The Things I'm Afraid to Tell You

I follow an awesome blog called Little Brown Pen written by a young lady named Nicole Robertson, a photographer who moved to Paris in 2009.  Her photography is simply amazing.  So amazing that I just ordered her first book, Paris in Color.  Through her blog I learned about a new blogosphere movement  called "The Things I'm Afraid to Tell You."  I first read about it on the Little Brown Pen blog who read about it on Creature Comforts who discovered it on Makeunder My Life, the birthplace of the movement.

The premise of the movement is that most of what people put out there in blogs is a glossy edition of reality.  Kind of like a high school yearbook, the lives of bloggers can seem so perfect.  So beautiful.  So danged photogenic.  Bloggers bake delicious morsels of goodness everyday.  They makeover old dressers found under garbage heaped in dumps.  Their homes gleam with the newest, coolest Benjamin Moore paint colors.  All things bright and beautiful are subject to blog posts.

Indeed, there are boundaries that bloggers put in place to keep out those who might decide to stalk or harm.  Also, who really wants to know about the ooogly parts of day-to-day living.  We've all got plenty of our own ooogly to deal with each and every day.

I'm going to join in the movement and confess a few things that I probably wouldn't have mentioned in the name of "Boundaries."  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...Full-On Carolyn.

• As a general rule, I hate talking on the phone.  Words like "Can you call all of the K's and L's on the roster and tell them the meeting time has been changed" make my stomach roil with angst.  Caller ID is my friend.  Don't worry.  I always pick up when you call!  
• During my busiest times - holidays and miscellaneous big projects - I tend to let my house go to ruin.  You would most likely find a 3-day-old half full glasses of sweet tea with lemon slices floating on the surface in random places throughout my house.  Mountains of dirty dishes rise out of my kitchen sink.  Piles of unread Lubbock Avalanche Journal newspapers form a cushions on my kitchen chairs.
• There is a male cat in our neighborhood that loves to pee on our garage walls and I can't figure out what to do about it other than imprison my cats in the garage by closing the door.  
• I sleep with a night guard that keeps me from grinding my teeth to little nubs.
• Every now and then, I don't clean up the kitchen after dinner.  I simply walk away after the leftovers are tucked into the frig and head for either 30 Rock or The Office.
• I watch an embarrassing amount of reality TV.  Put "Real Housewives" at the beginning of a show's title, and you've got me.  I'm pretty sure I'd watch a show called "Real Housewives of the Department of Public Safety."  
• Sometimes I order ordinary everyday things from Amazon.com because I'm too lazy to get in my car and drive to a particular store.
• My husband and I had a smack-down over whether or not we're going to use the sprinkler system to water the flower beds.  Long, story summed up with:  squirrels and brown tubing.  Alan and those blankety-blank squirrels.
• This year I did not be planting the usual 5 flats of impatiens in our front flower beds in passive-aggressive protest of Alan's insistence on "dry land" gardening.  Hm!
• I haven't balanced my checkbook in YEEEEEEEEARS.  I do not feel that my right-brained talents are being used to their fullest while crunching numbers.  I married a man with an MBA in accounting.  Need I say more?

Oh, there's more.  Way more.  I haven't even scratched the surface of Full-On Carolyn.  But, I need to let you catch your breath and process all of the above.  Oh, say...how's about you share some of your Full-On Foibles with me?