I love being a mom. I do. Even during the worst moments, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But every once in a while, I suffer from DINK envy. You know what a DINK is, right? These are couples that have DOUBLE INCOME, NO KIDS. Yeah. They actually exist. 

I have a couple of couple friends like that. They both work. Make good money. Go out and enjoy their lives without having to worry about babysitters who are getting paid a fortune or feeling guilty that they should be home spending time with their kids instead of listening to late night jazz at a club while sipping cosmos.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t always have DINK Envy. (But when I do I feel pretty darn guilty about it). It just crops up occasionally.  For example:

• When my DINK friends call from Times Square on New Years Eve to wish me Happy New Year and it’s 9:01 pm my time and I’ve already been in bed for 45 minutes.
• When we all go to Vegas for a wedding and my DINK friends can cut THRU the casino dropping $100 at the roulette table while I have to follow the brown carpet and go AROUND avoiding even the nickel slots because a 7 year old isn’t allowed within 3 feet of the gambling area and I need my change for milk money.
• When, also while in Vegas, my DINK friends can choose from any wild, colorful (and yes, usually fleshy) Frenchly named show on the strip and the only show I can go to is mid-afternoon and involves a rabbit, a top hat and a discount coupon.
• When we get a mid-week invitation to meet at a trendy club to celebrate a DINK friend’s birthday and instead of going I’m giving a bath and reading what manner of mayhem the latest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor is wreaking on Hogwarts.
• When my DINK friends show pictures of their cruise to the Caribbean and I show pictures of the cruise we took through Pirates of the Caribbean.

And then just when I’m missing my pre-parenthood freedom the most, Julia will do something…like telling me loves me, without me saying I love her first!  Or thanking me for giving her the best birthday party ever. Or just snuggling me extra close when Voldemort makes his appearance during storytime.

At that moment, I smell her hair, and feel her warm little girl skin against my cheek. Her chocolate-colored eyes filled with such delight because I do all the characters’ voices when I read. At that moment my DINK envy shrivels away. And I realize…I’m not missing anything important in those clubs or in Times Square. THIS is where the action is. Lying here, next to my daughter, reading a book.

Welcome to my website. It is dedicated to all those moms out there who, no matter how much they do, never feel good enough about their parenting efforts. You know who you are. It’s ALL OF YOU!

It’s because we’re trying to do it all (work, marriage, kids)! I mean, somebody told us we could, right? (Who was that person? Was it Gloria Steinem, cuz I’m pretty sure she never had a kid and was only briefly married once). 

So we juggle motherhood, jobs, relationships and the million responsibilities associated with each. And despite the impossibility of it, we moms strive to be PERFEKT (see FAQs to learn why it’s spelled this way) at everything. Especially to do the absolute best by our kids in the hopes that we will raise decent, thriving, productive human beings …or least NOT raise the next Unibomber. (I’ll bet his mom was proud).  

But no matter how hard we try, how much we do or even how well we do it… we feel GUILTY. Guilty that we’re not there enough, or that we’re there too much. Guilty that we aren’t strict enough, that we’re too strict, that we can’t be at every school function or that we’re too involved, that we overindulge our kids, that we’re not giving them enough, that we’re overprotective, that we’re not watchful enough, that, that, that… we’re just plain screwing them up! And that’s when we’re not obsessing about neglecting our jobs and husbands!

Well, RELAX. take a breath and remember… we’re here for each other, to remind each other that we’re doing okay. That we are good enough. And that there isn’t any screw up, real or perceived, that can’t be made better with love…and okay, a blended margarita. 

But in case you have trouble remembering all that, this website will remind you that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Here you can find commiseration, vindication, sarcastic observation and the occasional recipe for a libation to help you through it all.

We can’t guarantee the guilt will go away. It probably won’t. But we can dull it with humor, empathy and by providing a place to vent. So sit back, relax (for as long as you can before the guilt sets in because you should be reading a bedtime story instead of this blog) and share.

Oh, and since you can’t let go of the guilt, let this website be your guilty pleasure.

TONI

P.S. Check out the programming sched below. Enjoy the posts. Click around, check out the whole website. Come back daily for more fun. And COMMENT! I want to hear what you think!

