Move over Honey Boo Boo

Posted On October 8, 2012

This morning I was checking my email when I came across an email from Lisa Leonard Designs announcing that Lisa and her family will be the subject of a new reality TV show, “Life By Design.” If you don’t know who Lisa Leonard is, you must take a moment and click over to her site. She is an amazing artist and blogger who creates incredible jewelry and photography, and her life story, faith and outlook are just as inspiring as her necklaces and bracelets. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Lisa (although I’m pretty sure I did not make as a distinct impression on her as she made on me!), and she is charming, gracious and kind.

So this got me to thinking…if someone were to make my life into a reality TV show, what would people see? Watching the trailer for Lisa’s show, I saw she and her husband working together at home and at work, and I saw an incredibly calm and patient Lisa interacting with her two boys. If a production company were to pluck down a camera crew in our house, would the result be inspiring, like Lisa’s show, or train-wreck horrifying, like, say, Honey Boo Boo’s?

I’m really afraid to think what the answer would be.

Taking the past few days as a small slice of our life, here’s what a typical episode would include.

Paula and Husband spent two chilly evenings and one frigid morning watching their sons play football and soccer. During the soccer game, they were heard to be cheering for the clock to run faster and for their son to run at all, as he prefers to just follow slowly behind the rest of the team so he doesn’t accidentally get kicked in a fight for the ball.

Paula made two trips to the local archery shop to the dismay of the shop owner, who undoubtedly wanted to pull his hair out when she kept calling the arrows “bows.” Husband reinforced his own hunting prowess when he asked Boy #1 what he was going to do with the deer once he “caught it” (with a lasso, maybe?). Boy #1 promised Paula that he would someday shoot her a wild turkey so she could get it stuffed and mounted on a big tree branch to hang in their living room, just like the one they saw at the archery shop. Paula hopes he realized she was kidding.

Unexpected company prompted Paula to secretly die inside when her sister-in-law came inside her home to see the boys, two of whom were, of course, still in their underwear, and the dog, who had just peed on Boy #3’s coat that was, of course, laying on the floor, along with about 15 loads-worth of dirty laundry that had been moved from the bedrooms and was now piled up in the hallway for public display.

Paula came home from a scrapbooking event to find the boys had actually picked up a few things (but curiously left a pair of dirty underwear in plain sight) and that Husband, despite not having gotten the kitchen cleaned up from the last few meals, had baked an apple pie. From scratch. Yes, even the crust. Paula ate one piece. Then she ate Boy #2’s piece that he had left on the counter. Then for breakfast the next morning, she ate another piece. (She forgave him for not cleaning up afterward.) Later Paula and Husband ignored the dishes and laundry and opted instead to veg out in front of the DVR, watching two episodes of “Person of Interest” and the series premiere of “Elementary” (Go CBS!).

Other highlights of the episode include Paula finding a petrified Hot Pocket in a cup on her dresser and Boy #2 sending the following text to her at bowling: “So I’m guessing if the French bread is green, I shouldn’t eat it?”

I’m pretty much convinced that our reality show would be a cross between Hoarders and Honey Boo Boo.

Athough, after reading that Honey Boo Boo’s family now makes up to $20,000 per episode, I could probably learn to live with that.