I can bring home the bacon...but shouldn't I just fry it up in the pan?

When Kevin and I made the long awaited decision to have kids, we agreed that we both wanted me to be a stay-at-home mom. I was raised by a mom who stayed home with us, and I loved the feelings of closeness and security that came with knowing my mom would always be around to dance with me or paint with me or just cart me around from activity to activity. I wanted that for my kids. I wanted that for myself. Or did I?

After being home with our first born, Alex, for a few months, I started to get antsy. Not antsy to get away from the house. Not antsy to get away from Alex. Simply antsy to explore other venues of myself while being a mom. Slowly but surely I started picking up writing gigs, volunteering opportunities, consulting jobs. Suddenly my noodle in the acronym soup had changed. I was no longer a SAHM. I had become a WAHM without even knowing it.

Part of this transition was simply that I like being busy. I like feeling as though I'm being intellectually challenged and that I'm doing something to better the world. Deep down, I think my greater fear was becoming obsolete as a person. I would soon be able to define myself as a mother, but would shortly not be able to define myself as anything else. This really scared me.

Something about writing "stay-at-home mom" or "homemaker" on my tax returns made me cringe a little bit. If I'm honest with myself, I'll admit that something about those phrases didn't feel good enough to me. In spite of the fact that SAHM was the title I had dreamed of my entire life and a title that I truly believe is the most important one of all in this world.

Here's what I've learned. I have loved being a Work at Home Mom - a lot! I love spending time with my kids and helping them to become better people. I love the picking and choosing that comes with having my writing career and my consulting job be secondary to my primary responsiblity as a mother. Don't like the option that's being presented at work? Don't want to seek out a new gig? Don't want to go to work today? No big deal. My "real" job is being a mom. I can say no to all of those things that I don't want to do in my freelance life.

BUT...and this is a big BUT. I'm not very good at being a WAHM. In trying to combine my two careers - that of a money-earning part of the working world and that of a child-adoration-earning part of the home world - the career that suffers is the one involving my family. There are many times when I find myself saying "One more minute" (which is really 30 more minutes) while I finish up an article or a newsletter layout or a strategic planning agenda. Meanwhile, the dishes sit unfinished, the laundry sits unfolded and the kids sit waiting for mommy's much needed attention.

What I've noticed is on the days that I am fully committed to my SAHM job, my entire family (including myself) is much happier. Things are clean. Things are organized. Mommy has more patience. And life is a lot more fun. So, I'm trying to find a balance. Selfishly, I don't want to give up my WAHM career. But honestly, I want to a more focused mother, a more focused homemaker and a more focused partner. I'm working on ways to divide my time more evenly so that I don't have to stop writing or mothering, but can do each one just a little bit better.

There's no right or wrong answer. And I know there's no panacea in the "Mommy Wars." But I feel like I'm having my Mommy War as a civil war within myself. Any suggestions?

New Look, New Feel, New Me??

If you're a longtime reader, you've noticed that I've changed the look of the blog. I've been playing around with some new features. So today's post isn't showing up on the main page. You can visit here to see the new 100 Things About Me page. You'll learn some new things that you might not know. Click here to read it!

Back to regular posting on the main page tomorrow.

A Perfect World of Imperfection

I've realized something about myself - I'm a perfectionist. Let's step back for a second. I've actually always known this fact. As a kid I spent hours at the piano because if I made even one mistake, I subjected myself to the self-imposed flogging of starting the song over from the beginning again and again until it was perfect. That's a lot of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"s!

What I've realized is that it's tough to be a mom who is a perfectionist. I'm self-aware enough to ensure that I don't subject my kids to the tortorous and often neurotic routines that make up my daily existence. Although my eldest is fairly uptight about making sure his stickers are always placed precisely inside the lines, I think the boys will dodge both therapy and the musical stockade of Faber's Piano Primer. But...I'm not so easy on myself.

Two kids, a miscarriage, a lengthy bout with post-partum depression and several months of therapy helped me realize that sometimes good is good enough in this world. This is the mantra that runs through my head every day. Every day as I'm beating myself up for not getting the toilet cleaned while finishing my weekly column, teaching my oldest to write his name, teaching my youngest to maneuver stairs, cooking dinner and trying to save the world, I say to myself,

"Good is good enough!"

But saying it is one thing, and living by it is quite another. And the hardest part is that the very loud voice that lives inside my head doesn't always believe it.

As a result of this, I have a hard time letting other people in. I know that people love to share other people's problems- there wouldn't be room on the airwaves for 9 million different talk shows if people didn't enjoy reveling in the misery of others. I just don't enjoy subjecting people to mine. Because - and if you've followed the perfectionist line of thinking thus far, this shouldn't come as a surprise - sharing problems is admitting fault. Admitting fault is admitting imperfection.

