My Road to Mediocrity

I am a mediocre mother. No, I'm not being hard on myself...mediocrity is something I've pretty much endeavored towards my entire life.

In high school I was a mediocre student. No, I wasn't stupid or even average. I was in fact, in the top 20 % of my class. Try though I might, I could never hit that top 10 %. I recall my senior year when I won a scholarship. In fact, the scholarship application required that "applicant must NOT be in the top 10 % of his/her class." I mean, what the crap kind of a requirement is that? We want you smart...but not very. I managed to scrape by on my SAT's with an 1100, just enough to secure a spot at Boston University (I don't even think I could get wait listed there today).

In college, I studied Public Relations. I had been a theatre enthusiast all through my childhood, but faced with the option of waiting tables or earning a living I decided at the tender age of 18 to give up my dreams in pursuit of an average life. I quite literally chose my major by looking through the student handbook. To my recollection, it went a little something like this...

"Hmmm. Public Relations? Yeah, I like the public and I can relate."

So began a very short and highly mediocre career in public relations. The truth is that I began a string of jobs that I couldn't have cared less about and "relating to the public" was not exactly paramount in my mind...I really would have sooner remained anonymous.

And so, what does a mediocre PR person do to ramp up her career? I became a mediocre lawyer.

Okay, this I will grant you...I had potential. I received nearly perfect scores on all my oral arguments and my writing was certainly above average. But a bad job with Psycho Firm after my 2nd year turned me cold on lawyering and put me off litigation for life. Confidence shaken and a year of law school to go, I decided to turn it all around and go to work for a highly unpopular junior senator for my state legislature. I managed to graduate law school 1 spot out of the top 3rd, thus missing cum laude by .01. I'm also pretty much sure I just barely passed my bar exam (they don't show you the final cumulated score, but I saw half my score and it pretty much spoke for itself). I have shoved my J.D. on the backburner since I received it in 2004.

So, how did I become a mediocre mama? Well, in a nutshell, I married my husband, Deviant Dad, back in 2001 after 5 years together (a story for another time). I gave birth to Captain Kid in October 2005 and the jury's still out on whether or not there shall be a Kid 2. We are currently and temporarily living in Valencia, Spain for Deviant's job and I have been a SAHM for nearly a year. Captain Kid just turned 18 months. His favorite hobby is climbing on the tv and torturing the dog.

Deviant and I have dragged Captain Kid all over Europe this year and are the worse for wear. We have been through Italy, Ireland, Scotland, Portugal and Spain, sometimes in tears, occassionally covered in vomit, always with dirty looks from strangers. Hopefully I can use this blog to purge some of my experiences, to warn others about the hard job of trying to maintain your active lifestyle while parenting, and hopefully to create some semblance of sanity in my insane life of mothering.