Modern Day June Cleaver

Modern Day June Cleaver wanna be with Lucy antics mixed in.
If I were on one of those Real Housewives shows that would be my tag line.

I definitely have aspirations to be a Modern Day June Cleaver.
She always seemed to have her mess together.
Her house was always perfect and she was always a beauty.
Her hair was always perfectly in place and her make-up was exquisitely done.
She had a the best behaved little boy and a more obnoxious older one who still wasn't that bad.
And she had dinner on the table every night when her husband came home from work.
How she did it all, i'll never know. I realize that this was just a t.v. show but it was reality back then.

Even Lucille Ball had a perfectly clean and organized apartment and was a real beauty.
Her hair was stunning and so was her make-up.
Her son was adorable and well behaved.
And she had dinner on the table every night for her husband.
And she was always dressed up.
Both of these women even cooked a home-made breakfast every morning.

Like I said, I realize these were t.v. shows and behind the scenes Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a volatile marriage but what they portrayed on t.v is what I want. I have the Lucy antics already mixed in. It's just the way life is.
I've never lead a horse up our stairs in the home or crashed my husband's performances but the chocolate factory episode, that would so be me and my best friend.
We're each other's real life Lucy & Ethel.

The thing about these shows is that this is the way life was back then. It was slower & simpler.
You could leave your front door unlocked because the only people who were going to come inside were your neighbors who were your best friends anyway.
You could walk everywhere and small towns really were small towns.

My great-grandmother was very much the same way even through my childhood in the 80's & 90's.
You never stopped by her house and saw her not put together.
And you never ever stopped by that she didn't have a huge southern dinner ready to go.
She always had fresh veggies and everything was home made.
And her house was always clean.
She passed away about 7 years ago, I think and while I have some of her recipes and years of memories I wish I had spent more time asking her how she did it all.
I feel like this art of keeping it all together passed with that generation and we have the excuse now
"You have as many hours in the day as Beyonce."

I think Beyonce is a power house of a performer but she is incomparable to June, Lucy, and my great- grandmother.
Beyonce has people who do everything for her.
She probably has a nanny, a personal chef, a personal trainer, a house keeper and whomever else she may need at her service.
That's not who I strive to be. Sorry not sorry.

I wake up every weekday no later than 6:45 and my feet hit the floor running and don't stop until bed time. I'm not at all complaining, this is what I want to do for my family but I simply feel like I can never get everything done that needs to be done. Finding a balance between myself, my child, my fiancee, the house, cooking, cleaning, our family, our friends, running errands and everything else that needs to be done seems impossible some days but it's on those days that i'm reminded what doesn't get done today will still be there tomorrow.



My morning starts around 6:20 when I sleepily kiss my fiancee good bye and tell him I love him and hope he has a good day from the bed and i'm not even sure what i'm saying makes since. I'm not getting up to make him coffee or breakfast and he doesn't expect me to.

I doze back off for about 20 minutes then wake up to my alarm going off. I spend the next 15 minutes talking to God and trying hard not to doze back off.

I get up out of bed at 7, grab whatever sweat pants I had on the night before that are sitting on my hope chest put them on and stumble down the hall to our son's room where I attempt to wake him up. I then stumble into the bathroom and start the shower for him then poke my head in his room again and tell him it's time to get up.

After that I make my way back to my room where I throw on a bra and whatever tee shirt I find first then into the bathroom to pull my hair back up and brush my teeth. While asking "Is Dylan up yet?" No. So I rush back down the hall, yank the covers off him and tell him it's 7:10 and i'm not leaving until he gets up. It usually ends in "don't pull those covers back up." He sits up so I leave and a minute later he's in the shower. I'm making the bed at this point.

I'm awake enough by this point so I go downstairs, turn on the t.v., and the Keurig only to find it's already on because my honey, bless him, made his own coffee before work and left it on for me. I warm up my son's lunch for the day and finish putting it in his lunch box. I make my coffee and clean up any dishes or empty the dishwasher.

My son emerges from the bathroom in about 15 minutes so I give him his breakfast of pop tarts or pre-packaged microwaved pancakes
(no June Cleaver here!) I finish making my cup of coffee and together we sit on the couch, spaced out for the next 15 minutes while watching GMA and talking about the news stories.

After about 20 minutes he's upstairs finishing getting ready for school and i'm downstairs, still watching GMA. I take him to school around 8:15 and come home then spend the rest of the day working my butt off to no avail. It's in these moments that I wonder how these ladies used to do it all do it so well. I'm fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom but I still can't do it all in a day.

At the end of the night I snuggle up next to my honey, sigh and think about all that I did do that day and fall asleep content because life is about finding the balance but it's also about not beating yourself up over what you didn't do. It's much better to think of the things you did do.






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