I have a feeling that you know this about me already, but I would like to take this opportunity to admit to you that I am a total poser.

Oh, I pretend I’m cool. I attempt the trends. I fake the funk. But it’s not really there.

You see, I’m living my life in one big gray area. I want to look my age (mid-twenties, holla!) but I also want to look like a responsible mother. And from the extensive research and home studies I have performed, it seems that responsible mothers mostly look like they don’t get enough sleep. Well, I don’t get enough sleep, so I can dig that. But I do want to go to the grocery store wearing something other than yesterday’s snot-stained workout capris. Is that so wrong?

I remember a few months after Babs was born, I hesitantly ventured out to the mall to try to soak up some civilization. My eyes were hungry for people who didn’t grind my nipples to shreds and shoot poop up the back of their shirts. There was nothing there I wanted to buy, so I just wandered through the crowds trying to figure out how the rest of these people managed to look so awake. As I groggily trudged along, my feet came to a stop in front of the grand and terrifying Abercrombie and Fitch. Posed in the display windows were sleek, headless mannequins luring in the customers with their provocatively arched backs and jutted hips. Behind them rose giant black and white posters that pictured ruggedly handsome (and mostly naked) young men climbing on a yacht. My attention was immediately drawn to the tiny scraps of clothing that the yacht boys and plastic women were wearing. Everything- the shirts, blouses, miniskirts, all of it- was scrunched up and wrinkled like the laundry that had been sitting back home in my dryer for over a week. I felt a small bud of hope rise up in my chest. This, this, I could do. I could do wrinkly. The two worlds that I lived between, the world of cute and sexy twentysomethings and the world of tired but happy young mothers, had merged in one beautiful new style trend.

So here I am, four years later, standing barefoot at the kitchen counter with my A-line denim skirt and shamelessly wrinkled up blouse that I dug out from the bottom of my clean laundry pile this morning. I have no idea if wrinkled is even “in” anymore, but I don’t care. I’m sticking with this style for a long time, I can tell you that much, and I am going to choose to believe that I am seriously current and hottt. Word.

The “Pop Art” theme for this month’s Self Portrait Challenge was really hard for me. I’m really excited for next month’s theme, and I already have some ideas. For my self portrait today, I totally stole this idea from Multitasking Mama, who has an amazing self portrait in the style of the Silence of the Lambs movie poster. There’s no deep meaning behind my self portrait this week, it’s just for fun.

Although we barely slept and our spanking new, right-out-of-the-box parenting skills had yet to be broken in, I think that the first year was the easiest. So straight-forward, problems all so easily solved. The second year was physical. She tantrumed and flailed, bolted in parking lots and fought a winning battle against harnesses of any kind. Years three and four were achingly emotional, so many of life’s joys and pains freshly discovered and experienced. Independence was exerted, freedom was explored, feline mortality was heart-breakingly understood but not accepted.

And now, several months in, I’d have to say that the fifth year can be described in one word. One innocent little grouping of letters that doesn’t look like much, but packs a serious wallop. Attitude.

There are many demands. Much whining. It has been made very clear that Mommy has no earthly clue. She has aged ten years in a few short months and I am suddenly dealing with an adolescent that I thought I had ages to prepare for. She is so grown up, saying things like, “Why, thank you!” and “Daddy, could you please remove this strange-looking device from my pony’s tail?” But it is glaringly apparent that although we are needed for general chores and food preparation, we as parents are really only there to annoy her. “Mo-ohhhhhhhhm!” I hear several times a day. Feet firmly planted, tiny hands on non-existent hips, she is comically serious. But I do not dare laugh. It would only prove my ineptitude.

I would write more, about how I have decided to choose my battles and how it seems that the little one, terrifyingly, seems to be aging even more quickly than her big sister and already I have heard a small voice full of irritation calling out “Momeeeeeeeee!”…

…but it seems that the peaches are touching the strawberries on their plates and this is a serious issue that must be dealt with immediately.

I am young, maybe five or six. I’m waiting in the car while my mommy picks my sister up from preschool. I am looking out the window, up to the heavens, and I see thick gray clouds moving across the white expanse of sky. A thought comes to me, and I watch the clouds fly overhead with a new wonder. Mommy comes back to the car, my little sister in tow, and opens the car door. Mommy! I say. Guess what? She asks me what. I can see the earth moving! I tell her about the clouds and my new discovery, but she gently suggests that maybe it’s not the earth turning it’s just the wind blowing them. Oh. I look back up at the clouds. I still think it’s probably the earth.

My dad has a giant wooden boat that’s turned upside down in our backyard, and covered with a tarp. He says someday he’s going to fix it up. My sister and I use it for a playhouse. This afternoon it is warm, but raining hard. We grab the old Scrabble box, and ducking under the tarp we climb into the boat. We spread the game out on the boat’s ceiling, which is our floor, and we play. The rain pounds over our heads, and after awhile it sneaks in through gaps and cracks and starts to drip drip drip down onto our game. Every time a drop splashes on one of the square letters the ink runs and spreads, and after awhile it looks like we’ve been painting them with watercolor purple. We stay out as long as we can, but it finally gets cold and we pack everything up and go inside. We don’t tell Mom that we ruined the Scrabble pieces.

