Finally, something at which I truly excel.

I read this a few days ago, thanks to one of my Facebook friends, and I realized that I am really, really, really good at appearing Perfect.  I'm not, of course, but maintaining the facade?  Easy-peasy.

If you paid any attention to the very first post on this blog, you know that I am a professional self-employed tailor who is a single (divorced) mother to three homeschooled kids all under 14.  I get no child support from their father, and they have no contact with him (court ordered).  So I wear a lot of hats.

I don't wear any of them very well.  I am a lousy housekeeper; my house is cluttered and messy.  I own so many books I have them stacked on the edges of the stair treads between the first and second floors.  I am so negligent about mopping my kitchen floor that I had it redone in that commercial tile that's black with gray and white flecks in it because it doesn't show dirt and crumbs.  My vacuums are constantly clogging up with thread and hair.  I haven't had the laundry caught up in months.  The bottom of my toaster oven is covered in crumbs, and my microwave tray is only clean because I was out of town last Saturday at a class and my mom cleaned it.  I have dust bunnies that are constantly on the verge of forming their own government and staging a coup d'etat.  I went for 5 weeks this past summer without doing the yard.  We eat a lot of frozen stuff, even though I think meals prepared from scratch are much better-tasting and more nutritious (not to mention there is more variety if you cook from scratch).  I work about 50 hours a week, if you count time spent on the phone making appointments and calling clients to let them know their projects are done. In addition to those work hours, I also take my older son to Civil Air Patrol drills and Rifle Club meetings, my daughter to riding lessons at the far end of the county, and daughter and younger son to 4H meetings and events.  I have started turning over some of the duties to one or the other of my kids, such as changing light bulbs.  But I still have to remember that the new bulbs are on top of the fridge.
In addition to the general parenting, schooling, working and homemaking tasks at which I am not perfect, I'm also not perfect as a woman or a Catholic. I'm divorced, you know.  Never mind that I would be the first person to admit that I have very poor choice when it comes to men (or boys, as the case may be, but I digress).  I married a lazy, conceited, entitlement-attitude-inflicted, alcoholic, verbally/emotionally/financially/physically abusive child molester.  (And all of those attributes except the last can be applied to husbands #1 and 2 as well).  I have sort of managed to solve the problem of always choosing the worst sort of man:  I do everything I can to be as mean, disagreeable, opinionated and unladylike to any man who shows the slightest inkling of an interest in dating me.  I even went so far as to have my mother's engagement diamond re-set and commenced to wear it on the 'proper' finger, to further discourage any would-be suitors.
This means, of course, that aside from my homeschooling group, the gals with whom I get together and knit, some really good online friends and the folks at my parish, I have no adult companionship in my life.  I'm very afraid that I'll grow old and bitter (the bitter thing?  I'm making good progress on that one) without ever having been to Julio's for dinner (long story; when I post this I'm going to make sure I put that on my Bucket List).
There's more, but I think you get the idea.  I refuse to be Perfect at a blog post that lists all the ways in which I'm not perfect.