I'm doing this all wrong - this parenting slash living thing. I've been a single working mom pretty much since I was a teenager and I've had enough time to get the hang of this, or so I think. And I should really be playing the role. Picture Miranda in Sex and the City .. only a bigger booty and longer hair. I should be living closer to downtown in a condo that requires only HOA fees to have a nice yard, not my time and energy, with a shared pool (with a pool boy?) and weight room , under-ground parking, and a nanny / house keeper. Hell, this is my blog ... let's throw a cook and a personal trainer in there too. But that's not my life. I'm living two blocks from a Sikh temple, on a street where toddlers run amuck screaming outside my door. Where I have a beautiful house on a large yard that I have to mow, complete with tulips, dandelions, and ant hills. In a nicely renovated 10 year old house that I'm trying to give my personal touch to since it's my quarter of a million dollars plus that I agreed to pay the bank over the rest of my ever-lovin life to live in. And I sit in the middle of my living room, on my favorite item in the whole wide world - my couch - watching my second favorite item in the world - my TV - thinking about all the things I'd like to change, staring at the easter baskets in the middle of the floor, at my elliptical trainer in the bay window, with my little shit box car that I can't fix sitting in my garage with the molding walls wishing that I either had a useful and handy husband that I liked enough to have a few more kids with to justify this lifestyle that I've been trying to integrate myself into or enough money (or motivation I guess) to find comfort in what I am. A single mom. A working mom. And yes, even a soccer mom. Almost 31 years old with an almost teenage girl. Living in the suburbs. Completely out of my element and in way over my head. Circumstance led me to where I am today, and although it's not a bad place by any means, sometimes I just feel like it's not my place. If I knew then what I knew now ... let me tell ya ... things would be a whole lot different. Maybe not better, probably not worse, just different.