The craziest part of it all? I don't judge other people for their problems - little or big. And I don't care one lick whether other people perceive me as perfect or not. It's not about some great Wizard of Oz show that I put on for the benefit of others. The smoke and mirrors about the perfection of life is all something that I've created for my own internal judge and jury.

Now, here's the kicker! You can spend an entire life trying to control things. Don't know the material well enough? Study harder! Can't run that race fast enough? Practice longer! You get the point. You can even work pretty hard to ensure that your lovably imperfect husband succumbs to your craziness. Boxers always on the floor? Nag until he picks them up! But throw two kids into the mix. Two living breathing kids who are trying to find their own way and establish their own personalities, and control goes right out the window.

My son is shy and has a hard time making friends? Nothing I can do about it except love and support him. My other son doesn't like to eat and won't gain any weight? Aside from jamming a funnel in his mouth and force feeding him a liquid diet, nothing I can do except offer food and love and hope that it will all work out.

These are not life-marring things. These are not uncommon things. In fact, if you talk to other moms, you'd probably find that these things are more common than not. But once again, here's the problem. Talking about them is admitting something less than perfection to myself. So I don't! I wring my hands, I stew about them, but I don't simply call up a friend and laugh about them. All that worrying is tiring, I know!

So today, I was given a gift. My neighbor called me up. Her son needed a playdate and my neighbor needed a playdate. A playdate to share some of her simply-out-of-her-control mommy issues. And I shared mine, too. You know what? It wasn't that hard. In fact pretty easy. And I'm still here. My very good, but perhaps not perfect, life didn't come tumbling down around me. Today, I remembered that good is good enough. And when I let down my guard long enough to share it with a friend, it might even be great!

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Wars Redux

Apparently I am not a very good sharer. I've known this most of my life, but the fact was recently reconfirmed for me. When I was little my parents forced me to repeat the phrase, "Take as much as you'd like but leave some for me please," whenever I was forced into a sharing situation. I would sit on my hands and bite my lip to keep from ripping or biting off the hand of the person with whom I was "sharing" my cotton candy or Bubble Yum gum.

My mom would take my brother and me to the grocery store. At the check out we could each choose one type of candy. Mind you, this was a couple of times a year because my parents were huge "healthy choices/no sweets" people. I would scarf down my foot long Tootsie Roll before we made it out of the parking lot. And that was pretty fast, since my mom drove a brick red Camaro.

Don't ask me why. It was 1987. I guess they were cool at the time. To give you a visual, my mother is maybe 4'10" in her tallest shoes. Crusing down the road in her Camaro she looked like a soccer mom attempting the ultimate low-rider maneuver. In reality she had phone books piled up just to see over the steering wheel. From the street, however, you'd swear she had leaned the seat all the way back and was jamming out to Kurtis Blow while waiting to pick me up at school. Now this was pre-hydraulic bounce vehicles. But, dammit, if little Patty could have bounced, she would have. This midguided auto selection unfortunately led to other extremely misguided vehicular choices in my household. It opened the door for my brother to purchase the electric blue Camaro. He drove this automotive blemish until 1998, by which point he had become an ordained minister. I'm sure the first day he pulled into the parking lot of the church in Very Affluent Chicago Suburb with his hoop-ti-mobile and gold chain (thank goodness there were no medallions on the chain), the congregation had to swallow pretty hard. The old folks were probably convinced that the church was part of an urban ministry exchange program. Until they heard my brother speak and realized that he was simply a suburban sheep in wolf's clothing.

But, I digress. I would finish my Tootsie Roll in 11.5 seconds while my brother would save his Kit Kat for days. I swear he had a whole cache of moldy chocolate bars in his dresser drawer just to drive me crazy. And it did. He would pull out his Kit Kat five days after the grocery run and I would have nothing. Can't you just hear me now?

"Mom, make him give me some!"

Yes, I was a little brat. But usually my mom would make him because I was a completely spoiled second child. And thus, my definition of sharing was born: 1.5 for me and .5 for you is fair and equal sharing.

By this point, you should notice a trend. Most of my sharing "episodes" happen with food. Yes, I love food.

Kevin tells people,"Yep. She's my big eater."

And in the privacy or our own home he very lovingly calls me "piggie." Good thing I have some serious self-esteem and I'm not overweight. Otherwise he'd be in big trouble.

It's not just food though. It is specifically foods containing chocolate with which I have this problem. In fact, most people who know me would consider me to be a very giving person. This whole bad sharer thing really is a closeted personality trait that only my immediate family and my husband know about. But put a chocolate chip cookie or a brownie in front of me, and we're going to have a smackdown.