Per our Saturday morning ritual, Randy the perfekt husband, my daughter Julia and I went to the local donut shop. Well, THEY went to the donut shop. I hit the Starbucks for my heart-starting overpriced grande drip with room– moms’ asses can’t get away with deep fried-carbs like men with hummingbird-like metabolisms and kids who are built like sticks of gum. 

After our sugar and caffeine injections, we got up to go for our hike at our local Nature Center. At which point my kid asks “Did you bring snacks for the hike?” “Uh, well, NO, I didn’t bring snacks for the hike”, I replied.  I mean, after all she’d just consumed enough chocolate covered crap to throw ME into a sugar coma just from her breathing on me.

Her face squinched up like a baked apple and she let loose with the longest most annoying WHINY “Awwwwwwwwwww!” that had ever come out of a 6 year old. 

“Well, excuuuuuuuse me”, I said in an equally whiny voice that could only be described as retaliatory (I’m mature that way). “I guess I’m just the WORST MOM IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.”  (I’m also prone to exaggeration).

“I seriously doubt that”, I heard a voice say. I turned to see a 40ish MAN sitting at a nearby table. The hair on my, as yet, unshaved legs stood at attention, my mommy radar went into DEFCON mode. Why was this stranger addressing me? And how can I discreetly scan my Blackberry for the Megan’s Law website? Then I noticed his TWO KIDS and attractive WIFE sitting nearby. The hair on my legs relaxed.  “I’m sure there are a LOT worse moms”, he said with a sincerity and earnestness that would have made me puke if it wasn’t so… sincere and earnest.  

That’s all he said. But he gave me a look that made me think that maybe he knew about worse moms. I know that look because while I have spent years in therapy and one year in particular of absolute rock bottom depression on a diet of Paxil with Cappuccino chasers, I occasionally still get that very look myself. 

Not to sound melodramatic, but I was a victim of bad parenting. An experience I’d rate a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10…10 being the kind of parenting you read about in the “California” section of the L.A. Times that makes you hug your kids extra tight at night. 

And then I thought, this 40ish dude has a point. Hell, compared to a lot of moms out there I’m very likely the perfekt mom.  And by perfekt mom, I mean you can be flawed but still, in the grand scheme of things, be absolutely perfect. I know these moms. They’re my friends.  Here are some examples of these perfekt moms:

• The perfekt mom forgets to put your lunch in your backpack sometimes.
• The perfekt mom can’t make all your school functions because she has a job to be at that isn’t nearly as fun as watching you give your book report but pays for the family health insurance.
• The perfekt mom sometimes puts ointment instead of toothpaste on your toothbrush because she hasn’t had her overpriced grande drip with room yet. 
• The perfekt mom reaches the end of her rope in the eleventh hour of a 12 hour day. Sometimes in the 1st or the 2nd hour depending on what time of the month it is. 
• The perfekt mom stays up way past her bedtime (9pm) to finish sewing the sequins on her kid’s Halloween costume and doesn’t get why they turned out wonky (or how that bottle of Chardonnay got so empty). 
• The perfekt mom forgets to RSVP to kiddie birthday parties by the date given on the card then drops off her kid anyway.
• The perfekt mom gets to the end of the weekend and realizes that her kid didn’t eat a single green vegetable or piece of fruit.
• The perfekt mom spends every some mornings trying to find matching socks in the clean laundry basket because she never got around to putting laundry away.
• The perfekt mom regularly sometimes pulls clothes from the dirty clothes hamper in a moment of desperation. 
• The perfekt mom regularly sometimes says “sh*!” in front of her kids. Usually when stubbing a toe or discovering permanent marker on the carpet … or realizing she forgot to take her birth control pill. Actually that evokes a whole different word. 
• The perfekt mom can’t be everywhere all the time. 
• The perfekt mom can’t be everything to everyone, least of all to herself. 
• The perfekt mom isn’t perfect. But she loves her kids more than anything in the world. And that’s about as perfect as it gets.

One day, probably when she’s gone, her kids will realize what a perfect mom she was. And the perfekt mom will think that’s perfectly all right.