Monday, December 22, 2014

Things I Want To Do When I'm 50

When I'm 50, my youngest kid heads off to college (he's in 6th grade now...I've got a few years to go). I love my kids and love being a mom (see previous post in which I confess that I've always had weird, Religious-Right-ish-type maternal feelings) BUT that doesn't change the fact that I'm already fantasizing about the day when I don't have kids at home anymore. I imagine all the freedom I have. (I know, I know, I know - they're always my kids, I'll always worry, I won't be as free as I think I will - SPARE me the logic. Let me have my fantasy.)

Fifty is such a perfect round number and it seems appropriate that my kids won't live with me anymore at that point, so here's my plan...

1. I want to start cussing a lot more. (This will annoy my husband to no end, but who gives a fuck?)

2. I want to go back to school - probably so I can become an Applied Behavioral Analyst and help autistic children. (I won't cuss at the kids, OBVIOUSLY.)

3. I want land (just a few acres but it MUST have a pond and a little hill).

4. I want a goat to live on said land.

5. The goat will be named Gabrielle. Gabrielle la cabrita. (Incidentally, I always thought that was gabrita - with a "g" - until I just now looked it up because if I'm going to put it on my blog where 2 whole people MIGHT see it, I wanted it to be correct. Now I'm bummed because I've always been so proud of my alliterative naming talents for Gabrielle. I don't want to change her name now. I suppose I could go with Celine....but I still thing Gabrielle is better.)

There are other things I want, but those are the highlights. I find it interesting that cursing is at the top of my list. (Notice how I called it "cussing" up top and "cursing" down here? It's because I don't even know what to CALL it. Let me know in the comments, please, because clearly I need help.)



Friday, December 19, 2014

I'm Weirdly Normal

It's been a while since I've written.

Again.

I know.

But I've had a profound epiphany (I just did a word search on my blog to make sure I've never used "epiphany" previously and...oddly enough...I haven't). Here it is: I've spent my whole life feeling like I'm a freak -- but I'm not!

Actually, to be honest...I am, but you are too. Chill out. It's nothing personal. I've decided we're all freaks, so being a freak is actually NORMAL.

It's just that for some bizarre reason most of us walk around pretending that we fit some sort of mold when we actually know that PIECES of the mold fit us, sort of....SOME of the time...but not on a regular basis. So we feel like a fake most of the time.

I'm not making sense, am I? Maybe this will help.



I'm a feminist. A proud feminist. I'm also super girly in quite a few ways (not in the "I love purses" way but the quote matched the theme and I totally relate to Jess). I am MAJORLY MATERNAL. Since I was 4 years old, I knew my greatest ambition was to be a mom and I also knew I'd have a girl first, then a boy - and that's really all I wanted in life. Other than a few years when my life fell apart and I lost my mind, I've really been in heaven with family life.

Get it? The Religious Right could point to me and say "SEE????? It's true that the natural instinct for women is to want to nurture and be mothers!"

I. Hate. That.

So this conflict has always been an issue for me. I work outside the home and am doing a damn fine job of raising super open-minded kids but my natural instinct is to be a mom to every single child in the entire world. (Plus to co-workers, which can be a problem but we can talk about that another time.) I am a nurturer on steroids. I'm stereotypical about the whole mushy, gooshy mom image but I often try to hide that fact because I'm actually a freaking radical. I'm a radical feminist who is super into nurturing her kids and baking cookies.

Oh...and I LOVE fairytales. It's an apparent nightmare of annoying girly-ness.

The only thing that makes me feel a little bit better about the situation is that I don't TOTALLY fit the female stereotype. You see, I'm the messy one in the relationship. If folks are coming over - it's my HUSBAND who stresses out about whether the house is straight and he notices things that I don't even see. (To his credit, he does a lot more cleaning than I do...which is only fair since I'm not bothered very much by clutter.) I have LITERALLY walked over a new rug my husband bought us and not noticed it was a new one. (Don't judge me, it was essentially the same color and almost the same size.) My husband will get a haircut and then ask me if I noticed. Weekends are awesome for me because - two days without makeup, people! (Not that my coworkers even realize I wear makeup...)

From a "keeping house" and personal style perspective, I'm completely UNstereotypical.

My friend Holly linked to this post today and it pretty much summed up how I've been feeling. Then I watched a bunch of New Girls with my amazing daughter tonight and saw the whole "I'm a DAMN feminist who loves purses" quote and it all came together for me.

I don't spend much time worrying about the cleanliness of my house until someone in my family gets a stomach bug, at which point I turn into June Cleaver and bleach the hell out of every doorknob and flat surface in the house so that I can protect my kids. Ironically, a guest will never see my house that clean because it's pretty uncool to have people over when your kids are barfing. While my family is well (and I might consider hosting friends), I don't lose much sleep about the piles of crap on the staircase or whether there are water marks on the mirror. Thank goodness I'm married to David and can afford to hire a housekeeper twice a month.

I like my job and work pretty hard, but honestly have very little career ambition and am still not sure what I want to do when I grow up.

Nobody fits the mold. There are women who love to stay home but get annoyed with the whole cooking and baking thing and there are professional women (like a few of my lawyer friends) who are such amazing bakers that they could start a side business with it. (One of them has.)

So, I'm totally weird and don't fit any of the typical molds. I'm not the Religious Right's perfect mom image (I work and teach my kids that they need to fight back against sexism) and I'm also not an ambitious career woman. 

The great thing about our super connected culture and honest women who write blogs (I'm looking at you Janelle and Jenny) and the many, many, many people who comment and say "That's exactly how I feel!" is that it becomes obvious that NONE of us fit the mold. 

Remember when your mom told you they "broke the mold" when they made you? It's true. And that's cool. The people who go around trying to stuff themselves into molds that don't exactly fit are going to end up contorted and grumpy. Who needs that in their life? Not me.