This all came to head last week in a screaming fight with my husband. Let me preface this by saying you know you are in a very good marriage when the worst fight you've had in months is about chocolate chip cookies.I made a batch of 24 Pillsbury cookies. Nothing fancy. Just the spoon-up-heaps-off-the-roll-and-pop-them-in-the-oven kind. We were watching Scrubs on DVD and sharing the cookies. It was roughly a one-for-one eating encounter. Kevin was leaving town the next day for business and asked if I would save some cookies for him. "Sure," I said. And I meant it.

End of Day 1 (Wednesday): 11 cookies left

Knowing that I am not good at temptation, Kevin sealed the cookies in a tupperware container and put tham on the VERY top shelf of the cupboard. I had to climb on a stool to get to them.

Kevin was gone for one night and when he returned on Thursday, he didn't eat any cookies at all. End of Day 2 (Thursday): Not exactly sure how many I ate, but...

Beginning of Day 3 (Friday): 2 cookies left

We were driving down to Denver to help my brother and his wife move to a new house. Kevin pulled the tupperware container down and very sarcastically said,

"Oh look. You saved me some cookies."

I, of course, was very proud of the fact that I hadn't eaten the last two. It took a lot of self discipline to keep from climbing up on that stool to eat those last two cookies.

"No. I saved you a cookie. One of those is for me. And one is for you."

Kevin rolled his eyes and thought that it was the end of the discussion and he had simply gotten screwed. But I was mad about the fact that he hadn't given me kudos for saving 2 cookies. After a lot of sputtering about getting Alex ready to leave and silent fuming, I finally let Kevin have it on the way down the mountain.

"You don't even appreciate the fact that I saved some cookies."

"You saved a cookie according to you. Besides I was hoping there would be some left for tomorow on the plane."

"So then just tell me. When one makes a batch of 24 cookies, what is the appropriate timeframe for saving/eating these cookies."

"Oh forget it," Kevin said.

"No, seriously. Obviously, I'm not following the rules. So just tell me what would make you happy and I will save the cookies for the predetermined amount of time."

"Well the serving size is 2 cookies."

"Right. So let's say we're having 1 serving for lunch and 1 serving after dinner. That's 4 cookies a day times two people. 8 cookies a day. So they should last us three days. Which they have. This is Thursday and I made them on Tuesday. Three days!"

"No, you made them Tuesday night. So technically, it hasn't even been a day and a half. You just have different definitions of sharing. In the past 90% for you and 10% for me has been fine. But I really like these cookies, so I was hoping to get a few more. 90/10 in your mind is fair and equitable."

"Oh, you really want to break this down by percentages? Let's talk about the amount of time that I am at home with the cookies vs. the amount of time that you are there. I spend 95% of my time at the house, with the kids. So all of my nutritional and caloric needs are met by food we have at home. You are here maybe 25% of your time, and most of that is sleeping. So fair and equitable should in fact be 95%/5%."

Yes, I did in fact say that. Can you believe how desperate an argument can get when cookies are involved?

"So, I don't care about the percentages. Just tell me how we can solve this because I'm sick of fighting about this every time I make cookies. Besides, to quote The Little Red Hen, 'He who makes the bread, will eat the bread,'" I said.

"Well, I guess we're going to have to split the cookies up."

"So you're saying that if I make a batch of 24, I give you 12 up front and I take 12. Your 12 cookies are yours to eat at whatever speed you would like?"

"Yes, I guess that's what I'm saying. Will that work?"

"I guess, but it sounds a little childish to me," I said. (Not mentioning that in fact this entire conversation is the most childish thing I've ever heard.)

"Childish? Yes. But necessary if we're ever going to stop having this discussion. Besides I'm sure I will end up giving you some of my cookies anyway. Because at the rate that you eat them, I will have stockpiles of cookies by the end of the year."

So it was decided. We would take the childish route. Pretty soon we're going to have separate shelves in the refrigerator for his food and my food.I made another batch of cookies when we got back from New Hampshire. After they had cooled, I put 12 in a ziplock bag and delivered it to my husband.

My cookies were gone in two days. I ate 9 the first day and polished off the last three yesterday. And my husband's cookies are now lurking somewhere in this house waiting to be eaten one at a time. Here I am 18 years later, and I haven't learned. I know this is a Dr. Phil episode just waiting to be filmed: food addictions, childish sharing techniques, selfish life choices. But you know what? Kevin is right. In my world when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, 90%/10% is definitely fair and equitable.

Now where did he hide his little bag of cookies?