybe forever), to never stop learning how to be better, to choose optimism over pessimism, to do the work necessary to heal when things aren’t going well

I want to be spiritually healthy – to find more time to pray or meditate, to listen to my inner voice and trust my intuition

I want to find a balance between being a wife, a mother, and a woman.  I want to be good at all of those things and not let one identify me over the others.  I want to enjoy all of those things and not have one become more of a burden than the others.  I want to accept that I am human and will make mistakes and not judge myself too harshly when I do and I want to take the time to reflect and learn the lessons that the universe is trying to teach me

Here’s the big one…I want to find my passion!!  I want something in my life that is just about me, that excites me, that I look forward to doing, that I’m good at.  Something that feeds my soul and makes me feel interesting and fulfilled and satisfied.

And finally I want all of these things for the people I love, especially my husband.  I want us to be amazing, whole, healthy, happy individuals who make an amazing, whole, healthy, happy couple and raise amazing, whole, healthy, happy children.

Really, is that too much to ask?  I don’t think so.

Until later…

New Dreams…

What happens when the only dream you ever had comes true and it isn’t enough?  That’s where I’ve been lately.  Seriously, all I ever wanted was to be a mom.  I never wanted any kind of career, I never really had a hobby that I loved, I just wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.  Of course I also wanted a great husband, who loved and respected me for who I am and fantastic friends and a beautiful house, but it was the mom part I really HAD to have. I wasn’t going to be just some average mom and I surely wasn’t going to be my mom.  I was going to be the best mom ever.  My kids were going to be sweet, well-mannered, adorable little people who were also extremely charming and talented.  They were going to look good all the time with matching outfits and bows in their hair.  They would eat lots of fruit and vegetables and never have pop or sugary cereal.  They would be involved in really interesting activities.  I would take them to the park and do arts and crafts and bake with them, all while keeping my husband completely happy and madly in love with me, and my house of course would be perfectly decorated, and there would never be dust on the tables, a ring around the bath tub, or toothpaste in the sink…and being in control of all of those things was going to make me happy.  You can laugh now if you want, I do when I think how ridiculous it was.

The hair thing went out the window pretty quickly when Addy’s grew in curly. It’s always a mess and she won’t keep a bow, barrette, or rubber band in it to save her life.  (She has come home from the neighbor’s with a chip clip in her hair because the mom over there couldn’t stand it hanging in her face any longer.)  I did pay an extreme amount of attention to her and we took swim lessons and gym classes together and did go to the park and the zoo…and she truly believes that she is the center of the universe.  Then Avery and Reilly came (15 months apart) and there went the rest of the illusion.  Avery is my sweet, middle child.  She was the easiest baby and toddler of all three…but she definitely has some of her mommy’s crazy genes.  She has a certain spot in the living room where she likes to sit and Lord help the person who tries to fight her for it.  She is also extremely particular about the color of her cups and dishes, she insists on being the first one to bathe every night, and she will only wear about 10% of her clothes (OCD anyone?)  Seriously, have her dad and I messed her up already at 6 years old, or was she just lucky enough to inherit our tendency toward mental illness?  Then there’s Reilly.  Sometimes I look at her when we are out and I am honestly surprised by what she is wearing.  How did she get out of the house without me noticing she had on a red t-shirt, with a different color red sweatpants, green socks with white snowflakes, and her silver, sparkly mary janes?  That is true!  I remember it well because we were at our school to get the H1N1 vaccine, so we saw and spoke to lots of people we know. Other days, I actually see what she is wearing and I know she looks ridiculous and I know that other moms are going to judge me for it and I let her go out anyway.  And don’t even get me started on the nutrition thing.  Avery had to keep a little food diary this past week of all the fruits and vegetables she ate  each day.  There was a blank page!!  Pathetic, isn’t it?  I was so embarrassed that I told her to draw a tomato in the fruit column for the spaghetti sauce she had for dinner and a head of  lettuce in the vegetable column for the little bit that was on the fast food cheeseburger she had for lunch.   That may have been a new low, even for me.

