Team Bridget vs. Team Keaton

My parenting style--make that my life-living style--vascillates between having it all together and holding it all together by a thread. I think of myself as sometimes being an Elise-Keaton- type, but more often being a Bridget-Jones-type. Take for example a party I went to on Saturday. After only two beers, I reached my "tipsy point" and entered that wouldn't-it-be-fun-to-have-a-cigarette-even-though-I-don't-smoke state. I was trying to secretly lure my friend away to the "smoking bench" but blew my cover when I asked her to "sneak off and go
s-m-o-k-e," embarrassingly spelling out the act I was trying to hide in earshot of two adults who can spell. Bridget Jones. Or the time I went back to work after the end of my first maternity leave, and I had on a navy slingback on my left foot and a black one on my right foot. Bridget Jones. Or just a few days ago when David discovered that I had laundered my ipod in my running shorts' pocket, ruining a perfectly good $200 piece of technology. Bridget Jones... and David says I have to go without an ipod for a significant amount of time, essentially being punished, before going out and buying a new one. Then there was the time I drove Grace all the way down to her preschool in Pittsboro only to find out it was a Teacher Work Day. Or the times I've been spotted pushing my kids in a grocery cart in downtown Chapel Hill and Boone, because the carts were there and my kids' feet were tired. Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones!!!

I do have some redeeming qualities as a parent and a person. Some of my Elise Keaton moments include pulling together a sold-out fundraiser for the Orange County Literacy Council and getting my kids involved with me to help promote the interfaith community CropWalk to help fight local and world hunger. And getting through a full day that includes dropping Grace off at preschool and a quick mini-conference with her teacher about my concerns over Grace's aggressive behavior towards Johnny, practicing my conversational Spanish via CD on my way to work, getting to work and paying bills, planning for the annual art and psychoanalysis lecture, scoring and entering self-report research measures, and preparing for the upcoming Board Meeting, stopping off at the grocery store on the way home from my forty-minute commute to pick up milk, juice and coffee, putting a square meal on the table in under thirty minutes, creating and implementing a fun yet educational after-dinner activity with my kids, bathing the kids, telling one too many stories about a.) FlatTop the Raccoon at MerleFest, b.) Running into Bob Henshaw at University Mall, or c.) Bruce "Rain" falling into the hole full of bats, reading one too many stories about a.) Disney Princesses, b.) Elmo, or c.) Dora, having a four-sentence conversation with David, and then falling into bed to finish reading the last two chapters of Screaming to be Heard: Hormone Connections that Women Suspect and Doctors (Still) Ignore.

Sometimes I wonder how I can be so scatterbrained one minute but so sharp and focused the next. Maybe it's because I am a Pisces?