I got off the phone with my friend today when Laylee put her hand on my shoulder and said seriously, “Mom. I have one thing. When you were on the phone I heard you say a little bit of ‘craps’ and that’s not a good thing.”
Mom: 2003-Present
I spent a good chunk of yesterday writing a proposal for a blogging gig I think I’ve decided not to apply for. Then I took the opportunity to update my résumé . When Dan got home, I gave him my daily explanation for why the house looked like… our house… and told him how glad I was that my credentials were in order and looking strong. It feels good to know that I’ve still got it and I could go out and get a job if I wanted to.
He laughed and said, “Are you planning on leaving me or something?” Hrm. No. But then I started thinking. Why was this so important to me?
When I was pregnant with Laylee, I was working on hiring new employees for the library where I worked. We had TONS of résumés from mothers whose kids were older and who were ready to get back into the workforce. I had a hard time choosing a candidate who had a 15-20 year blank spot on their résumé over someone who had been steadily working on education or tangible work-related projects. They just didn’t measure up in my book. At that point I was fairly sure I would quit and stay home after Laylee was born. I was planning to become a SAHM who would one day come back to work and even I didn’t relish the thought of hiring one and breaking her in.
That night I went home and “bawled out my eyes” (as Laylee would say). “No one’s ever going to want to hire me again. I’m going to lose all my skills and credibility. People don’t value motherhood as experience. Wah, wah, wah wah.”
Then I thought about it. Several of those women had been stay-at-home moms but their résumés did not reflect a gaping hole in their lives. Their lives had been filled with community leadership roles, continuing education courses, part time jobs or contract work from home.
It hit me that staying home with my kids did not mean dropping into a black hole for 20 years. I decided that my mission would be to stay current on technology, continue to read, educate myself and engage in projects that could be quantified on paper.
I frequently hear women talk about getting an education or mastering job skills “in case” something happens to their husband or “in case” of divorce.
I say do it in any case. Find something marketable you love to do and learn how to do it well. Take classes online or at a local college. Finish your degree or follow one of your passions and then write it down so that you have credentials ready at a moment’s notice.
Not only will making or keeping yourself employable bring you a sense of pride and security, but it will help you stay confident that you are staying home to mother because you CHOOSE to stay home and not because there’s nothing else you can do. It will remind you that you are married to your husband because you CHOOSE to be and not because you feel trapped or financially dependent on him. I believe it will strengthen your marriage and make you a happier mom.
A healthy dose of independence and the lingering possibility that you could live without your spouse makes it all the more meaningful that you choose not to. Knowing that you are capable and qualified to work outside of your home makes those rough days with your kids more bearable as you tell yourself that you have your choice of careers and you choose to be with them all day because you think it’s valuable and you are frugal and/or fortunate enough to work without pay for a decade or two.
I challenge all you ladies out there to take an hour and really hammer away at your résumés. If you wouldn’t want to hire you, then make one small goal towards changing that. (This is a great exercise even for women currently in the workforce. Prove to yourself that you have options other than your current job and if those options are more appealing, take the plunge!)
I’d really love to hear your thoughts, goals and progress on this.
My Body Myself
Last night I asked Dan to get my wrist brace from downstairs so I could put on my last piece of my Darth Vader evening wear and go to sleep. He said, “Dork Vader?”
Pretty much.
I’ve got my zit cream, my plastic mouth guard and my black wrist brace. Just add a helmet and a few more electronic devices (I sleep with my PDA at arm’s reach.) and I’m a Saturday Night Live caricature of the geeky evil one.
Sometimes I feel like a combination between a 14 year-old just hitting puberty and an 80-year-old woman whose body is falling apart. It’s possible that all these symptoms are related to bearing and raising children or maybe I’m just at a weird vortex between the two ages.
My skin is breaking out and breaking down. It appears that blemish and wrinkle-fighting face wash may become my new best friend. Ever since Dan and I started discussing thinking about maybe planning on possibly getting pregnant again sometime in the next few years, my cycles have gone junior high crazy. My joints hate me and I’m needing braces for all kinds of parts just to do basic things like walk, bend over to pick cheerios out of the carpet and hold Magoo upside down over the sink for a hose-off.
All signs indicate that I should be drinking more water but I’m already so sick of going to the potty. It’s such a waste of my valuable time, time I could be using to blow on Laylee’s watercolors till they dry, pretend to eat plastic food under the slide and possibly shower.
At 28 years of age, I can frequently be heard saying, “I’m OOOOOLD!” as I creak my way along. I need to lose weight for optimum health. I just need to make some fundamental changes in the way I live so that my body will learn to like me again.
Lessons From Harriet Carter — Part 2
And now for week 2 of The Series:
If you purchased all of the organizers and devices in the catalog, you would need an organizer to hold all of your organizers. It appears that the catalog itself is an organizer for exclamation points and photographs of sythetic materials.
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The squeals you hear from your friends after they come across your demonic pig tree feeder are squeals of “laughter”.
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There are uglier front door mats.
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Don’t stress out if little Timmy’s still not interested in using the potty. Let him start when he’s ready. It’s never too late for toilet training.
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Crafty people like vinyl that resembles lace. Non-crafty people like tablecloths that resemble cloth.
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I can eat as much as I want on Flag Day.
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The Last Thing Magoo Needs is More Camo
At Some Point Everyone Needs to Come Clean
There is really never a good time to clean the dining room floor or change my clothes or shower. There’s always another meal-tastrophy on the way, another boogie to be wiped on my shirt or another workout to be done.