When I turned thirty, I remember thinking how great my life was.  Addy was almost two and I was pregnant with Avery.  I really believed that I would never want anything more.  It seems kind of foolish now.  Don’t get me wrong, my life was great.  My marriage was great, and I loved being a stay-at-home mom and caring for my family.  What I feel foolish about is that I believed it would be easy for me, that as a mother I would always know what to do and I believed that I would never want anything more or want to do anything else.  Why did I, at thirty, think all of my dreams had come true?  And why is it so hard to admit that I have new dreams now?

There are several reasons  that this is difficult and scary for me.  First of all, it’s hard to admit that I got exactly what I wished for and it doesn’t fill me up the way I thought it would.  At the height of my depression, my mom said to me, “I just don’t get it, Jenny.  You have everything you ever wanted, what do you have to be depressed about?”  That hurt.  I like to say it hurt because she wasn’t being sympathetic and I thought it was a cold thing for my mother (who has fought her own battles with anxiety and depression) to say.  The truth is it hurt because I thought she was right.  In my head I know enough about depression and anxiety to know that it isn’t always rational, there doesn’t have to be something wrong with your life, but in my heart I felt guilty about it.  I did have everything I said I wanted and a whole lot more, what did I have to be depressed about?  It’s also scary to think about doing something I’ve never done before…it’s hard to figure out what it might be that I want to do.  Do I have a gift, a talent, a passion that I haven’t been able to identify yet?  And if I pick something crazy (like writing, for example) and it turns out I don’t love it or I suck, what are my friends and family going to think when I try something else?  I know it’s also a little scary for my husband.  He, of course, wants me to be happy but I know there’s part of him that’s wondering exactly who I am these days.  What happened to the woman he married?  Is she still in there?  I know he wonders if I want something new in place of what I have, but I am certain that is not the case.  I do have a great life, just like I did at thirty.  I have a great husband who believes in me and believes in us, I have three beautiful daughters who bring me joy, I have amazing friends and family…I am blessed and I know it and I am extremely grateful for it all.

I hate that I sound so negative.  That’s not really who I am.  I am just trying to learn from everything I’ve gone through and I am very optimistic.  I still have the same dreams for my family that I’ve always had.  Dreams are a good thing, after all.  They give us direction, something to strive for…and when you get whatever it is you worked so hard to get, it’s time to dream of something else.  That’s where I am right now and all the chaos, anxiety, stress and doubt are just part of the process…

Until later…

My First Blog Post

I remember an afternoon when I was maybe 10 years old.  My sister and I were looking for our mom.  I’m sure both of us had some important reason for needing her, because kids only need their moms for really important things, like asking right then if they can have  a slumber party for their next birthday which is still 8 months away and how many girls will they be allowed to invite?  Anyway, we are calling her and not getting any answer and we’re running from room to room not finding her.  Finally, our dad got involved.  He joins us in the search and also tries calling her, all with no response.  So at this point, we are starting to get a little worried.  It seemed like we had been looking for a long time, although I’m sure it was just a few minutes.  I guess when we couldn’t find her in any of the rooms, somehow we ended up looking in closets and sure enough there she was in her bedroom closet.  She was sitting on the floor, right in the middle of all her shoes, hiding from us.  She told us that she was just sick of hearing “mommy, mommy, mommy” and she needed a break.  She was so desperate for a break in fact, that she needed it right that very minute and couldn’t even take a second to let our dad know.  I can only imagine what my dad was thinking at that moment when we opened the door and found her.  My sister and I thought it was funny, of course.  I know we told all of our friends about it and I’m sure they told their moms who either completely understood and if they hadn’t done something like that themselves already, wished they had thought of it or were extremely worried about our safety and the safety of their children when they visited our home.  It’s a story I thought about every now and then.  For a long time I kept thinking it was funny and my sister and I would laugh when we told it.  Then, I think sometime in my twenties, when I started making plans for my own family and started thinking about the kind of mother I had and the kind of mother I wanted to be, my feelings about that story changed.  I  began to think my mom must have truly been crazy.  Hiding in a closet to escape your own children just couldn’t be normal.  Was she mentally ill?  Were there other instances like that which I had blocked from my memory?  I would surely never be a mom like that!!  Now, here I am, nearly 37 years old with three daughters of my own and I can finally say I understand.  I have hidden in my closet just to have a moment’s peace.  I have stood in the cold garage to finish an important phone call without interruption while my children enjoy the run of the nice, warm house.  I have locked myself in the bathroom to get away, although that one rarely works.  Give it thirty seconds and there are little fingers poking under the crack, sometimes they even lay their face on the floor and stick their tiny mouths and noses under the door to say, “Mommy, are you there?  Mommy, I need you!”  I have also completely ignored the calls from the first floor silently hoping and praying it would stop.  So I get it!!  I’m not saying I really understand my mother, I’m not sure that ever happens, but I understand the day she went crazy.

