The mess

When Ez talked about showing a little realness on blogs I immediately wondered if it would come across as self-indulgent and waylaying faults (Hello, my name is Renee and I'm a serial pessimist.) When I see imperfection in the mainstream perfect world I automatically think it's supposed to be a wink, like Martha Stewart saying, "Hey, look at me, I'm just like you." Except she has a giant sheet ironing contraption. I barely get the sheets washed, much less ironed, no matter how much she winks I'm not a part of that inside joke, I just feel even more inept.

But, in the spirit of openness and honesty, a few things I don't talk about because, well, they're a little messier than  where I usually take my blog posts:

• I have better intentions than follow through. I also have no attention span. Small goals and completed tasks amaze me. {In fact, this post was supposed to happen several weeks ago.}
• I am messy to the extreme and constantly battle the mess. I am also obsessive about recycling, and working with printing on paper makes it even harder to battle the mess. Charlie, is pretty much the same, sans recycling obsession. Poor, poor Mabel.
• Despite the fact that this blog shows otherwise, Mabel does not play outside all the time with natural toys in utter wonder. Sometimes she climbs all over me while watching Blues Clues as I nap on the couch because I didn't sleep well because we still co-sleep and she does acrobatics in her sleep. I can't take and post pictures of these moments because 1) I'm asleep, and 2) I'd have to learn to Photoshop the pool of drool collecting on the pillow at the corner of my mouth.
• I fibbed, I know how to use Photoshop and I'm not afraid to erase some crumbs from a picture of our dinner. Ironically, our kitchen is simultaneously the cleanest and messiest rooms in the house. I don't know how that happens, but it does.
• I'm 34 and still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. That simple fact is enough to induce panic. 
• Though I never really had a firm picture of who or what I wanted to become, when I was in college I thought I'd be someone else somewhere else at this stage in my life.  More cosmopolitan (too much Mary Tyler Moore in my formative years?) maybe a little more Door Sixteen or Little Paper Planes or something. 
• I have panic attacks and anxiety. They are one reason I rarely slam the pharmaceutical industry: medicine got me through some of the toughest times of my life. I also have a history of lock-myself-in-a-dark-room-and-cry depression. 

That's the short list of faults, mind you, not the deepest secrets I hold, by far, but an introductory mess. I think it's important to present a little bit of real, a little bit of well-edited. All of these things aside, I'm happier than I've ever been.  Half completed projects and all, it's exciting to be part of a relatively new internetosphere landscape. It's amazing to see the world anew through the eyes of a toddler, marriage in suburbia is...normal, and normal is far less scary than I'd pictured it when I was a teenager.

In fact, it's a rather lovely place to be!