Jim & Pam's adorable "Plan C"

I am a huge fan of The Office, so I watched Jim & Pam's wedding episode with great anticipation last night. They did a brilliant job with it, and I was surprised to even find a Mojo Mom connection.

[Spoiler alert, show details to follow. You can watch it online here.]

I've talked for a long time about how in motherhood we set ourselves up for disappointment by making such a big deal about pregnancy and birth, while not planning much for what happens next after we actually become parents. As new mothers, we can get caught up in the "big day" just like brides focusing on a magical wedding, rather than the rest of their lives as a married couple.

Fanfare, parties, how can the day after, when real life begins, and goes on and on, live up to that?

Of course, the tension between expectation and reality also shows up on the Big Day itself. We see Pam break down into tears as her wonderfully nutty family and friends turned her wedding day spiral out of control into something less than the perfect fantasy she imagined. Heck, even her perfect fiancee Jim spilled the beans about Pam's pregnancy, much to grandma Meemaw's disapproval.

So as Jim comforts Pam in the Sunday School room before the ceremony, he pulls out his "Plan C," and they run away. Just as the guests wonder whether they've called it off, Pam and Jim return to the church to go through with the ceremony, which gets further hijacked when the wedding party springs the YouTube "boogie down the aisle" procession dance on them. Rather than getting mad, Pam and Jim take it in stride, smiling at each other and making classic "Office faces" across the church. Pam looks truly happy and relaxed for a change, even as the procession gets sillier, with Kevin knocking over the candles with his Kleenex-box shoes, Andy using a walker to support his splits-bruised scrotum, and Dwight getting carried away and accidentally kick-box kicking bridesmaid Isabel in the face.

Through intercutting scenes, we see why Pam is able to laugh it off: Turns out that Jim had "Maid of the Mist" boat tickets in his pocket in case they needed to escape. They went off by themselves to get married, had their perfect moment alone by the waterfalls, then came back to go through with the ceremony their family wanted.

The wedding weekend was totally crazy, but they made it work. The wedding scenes by Niagra Falls were truly gorgeous and romantic. Pam and Jim looked like they were in perfect bliss together, even soaking wet! The church ceremony started out ridiculously but ended well. I think the tears in the actors' eyes were real (especially Steve Carell's proud papa look) as this beloved couple finally got the happy ending they deserved.

As Jim said, the boat was Plan C, the church was plan B, and plan A was, "marrying her a long long time ago, pretty much the day I met her." It took five years, but his patience finally paid off.

Throughout our lives, we have to make compromises to keep our family and friends happy. Real life is crazy, and things don't go as planned, but if we can let go of our perfect fantasies, and accept a reality that includes Plan B, Plan C, and a lot of laughter, we can write our own happy endings.

The Doghouse and the gap between expectation and reality

This new video, The Doghouse, is sexist and consumeristic but funny as hell, so I had to post it anyway.

It would be a perfect viral video, but they don't provide tools to embed it on blogs or share on Facebook, etc.! Oh well, typical corporate America, at least they got it half right.

I don't want to totally spoil the video but it's a sly example of one of my favorite concepts, the gap between expectation and reality. As I write in Mojo Mom, often our reality is truly okay, but when life does not measure up to our expectations, we can feel miserable, out of control, or disappointed. This is a particularly potent dynamic in marriage and motherhood, especially when the whole world works to raise our expectations to ridiculously unattainable levels of perfection. If we judge ourselves by unrealistic standards, or take in too many marketing/media messages (such as wedding, celebrity, and pregnancy magazines), the gap between fantasy and reality sets us up for a hard fall back to Earth.

The Dog House video both sends up this process and reinforces it, which is why it's somewhat diabolical and extremely effective. It got to me, even as I was critically analyzing it!

My husband is very hard to buy Christmas presents for, mainly because he pretty much already has what he wants and needs. The other day he asked me to buy a Macintosh power adapter for him when I was placing an Apple order online, and at first I thought, "I can add this to his pile of Christmas gifts." But then I realized, then I'd deserve to be put in "The Doghouse!"

The search goes on....

"Effortless Perfection," meet "Flailing and Failing"

At nearby Duke University, they came up with the term "effortless perfection" to describe the pressure that college women feel to project an image of perfection AND make it look easy.

It's possible to keep up that charade for quite a while, if you are willing to work hard to pretend that it's easy. Women at Duke have found that this effort comes with the price of eating disorders, stress-related illnesses, anxiety and doubt. But even beyond those costs, the fact is that eventually, real life prevails. Imagine those unrealistic expectations rolling over to marriage and motherhood, and you have a recipe for serious disappointment brewing. As I say in Mojo Mom, a great deal of the shock of motherhood comes from the gap between expectation and reality rather then reality itself.

So let me share a corrective narrative. Lately my life as a Mom has been as far from "effortless perfection" as possible. Instead it's been about "flailing and failing." At times I have felt like I've done things in the most difficult way I possibly could, while obtaining terrible results. This is why Mojo Mom is a book about motherhood rather than a parenting guide!

Last Friday there was no school and my daughter had a friend spend the night, which was a lot of fun, but as soon as said friend put on her coat to go home the next morning my daughter declared "I'm bored!" Whew, no "long tail" of contentment from that activity, eh? After lunch we went to a neighborhood Halloween festival, which somehow just wasn't quite fun enough for her tastes. My daughter was cranky, tired, and hopped up on sugar by the end of the afternoon. And I was annoying even myself with the Mommy pronouncements coming out of my mouth. Pick up your coat...come on....come on now...I am leaving....bye...COME ON I REALLY MEAN IT NOW I AM SERIOUSLY MAD.

My daughter has also reached the age where I have suddenly become the most embarrassing person in the world, and I was surprised to feel that this opinion was really starting to work its way through my defenses. So on Saturday night I felt compelled to tell her later on that I didn't like feeling like the lamest person in the world. My ill-timed comment hit her the wrong way and she just got mad at herself. More Mom flailing and....thud, that one landed with a plop.

So by the end of the weekend I just felt like everything was a battle: getting up, mealtimes, bath, bedtime. When I finally made it to the post-bedtime finish line on Sunday night, I was really pissed off when I found out my husband had eaten all the chocolate ice cream. So I snapped at him, too. I was mad about the ice cream and also jealous that his Daddy-parenting style is really paying off now. (For a good perspective on this I recommend Anthony Wolf's book, It's Not Fair, Jeremy Spencer's Parents Let Him Stay Up All Night. Wolf explains the different sides of a child's personality, the Baby Self and the Mature Self. The Baby Self comes out more with the primary nurturer in a child's life. So while there is a lot to learn from my husband's parenting skills, I can also stop being surprised--and blaming myself--for the fact that my child's Baby Self likes to come to Mommy.)

But things gradually went back to normal on Monday. Our whole family needs structure and the school day is a good thing, especially after a 3-day weekend. My sense of humor returned. There was still no ice cream on Monday night so I broke into our Halloween candy stash. I discovered the candy I had bought a miraculous two weeks in advance had melted because I'd left it in the car for too long. How's that for punishing my attempt to plan ahead?

I could tell that I was starting to get my mojo back because instead of being upset, I just decided that a little bit of melted and refrozen chocolate never hurt anyone. With the holidays coming up, it's time to start taking the easier path whenever necessary. Holidays are tough on Moms, as we are called in to put out all sorts of last minute holiday "crises." It's important to realize that even if the kid's costume isn't perfect, or the turkey is dry, or the tinsel doesn't get hung up, it's more important to get through this stressful time with your sense of humor and compassion toward yourself intact than it is to project an illusion of perfection-- effortless or otherwise.