So why the blog?  It’s a long story that led me here.  I’ll fill you in on an as-needed basis, but not today.  It’s not a boring story, in fact it’s full of sadness and scandal and humor and drama and all kinds of things most people can relate to, but it’s long and I haven’t decided yet what details I’m going to share.  Anyway, here’s the basics…I was living a great life, the life I thought I always wanted.  I have an amazing husband, three bright, beautiful wonderful girls, a nice house, great friends.  I was busy all the time, and not just running my kids around.  Somehow, as happens to a lot of us, I got lost in it all.  I wasn’t me anymore.  I was somebody’s mommy and somebody’s wife and I was taking care of everything and my own soul was starving.  So basically I flipped out.  I did some things I never thought I would do, my marriage was in crisis, my girls were confused and scared, and I was majorly depressed and anxious.   I wouldn’t say I had a nervous breakdown, but it was close.  I just sort of fell apart.  I cried all the time, I had panic attacks, I couldn’t clean or cook, I wasn’t sleeping or eating.  My anxiety was at an all time high…and that’s saying a lot.  I spent a solid month basically just surviving.  Since then, I’ve been recovering.  Part of my recovery has been trying to figure out exactly who I am and what my passion is and how I can fill myself up so that I don’t fall apart again and so that I can care for all these people that I love.

I’m in therapy, I’m on an anti-depressant, and I read and think a lot about how to help myself.  I don’t know why but I have this desire to write.  It’s new for me.  I’ve never been a writer, I never thought I would be any good at it, and I never really liked it.  But now it’s here and I want to see where it goes.  I hadn’t thought about a blog until a friend of mine shared hers with me.  I have to say if she wasn’t so nice she’s the kind of woman I could really hate.  You know what I’m talking about…she’s adorable and has four kids ages 6 and under, she never loses her patience, her children always look perfect, her house is always clean and she runs marathons and she’s generous and genuine and she’s crafty and she blogs in her spare time.  Truly I do love her, but sometimes it’s enough to make you sick.  Now I’ve gotten off track…I do that a lot.  I was looking at her blog, which is adorable and interesting just like her and I thought, “Hey, I could do that.”  Only my blog would be the exact opposite of hers.  I could write about trying to be a perfect wife and mother and failing miserably.  I think a lot of women would relate.  I could of course be funny and laugh at my own insanity and if my message somehow reaches another crazy mom or two then all the better.  If no one ever reads it, that’s okay too, it’s all part of my own recovery.

So, I’m going to give it a shot.  I already have a long list of things to talk about…my observations on motherhood, being a woman, marriage, raising girls, my love of music, books, TV and technology, depression, OCD, being a hypochondriac…all of a sudden I think I know a lot about a lot of things, so we’ll see where it goes…

Until later…