Perfection

That's a nice little thing to obsess about at 4 AM on your day off.  Am I right?  Also, the subtitle for this post is "Insomnia is dumb".

We all know perfection is unobtainable.  Unless you're a baseball pitcher or a bowler, I guess.  Or a few other things that I can't think of right now.  You know, 4AM and all.

Syd is getting her braces much later this morning.  Looking at her, you would think her teeth were just fine.  And they are fine.

Here is a before:

And here is my cute girl with her braces:

It seems strange to put braces on teeth that seem nearly perfect, only to try and make them closer to perfect.  But, her jaw is also misaligned.  So, while her teeth appear straight, they line up directly on top of one another, which apparently can cause a whole host of issues.  At least according to her orthodontist.  Waaaait a minute.  Just kidding, he is totally trustworthy.  But it makes me think about how I do try to obtain perfection probably way too often.  It's also a good reminder that even though something seems perfect, it really isn't.

There are so many times when I expect perfection from my girls.  Like I said before, I know no one is perfect.  But, I still expect it from them.  So unfair.  I know they are capable of getting straight A's.  They have no shortage of smarts.  In fact, I'm probably the dumbest person in my house at this point.  :-)  But, I also need to remember that I was perfectly able to get all A's and never did.  Why?  Because I'm lazy. And mostly, they do get A's.  But not always, and that's actually okay.  I hope that part of the reason I expect more from them is altruistic and that I want them to learn from my mistakes.  And, I'm sure that IS part of it.

I am an odd sort of perfectionist.  I like things to be "perfect", but if I don't know how to make that happen, I freeze up.  It took us waaaaaaaay too long to tile our kitchen.  I was afraid it wouldn't turn out since we'd never done it before.  I couldn't get myself to actually start the project.  Thankfully, Mark stepped in and got us started.  Oh, and of course the tile turned out just fine.

I'm definitely not a fan of trial and error. UGH!   I don't like making mistakes or failing.  Which is silly, because those are just a part of life.  I know this logically of course.  Unfortunately, Syd takes after me.  Poor kid.  We are the worrying sort.  We obsess.  We lose sleep.  It's definitely a battle fought every day.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.  Sometimes, you write an imperfect blog post when you should be sleeping.