Underachiever (And Proud Of It)

I was talking to my friend, Kristi, about how some of the people in their blogs sound like Superwomen. They can bake 10 loaves of bread, sew matching outfits for their 5 well-behaved (and happy) children, take dinner to a sick neighbor, catch up on ALL the laundry and wash and wax the cars, all in high heels while looking like supermodels.

Me, I'm not really like that. (As you well know, if you know me at all, which you must or you wouldn't be reading this, now would you?)

Well Kristi, bless her heart, politely pointed out that in the blog world, exaggerating is an acceptable practice. It's perfectly fine to make yourself (and your family) sound a little - how should I say this, better? - than normal.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't really work for me. What if you meet us in real life and discover that (gasp!), we aren't perfect? What if we don't all have perfect teeth or look perfectly happy all the time? What if, heaven forbid, you came to our house and needed to use the bathroom and it wasn't perfectly spotless? What if you see us out somewhere and you find out that the kids aren't as perfectly well behaved as I'd alluded to in the blog? (Case in point, as I started writing this, I noticed a used q-tip sitting by my keyboard, earwax and all. Do perfect families do that? I think not.)

I want you to meet us and think, "Well, they're not as bad as I expected them to be. They talk in complete sentences and everything."

I'd also rather have people think that I don't know how to do anything and then be impressed when they find out that I do have a marketable skill or two. (Although I'm having a really hard time trying to fix the paragraph spacing at the end of this post. I have no idea why it won't work. I think it has something to do with importing photos that makes it go haywire. Anyone?)

Right.

You know, now that I think of it, maybe there are some good reasons for writing only the good stuff. If your kids read your blog years from now, they might actually believe that that's what their life was really like. Also, there will be less evidence to take with them when they end up in therapy at age 50 because their parents never understood them.

I think I'm going to turn over a new leaf and sugar coat everything we do so we sound like a perfect family from now on. I'm going to make it look like we are all perfectly happy all the time, so my kids will believe that I always had cookies waiting, hot out of the oven, for them when they came home from school. (We won't worry about calories. Perfect families never gain weight, do they?) I'm going to write about how, when they don't want to do their chores or homework, I just smile and say, "That's okay honey, you don't have to do it. I know you're tired. Besides, I know you're going to marry into money anyway so you don't need to know how to do any of that boring stuff."

Yes, maybe that's the key to happiness. I'm going to try it. Maybe everyone will like us better because I'm going to tell them how wonderful we are.

Let me start by introducing my three beautiful children: