no interest in pinterest

I kept hearing about Pinterest and decided to finally pay it a visit. I revelled in horror upon seeing it and vowed to never be a Pinterest mom. I just couldn't spend two hours and twenty bucks to make a sensory table that my kids would destroy in one minute flat, leaving me with sand and rice grains in strange places for the next decade. I just could not make sense of color coordinated popsicle stick snowmen bathroom candle votives or whatever. C'mon people, is this "home maker" thing a competition? Screw that! So what if I only sent a dozen pre-made 99 Cent Store cards to pre-school when all others sent handmade sparkly finger puppet cards with attached lollipop cupid's arrows or whatever. I didn't need to create and micromanage every childhood experience according to some website. I did not need to post my crafts on tumblr and instagram for the entire world to see how awesome of a homemaker I was.

And then....as my boys discussed penises and farts while my mom told me she was a non-traditional mother, after my grandma could not even comprehend why I had a (somewhat) clean house and planned dinner in the making....I logged onto Pinterest and made a quick pumpkin craft.

I can never get my spit together to be a mom who makes 3 exotic, never from a box, meals a day, who has a daily schedule with craft time and learning time, a seasonally hand crafted and decorated home mirroring Good Housekeeping meets Architectural Digest. Aint gonna happen.

But my kids deserve something. I won't have to send my kids to other's homes to experience a real Thanksgiving or Easter. They will see fireworks every July, and help put cheesy themed clingies on the window and help make a Holiday centerpiece. We will attend church and social functions, hang Christmas lights,  have 3 meals a day (boxed mac and cheese counts, right?). We will do a craft or Pinterest activity a week, and my home will attempt to look more clean than, say, a Hoarders episode. I won't let addiction take me over, and will do my damndest to not let depression make me into an empty shell of a mother.

 I will flounder and fail and rise again. I will never be like my best friend, a mother I dream to be. I will never quite grasp mother/home maker one-upping, and Pinterest still makes me feel like pile of crap because I don't make bunny-shaped organic cauliflower buns or whatever and...sigh...we do sometimes eat crappy fast food and leave the television on too long, the antithesis of Pinterest. I am a product of generations of neglect, and have to dig down deep and learn everything new, but it will show. And my no-sew pumpkins and soon-to-be-cooked bratwurst and kraut dinner will be proof that I am trying. I am trying to battle the Pinterest vs neglect demons and come out on top.