Good Better Best ...

In contrast to most of the world, I really like Mondays. Monday is usually my busiest day at work. I know there is no chance of getting bored, sleepy, or distracted. Mondays require focus, attention to detail, and skillful timing if everything is going to get completed and submitted on time. There are several deadlines I have to meet on Mondays. I have imposed additional deadlines upon myself by setting tasks and reminders in my outlook. Mondays, for me, are a rewarding culmination of OCD combined with multi-tasking and a little dash of masochism. I hope that I never master Monday and that it can always be the challenge I enjoy.

Challenge ... I wonder why I am such a glutton for challenges? Could it be the evil mantra taught to me by my mother? "Good better best. I'll never rest until good is better and better is best." These two sentences cursed me with the never satisfied desire to attain perfection. Thus began my journey into OCD land as I held my scissors in kindergarten in my right hand with a determined thin-lipped grimace to cut out those paperdolls so they actually form a chain this time. I had such high expecations of myself. I had seen my grandfather, of all people, do this on numerous occasions. He could cut out paper dolls, paper guys, paper dogs, etc. And he had a crooked finger and arthritis. Surely I could manage a measley stack of paper dolls?

Ut-oh. Someone forgot to tell me that I was left-handed. They also forgot to tell me that no matter how hard I tried, I was never going to cut anything with those round-tipped, dull, kindergarten scissors. But in the back of my mind I can hear my mother chanting, "Good better best. You shouldn't rest until good is better and better is best!" Cue the meltdown ....one of many that would plauge me as I became frustrated past the point of no return.

And then, just as I would be expecting my mother to chastise me or fuss at me for not producing the masterpiece I was so determined to create because I thought she expected "my best" ... aka ... "perfection" ... my mother would turn into the most patient and loving and soothing woman on the planet and gather me in her arms and hug me and tell me I was the best thing since sliced bread and not to worry because one day I would get the hang of it and make fabulous paper doll chains. It was quite confusing for my budding OCD. She always seemed to be one step ahead of me. It made me crazy.

Thank God I eventually made it to a point where my OWN opinion of myself is what I use to judge my "best" and I don't have to rely on anyone else to tell me that I did a good or crappy job. With age comes the freedom to look at a mangled project or challenge and just say, "Screw it. I don't have time to futz around with this anymore!" In my youth, I would go down with the ship in a swamping sea of frustration and inner rage. In my teens I would still go down with the ship but I was alot more verbal about it and expressed said frustration and rage with new unlady-like vocabulary. In my early twenties I stopped going down with the ship and took up tilting at windmills. My predictable failure somehow not my fault as I was a victim of some unknown force, person, theory, procedure, etc. When you hit 30 you stop for a minute and ask the question, "Does this really matter?" and then proceed with caution. Now that I'm 40 ... F**k this sh*t ... I have limited time and even less energy ... better focus myself on what I can actually make an impact upon rather than trying to move mountains and bend steel.

This fact, in my opinion, is where Martha Stewart has previously failed the domestic goddess following who worship at her kitchen sink. Prior to her unpleasantness with the pesky SEC, she had yet to develop the ability to mentally say, "F**k this sh*t" and then gracefully remove herself from the corner of perfection she had attempted to paint herself into. Now don't get me wrong, I am a devoute Martha Wanna-Be and strive daily to provide myself and my family with a home and life just 1/10th as good as she has taught us. But I wonder if, even in her dark prison days, at some point she dropped her aloe vera goat-milk soap on a rope in the grimy prison shower and let loose with some unlady-like vocabulary. I have hope, for her sake and the sake of her OCD following.

And so what does all this mean for an Instant Mother? It hit me like a ton of bricks when, as I was walking down the hallway on the way to the linen closet, and noticed a long dark line on my white wall that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be boogers from the 10 year old beast that had moved into my home.

"Good better best. I'll never rest until I've smeared good boogers all over Jacque's walls to the BEST of my ability!" Do you think he was thinking that? I had already made a promise to my 12 year old self that I would NEVER burden my children with the mantra of evil so I KNEW I hadn't ever said that to him. Bob assured me that it wasn't a personal insult. Bob assured me that it was just "a boy being a boy". Excuse me? How do I not take that personally? It was MY house the beast was in. It was MY wall he so disrespectfully smeared his boogers upon. Not personal? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Just the memory of this event raises my blood pressure to dangerous levels. And as you can imagine, my meltdown was immediate and gloriously explosive as I marched his beastly fanny down the hall and pointed out the offensive nose slime and asked him, "What is this?? Just what do you think you're doing here?" To which he replied, "I dunno." And so I continued, "Do you see what this is on the wall? Why in the world would you do such a thing?" And he answered, "I didn't do it." And I said, "I beg your pardon?" And he said, "Maybe Dad did it?"

Sadly I must confess that I took one nano-second to consider the fact that my live-in-soon-to-be-husband who daily proclaimed to love me might have actually smeared his boogers on the wall. The one thing that saved him was the height of said boogers ... my husband is 6'5" and the booger smear was much lower to the ground. Whew! Massive crisis averted, I must say.

And thus my melt-down exploded all over the 10 year old beast as I gave him quite a scolding and threatened to make him wear booger encrusted panties for a week if he EVER ... EVER ... considered doing something like this ever again. I marched him to the kitchen and prepared a bucket of warm, soapy water and proceeded to have him wash off the boogers and then wipe down ALL the baseboards in the house. "Maybe while you are doing that you will consider that this is now your house, too, and it is up to ALL of us to be respectful in it and try to take care of it." His moody "yes, Ma'am" was just the perfunctory acquiescense equivalent to the rolling of the eyes that I was sure would be appearing in the near future.

I had thought that being the step-mother to a 10 yr old boy who had no idea what mothers were for, much less how to co-exist with one, would be a glorious challenge I was well equipped to master. Afterall, I had my truly wonderful mother and father's examples to follow. What I never considered was that 10 year old boys can do some nasty things ... things I never saw my brother do when we were growing up (probably because he was mothered from the beginning of his life and didn't, after his formative years, have my mother all of a sudden show up to impose some decency and moral codes to live by) ... things I doubt my parents ever ran into. Suddenly I realized I was really in this challenge all on my own. And it was probably going to kill me. Good Better Best? Hell. I realized I was going to be lucky to make it to Good. Picture the elevator of my glorious challenge plummeting to the floor of the sub-basement.