I wake up in the dark. My bed is wet. I cry for Mommy and Daddy, but they don’t come. After awhile a girl comes in my room and I remember she is my babysitter. She’s mad that I wet the bed but she lets me get up and go out into the living room. She can’t find the clean sheets after she’s stripped off the soiled bedding, so she doesn’t make me go back to bed. I sit with her in the dark, watching grown-up TV and eating powdered doughnuts until Mommy and Daddy come home.

It’s corn dog day at school. I sit hunched at the table with my embarrassing sack lunch while all around me my classmates pick and poke at their hot lunch plates. I see that no one is eating the corn part, only the dog. I sneak behind the lunch monitor and grab an empty tray from the cart by the kitchen. Back at my table I pass it down and back up the long line of students, each one donating their unwanted corn dog bread. When it reaches me again it’s piled high, and I stuff myself. It’s crunchy on the outside, sweet and squishy on the inside, and it’s warm. Lunch ends with a bell and I go outside for recess, tossing my untouched sack lunch into the garbage on my way out the door.

It’s summer, and we’re on vacation visiting family across the state. I am unaccustomed to the dry heat. My bare shoulders are burned an angry red and I can feel how my hair has absorbed the sun’s heat when I place my palms against the top of my baking head. I tag along after my cousins. I come from the city and they think my ignorance about rural living is hilarious. They push me on a rickety old swing, and I look up and see how the bark from the tree has bulged and spilled over the chains. I slide my hands along the board, trying to adjust my weight, and an inch long sliver lodges itself firmly under the soft skin by my wrist. I am crying. My cousins lead me up to the porch where all the grown-ups sit drinking iced tea. My grandma’s brother reaches into his overalls and pulls out a frighteningly sharp pocket knife. Terrified, I plead with my eyes for my parents to save me, but they don’t get up from their aluminum chairs. He grabs my arm and holds me tightly, and I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for the pain. He tells me it’s out, and I don’t believe him. It’s out, he says again, and I open my eyes and look down at my hand. He’s right. I hadn’t felt a thing.

There is a small group of women that attend my church who have formed a very strong bond with each other. If we were in high school, I would call them a “clique.” They are all rich and pretty, overly polite and well-poised, and usually extremely gracious women. Their social calendar is jam-packed with engagements that they attend only with each other, including an exclusive “invitation only” book club. They maintain that it’s because they want to keep the numbers in the group small, but the women who have expressed interest in joining (and have been told there’s no room) have repeatedly been stung when a new family starts coming to church, and the beautiful and well-to-do wife is immediately invited to join. If we were in high school, I would call them “snobs.”

On Monday afternoon they held a going away party for one of the members of this tight-knit group. Predictably I was not invited, but my good friend Sandra and I were both surprised to learn that her presence was requested. We laughed about the juvenile silliness of the whole thing, but I could tell she felt bad that I was not included on the invitation list. I wasn’t bothered. I have been invited to a very small number of their secretive events, and I spent the entire time feeling uncomfortable and wondering why they invited me.

By the time Monday afternoon rolled around I had completely forgotten that this party was going on. Zibbit was still fighting that high fever, and I was exhausted and frazzled. At 4:30 the phone rang, and the name of the party’s hostess popped up on my caller ID. I am actually embarrassed to admit that I had a fleeting hope that they had suddenly realized that I had been overlooked, and were calling to apologize and offer me a last-minute invitation. I answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hello Karli!” she chirped brightly. In the background I could hear dozens of voices talking and laughing.

“Hi Kim. Sounds like you’re having a good time…”

“Oh yes, yes,” she giggled. “Hey listen, I was wondering if you have Sandra’s cell phone number?”

“I- what? You’re going to have to talk louder, I can’t really hear you.”

“Sandra’s cell phone?” she yelled over the din from the partygoers. “We’re trying to reach her but we don’t have her number! We don’t want her to miss all the fun!”

Suddenly I could picture them all there, sitting around a perfectly arranged table in their designer clothes, enjoying themselves over a gourmet spread of hors d’oeuvres. I looked around my house, at the clutter piled in every corner and the dishes towering in the sink. A bottle of Zibbit’s Tylenol had been knocked over, and lay in a sticky purple pool on the counter next to the phone. My hair was unwashed and I was still wearing the sweatshirt that had snot stains all over the shoulders from trying to comfort my sick baby the night before. My kids had both started whining and crying because the movie they were watching had ended. Zibbit was due for another round of medicine, and I found myself wondering how much of the expensive liquid I could scoop back into the bottle from the mess on the counter.

“Karli? Are you still there?” Kim’s voice broke through my thoughts and I struggled to fight back the tears that sprang to my eyes as I listened to the noise of the party on her end.

“Oh. Um, no. I don’t have her number. Sorry.” I felt like a big, fat loser. Used. Rejected.

“Well thank you anyway!” she gushed. “Have a great afternoon!”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, “talk to you later.” I hung up the phone and stared down at the receiver. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized that as much as I don’t want it to bother me, it hurt to be excluded. I want them to like me and invite me to join their festivities, even if I don’t really want to join them. Imagining them all there having a great time while I was stuck at home with sick and cranky kids made me feel just awful.

If we were in high school, I would have to call this really really lame.