The other day I came across an interesting project on The Shriver Report. I am a huge fan of Maria’s. I love her creativity and passion for others. As I was scanning the site I came across this project where she is asking women to share images of their real life. The front lines by hash tagging #womendoingitall. It struck a cord with me because I often feel bad sharing only 5% of my life because when it is shared in such a small portion it looks pretty great! I pour out a portion of the good stuff because, well…I am proud of the good stuff and not so proud of the bad stuff.
I have been in a blogging slump. Enjoying everyday life, work and kids but nothing left to write about until this. This is something I can sink my teeth in. This is real and I can do real especially when others are too. So I attached my camera to myself this past friday and I documented a portion of my day. I focused on the everyday, not so exciting stuff that can sometimes be embarrassing. That stuff. I downloaded the images, did a little editing and ran a matte finish over them because you know what? Everything looks just a little better with a matte finish.
My kids rooms are a mess. Most.of.the.time. Grace rearranges toys, clothes, books and blankets on a regular basis and does not clean it up. I should make them participate in the clean up process but most of the time I am running though tossing and stuffing in drawers because I am an out of sight out of mind type of person. You know those kind, right? Thats me!
Yep, this would be my hall linen closet, bulging with sheets and towels. Every time I open it I think of an Oprah show where Oprah said you can tell a lot about a person by their towels. I hope that’s not true because if it is I can not imagine what this says.
Friday Grace trashed my homeschooling bag. Yep, she often feels the urge to reorganize my flash cards. When that happens it can take almost a week or more to get back on track. Yep, real life. When curriculum becomes unorganized it causes HUGE problems for me.
My kitchen is a hot mess every morning. It takes me till at least 10 to get things organized again only to serve lunch and start all over. Unexpected guests stress me out because I never quite know where I will be in the process of getting things back on track. If the phone rings this process might not be complete till noon.
Laundry……ahhhh where do I start. It is never, ever, ever completely done. Ever. My husband and I do laundry all day every day. In the perfect world my kids would help with this process but honestly it is faster if we do it ourselves. This is the WRONG answer but it is our answer and an area we struggle with.
The car was way over due for an oil change so in effort to make my children happy I took them for a treat while we were waiting. That was all good and you would think that would be smooth as frosting. NOT. I got the wrong size of ice cream. You can fill in the blanks.
This is just a portion of my Friday. In fact I gave up trying to document everything about 3:00pm. After the oil change I came home only to pack up the entire family for a weekend at the cottage. In the mean time I squeezed in some work, emails and calls.
I consistantly remind myself that amidst an internet flooded with perfection we are all the same. We are all trying to pack the most into every single day. Children, work, schedules, laundry, husbands and yard work. We all have it and none of us have enough hours in the day to get everything done perfectly. We as Moms (and Dads) work really hard to get it done but at the end of the day often feel like we are drowning in failure. I don’t get it. We know ourselves and we know how badly we want life to move smoothly so why so hard on each other. I think it comes down to honesty. If we could all have a “this is the real me” day it would strip away the pressures of perfection because what is perfection anyway? Is it warm baked cookies waiting for our kids when they get home from school? A clean bathroom, always? Homemade dinner every night? Or is it all of those things together?
Fact is there is no definition and that is why we fail miserably at achieving it. So I choose to look for the beauty in the day. The good stuff. That is what makes me feel good and makes the bad stuff seem less bad. So there. Here is the good stuff from this weekend of neighbors, family and fresh air.
Hawaiian Punch in a fancy glass.
Fresh strawberries.
Shucking corn.
A deck remodel.
Silly faces.
Swings.
Messy summer hair.
Happy dance after a successful slide.
My wish for everyone I love is that we can all build each other up instead of tearing each other down. We make our own rules when it comes to what is right and good for our family and it feels great to share with you some of my down falls. If our house was never dirty it wouldn’t feel as good as it does when it is clean. Right?
Look for more “Real Life” on the blog this summer! Summers are even harder for me to keep all my T’s crossed so I am looking forward to sharing with you how I manage or don’t manage!
Have a great week! OX Katie
