Not Me Monday

Sometimes I feel like other moms look at me (on my good days, of course,) with the four kids and think that somehow, I must have it all figured out. (Which, I utterly and completely don't.) Like every mom, I often find myself throwing the rules out the window, and ignoring even my own best advice. There are days when my loftiest goal is simply to make it through another day. One of the other blogs I read features a weekly post called "Not Me! Monday", where the author recounts some of those moments we all have, but might not always want to share. The post this week caught my attention because I too am guilty of the exact same irony. I was also reminded of these posts last week, while Ted was out of town, and I had my own Not Me! moment.

While Ted was away for three days, I tucked our stash of cloth diapers away, and got out a big package of disposable diapers. I used them joyfully the entire time he was gone. It wasn't saving that extra load of laundry that I was celebrating, but being able to go up to 6 hours between diaper changes. With that one switch, I was able to knock two or three diaper changes off my list of things to do each day. It felt good, and easy too.

Sometimes I feel like I go to so much trouble, and do so much extra work to do what I think is right. I'll make an extra trip down to the basement (that's down 5 flights of stairs,) when I know the lights were left on. I drive to another town to pick up local, unpasteurized milk each week. I use cloth diapers (95% of the time at least :-) ) and even hang them up on the line in nice weather, to avoid filling up our landfills. I make our beds every day, keep journals for the kids, try to make most of our food from scratch, volunteer at the kids' school and in the neighborhood. But, by the end of the day, I'm exhausted. My head spins. Ted just stares at me with utter incomprehension. I know he's thinking, as he relaxes in front of the TV, "do you think it's all worthwhile?" I guess the answer is that, most of the time, I do. But, it is fun to just let it all go sometimes. After all, that feels worthwhile too.

It was not me.

I would never wait until my husband had walked out the door for yet another business trip to tuck away our stash of cloth diapers and pull out a giant pack of disposables. It was not me putting on those disposables so joyfully, knowing that I could go 6 whole hours before having to change them again, then tossing them blissfully into the trash! And I certainly would not have ordered them online, so they had to be flown, driven and delivered, at the expense of gallons of fossil fuel, right to my front door.

There you have it. It was definitely not me.