I'll keep Pretending...

Alarm sounds at 5:30am, snooze. Oh, and by the way, what kind of alarm only has a 5 minute snooze button? Mine does. 5:35….snooze. 5:40….once again, snooze, and of course 5:45 am…time to drag myself out of bed. Presley is already awake crying, the dogs are running in circles around me because they need to go outside and want their breakfast, and then I stumble over my shoes that I had left in the middle of the living room as I must have just walked out of them on my way to bed last night, I have no recollection of this. Groggily, I lift my feet one by one up the steps to find my screaming Presley standing in her crib, apparently starving. I pick her up, take her downstairs to her highchair and give her some bananas and cheerios to content her while I make her usual morning egg. I now have about 2 minutes to let the egg cool, during this time I quickly let the dogs outside to pee, feed them, feed the cats and check on the bunnies…and I’m back in the house before Presley starts “starving” again. Yes, this is when I get most of my exercise, I’m so glad that most of my neighbors are still sleeping at this hour, it might be a little awkward for the people next door to see a girl running through her backyard in underwear and a t-shirt carrying two bowls of dog food. I grew up in the country and I refuse to change my habits! Anyway, I give Presley her cooled off “eggie” and it’s now time to wake Benjamin up. This task is comparable to trying to drag a troll out from under a bridge…scary and dangerous! After poking, prodding, coaxing, and singing my little cowboy awake, he tells me that he cannot walk. It’s 6am and I really don’t feel like fighting so I carry him downstairs where he is placed in the recliner. Ben doesn’t usually have many words in the mornings, he just points to most things. This morning as we walked downstairs he pointed to the chair, so without argument that’s where he remained until 6:30 when we had to leave! I got him dressed, Presley dressed and cleaned up, and now time for myself. Thankfully it was yet another casual day at work, so even with a cute black top and some heels I can pull off the image that I actually have my life together! I put on my shirt, jeans, cute heels, earrings, brush my teeth, run my fingers through my hair and it’s time to go. I'm going for the carefree and beautiful look if you couldn't tell! Out the door, kids buckled in the car, myself buckled and we’re off. The morning starts off slow as usual, still groggy, but it starts to pick up after my morning caffeine kicks in and my brain begins to wake up.

After several trips to the bathroom, break-room, supervisor’s office, friend’s desks…I realize that I’ve been wearing my shirt backwards all day. It was now 1:15pm. I had gone about 7 hours walking around pretending to have myself together…and then really…a backwards shirt? Nobody had said a thing, I’m not sure if they hadn’t noticed (unlikely) or were just being nice.  Even Ben was able to place his cowboy boots on the right feet this morning. One of these days I’ll get it right, but for now I’ll just keep pretending!   

This is how I want people to see me every day.

 But...this is what I look like when I wake up.

And this is what I feel like most mornings.