Part One

Pursuit of High Maintenance: A New Year’s Resolution


The following definition has been modified from it’s original version. It has been formatted to fit my needs.

The modification of myself, after delivery(of my children), to correct faults, to improve performance or other attributes, or to adapt myself to a changed environment(motherhood). Maintenance is an important part of a woman’s life-cycle. It is expensive in manpower and resources.

As a young mother I constantly find myself doing things that I never would have done before I had children; things that I previously believed to be unacceptable.

Yes, I am talking about leaving the house without make up, without fixing my hair, without ironing my clothes…The list goes on and on. It is a list of simple yet important actions that are no longer a priority to me. You may ask yourself why would a woman leave her house with hair uncombed? Well, the answer is simple: I had to comb my son’s hair and that left no time to comb my own. Needless to say that the simple act of fixing my hair involves slightly more than a single comb, the point remains the same. I have become the woman on the Suave commercial. She is so cute and happy. She gets married, yet remains cute. She gets pregnant and is still mostly cute. She has her first child-what a cute child…she too is cute-sometimes. As the first child grows more independent she has a little more time to make herself cute again, until the day she starts the cycle over again. Same song, second verse: Mother’s concern with her own cuteness even worse. You see her on the commercial going through various stages of life with commotion around her. She begins to look frayed. Then suddenly she discovers SAUVE and is CUTE ONCE AGAIN!
No, my friends, this blog is not an advertisement for cheap shampoo…It the beginning of an undertaking to reclaim MYSELF!

As I am as close to low maintenance as one person can become, I thought an extreme challenge would be completely interesting.

So, what does “High Maintenance” actually mean? Does it mean a bottle of Suave in my shower? NO! That is the only answer I am sure of right now. I do know that it may not mean to me what other people think when they hear those two words. I do not intend to look like Reese Whitherspoon in Legally Blonde, but I do intend on fixing my hair, wearing make up, wearing nicer clothes, and most of all: doing more for ME.

I will also say that my pursuit of high maintenance is not an attempt to be selfish. I do not feel that taking care of myself is selfish as long as I still make sure my family is taken care of too.

So stay tuned through 2009 to get a glimpse of my pursuit of high maintenance.