Being Real

I can’t remember where it was, but sometime last week, I saw a challenge issued in a blog.  This author’s assertion is, those of us in business and with business blogs tend to blog almost exclusively about business.  He further challenged to take a day and write about yourself, opening yourself up and sharing parts of yourself that your public may never see.  This isn’t a bad challenge, and although he was proposing that Monday of this week be that day, I simply ran out of time before now.  So, I’m making this week’s blog post about the real me.

Technically speaking, the me in my blog posts is real.  I’ve blogged about vacations and vacation disappointments, soap production, recipes and day trips.  These are all me, all bits and pieces of my life and that of my family.  This week, I’ll open up a bit more to you, make it less business.

Not only do I run my own business, but I also homeschool my older daughter and am the family’s Minister of Finance.  That means I’m in charge of making sure what’s supposed to go out goes out when it’s supposed to, and holding people accountable for not spending recklessly.  Say my husband wants a brand new flat screen TV.  He can have a brand new flat screen TV – if he can show me how he’ll be able to afford it without compromising the household finances.  It’s up to me to keep things in balance, which I don’t like more often than not, because I feel like the bad guy, always saying, “No, that’s not in the budget.”  (Why don’t homeschool moms run the government?  We’d have the budget balanced and America out of this debt in under six months!)

I love to write, which presents a struggle with my math-lovin’ daughter, who can’t stand writing.  I have a few blogs besides my business one, and I enjoy writing stories with romance and passion – when the time allows for me to indulge my hobby.  It totally blows my mind that she can be my daughter and not LOVE to write.

So, I’m business owner and homeschoolin’ mama and baby wrangler and minister of finance.  My friend Donna Maria said the other evening, “You multi-task like nobody’s business!”  Another friend, Ginger, chimed in, “I want her to bottle that skill and send it to me.”  I only make it look easy.  Truth is, this level of multitasking is draining.  They might admire my multitasking skills, but they don’t see me in the wee, predawn hours of the morning, wide awake because my to-do list is running through my head.  They might see how well I finesse homeschooling and business, but not the heartbreak I feel when one of my girls wants to spend some quiet time with me as I’m scrambling to cook dinner, return emails and throw down just that one batch of soap.  The tension is how to do it all without staying up half the night.  I look at Saturdays and think, Woohoo!  A whole day with backup to get things done!  But then I think, A whole day of family time.  And, yes, there are days I work.  And then there are days – like a couple of weeks ago – when I say, “Let’s go to the beach!”

This coming Sunday, my baby turns two.  Since my older daughter doesn’t do so well with watching her sister getting all the attention, I’m toying with the idea of taking her to a movie on Saturday, just the two of us.  I don’t know.  I’ve got 175 bars of soap to make for an order and some experiments I want to try.  And a party to put together.  It’s hard sometimes.  OK, a lot of times.

As my older one gets older, we have to find new ways of getting along together.  I’ll send her outside to play just to ensure that she gets time to be outside playing with her friends.  This is the same girl who’ll ask me a hundred times a day if she can go outside to play with her friends.  This evening as we sat beside each other on the loveseat, she told me she doesn’t always want to go outside.  I told her that sometimes I want her to go outside so she’ll have a chance to play with her friends, and sometimes I just need a mommy time-out but have to get work done in the kitchen (meaning no hiding out in the bedroom for a bit).  We just have to keep the lines of communication open.

We had some good giggles today.  We decided that our language for this school year would be American sign language, something she’s interested in and something we can learn together.  We were going over hand lettering, and she was looking at her hands as she formed the letters.  I instructed her to turn her hand around; she was talking to herself.  This is fun so far, because it’s like translating English to English, and we both talk with our hands.  Besides, she could use this one day in church to minister to people, something she’s seen done in our church.

I’ve probably rambled enough.  If you could ask me anything, what would it be?  I’m fine with answering almost all questions.