I am freaking out a little bit. In four weeks my daughter Boo (8) performs in the school musical Aladdin as narrator #5, thank you very much. I am thrilled for her. She is already drunk on the excitement of being on stage and I can imagine she will be over the moon when she actually has an audience. But, here is the problem; narrator 5 needs not one, but two pairs of harem pants, a vest, a sash and a tunic top. Of these items, I feel confident that I can handle the sash. Normally, I can build any costume. I am resourceful with an intense imagination and can put together parts to create any costume – at least enough to have the audience sufficiently suspend disbelief. For example, here’s Spencer dressed as C-3PO from Star Wars:

And I don’t even sew. What? No, he’s not a party boy going to a rave, he’s C-3PO! Not seeing it? OK, well in the picture above you can see Boo dressed as R2-D2. Get it? Right? No? OK, but you see the Ewok, right? Unfortunately another mother did that one. Anyway, this harem costume is hard. No store on the internet sells harem pants or tunics for eight-year-olds – at least not that I have been able to find. At the costume call last week, the other cast members’ costumes were amazing. Seriously, you have never seen a better Jafar costume. I think I saw Jafar’s mom on Project Runway — as one of the judges. Looking at my own daughter, acting in her over-sized brown sweatpants, which looked kind of harem-y to me if you squinted just right, topped off by a green Chinese dress crudely cut to resemble a vest – I felt like the world’s worst mother.

Yup, there is no way around this one, I am going to have to swallow some serious pride and approach Jafar’s awesome mom, tail between my legs, and beg her to whip us up a damn tunic. I tried this on for size the other day when I admitted to a group of play-moms that my husband does any sewing that needs to be done in our house. I was surprised by all the giggles that followed this comment, with one mom commenting “Oh, that is so funny!” Unfortunately, this got my feminist panties in a bunch and I defensively turned and said “Really? Why is that funny? Why is it funny for an equal partner in a relationship to contribute domestically? Huh? Is it hilarious to you that even though I am the one with the uterus, I can’t thread a sewing machine? Really? Funny? Huh.” Yes, I recognize my extreme need for a deep breath, but still. The message from the moms was clear: “You can’t do it all. You can’t provide for your child. You can’t call yourself worthy as a mother or a human.” OK, perhaps I’m reading into this a bit, but either way, I reject this message. I may not be able to sew something as simple as a vest, but I am in charge of the props for the play. I am doing my part. I am going to take a flower pot and a bowl and by the time I am done spray-painting the living daylights out of them, Barbara Eden will be convinced it is a Genie’s lamp. I can’t do everything, but I can do something – and I am doing it. Sometimes the world is best served when we don’t do it ourselves. When each of us does what we do best and work together It is pretty much civilization 101.

So why do we all feel so much guilt and stress around this concept? Why do so many of us think we have to be good at everything, or even that we should try to accomplish everything? This is a syndrome that especially effects moms. We all look at each other and think “Why can’t I be more like her? Why can’t I effortlessly teach my kids to knit? Why can’t I cook amazing dinners each night? Why can’t I keep an immaculate home, manicured gardens, and a fashionable, trendy, yet classic, look? Why can’t I be good at being a stay-at-home mom? Why can’t I be a good role model by working outside the home?”

It is crazy how clearly we see all the things others do well, but rarely notice the things we are doing well. It is time to cut ourselves a little slack here. Be mindful of the things you do really well, and do more of those things. Be also mindful of tasks you hate and find draining, and do less of those things. This sounds simple, but it is more difficult than you may think. The hard part is realizing what energizes you, while resisting the influence of an outside agenda. You can hate scrap-booking and still be a good parent. Just because you are a mom of a preschooler whose school is doing a bake sale does not mean you have to develop a love of baking. Swing by a bakery and pick something up, for the love of God. Pay for it with the money you get from selling a painting – which is what you really love doing -or doing someone’s financial planning for them – I don’t know, just think about how you want to spend your time, then spend it that way.

I hate socks.

I really hate socks.

I hate wearing them, washing them, sorting them, and deciding when they no longer fit children or when they are worn out. I hate that because of socks and all the time I spend in my laundry room I have decided to hang my college diploma in there. I hate socks. My least-favorite part of parenting. If you know me and my children, you may have noticed that we almost never wear matching socks. If you know my husband/editor you know that he is only to ever wear one kind of sock – ever. All one size, one color. They never need to be matched. Recently I have been struggling with this a bit and every time I do the laundry, I have just been leaving all the socks at the bottom of the laundry basket to “Sort next time.” Right, like that is ever going to happen. This is stressful to my husband/editor because he can never find socks to finish dressing the children. [Editor’s note: Ah, so that’s where the socks are.] This policy of footwear procrastination is stressful to me because only bad mothers are unable to have clean socks available for their children. So, the other day I was in the store and I just bought all the kids a boatload of new socks. I did the math and it worked out to be about 50 cents a day to keep a kid in new socks, that’s if you never reuse them – Hallelujah! Brilliant. Environmental concerns aside for the moment – how great is that? Small price to pay for making me love parenting again. I will pay for it using the money I am making from this blog (by the way – why not click on a few ads to support my sponsors while you are here? – Just sayin’).

The don’t do it yourself thing takes a little while to get your head around and execute. My 12-year-old son, Spencer, was thinking about ways to make money. A lot of his friends pull in some serious cash doing yard work. When Spence explained to me that this kind of manual labor was not really his thing, I was horrified by this lazy-ass attitude. I wanted to say “Man-up and go mow a lawn.” but then I took that much needed deep breath and thought about it. Although I insist he mow our lawn because that is the way he contributes to running the house, why should I be so invested in how he makes his way in the world? My first reaction was wanting him to have an honest, hard day’s work – but he wants to make popular You Tube videos and get a sponsor, or transfer people’s music onto new media forms to make money – it is not exactly like that is an easy or dishonest day’s work. My second consideration was worry that he would not know how to do yard work when he grows up. I am going to go ahead and dismiss this as a non concern at the moment. I will just have enough faith that if he wants to, he can figure out how to use a weed whacker at 25 years old.

If he doesn’t want to whack weeds at 25, hopefully he will meet someone who hates weeds and loves whacking [Editor’s note: no judgment — we love him no matter what] so he can spend his time being a rock star – or whatever else he actually loves doing.