Saturday night I participated in the Get Made Holiday show hosted by the Sacramento Craft Mafia. I decided around 8 pm Friday night that it was something I wanted to do and emailed Lauren of Speckled Hen begging to share a booth with me. Lucky for me she said yes and I scrambled to get a few things ready. The show ended up being somewhat poorly attended because of the rain and I sold only a few things, but I got to hang out with Lauren and Melissa and commiserate about the picture prefect parenting/crafting/wifeing that is dispayed out there in blogland.
But I suppose that is how blogging is. We choose to put only our pretty stuff out there for all to see. Since the blogs we read tend to be on the craft/parenting side of things we are seeing plenty of perfect crafts and great parenting and kids who are creative and don't talk back and mothers who don't spend too much time emailing and reading other people's blogs. They have chosen to put their pretty lives out there and not talk about the stuff that dosen't go well or show the picture of the garage that hasn't been cleaned in six months (or six years...). The funny thing is that when people do bear all and talk about the bad parenting days or the dirty dishes that have sat in the sink three days everyone seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief like, "Oh thank God I am not the only one..."
We seem to take a sick pleasure in seeing people's laundry piles and dishes and dirty craft rooms. It feels like a club. Especially if you are bad housekeeper, which I am and always have been. My tolerance for clutter is really high. This is most likely because I grew up in a house with three boys and my mom was a lousy housekeeper and she grew up in a house with eight kids and large amounts of mess and chaos. Hopefully it isn't a gene I have now passed on to my own children. Oh if only Aaron knew the baggage our offspring would inherit one day...
Anyway, Lauren and Melissa paid me the lovely complement of saying that they apprecite that I blog the good the bad and the ugly and not just the pretty parts of my life. In all honesty I really do mostly blog the pretty. Sure I may share how my kid overflows my friends toilet, post a picture of my craft room (which is worse now, by the way, even after a complete overhaul), and talk about the messes I make, but it reality is all still the pretty part of my life.
We thought it would be rather grand to have a flickr group where we post our real lives. We were calling it a reality check, but I think I'll call it Airing the Dirty Laundry. I even took a picture of our garage for it. Maybe then I'll be embarassed enough to clean it. I thought, oh haha I'll take a picture of the garage and post that, but it really is shameful. But in an effort to show the real me, there it is.
Wow. I cannot believe I just did that.