Real? Really?

I am back.   However, I feel like poop and wonder how a little cold can kick my butt so badly.

AND, having spent a lot of quality time with my television these past five days, I also wonder a couple of other things.  (Okay, fine - - maybe not "quality" time, but time nonetheless.)

I wonder - - what is so real about the Real Housewives of Orange County?  I know - not a question whose answer will benefit mankind, but still . . .  Having grown up in Orange County, I can tell you that I have never once run into a housewife like that before!  True, I didn't grow up in Newport, or in a gated community.    However, I DID grow up in the "real" OC.   Where "real" people live.   What is so real about a woman whose hair is blonde (not real), whose anatomy parts are huge (not real), and whose goals in life, so it seems, are to have more money and things than her "friends" and to use more swear words in a single conversation than the entire population of South Central L.A.   Really???  That's a "real" housewife of Orange County?  That's a SAD housewife.   I'll tell you what a REAL real housewife of Orange County is like . . .

She's the mother of four girls, and one boy, who adore her.   She lives in a modest three bedroom house in a neighborhood that borders a noisy, very busy freeway.  She takes a taxi to the grocery store for many years because she doesn't have her drivers license.   She takes her children to church every Sunday.   She gets up every morning, helps her kids get ready for school, and then heads off to work to help support her family.  She then comes home at night, dead tired.   She makes dinner for her children while her husband works his night shift.  She helps her children with their homework or listens to them talk about their day, when probably all she really wants to do is lay her head down or take a bubble bath.   She does the laundry, and cleans the house, and takes the kids school shopping.   She will lay down on the floor and watch movies with her girls, even though she usually falls asleep during the movie.  

Her children have never heard her say anything bad about anybody, let alone swear like a sailor (or most teens in the hallways of your average high school).   And her children know everyday that she loves them.  

THIS is the real housewife of Orange County.    Vicky, Tamra, Gretchen and all the other fake "real" housewives of Orange County have nothing on this woman.  In fact, they could learn a great deal from her about what it means to be a woman, let alone a "real" housewife of OC.