American Housewife aka Art Imitating Life

The girls and I have been re-watching (not hate-watching) the sit-com American Housewife.

For anyone who has never heard of it, it’s about a stay-at-home mom and her family, a professor husband and three kids, daughter Taylor, son Oliver and daughter Anna-Kat.

It’s funny. It’s also almost too close to my actual life for comfort.

Katy Mixon plays the mom. She’s ‘fat’. Actually, Katy is maybe a size twelve, maybe. She’s probably actually a size 8 but the show is set on the east coast where the family rents a house in a very affluent community so that their youngest daughter can receive special education for her ‘issues.’

So, right there with you Katie on the fatness. She hates the other moms in her neighborhood and at her kids’ school. (You’ve all heard me make fun of the Edon-mom haircut, right?)

In the second (or third?) episode of the first season, Katy is lamenting all the work that goes into being a stay-at-home mom. She considers going back to work (don’t do it! The work just compounds.) The end of the episode shows her in the bathtub, trying to get a moment of peace from her loving family.

Hey, remember that time I stepped out of the shower and my entire family (both daughters AND MY HUSBAND) were standing around the bathroom waiting to talk to me? Ha, hahaha. I laugh so that I don’t cry. (I told my mom the shower story because I thought it would amuse her. She was aghast at my family’s lack of common courtesy. “The intrusion!” she gasped. Whenever I tell the story when Olivia is within hearing she likes to point out that she was in the bathroom first! As if that makes it better/okay that she was there.)

Katy also has amazing friends who love her, flaws and all. I’m lucky that I have such friends. I don’t see them nearly often enough, but knowing they’re there, supporting me in spirit even if not by having breakfast together each day, is enough most days.

The Thanksgiving episode of the first season mentioned medicating Anna-Kat, Katy’s youngest child. Anna-Kat has a lot of anxiety. She also has OCD tendencies.

Remind you of anyone?

I was very resistant to medication when Liv was seven (which is how old Anna-Kat is in the first season.) Let’s see where Katy is on meds in a few more seasons, shall we?

Of course, this is all fiction so maybe in a few years Anna-Kat will be ‘cured’ of all her issues. It could happen.

But that aside, this show is like watching my life being played out by a woman who is younger, thinner and prettier than I am. But that’s okay, I like to imagine myself younger, prettier and thinner than I actually am on a daily basis.