The other day one of my friends told me (now mind you, this is a PROFESSIONAL woman who owns her own fabulous jewelry store, is educated, classy, refined, everything that I am not, shocker) that she loved the blog post I had written last week. I think this was about Bitter with Baggage Party of 1,000 or something. She proceeded to mention that, “you know, all all of us really want are those kind of blogs, forget about the other kind of business-y ones.” (I’m paraphrasing due to the shock I experienced at the time – it affected my recollection.) Do you realize that what she is saying is that all she wants to read about are my train wrecks? Do you think I blog when I just won an Emmy? Not so much. I don’t really blog and say, “Guess what, my husband told me I was gorgeous.” No, my blogs are more like “Can you mix Thera-Flu with vodka because maybe then I’ll sleep with this nasty cold and my almost four year old who insists on burrowing himself right up next to me the second the clock strikes 2am??”
The blogs you people like are not flattering. They are real, but not flattering. I am not sure how to take this. While I’m figuring it out, I’ll give you another one to chew on.
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Start of new disastrous blog:
Earlier in the week I come home from a crazy busy day at the office. We have got projects going all over the country, I’ve been traveling and doing tv non-stop and in general I’m wiped out (or “particularly cheerful” as my husband might say). I walk in the house to see my 21 month old sweet potato pancake, Coco, complete with the chubbiest white face, dimples and curls you’ve ever seen, with yes, a BLACK EYE. A Shiner. A target. The full situation. In between her giggles, she glows with all of the cream that is now covering the left side of her face. I freakin’ lose it. Bananas. Lilliam (my friends all know Lilliam our watchful nanny) is kind of hanging out.
Lilliam: “Oh, Mommy home!”
Yes, Mommy is 100% home and what the heeeeyelll happened to Coco????
“Oh, she fall.”
I can see that but what do you mean she fell. Where did she fall? In the swimming pool?
“On no, she yumpeen.”
She yumpeen?
“Yeah, she wah yumpeen.”
It takes everything in my power not to start “yumpeen” on Lilliam.
So where was she yumpeen? Did she yump off the hillside? Was she attached by wolves? How does a 21 month old little, brown haired, Shirley Temple kind of situation end up with a ginormous black eye???
“No, she wah yumpeen oh the bet.”
And where were you Lilliam???? [Insert massive amounts of expletives which I will save because this is a family blog.] So she wah yumpeen and then what? She nosed dived? A bird flew from the sky and tackled her? The cast from The Jersey Shore showed up at the door?
“No, she wah yumpeen and ten she fall on the coner oh the bet.”
You can see where this is all going. Nowhere. I guess Lilliam thinks this is just what all little girls do, jump, jump, jump until they crash? My almost 4 year old, Mr.-Perfection-in-a-Bottle-Stanley (NOT), is just smiling like the cat that ate the canary. Why are you laughing I’m thinking Stanley, because for once you didn’t actually push your sister into moving traffic??
I slip into the age old depression of mothers who work. Maybe if I weren’t out seeking world domination on behalf of The Party Goddess, my little Coco Pancakes wouldn’t look like a gangbanger? Maybe her brother wouldn’t be destined for the upcoming season of The Sopranos? Maybe my 14 year old would not accuse me of being “soooo challenged.”
And then it hits me. No, if I didn’t work, I’d be home more with all of them. Coco would have a broken arm because I’d be shooting off an urgent text regarding a Paris Hilton sighting at The Ivy, Stanley would be featured in some Amber Alert while I try and wriggle into a smaller pair of jeans at Bloomingdale’s and their oldest brother would be hanging out in some crack den because his dizzy mother forgot to pick him up from his very strict, yet inner-city, Jesuit high school that appreciates immediate retrieval of one’s young. (Not exactly an unusual request.)
So if anybody’s looking for me, I’ll be at the office on Monday. I think it’ll be safer for everyone.
Your friend is right; we do like reading about other people’s train wrecks. Why? Because it helps us believe that maybe, just maybe, we’re not the only ones with spit-up on our collar and laundry piled to the ceiling. After all, if The Party Goddess, can have an off day, then there’s hope for the rest of use mere mortals! Keep it all coming, the good and the bad.