I read

I read so many beautiful blogs. On the good days, these amazing, talented people inspire me to try new things—small things like fabric-covered thumbtacks and big ones like changing the way I talk to my child.

On other days, when I have been up every hour all night with a teething baby, when I am on deadline at work, when my to-do list runs off the page… On those days, they make me tired. And jealous. And a little bit sad that I choose a nightly cocktail over sewing cute baby pants with adorable patches or hewing logs for our own ceiling beams.

But I realize that these blogs are highly edited selections of a life—the “best of,” often. The brief moments of perfection that punctuate all our lives.

I hesitated to start a blog. So much to live up to. Would I find myself engineering lovely little photographic vignettes in lieu of living? Or would I not be perfect?

But I soon realize that I’m too lazy and too tired to want perfection. I don’t want having friends over for dinner to set my teeth on edge as I turn out courses of intimidating food. I want to let the baby unload groceries into the dog bowl. I want to sit on the couch with a cocktail and read—even as pet hair wafts in the breeze at my feet. I am striving and doing and living and failing and succeeding and (not really) sleeping.

This is real. And this is what I ate.