I Was One Step Away From Turning Into Dona Florinda

For those of you that don’t follow or never watched the Univision Channel or Televisa, Dona Florinda was a single mom on a show called El Chavo. Her mom uniform: rollers and an apron. I used to think, what kind of chick hangs out in rollers and an apron all day? She looked like she hadn’t even showered. I mean yeah she had a son, but he was “supposed to be” in elementary or middle school. What was up with her?

Now that I have two kids…I know…I know.

Dona Florinda

You don’t get an ego living here. No pedestals, no big heads. I’ve got every position in existence from the CEO to the custodian of this household. When I had one child I managed to make time for basic hygiene such as showers, brushing my teeth, grooming myself and adding the occasional make-up. But now that I am the mother of two…it’s no surprise that sometimes I don’t make it to the shower until well after midnight…and to tell you truth sometimes I don’t even make it at all.

Most of the time I’m indoors or in the yard, so I tend to forget that my appearance is not quite up to Red Carpet standards. My son doesn’t care if my hair is up in a ponytail, or that I have no makeup, or that I wear yoga pants and don’t practice yoga. He’s just happy that mom plays construction site or any type of sport that involves hitting a ball.

So when he wanted to go to the park down the street before nap time, I was all set. Ready to go. Picked up the baby, put her in the baby backpack Bjorn carrier, collected all the sporting equipment and walked out the door. As I passed by the parked cars, I noticed my reflection in the window of an SUV.

Dude…wait-a-minute-one-second. Who is that?

I was one step away from turning into Dona Florinda. No…wait. Dona Florinda would have been an improvement. I couldn’t believe I had left the house in that state. I completely forgot that I hadn’t showered, my hair looked like a before picture in one of those Pantene or Dove commercials, and my face looked like it belonged in a mug shot.

I stopped. Most of the time I could care less about what others think about my appearance, let alone fashion. However this was going too far. But my son just wanted to go to the park and play some sports. The baby wanted to see grass and leaves. They didn’t care.  But I couldn’t do it. It reflected poorly on my kids that I was walking around in that Dona-Florinda condition.

So I walked back to the house to upgrade my appearance. But just as I opened the door, my son had a look of utter disappointment. I thought, why am I going to waste a good half-hour trying to look fantastic when we could be hitting baseballs, or kicking soccer balls.

Not cool.

So I opened the closet and there they were, about fifty or sixty of them hanging on hooks.

Thank God for caps.

I slicked my hair back, slipped one on, and put on my sunglasses. Ready for my best David Beckham  or Mariano Rivera impersonation. I was the new and improved Dona Florinda.

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