It’s Saturday, but it’s pretty late and the Sunday Scribblers say it’s OK to go ahead and post my response. This week’s prompt is Real Life. I first tried to craft my response yesterday, but everything I wrote was pretty dreary. So I’m going to try it again with, we’ll hope, a little more sunshine.

“Real life” is not what I’d expected it to be. It’s bills and dishes and baked potatoes and vacuuming and scrubbing the bathtub and diapers diapers diapers. But it’s also so much more than I could have ever hoped. It’s Rockford bringing me breakfast in bed. It’s Poppy’s sweet smile and her giggles and her toes and her soft, shampoo-perfumed hair tickling my nose. It’s a warm cat, a cozy afghan and a good book on a chilly morning. It’s pie and ice cream on my birthday. It’s my friends and my family and knowing that I am loved. Knowing that I’m blessed.

And I am blessed. Every day. I know that, but it’s so easy to get bogged down in what “real life” was supposed to be, what “The Cosby Show” and the cotton commercials and the Lifetime movies said it would be. But I wouldn’t trade my real life for all the funky sweaters in Cliff Huxtable’s closet.