Monday, November 20, 2006

a momentary feeling of inadequacy; or I feel like a total blob

This morning I was invited to a casual tea sort of gathering by one of the other mom's at N's school. She is nice and has recently had a new baby and I wanted to visit and wish her well.

Firstly, she lives in a BEAUTIFUL house. Let me say this again, a BEAUTIFUL house. One where, like grownups live? ya know? There are front rooms and matching upholostry and elegant rugs and window treatments and wallpaper and painting and art and china and antiques and it was just LOVELY. I'll add that this woman has three children. I noted a lack of small piles of priceless paper stacked around, no nest of lovies decorating the coffee table, no elaborate block assemblages spanning the living spaces, no dog-eared pages of an IKEA catalog laying about.

She answers the door looking not at all like a post-partum mom. She is looking relaxed, refreshed (showered!) in casual yoga pants and a t-shirt. If there is makeup, it is applied to look like none. There is a gracious spread for us stay-at-home moms who could manage to make it after drop-off. Things like a wine cake. and a pumpkin banana mousse tart. that she made. Granted, she did mention that these were leftovers from a recent cocktail party she hosted, but still! New mom! Making Mousse and what-not!

Now, in a normal scenario, all this would mean that I couldn't like this person - she's just too perfect and put together to know me (and probably too uptight.) Sigh. But she's so nice. And so creative. And so interesting. And so totally not uptight. She makes it hard to hate her.


Here's the snapshot of me on the other side of the door:
I arrive unshowered (i.e. greasy hair with morning breath and possible body odor)
with frayed jeans
and a torn coat.
J has come with me and suddenly has become a floodgate of snot
Halfway through the visit I notice that my sweater is on backwards

I return home to step over 4 pairs of baby shoes and yesterday's discarded socks in the foyer, 3 loads of unfolded laundry strewn about the living room, parts of the blender and coffee maker set up in some elaborate "machine" in the dining room, plastic farm animal toys littering the kitchen floor, a crystal growing experiment hogging the counter and a faint reminisnence of my telling a neighbor that we don't have a garbage can anymore in the kitchen because it was breeding maggots.

yeah. that's me.

4 comments:

peevish said...

This is my favorite post, ever!

Hey, you got rid of the maggots, didn't you? You didn't keep them for pets or anything? SO you should feel good about that!

Vetmommy said...

Yeah, I don't know how people like that manage to do it. Maybe they're really just robots. My house is a lot more like yours than the other lady's.

I once went to a shower and looked down to see I had 2 different shoes on my feet. Maybe no one would've notice if I hadn't laughed at my self so loudly...

Agent X said...

Only one explanation...Stepford Wife. You wouldn't want to be that anyway.

Sinda said...

I'd much rather visit your house.