October 30, 2011

Hello World!

     Introductions are in order. Andrea's the name. I like to think of myself as happy, healthy, and successful, but I often find myself coming up short in some area. Sometimes I excel in certain areas in life, but at the expense of success elsewhere. Sometimes nothing goes right. But somehow I have to find a way to keep going, and that is what this blog is about.

     Here are some specifics: I'm thirty something, married, two kids. We live in a suburb of San Diego, California, where I was born and raised. I am a stay at home mom. None of this sounds too bad until you  get more details like, I've been married for three years and I have an 11 year old son (that means I was a single mom for eight years). I also have a two year old (that speaks for itself). I find San Diego a nice place to visit, but an oppressive, expensive, and un-fulfilling place to live. Being a stay at home mom would be nice if I could afford it, but for me it just means that I'm unemployed so I stay at home and worry about how to pay the bills.

     Don't get me wrong. I'm not miserable. There are things that I do enjoy about my life, but I think a lot of you can relate to the feeling of falling a little short. My hope is that this blog will help inspire you (and me) to hang in there.

     When I first became unemployed, I checked out some SAHM (stay at home mom) blogs to help me get organized and manage my home. I found tons of helpful information, and I wanted to be like these women. They seemed confident and calm. Even as I read about how their toddlers got into the dog food, and how their teenagers were rebelling, I sensed that these women were managing the rest of their lives well and that they would deal with life's little hiccups without everything falling apart.

     So I took what I learned in their blogs and began to do the things they did. I figured I would be a domestic goddess in maybe two weeks.  What I found instead was that none of them had the unique challenges that I had. Not that my challenges were special, but I was trying to get the same results they were getting by applying their techniques to a completely different situation. For example, I could follow the recipe for "Creepy Crawly Cupcakes" (guaranteed to be a hit) for my son's Halloween party, but I couldn't afford to buy the food coloring or paper cups that I needed. So I failed at being SuperMom.

     I have to remind myself every day that life is not a contest, and that those perfect SAHMs aren't out to make me feel inferior. They are just trying to share some of their success so that someone else might benefit from their ideas. No single blog is going to work for every person, every time. What I want to do is give you an alternative when perfection is not an option. I am not a domestic goddess, I am the Queen of Just Getting By.