Nothing like a slew of women in their twenties coming to peek in your life to make you feel, well, not in your twenties.
Welcome, vibrant new readers. I am not Miss Musing. I do not write about my beautiful piano room or my heroic boyfriend or my pink bicycle. My life is not perfection.
Fortunately, for those of you that stick around, it appears that perfection can be wearing.
But it gets worse.
I don’t even post that often. Period. I own this baby, it doesn’t own me.
So let’s just own it. I’m a mom, at home, no longer living in a large city. I live near the beach but no longer own a bikini. I have stretch marks. Because I have two toddlers. And a new baby on the way.
A new baby that I haven’t even written about because I am nauseous and tired. Laissez les bon temp rouler! No?
When I do post, it is rarely about controversy. Instead, I’m usually pleading with women to stop worrying so much and to come out and play with us in real life, because seriously, it’s okay. Reality bites but we don’t.
For instance, are you going to BlogHer? I see many of you have the BlogHer ad network on your much-updated blogs. (Ahem, I did until they booted me for, um, poor update frequency. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Well, I’m co-hosting a party the night before BlogHer. It’s called The People’s Party and this is our third year (which we’ve only teased so far, but more details to come). The goal? To make women feel at ease while out from under the cover of their blogs. Imagine that.
But that’s about as glamorous as I get. I do publish and serve as the Editor-in-Chief of a successful (aw, shucks) online magazine called Blog Nosh Magazine, but that thing is currently run without shoes on and, were I updating it this morning, without a bra on, too. Ya deal?
I am not in my twenties. Haven’t been for a few years. And when I was? I spent all but one year of it with my would-be husband, not exactly gallivanting around with a martini in hand. Chick, I don’t even own stilettos. The last time I wrote about shoes was to demonstrate my own dichotomous personality that seems to straddle between punk rock and Florida retiree.
We might not have a lot in common. Other than the dichotomies that define us.
But I write to you from the heart because I don’t know any other way. And I embrace all that is me. And you might be surprised what bits of yourself you find in me.
I write this to you from my backyard because today is too gorgeous to not inhale deeply. Our roses are blooming. I’ve been so busy, I hadn’t even noticed.
When I ran inside to grab my camera just so I could show you our modest accomplishment (if by accomplishment, you will accept that we simply didn’t touch them and therefore did not kill them), my two year old decided a romp outside suited him, as well. You haven’t lived until you’ve dated a two year old.
While chasing him around, I caught wind of a smell from my childhood in Illinois. Wandering around old properties, gathering Queen Anne’s Lace to take home and dye with food-coloring-spiked water. This smell, the one in my own backyard, was the smell of my mother, stopping at the side of a rural road to gather and assure us we could taste.
Honeysuckle.
I didn’t even know we had honeysuckle in this yard. But this morning, it is blooming. And filling our yard with the warm scent of simpler days, superseding the rich layers of the bayou, so close to our home.
I live in Mississippi. On the Gulf Coast. Not in New York.
Perfection here comes covered in powdered sugar and doused in sweet tea. Our fingers hint at crawfish boils enjoyed with friends and the air wafts by with a hint of Zydeco.
Yes, there’s a hurricane party every time it blows.
My musing comes in very different flavors than you might be used to, but there is room for you here at my table, sugar.
Ya’ll come back now.
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Writer. Mother.
