Thursday, June 30, 2011

We live in what real estate agents would call a desirable neighborhood - quiet streets, good schools, nice houses* and because of this, many of the kids The Kid hangs out with are from upper middle class families and while we're not exactly living in abject poverty, we're definitely in a lower tax bracket than these families.

Sometimes I feel bad that I'm the mom at basketball games wearing beat-up Converse instead of rhinestone flip-flops and carrying a $6 satchel with 50 pockets instead of some name brand purse.

Today I realized that it's actually better to be the mom I am - no one expects us to contribute much money for stuff, no one invites me to go shopping and I don't have to clean my house because no one is beating down my door to hang out. Kids like coming over here, though, because they can flop on the couches or run around the yard winging water balloons at each other without me yelling at them to keep it down or to use a coaster. And if I send the kid home with a belly full of something other than pork rinds and vodka, it seems like I've done my job - sometimes I even surprise everyone by whipping up some homemade food like pizza or empanadas and them the parents ask for my recipe.

So maybe I don't drive a BMW suv or vacation in the Canary Islands for a month every year, but I've also got zero pressure to be Martha Stewart (and, really, I just painted my nails today, so all of that cleaning would fuck up my sparkly dark blue manicure). In parenting, as in every other aspect of my life, my goal is to make people expect less of me. And I'm doing great at it!



*before the economy went all pear-shaped, you pretty much couldn't touch a house in this zip code for under half a million

Labels: adventures in shitty parenting