imperfect

Kate has got me thinking, with her celebratory week of imperfections. 

It's the strangest thing sometimes, blogging. Because we tend to macro focus on the marvellous and edit out the imperfect. This isn't because I'm pretending my life is perfect, for heavens sake, my sisters both read this blog! How long d'ya reckon I'd get away with that?

It's more about what I feel like writing about at the end of the day and what I want to remember. And also what you want to read. 

So rather than write about the rushed day of a meeting I was late for and then had to breastfeed in, about taking Henry out of school early to go to his weekly speech therapy appointment, the lovely cauliflower soup I cooked for dinner that the kids didn't like; well I'd much rather tell you the story of dropping one of Ivy's wee shoes in the rush to get to the meeting and the lovely, lovely woman who passed me in one direction, found it right down the street and bought it all the way back to me. Or about the whispered "I love you guys, I love you" video message Henry left on my iPhone. 

All of it happened today. But only some of it would tend to appear here. 

Am I guilty of presenting the perfect and burying the imperfect? Of course I am. I only blog a fraction of the story, I'm sure you know that! And I want to to spend that precious hour after the kids are in bed before I start doing something else, cherishing the nice bits.

For example the old dude in the lift on the way up to speech therapy today who asked Henry how old he was then proceeded to recite this poem to him: (speech therapy is on level 7!)

When I was one I had just begun

When I was two I was nearly new

When I was three I was hardly me

When I was four I was not much more

When I was five I was just alive

But now I am six I'm as clever as clever

So I think I'll be six now forever and ever.

(A.A.Milne)

That was a cool moment. 

So, the view from here. 

I might be guilty of posting a photo like this. Making some joke about the imperfection of the activity as only three jars does not make a chromatic scale. Or even a pentatonic one. Haha.

It's a pretty typical Inner Pickle picture, right? Fairly wholesome. Kid in uncoordinated clothing. Bit of IKEA furniture. 

Shall I pan out? 

Oh look. There's not a small amount of washing on the end of that dining table. If you look closely, there's a bathmat halfway down the left hand pile that used to be a nice grey, now mottled pink. Not even sure what the offending red item in the load was. 

Oh and look…

She hasn't even finished folding the washing. And if she adds that to the piles on the table they'll probably topple over. That wall's pretty grubby.

Oh, and look…

The baby's crying. 

And..

Something's gone horribly wrong with the wholesome musical activity. 

Oops. 

But you know what?

It's all about choice.

Choose how you react. Choose how you remember. 

Henry told me tonight that in his workbook at school, where they wrote today what they did on the weekend, of all the fun, family-oriented, thought-out activities he did, he wrote "On the weekend I went to MacDonalds and had an icecream."

Right. Perfect.

xxx