J is for . . . Judging the Starbucks mom: Part 2 of the Judgey McJudgersons Series

Do you remember the Sex and the City episode when Carrie has to write at the corner coffee shop because Aiden offered to refinish her floors, and she realizes that maybe all the people sitting there on their laptops are not pretentious pretend writers, but just normals hiding out from something or someone? I just had that moment. I decided not to judge moms in leggings at Starbucks, scrolling on their phones, because I was hiding from someone too.

I am a stay at home mom. For now.

I am an elementary school teacher and when this school year started back up, I packed up my classroom instead of setting it back up. I donated markers, crayons, single subject notebooks, scissors, and lots and lots of pencils. It hasn’t quite hit me that it isn’t still summer break. It hasn’t quite hit me that I am a mom, with a son, but moreover, a stay at home mom. Yes this is something I have dreamed of and am so so so so lucky that I have both the means and an altered sense of reality that allows me to believe I can shun a paycheck for the next year.

What I also fail to fully grasp is that our gardeners and our housekeeper come on the same day and this does not work if you are a stay at home parent that actually stays at home all day. Stick with me here mamas. I do not live in Beverly Hills, I do not have a pool boy (or a pool), or two acres in the Hollywood Hills, but I do have a small spot of grass to be mowed, sprinkler heads our dog likes to chew off, a Bella Donna and a Bird of Paradise I desperately want to keep alive despite doing nothing to help them, and an avocado tree that will one day bear fruit again. I will pay a group of people $40 to come and take over our front and back yard for an hour and make this space beautiful and survivable.

When my husband and I first moved in together, we decided to get rid of cable and use the money towards a housekeeper once a month. Fighting over who cleaned the shower last time, and who takes baths with confetti-strawberry-chocolate bath bombs and should be cleaning the shower, was not part of our pre-marital bliss package. A housekeeper was. Not paying for cable was a big deal then, this was back in the day, Hulu had just been introduced and Netflix was a DVD subscription company that did not yet make their own award winning television series.

Fast forward to modern day and there is one Monday a month (now two, ok, I know, I practically live like a movie star) when our save-the-avocado-team and god-bless-you-why-aren’t-you-a-better-housewife-housekeeper descend on the same day. The dog cannot be inside #becausecleaning but cannot be outside #becausecrazymenwithloudmachinescuttinggrass and I never can seem to time my exit right. I cannot just take the dog for a walk like I used to #becausebaby and the combination of a lame postpartum recovery and sweltering Indian Summer limits my options. Now that I have taken off work for this school year and am home allllllll the time, I have decided there is only one solution for my family: evacuate.

I am so very #blessed that my sister lives a few miles away. One of the many reasons being that she not just allows, but invites me to descend upon her home with my baby and dog during such trying circumstances as the aforementioned, or just because I am tired. Inevitably she pauses her conference call and helps me unload the baby and the puppy. She fixes up a water bowl and treat for Belle (the dog), gets a drink and treat (usually an chocolate chip cookie ball and decaf hazelnut latte) for mama, and then inevitably suggests a nap for me and proceeds to teach my son to crawl properly while I lay down in the guest room listening to a stream of recorded meditations about stillness and silence and rainbows.

Last week, after a very successful day at my sister’s house, but lack of naps for my son, I returned home to a lemon scented, spotless kitchen and lovely conversation with our housekeeper about how hard my husband works and how my angel baby is the most adorable thing ever. She held and hugged little Z, and just before she handed him back, before I had a chance to get our dog out of the car, and unload the rest of baby Z’s toys, I heard it. Ruh-rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The sound of a weed wacker coming from our front yard. I glanced out the window and saw the calm, yet, “I’m looking at you ma” face that my dog gets, as if asking for confirmation to absolutely lose it. I grabbed my baby, yelled some gratitudes back at Maria, and strapped my babe into car seat. We were headed to Starbucks.

I am going to Starbucks because although their coffee is bitter, they have a drive through. Loading baby into the stroller and leashing up the dog (who despite my anxiety, is not a certified anxiety dog, probably because she has more anxiety than me) is not a good choice right now. If I take only Baby Z into Starbucks, then I am leaving fur baby to look longingly at each passersby who will judge me for locking my pup in my car on a warmish day. We fled the house to avoid people and noises, and are better off staying in the car. So we go through the drive through and then sit in the parking lot, which is home to not only Starbucks but a yoga studio and a nail salon. This means I can judge women in Lulu Lemons, picking up a caffeinated, overpriced beverage to sip during their mani/pedi. I want a foot soak and massage right now. I am so glad I cannot see my feet from the driver’s side because this polish is weeks old and I did it myself (gasp!)

But then it hits me. I am a woman, on a Monday, not at work, in my yoga pants, sipping a PSL from Starbucks. Albeit hiding in my car, sitting in the parking lot not on the shaded patio, but same same. Starting from college and continuing to present day, anytime my husband and I go out on a weekday I get upset when the breakfast place has a wait, or there is a line for the newbie waves at La Jolla shores and I am not the only person out enjoying the day. Don’t these people have jobs?!? I complain EVERY time. “Yes, honey,” my nonjudgmental husband assures me, “Just like we do. They probably have the day off, just like us.”

Ughhh, he’s kinda always right.

How does the saying go? “Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw Pumpkin Spice Lattes?” Maybe that woman I am glaring at is a working mom and this is her one afternoon off from work, the kids, the everything. Maybe she is just as tired as me, maybe her toddler still wakes her in the middle of the night, maybe those cute yoga pants were on clearance, maybe she also had postpartum mobility issues and is finally back in a yoga class, healing.

Sometimes in my desperate attempts to not judge others I need to think these people have something difficult going on their lives; you never know what someone battling. This time, though, I just let that tall, thin, blonde lady with yoga braids and a perfect bum squeezed into Lulu Lemons buy her overpriced, overly sweetened drink from Starbucks that somehow doesn’t go straight to her cankles, and go pay someone to paint her toes after yoga class because that sounds awesome. Maybe she isn't just a trophy wife, or maybe she is? It is awesome either way.

I live a pretty charmed life too and some day I am gonna pay someone to paint my toes. I had to do a few laps around our neighborhood before the coast was clear, but then I took the baby and the dog to go chill on the poop free grass in my backyard, sip my PSL and not judge myself one bit for it.

#funny #stayathomemom