The Failures of a Well- Intentioned Mother...

I bet you think I'm going to be very vulnerable here and tell you about a struggle I'm having with Abby. About how, especially while Steve was on his trip I didn't have enough patience with Abby and noticed a clingier Abby as a result and how incredibly heartbreaking it is that the motto the pre-school has is so true 'The harder a kid is to love (due to a behavior) the more that child is needing love" I mean OBVIOUSLY she's 100% the love of my life all the time, clingy or tantrum or not, but you get the idea. And yes, that is all true...

However, this blog... this blog is to tell you the shocking failure of my mother...

SURE she loved me unconditionally from the moment I was conceived. Even though I was so very very different from her she didn't try to curb me into someone she could understand better. She made me dresses and gave me freedom and joy and happiness and security and cuddles and love. She made sure I was socialized, that I would be able to (no comments from the peanut gallery) generally fit in with society, have friends, find love, have children and all of that. She empowered me by teaching me to sew and encouraging my drawing and music with both direct and indirect activities. She praised my ridiculously bad clay dragon and didn't push to show me the better way to shade a portrait. She put up with my jr. high and high school... and college attitude with love and patience and fun. She made me cake when my face was burned off and got me a box of grape big league bubblegum when the doctors told me I was the next virgin birth. She was my advocate through school and beyond... She helped me be well and get what I wanted when I was weak. She was there for me and is there for me when I am cranky, happy, bored, whiny, hyper sad, mad, and worst of all, pregnant. She has cleaned my bathrooms, organized several closets, taken apart and put back together my garage ten or twelve times. She had read every email, every rant, every boast, every blog post and comment. She has given me time in which to be sane away from my child and inspired me artistically and made me proud to be me. She was at every recital and show and teacher's meeting and school tour. She has defended me and confronted me and is just about everything to me that I could possibly dream to have in my mother.

Sure. There's all that.

But then there is this recipe book that she gave me in college - very sweet it was for her to print out all the recipes I love that she made for, as you might know, I have some pretty specific tastes.

And again, with the best intentions, she took that recipe book (stained and spattered with years of cookie dough and brownie batter) in order to put them in a smaller, cleaner little book for me. Very nice thought.

Except for ONE thing. First she left out like three of the most important recipes forcing me to badger her to send me the recipe on email whenever I am making thing (sure I could save it to my computer... but there are consequences for our actions people!). Secondly, as I have had these original copies emailed to me I have realized that several of the recipes in that original book were WRONG.

Firstly causing extreme emotional anguish that my brownies never came out quite right. Perhaps the correct amount of egg, flour, cocoa and baking soda would have helped that! Secondly, causing extreme emotional anguish NOW because I have come to prefer some of the wrong recipes and have no proof of what they were now!

Yes, I know, you're all shocked and appalled at this tragic failure of an otherwise perfect mother. I am too...


I am too...