Bikini on Aisle 6, CLEAN UP!

 I really wanted to be good at something. By now, I was supposed to be an expert on some level. And, wiping stuff, whether it’s kitchen counters, or little noses or baby butts just doesn’t count. I had an expectation of what "now" was gonna look like.

Expectations are everything in life.

I mean, it’s one thing to see a woman in a bikini on the beach but to see her in Wal-Mart shopping for grapefruit, well, that’s just cause for great alarm. Egads! Someone call the Social Crimes Division. I was just NOT EXPECTING that, at all!

My expectation was that by this point I’d be, I don’t know, a rock star? Oops! My generation is showing, again. Okay, maybe not a rock star but something, in addition to, “somebody’s mom, somebody’s wife, that weird lady next door.”  It's not that I don't like being those things ("weird lady next door" is especially gratifying :) ) but, in the back of my mind, I had an expectation:  I was also gonna be a career woman, a lady on her way “up,”  the go-to chick.

The thing about my mom’s generation is that a lot of doors were opened for women that had been closed and that was way cool. They finally knew that they could have it all.

My generation grew up thinking that we were supposed to do it all.  And, you know what?

You can’t. You can not do it all. You are not superwoman.

You do not have clones of yourself all spiffy in the closet just waiting on orders. It is completely impossible to be in two places at once; you can NOT attend every little thing at elementary school AND work a full time job. You can NOT make dinner every night and then arrange little quality-time segments of “Leave it to Beaver" moments for your family AND work late so that the boss will get off your ass about that deadline. Nope. Nada. Uh-uh. Not gonna happen. Zip-po!

We are, most of us, just surviving this life and hoping desperately to do a good job in the process. The fact that we actually make a difference to somebody, somewhere, well, that would just be so GROOVY and  feels totally undoable a lot of  days.

“If I could bottle the energy I waste 

on insecurities and second guessing, 

I could power my house with it.  

Why are women inherently flawed to be both 

super human and super sensitive 

at the same time?”

- Best Barn Friend

I made a decision not to have a career, to stay at home with my kids. It wasn’t about finances. I stayed at home when my ex made not a whole lot of money a year (seriously not a lot) and also, now, when my second husband, the love of my life, makes quite a bit more.

You can do anything that you want to do if you’re willing to make the sacrifices.

My decision was about a lot of things, too numerous to go into right now. But, it was a decision that I made, that I don’t regret, MOST of the time. When I catch myself LUSTING over my husband’s commute, then I know I need a break. :)


Every decision costs you something and every decision gives you something, in return.

We all make decisions and we all have to live with them (and know if and when they need to be changed.) So, why bother feeling bad or embarrassed about your decisions? Live them, be proud of them, they’ve made you who you are. 


 Above all, forgive yourself  for not being able to “do it all," for failing to meet your own expectations.  


Try to make peace with a life that is less than stellar.  Or, even better, redefine "stellar."

"If neurotic is 

wanting two mutually exclusive things

 at one and the same time, 

then I'm neurotic as hell. 

I'll be flying back and forth between 

one mutually exclusive thing and another 

for the rest of my days."  

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 8

And, accept your neurosis. It ain’t going anywhere!