The Beautiful People

I haven't sat down at my computer for a week. I've missed this blog sisterhood. Chaos is always nipping at my heels. I'm not a skilled organizer, but I am good at functioning within my disorderly world I'm so accustomed to and am not a flake. I somehow almost always manage to pull it together just in time to satisfy (at least on a very minimal level) any requirements and responsibilities expected of me. However, there are times like the last two weeks, that events conspire and ambush and coincide in a manner that render me completely useless which allows the chaos to finally get a good firm hold of my ankle and bring me down. (I promise nothing bad or drastic has happened, all I was trying to say was that I just got swamped and very behind on everything.) Having read the above paragraph, you will not be surprised to hear that at 9:45 am Thursday morning I realized to my horror that I had a meeting for my child's pre-school in fifteen minutes and I wasn't supposed to bring any children with me. There I stood in my exercise clothes (not the stylish sporty kind, the scroungey sloppy kind) without a stitch of makeup and two kids in the next room.

For a split second, my pride and my practicality debated. Pride: "You can't go to a meeting for your child's pre-school looking like this. What will the teacher think of you? What will the other mothers think of you?" Practicality: "This isn't about you, this is about your child. Go to your meeting and quit being so vain. Besides, it's 10am, I'm sure none of the other mom's are all dolled up either."

A desperate phone call, a child hand-off, and a mad dash later I arrived at the school at 10:02. I rushed to the room and entered a nightmare. It could have been a photo shoot for a magazine called, "Moms-a-licious". There they all sat in those tiny chairs (fitting nicely) in their Gap capris, or old Navy skirts with a perfectly coordinated cute little t-shirt or tunic. Their hair was perfectly stylish and modernly carefree, and they all had just a hint of freshly applied make-up.

I promise I don't usually care a whole lot about how I or others look, but the contrast was humiliatingly inescapable. I silently sailed across the room and and sat down on my awkwardly tiny chair as invisibly as I could, but I was as conspicuous as I would have been had I just done a tap dance number on the middle table. I mustered all the dignity I could and held my head up, listened attentively, filled out all the forms, signed the volunteer list and waved to a few familiar faces. That's what mattered, right?

I am the first to admit that I could stand to take better care of myself. I confess I have never been a trend-setter or even a timely trend follower. I'm happy with my own little sense of style, but it probably wouldn't kill me to expand my shopping stops to include more than Target and Wal-Mart. That said, I understand and share the desire to look cute. I have often, in my enthusiasm at the chance to leave my house without children, shown up at Book club or Enrichment kind of over dressed and just generally over-done. But, come on people, how did those moms ALL have time to be that cute and that pulled-together at 10:00 in the morning? These are the same Moms who are sometimes seen at the park in July with jeans and high heels (I'm not lying, my SIL knows a lot of them and had a play date at the park and witnessed it first hand). Ugh. Call me sour grapes, but isn't there a middle ground here?