You're Not That Cute

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Whew, Franns! I don’t know about you but I’m often trying to project that I have it all together. Sometimes it’s very intentional. I coach myself into confident postures like a Lifetouch photographer on picture day! “Chest up. Turn your shoulders. Chin down a little. Perfect!” I want to look like I got it together because I am deathly afraid of being embarrassed. 


For as often as I feel embarrassed, you would think that I would come to terms with the fact that it’s just a fact of life. Sometimes you get caught slippin’. *shoulder shrug* I struggle to accept it! That I won’t be “perfect” all the time, that my “cool” girl persona is truly a façade, that we all are AT LEAST ⅔ “uncool” at any given moment (Especially when we’re being our true selves). And when my head gets too big, when I start to believe my own charade, life has a funny way of bringing me back to earth.


I’m grateful when the universe humbles me in small ways. Slight trip on the sidewalk, a little milk stain on my shirt, ankle gives out in my heels. Little things that you can easily recover from! But there are times where “just a pinch” is not enough for the universe. Those moments, if I can help it, I keep very close to the chest. But occasionally they are funny. 


After Baby Sis was born my body was wrecked; preeclampsia, weighed in at almost 200lbs, a c-section, and so swollen that my thighs ran right into my ankles. Honestly, for any other surgery, you’d get PT and they tell you to rest, but if they slice you open for a baby - you get to parent. If you remember, I went home without Sis for a few days. However, I was still pumping milk for her and wanting to see her. So I took one day to be home and then we decided to go see her that night. (There are no visiting hours when it’s your baby).


I put my milk in a cooler bag, waddled my way to the front door, and scooched my loose-barely-taped-shut body into the car. Google maps says it will take 20 minutes to get to the hospital. And that’s then the universe chimes in, “challenge accepted!” We get about 10 minutes from home, getting ready to get on the e-way, and I realize I have to go to the bathroom. And I have to go NEOW! Between the meds and the fact that my abs were sliced like a holiday ham, I knew I could NOT hold it! I told Cager that we had to stop. 


We go to Walgreens first. I waddle in, hunched over, Cager is begging for a bathroom. The cashier is under 18, the bathroom is in the basement, and the manager can’t leave the kid alone to give me access to the bathroom. I’m hustling as fast as I can back to the car (which is not fast at all!). We stop at a Popeyes, and somewhere else I can't remember before I say “just go home”. The irony is I probably could have made it to the hospital at this point, but I’m busting at the seems! I GOTTA POTTY! 


So here we are ZOOMING down this semi-busy street!


I am standing off the seat so I can clinch!

Cager is running red lights!


I’m yelling “I’m not going to make it!”


You would have thought I was having another baby!


We FINALLY pull up to the house!


I step out the car and BOOM!


THERE GO MY B O W E L S!


I was a O N E minute waddle away from a restroom and I do not make it! Then the hysterics ensue! I’m waddling and sobbing and wrapped up in shame (among other things :/).


I head straight for the bathroom and turn on the shower while yelling through the tears that I need a trash bag (because BAYBEE there was no washing that!) and resolve that I will not be seeing my child tonight! I can hear my sister ask Cager, “what happened?” “She needed to go to the bathroom and didn’t make it”


I don’t know how long I was in that shower. I just know that  my sister hugged me while I was still wet in my towel as she reminded me that everyone has “accidents”. If I could have died I would. It’s funny now but in the moment I felt like a loser because who would have guessed that my first blow out as a new parent would be my own! 


I’m still probably too desperate to not only look like I have it all together but also actually have it all together. But this time of year reminds me that I’m nowhere near together or perfect. My “joy list” from last year was only half lived, my “resolutions” for this year already broken, and I still don’t lotion what you can’t see. And at the very same time, I’m reminded that if I’m a little less critical of myself, that if I take the pressure off (even a pinch!), if I just stop being sooo serious with myself - I’m doing better than okay. Not perfect, but there has been much joy and much to be proud of even in these turbulent years. 


So if you’re feeling like you’ve got to be everything, remember not to take yourself so seriously because 

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