Today I woke up really tired and did not want to go to the picnic where all the home schoolers from my online support group would be. I did not want to shave my legs. I did not want to wax my lips. I did not want to make gooey brownies that I bought last night to make. I did not know what to wear. I did not want to get the baby ready. I did not know what he should wear. I did not want to drop my oldest boy off at the doctor. I did not want to put in the effort to make my other 2 kids look good enough to impress mothers and attract new friends. I did not want to do anything with my daughter's waist length hair. I felt guilty because I was going to go with a friend and had not gotten up to call her and now it was too late, she would have gone alone. I was so mad at myself I barked at my kids and looked for a good reason to be so barking mad. I took my son to the doctor and made the middle kids scramble around and get ready. When I got home my middle son had made egg salad sandwiches for the pot-luck. Instead of being charmed by his efforts, I took the knife he had been using and attempted to make them look like finger sandwiches but my haste and the condition of the bread made them look like arthritic finger sandwiches. I hid them in seran wrap and barked for my kids. I actually heard myself barking while helping my son tame his curly hair and flashed forward to the way I will feel when he brings his shrieking fiance home and I over hear her barking at him about his hair, so I decided not to repeat my sin with my daughter. I just let them be and did not scrutinize them any more. I would just flee the scene of the crime. On my way out the door I gabbed a bowl of hard boiled eggs. My daughter had drawn smiley faces on the eggs to distinguish them from the uncooked eggs. I grumbled on the way to the picnic and got lost and arrived late. When we arrived there was evidence of an exquisite sampling of homemade goodies now mostly absent. My eggs and arthritic finger sandwiches were ridiculous AND un-necessary. I put my eggs on the table and my buddy whom I had stood up laughed good and hard with me and at me. I guess she was not holding a grudge. I found kindness from a 12 year old boy who gave me the sandwich he was holding when he realized it was the last one and since it was his second he insisted I take it. That is BIG for a 12 year old boy. So shines a good deed in a dark heart. My heart grew 3 sizes that day or perhaps my blood sugar was appeased. Whether it was my heart or my blood sugar, the rest of the afternoon was spent laughing and talking with my friends and enjoying my children. We all had a good time and no one said a word about my waxed lip or shaved legs. The moral of this story - sometimes you just have to grab your smiling eggs and head out the door. Life is really that simple. This blog is not worth writing or reading tonight. But it is my smiley egg and my new motto is: done badly is better than neglected perfectly.
Let me congratulate you on your blog. I may be the only person who has read it in its entirety at this point. I liked everything except the egg salad sandwich/smiling eggs description. Besides making me ill, eggs are also dangerous. Eggs can harbor all sorts of bacteria...they can clog your arteries...they can make people like me want to experience and episode of emesis.
Please refrain from anymore egg references. I thank you in advance.
Posted by: Firstwife | September 15, 2005 at 08:33 AM