Didn't I Feed You Yesterday?

is absolutely hilarious.

It's a new book by a mom named Laura Bennett, who lives in NYC and has six children. She was on America's Next Top Designer, a reality show that is a competition revolving around designing clothes. I'm slightly lacking in the fashion sense department (ok, more than slightly, Mrs always-wearing-a-tshirt-jeans-or-capris-and-flipflops) and I've never seen the show, but now I want to, just to listen to Laura's life wisdom. I got to borrow the book from my cool blogger-mom friend Marianne.

The book tells it like it is, honest and real and hysterically funny. Those moms who go on Oprah to proclaim how glorious every moment of every day is with three kids under the age of six would probably not find much in it to relate to, but the rest of us do. Moms who need a glass of wine with dinner everynight, moms whose kids learn how to operate the remote and the DVD player well before the age of 5, moms who are lucky to find clean socks for the little people by Friday morning. Notice I didn't say clean matchingsocks. Just clean. Mostly.

I adore my children, I truly do. I love them more than my next breath, and more than my new Barnes & Noble nook (totally awesome, I have to say). But there are some days I would gladly sell them to the first band of traveling gypsies I meet. They challenge me every day and they test my patience (God did not bless me abundantly with the stuff) and they make me grow. Growing hurts sometimes.

But anyway, back to the book. It made me laugh so hard I cried, and it made me nod my head in sympathy. While Laura and her family live a life I can't really comprehend from Smalltown, USA, I can totally understand the balancing act she has to perform. I don't have such gorgeous shoes or an aptly named weekend getaway home ("Dairy Air"...still makes me laugh!), but I do have kids as well as my own life. Moms do not cease to be independent people with interests and desires of their own, once they birth another human being. I may not have a thriving high powered career, but I am a college student, a sometime writer (mostly a blog, papers for school and the occasional freelance article) who wishes she was an actual author of actual books, and a military reservist. I have lots of interests that have little or nothing to do with my kids, or the care and feeding of said kids. And, I'm still a good mom.

I can relate to Laura in another way, being the only woman in a house full of men. I'm not uncomfortable with it, but I do feel sort of outnumbered and outgunned. It's only me and the dog.

I'm digressing again. Marianne, thanks a million for lending me your copy!

Go get your own copy. Seriously. Laughter is the best medicine and we all take ourselves a little too seriously sometimes. If you don't love it, I'll buy your copy.