Yo Mama

This is not your mother's blog. Unless, of course, your mother couldn't cook, iron, remember to let the dog out, or bring herself to attack the pile of laundry festering as high as the ceiling in a corner of the bedroom. I am a new kind of mom--the kind that makes modern husbands yearn for reruns of Leave It To Beaver so that they can salivate over June Cleaver's pointy bra cups, the steak on the table, and her single minded devotion to making her men happy.

Yesterday I attempted to iron a white dress shirt for a meeting that my husband--who will, from this point on, be referred to as The Partner--scheduled for this afternoon. Plucked cleanly from the dryer, the shirt was not so much wrinkled as it was unsmooth. By the end of my wrestling match with collar, sleeves and--dare I say it?--pleats, the shirt was very much wrinkled. The shoulders were slumped over a plastic hanger as I handed the shirt back to The Partner. "You'd better button your suit jacket all the way up," I said.

I do a lot, but I can't do it all. My husband would probably say I won't do it all, and though I appreciate his confidence in my innate abilities, I have to disagree. Sanity is a precipice on which I've grown accustomed to balancing, but this I know: it won't take much more than a Swiffer Duster, a bottle of Woolite and a pooper scooper to knock me totally off the edge.

I'm the mother of a one year old I call The Boss. I'm a freelance writer. I'm the president of the local chapter of the MOMS Club and I'm the co-president of a professional communications organization. Since The Boss came along, I can use the term "well-rounded" to describe not only my stomach and thighs, but my experience as a woman. Instead of feeling pigeon-holed by motherhood, I've discovered that it's opened up a world in which I am free to be the fullest, smartest, most sympathetic and most gutsy version of myself. Me, much improved.

This is not your mother's blog. It is not a mother's blog at all, at least not any more than it's a freelancer's blog, a hopeless housekeeper's blog, or an over-committed wife's blog.

These are the musings of a woman who's just beginning to find herself. One who knew better than to look in the laundry room.