GGC
Making Plans
Tomorrow is Fable's birthday and I have done nothing. No gift buying, no cake making. I don't know what my problem is, why I always wait until the last minute when it comes to birthdays and planning them and sending out invitations. I put it off and I put it off and suddenly Fable can't wait for her birthday party and OH SHIT. I guess I should plan one?
I want to be better at these things. I want to be the mom who whips out a cake and snaps her fingers and suddenly BAM, little flags with Fable's name! BAM, centerpiece made from recycled perfume bottles! BAM, beautiful theme party dripping in lanterns with a front lawn clean enough for a flock of four year old girls to dance barefoot in!
The reality? Me at Target trying to choose between Tiana and Rapunzel paper cups and dog shit all over the yard.
I feel guilt for being a terrible organizer. Guilt for not wanting to bake Fable a cake. Guilt for wishing I could hire someone to do the whole thing for me. All fancy like in the magazines. Guilt for thinking that those kinds of things matter in the first place. (Kids care zero about perfume bottle centerpieces. Mine don't anyway.)
I am coming close to mastering the art of being "present" with my kids but I fail miserably at the "planning" portion of the exam. I'm always late and out of gas. And every time I buy the ingredients to "make the cake" I freeze. I cannot follow the directions of a recipe. It's why there are no cookbooks in the house and everything I make is just "stuff in a pan". My moms recipes? Amazing. Have I ever followed any of them? Nope. I can't. I can't follow directions or stick to an outline or cook a fucking recipe. And when I do cook? I have no idea what I'm making. I never have any idea what I'm making or what I'm doing and when things go right, it's pure coincidence.
I am flying blind here. Which makes a hectic life a lot less so because what happens next week, let alone, tomorrow, is completely off my radar most of the time. I do what I can and tomorrow I'll do the same thing. Except tomorrow I have to have a certain number of cupcakes for Fable's school and pizza ordered by a certain time and suddenly I'm in the fetal position rocking back and forth in the corner of my bedroom.
Planning for the future has always paralyzed me. It's why I dropped out of college on my first day and why I got married in Vegas six months pregnant and why I was even pregnant in the first place. It's why I have no idea what to do with a bucket list, let alone a grocery list. It's why everything in my life has happened sort of on accident. All of the good things. All of the bad things. Whoops, there it is. All of it. Bam.
But part of being a human person, specifically a human mother, is learning how to plan and prepare and follow directions on the side of a cake mix box. I know this and yet... here I am writing this post when I should be not writing this post.
Which, I guess brings me to the end of whatever this is. A rant? A can't? Because the day is almost over and I'm still wearing last night's sleep shirt with dried toothpaste on my pimple. And although there have been plenty of times when I've felt like a badass in the mom department, today has not been one of them.
I want to be better at these things. I want to be the mom who whips out a cake and snaps her fingers and suddenly BAM, little flags with Fable's name! BAM, centerpiece made from recycled perfume bottles! BAM, beautiful theme party dripping in lanterns with a front lawn clean enough for a flock of four year old girls to dance barefoot in!
The reality? Me at Target trying to choose between Tiana and Rapunzel paper cups and dog shit all over the yard.
I feel guilt for being a terrible organizer. Guilt for not wanting to bake Fable a cake. Guilt for wishing I could hire someone to do the whole thing for me. All fancy like in the magazines. Guilt for thinking that those kinds of things matter in the first place. (Kids care zero about perfume bottle centerpieces. Mine don't anyway.)
I am coming close to mastering the art of being "present" with my kids but I fail miserably at the "planning" portion of the exam. I'm always late and out of gas. And every time I buy the ingredients to "make the cake" I freeze. I cannot follow the directions of a recipe. It's why there are no cookbooks in the house and everything I make is just "stuff in a pan". My moms recipes? Amazing. Have I ever followed any of them? Nope. I can't. I can't follow directions or stick to an outline or cook a fucking recipe. And when I do cook? I have no idea what I'm making. I never have any idea what I'm making or what I'm doing and when things go right, it's pure coincidence.
I am flying blind here. Which makes a hectic life a lot less so because what happens next week, let alone, tomorrow, is completely off my radar most of the time. I do what I can and tomorrow I'll do the same thing. Except tomorrow I have to have a certain number of cupcakes for Fable's school and pizza ordered by a certain time and suddenly I'm in the fetal position rocking back and forth in the corner of my bedroom.
Planning for the future has always paralyzed me. It's why I dropped out of college on my first day and why I got married in Vegas six months pregnant and why I was even pregnant in the first place. It's why I have no idea what to do with a bucket list, let alone a grocery list. It's why everything in my life has happened sort of on accident. All of the good things. All of the bad things. Whoops, there it is. All of it. Bam.
But part of being a human person, specifically a human mother, is learning how to plan and prepare and follow directions on the side of a cake mix box. I know this and yet... here I am writing this post when I should be not writing this post.
Which, I guess brings me to the end of whatever this is. A rant? A can't? Because the day is almost over and I'm still wearing last night's sleep shirt with dried toothpaste on my pimple. And although there have been plenty of times when I've felt like a badass in the mom department, today has not been one of them.
GGC
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