The beauty of bad design

The morning daycare commute is a long and lonesome road.

My husband's welding job begins at 5am so this leaves me, my mama-self, and I to tend to my 3-year-old and 5-year-old in the mornings and get them ready for daycare. Waking up, wiping butts, brushing teeth, changing clothes, eating breakfast, answering questions about penguins, etc. I am going on 5+ years of this routine but some days feel like the first. I'll wake up with Marge Simpson energy but be ruined in the blink of an eye because of the color of the tshirt someone doesn't want to wear or the toast being too brown or not brown enough. Ya feel me?

Our family moved almost two years ago but had established wonderful relationships within our daycare village so we decided the 40 minute round trip commute was worth it. The majority of the drive consists of one main road filled with hometown restaurants, car washes, independent salons, dive bars – any business screaming with good ol' fashioned, can-do attitude rests its weary foundation along this tired Toledo avenue. And everything is accompanied by what I would now consider my BFF these past 24 months... beautiful terrible design.

My mental state varies from morning to morning. Typically (and unashamedly), I am fighting tears of frustration. Or I let them win the fight, and they enjoy a stroll of leisure down my face. Cocomelon tunes or selections from the vast Chuck E. Cheese library play from the speakers, and it is at this time that I go inward. I mentally float down the path I know I shouldn't: I judge my worth as a mother. I'm doing it wrong. My children will grow up to be incapable, insufferable humans. Every Instagram parenting influencer is right: I am trash.

Then I see them... Beautiful, terrible signs in the morning horizon.

A script font that never should have left the Microsoft Word doc it came from, displays its curly Qs upon a black restaurant awning. (My rage begins to descend.)

1900s era clip art shines above a barbershop door. (I can breathe again.)

Carpets by Otto has not one, but two different logos on the same building. (I begin to smile.)

Sunlight bursts through the Impact font of the thin plastic adult videos sign and tickles my cheeks. (I blush. I giggle.)

The cartoon rooster on the hookah-chicken wing joint points at me. (I wave back.)

"We are doing our best," they tell me.

"We're working with what we got here."

I nod. I understand. How is a questionable logo choice any different than my messy mom bun? Behind these weird gradients and drop shadows are people trying to do "the thing." And sometimes "the thing" ain't pretty but you're getting it done.

How is a questionable logo choice any different than my messy mom bun?

I turn off the street and drive east, directly into the morning sun. I opt to not put the visor down. You see, with every amatuer sign I pass, every misaligned text I eyeball, every yellow font on a white background that I can't read, my power is recharged. These designs slap me on the ass as I drive by, and I let them. "Get it, ma," they whisper. And that's when I know...

We're going to be okay.