I am a freelance journalist and professional bon bon eater (a.k.a. stay-at-home mom). I left my job as a project manager to stay at home and mold my children into productive members of society, or at least semi-adjusted kindergartners. So basically I get up around 11 a.m., loll about in my silken robes before stretching out on my chaise to watch Desperate Housewives reruns and stuff my face with imported chocolates and the like. I allow the au pair to bring the children to see me once they've been fed and dressed for the day. Then I spend the day surfing Pinterest and refreshing my Facebook newsfeed.
In reality I am a highly disorganized but somehow functional mother to two amazing child prodigies. My 3-year-old Sweet Potato is the spunkiest ball of fire that has ever lived. There's no taming this wild stallion, and although she's the number one reason for excess cortisol in my system, she's definitely the person in this house I want to party with. She got her daddy's non-stop energy and her mama's sense of humor. So there's no telling what off-the-wall, and often highly inappropriate thing she'll say or do next. But I wouldn't change her for the world.
Then there's little 7-month-old Bee Bop. She's my gentle giant. While Sweet Potato is my spunky little nugget whose weight and height are always in the 25th percentile, Bee Bop is chuggin' along in the 98th percentile with a big sweet smile on her face. Bee Bop got my laid back personality and her daddy's sweet dimple cheeks. She is the friendliest little PR rep for our nutty family, and her chuckles have been known to turn grown men to putty. And no one brings those chuckles out like Sweet Potato. If you ask Bee Bop, her big sis is the end all be all of stand-up comedy.
And these two little miracles wouldn't be possible without a generous donation from my main squeeze, The Hubs. The Hubs is the most brilliant, organized, high-functioning type A engineer. Think if Einstein, Mary Poppins and Chuck Norris had a baby together. He could actually engineer that to happen, then go back in time to be born.
Naturally this neat and orderly rocket scientist fell for a slovenly extroverted journalism major in college, so we got married and started our own sitcom called The Odd Couple. Once we were shut down due to poor ratings and copyright infringement, we settled into our married life in Gainesville, Florida as poor college kids.
The Hubs said he fell in love with me the night I proudly wolfed 26 hot wings on our second date. And I fell in love with him on a trip to Disney World. It was the first time in my life I was happy to wake up before 8 a.m., and on a vacation no less. Since then our lives have centered around food and travel. We're the happiest when we're on the road, and our activities are almost always centered around our meals.
We're a couple of stubborn mules, and we butt heads like a couple of Irish hooligans. But in the early days of our marriage, before we had kids, we learned how to compromise and how make each other truly happy. He learned that when I'm overwhelmed with deadlines and drudgery I just need to get away. Even if it's just a day trip to the beach or a weekend of camping, traveling helps me decompress. And I learned that the way to his heart is through his stomach. Being a Texas girl, all I knew how to cook when we were first married was Mexican food. But even the same old salsa could still get his attention, especially if it was prepared by a certain journalism major wearing nothing but tube socks.
So these are our adventures. We travel, we eat, we try to ensure the health and happiness of our two little offspring. It's our life. And I hope we can at least be an amusing pit stop during Desperate Housewives commercials.
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