Sometime ago I was invited to join a “Crunchy Moms Group”. If you don’t know what that means, you should Google it, but you’ll have to do it later because, frankly, I’m writing a book about a cow and I don’t have the time to wait on you.
Crunchy moms are women who make their own soap and wear hand-made calico peasant skirts and raise chickens. They grow mushrooms in their compost pile, hug trees, go braless, and eat organic kale chips for breakfast. They bravely venture out in public without makeup, and clean their houses – and their bodies – with nothing but baking soda and vinegar. They are green, eco-friendly, natural-minded, family-oriented granola eaters. Hence the term “Crunchy Mom”.
And I am not one. But I joined the group anyway, because it seemed like the polite thing to do.
I feel like such a phony.
I’m not crunchy. If anything, I’m caffeinated.
I haven’t worn a peasant skirt since 1977, Ulta is my happy place, and I wear my 18-hour bra 16 hours a day. I love my Honda minivan and I collect salad ingredients from the produce aisle, not the garden. In fact, the only mushroom I ever grew was behind the toilet in my humid Georgia apartment (it was fairly impressive if I do say so myself, but I did not feel compelled to eat it).
I will confess that one time I DID eat a kale chip, but th
en I had to go outside to lick the bottom of the lawn mower to make sure they weren’t the same thing. The verdict is still out on that. And thanks to Saturday Night Live character, Mary-Katherine Gallagher, the thought of tree-hugging kinda freaks me out.
Clearly, I am NOT a Crunchy Mom. Half-baked maybe, dipped in a little organic coconut oil.
Although, a few months after joining the Crunchy Mom group, I ran across a “How Crunchy Are You?” quiz. (And you should know, I’m a sucker for a good quiz.) The result forced me to admit that I was a co-sleeping, partial-cloth-diapering, non-vaxing, Mooncup-wearing, homebirthing, homeschooling, non-medicating, organic-baby-food-making, recycling rebel whose baby self-weaned at 30 months. Oh yeah, and I’m a doula.
Turns out I’m a “Granola Earth Mama”. The only thing that saved me from a perfect score of “Crunchier than Grape Nuts” is that I shave my armpits. Well, sometimes.
she said 