The Island of Misfits

I have been wanting to start a blog for some time and have been without inspiration. It's Christmas night, well technically it is the day after Christmas, and I have been sitting here watching Julie and Julia, when it occured to me what I could write about. Naturally, being a mother, my children would be the first thing I could write about. In some ways, they will be a part of this but for the most part, it will be me and my daily blunders and how I now accept the fact that I am a misfit in the world of being a housewife and all it entails.

It is only appropriate that at Christmas, like Rudolph and Hermie, I have cast myself to the island of misfits, accepting my lack of skill, organization, and know-how to being the perfect housewife. This is all quite interesting in the fact that I am not truly only a housewife. I share the duty with my wonderful husband who in many ways is better at it than I am. It is partly because of him that I decided to do this. I have been the brunt of his jokes and laughter due to my inexperience in the kitchen, and my mishaps through out our marriage. On top of being a housewife, I am a mother of 5, a retail slave, and a returning student. I am sure my attempt at juggling all these things is partly why I fail miserable at many of them.

As I was watching this charming wonderful movie, I thought about the days previous events. Organizing Christmas for a family of 7 is a feat in itself. Not once, but twice there were miswrapped presents, and people ending up with the wrong thing. I found it quite funny as my husband just rolled his eyes. Due to a massive sickenss at Thanksgiving, we totally skipped Thanksgiving dinner. Not wanting to disappoint the kids I threw together a "mock" Thanksgiving dinner with refrigerated turkey and gravy, instant potatos and corn. Only I can mess up not one.. but 2 batches of instant potatoes. It was a disaster. So to make up for it, I decided to make a great Christmas dinner. My mother-in-law gave us a Honeybaked Ham, I made fruit salad, homemade mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, homemade yeast rolls and deviled eggs. To illustrate my inexperience in the kitchen, I had my husband google "How to make yeast rise", "how to boil and egg" and recipes for the rolls and the sweet potato casserole. I have been making Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner for 10 years. Why do I still have to look this stuff up and why don't I have copies somewhere. Needless to say, dinner turned out delicious, even the rolls that before today always seemed to resemble hockey pucks.

This is just a small sampling of my adventures, and I usually have something daily but when I don't, I am sure I can pull something out of the archive in my head. I have plenty of material I believe. So you will be able to laugh and smile and read my mis-adventures of cooking, parenting, sewing, housekeeping, and sometimes for fun, I can throw in the other dumb things I do like dropping my Blackberry in a cup of hot coffee. I think the first step to recovery, is accepting that I am a misfit, but am learning to embrace it.