What A Waste (previously published on ScaryMommy.com)

For those of you that missed it back in July, here is the article I wrote for Scary Mommy's Society page.  


If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times.  It's the old one-two kiss-of-death combo that used to destroy my self-confidence.  A friend or acquaintance, thinking that she is paying me the highest of compliments, will say something like:

"It is such a waste that you don't have your teaching certificate/ haven't gone to grad school/ haven't gone to law school/ blah blah blah (pick one or all).  You could be doing so much more!

And there it is.

The remark starts off sounding like a compliment... but then its implications crash down around me like a rogue wave.  I have to face the fact that this person thinks: 1.) I have a big brain (yay, me!), and 2.) it's gathering dust.  Ouch.  Funny how something that I assume was intended as a compliment-- I refuse to believe otherwise-- ends up making me feel completely invalidated.  Or at least, it used to.

A Teachable Moment at the Redbox

Not my photo, not an advertisement

As I rolled out of the school parking lot this afternoon to head for home, I began looking forward to a quiet evening alone (after the girls were in bed, of course).  Just me and my goofy mutt, curled up on the couch watching tv sounded like a good plan-- until I realized I had very little on the DVR to keep me entertained.  Easy enough to fix, I thought.  I turned left instead of right at the light and headed into the Giant shopping center.  The grocery has two Redbox machines inside-- surely I could find something there to keep me mentally disengaged for the evening.

I'm wondering now why I couldn't have just been happy with Netflix for a change?

The Things We Hold Onto

In the beginning...

I look into the abysses that are my daughters' rooms.  I am NOT going in there.  Hurricane Katrina has nothing on my Princess and Birdie.  Clothes are strewn about their rooms with great abandon.  Toys clutter the floor while their toy bins stand open and empty.  Books are in piles all around the room-- sometimes the books are piled by topic and sometimes they're just piled up to clear a path to a pile of something else.  There are bits of trash and paper and "treasure". (Treasure in this instance translates to most folks as "random, formerly shiny crap found in the Target parking lot".)  And then there are the stuffies-- tons and tons of stuffed animals fill every gap, nook and cranny that remains in the room.  How would I get in if I wanted to?  Why would I want to?