Guilty Pleasures

The last few days have been rough. But things are looking much better today. Bryce went back to school (I am feeling a little bit guilty for sending his grumpy self off for the teacher to deal with, but not guilty enough to keep him home), I finally got all of the traces of vomit removed my comforter, bed skirt, sheets, mattress pad, ten towels and couch cushion cover and got them back in their proper places. The Mount Everest of laundry has been folded and put away. I took the little kids for a run this morning, which does wonders for my mental state, and even took the kids and two friends to the park to play this morning.

My world is returning to normal-- granted, normal for me is not all that interesting unless you really like doing dishes and picking up messes you didn't create, but I guess I created the kids and therefore, in a roundabout way, created the messes.  But I knew that my life was resuming its accustomed pace when I sat down after lunch today with a big bowl of dessert and my Star magazine.

I'll admit it-- I love my Star magazine. I read its smutty pages from cover to cover every week, and I usually dig into it as soon as it arrives in the house. For a blissful, sugary-sweet hour, my world revolves around Brad and Angelina, Nick and Jessica, Nicole and Keith, Tom and Katie, and Britney and Kevin. Yeah, I know it's sort of dumb. And yeah, I know I'm supporting the vile papparazi. But I can't help myself, I'm a sucker for celebrity gossip.

And if I can spend that hour in the bathtub, drinking a diet cherry coke and eating chocolate cake, it's almost like my real life can melt away for a while and I can be one of the unfettered, stylish party girls from the magazine. Except then I couldn't eat my chocolate cake. In order to be an it-girl I think you need to swear off eating chocolate cake forever. And that's not gonna happen.

So I'll take my own life, mommy tummy, interrupted sleep and all, and continue to escape once a week through Star.

What's your guilty pleasure?

--originally published 4/5/06