Sum of parts

I wake up this morning much to early to be awake. The kid and I fall back to sleep in the recliner. We pretend not to hear everyone else shuffle around until the bigger kid declares it officially morning. They want toothbrushes (thank you Ms. Dental Hygentist visiting preschool. We've gone from "eh" with the brushing to "obsessed." Really do we need to brush on the hour every hour?) They want breakfast. They want milk in their cups. They want PBS kids. All I want is coffee.

I'm still bleary eyed. I stumble to the computer. Push a few buttons. Wait for it to warm up. Pull open email and there it is. The first message in my Blog comments folder. I see little else other than "site of the day."

"No way," I think. I scratch my sleepy brain and I try to remember what it was I last wrote about. Ahh, the girl. Right. Oh. Visitors now think they have stumbled into the epitome of all things Mommy-blog. That's nice. Ok, sure, in a way it's a correct assessment.

It makes me think. Someone coming here for the first time. Seeing these words for the first time. If they read just one entry in this rambling sample of an exposed soul, what impression do they walk way with.

I begin to wonder if any one piece in this entire collection of entries really paints a complete image. Of course that's impossible. The sleep is now gone from my eyes. The wheels are spinning. I think back to a class in college - social science or something like that. How do people define themselves. The professor tells us that the general belief is we, as Americans, tend to introduce ourselves by career first. It bugged me. When I think of it I try to avoid it.

"Hi, I'm Sandy, I'm..."

But what am I? I'm mother to two. Sometimes that still feels like going "career" first. I am wife. I am daughter. I am sister. I am friend. I am writer. I am lucky enough to have a job that let's me be home more than not home. I am marketing consultant. I am 30-something redheaded woman who still feels trapped in her teen years because at those times I certainly don't feel adult.

I'm a woman who ought to eat better and exercise more. I'm a former infertility patient that gave up hope only to find it when she least expected outside the treatment cycles. I am impatient, which sometimes makes motherhood challenging.

I can be somewhat scatter brained. I can be forgetful. I can be insensitive without meaning to be. I am stubborn. I am actually very stubborn. I am short-tempered although I try to control it.

I am a lot of things and yet I am none of them exclusively. Though, on occasion, it sometimes seems I am just a piece not a whole. Those don't tend to be my best times. When the whole gets ignored for the part, I'm not being true. I'm not being me.

When I review this quickly I realize that even now I've not done a good job at painting the complete picture of me. I wonder - can we ever?