The Sainsbury’s man brings 8kg carrots as part of your weekly shopping delivery as opposed to the 8 you though you’d ordered. What do you do? It depends what kind of mother you are. As a half reformed perfectionist I firstly went to check who’s mistake it was (mine) and then let go of the idea of making best use of all the carrots (carrot soup, carrot cake, roast carrots, carrot pate). I saw the funny side, went off to twitter about needing to find a ravenous rabbit and then handed out bags of carrots to other parents at nursery whose days were no doubt brightened by the daftness of another frazzled parent. (Talking of frazzled parents I got my G.E.M. message onto p18 of April’s Prima Baby as a way to comabt the ‘fed-up and frazzled’ feelings so may mothers experience on an ongoing basis).
I didn’t get time to fit the carrot story in at The Vitality Show on Friday, although I shared plenty of other stories about what it is to be a G.E.M. because I truly believe that when you work and combine a young family you have to let some stuff slide. We have to go for ‘good enough’ with a lot of stuff and as I said on Friday ‘boll*cks to perfectionism’. I was astounded by the number of women in the audience who said they iron t-towels, bed linen and their kids clothes. Noooooooooooooo! What are you doing? Life’s too short and anyway, our kids trooping off to school in crumpled clothes surely comands respect from other mothers (a salute even?) as they nod away thinking ‘yes, another woman who’s got better things to do than priortise the crsipness of their kids!
I couldn’t agree more! I’m not a mother (I choose dogs instead), but between 2 dogs, a husband and two businesses, I too have had to let go of perfection and am now very happy with ‘everyone’s happy and I got some stuff done today!’. I takes the pressure right off!
Lynette x