If I clean the floor after breakfast, it will be filthy again by snack time so I should wait until after snack… and after lunch… and after dinner… but the kids will probably want breakfast tomorrow (jerks!) so what’s the point?
Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on exercise, cardio every day and strength training a few times a week. When I come home from the cardio workout, the kids are often up and needing me and it’s too late to shower. So I plan to do it during naps but if I don’t get my weights in, then I don’t want to shower if I’m just gonna get sweaty again but then it’s bedtime and why shower if I’m about to get up and workout? Blech!
I do shower regularly but the timing is tricky and I always look like a Sweaty McGreasy-head. I also can’t keep a shirt clean for more than 30 minutes. I should carry a stopwatch and my internet phone around and live-blog how long it takes for my shirt to get dirty. That’s bound to land me a book deal… of some kind. (Chicken Slop for the Spastic Mother’s Dirty Shirt? — Catchy, no?)
This morning Dan told me Magoo had woken up with a crazy-bad diaper so he’d had to hose him off riot-patrol style in the shower. Magoo’s grown accustomed to this, gets in the tub, grabs onto the towel bar, yells “SPREAD” and plants his feet insanely far apart with his back to the shower-head wielder. If he’s done the crime, he will serve his time with dignity and military precision.
Me: Did you have a yucky diaper this morning?
Magoo: Yess!
Me: Did Daddy spray you in the tubby?
Magoo: Yess!
Me: Are you all clean?
Magoo: No!
Me: Do you have a clean bum?
Magoo: Yess!
And it’s true. The rest of him is never clean. It is in fact the opposite of clean. And the clean bum is a fleeting and ironic triumph. Why is he only clean in places no one can see? Dirt and slime billow around him in a Pig-Pen-esque cloud and besmudge everything in a 30 yard blast radius. What was that? You’ve never seen slime billow? You should get out more. Probably with a 2-year-old.
The Things About Me
1. The cleanliness of my car in no way determines its ability to smell like poop. I could take a brand new car off the lot and if I put my kids inside, within 10 minutes the new car smell will be changed to something more… natural.
2. Every time I walk into my bedroom, an angel gets his wings. The tiny little metal pieces on my bedside lamp jiggle and tinkle as I walk across the floor and I smile.
3. I didn’t care much that Laylee’s bedroom door locked from the inside with a keyhole on the outside for which I had no key, until she locked it for the first time.
4. Shannon once told me that my northern accent gives me street cred.
5. Even if I didn’t want kids, I may have had them anyway just so I could drive in the HOV lane.
6. The first time Laylee had the stomach flu, I brought her a barf bucket and said, “If ye’re gonna spew, spew into this.” She was not amused.
7. Once I rented a video of housekeeping tips by Heloise. She can make her bed with her legs before she even gets out of it in the morning. Dan and I have been trying to master this skill for years. We call it “Heloising” the bed.
These random facts brought to you by Beth.
Lessons From Harriet Carter — Part 1
Dan and I love getting the Harriet Carter catalog and devour it like we’re reading the color funnies. But more than an entertaining page-turner, the Harriet Carter catalog is also an educational tool. The next 4 weekends, I will share some lessons we’ve learned from Harriet Carter that may enrich your lives as well.
Everything becomes more valuable if it’s As Seen on TV. I suppose that makes this website a “must-have”. Actually, maybe not. I think the item has to be As Seen on TV in a paid advertisement to be truly remarkable. I did not pay to be As Seen on the Today Show.
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Sticky-backed Velcro is the only hardware you should ever need for home improvement projects.
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You can write anything you want and it’s never a lie as long as you type it in quotes. I “ran” down the stairs this “morning,” ate some “nutritious” cereal and “sang hymns” to the kids as I made them “muffins” from “scratch”. “This” could come in handy.
The cure for hunch-back-itis is to stand up straight and wear a magnetic bra.
There is a special “AS SEEN ON TV” cleaner for every bodily fluid that may “spill” on your carpet, mattress or upholstery. If it comes with a free “stain detector” you can see exactly where all the “spills” are in your house or throw a rave.
Something Is Distressing Me
Laylee got out of bed the other night and told me, “I can’t sleep because there’s a noise in my room and it’s distressing me.”
She was truly distressed by the sound of the pipes creaking or the frogs chirping or possibly the sound of being alone. Although I don’t suffer from these same fears I, consider her feelings valid and I listen to her.
With my life experience has come the knowledge to fear other things. I only hope she will offer me the same courtesy so she can live to maturity relatively unharmed.
Read more about what’s been keeping me up at night and tell me your solution.
I Slept Through My Alarm
Dan and I have been going to occasional marriage therapy for the last year. It started with post partum Issues I was having and continues from time to time because it’s just so darn much fun to find a babysitter and sit in a room with Dan and a practical stranger who happens to be prodding us along to talk about our deepest feelings and most personal insecurities.
Sometimes we go in with troubles to talk about and sometimes we find things we’re troubled about because we’re sitting in a room talking about all the reasons we might be troubled and we think, “Hey! Didn’t you eat the last pack of pink YOGOS?!”
Yesterday was fun because I was being a brat. “I think it’s really insensitive that you didn’t notice me tossing and turning last night because you were asleep. I obviously need a new pillow and you did nothing about it.”
Dan got a funny look on his face and said, “I have a present for you out in the car.” Hmmm.
I guess I’ve talked about the Wonder Pillow at Costco one or fifty times in the last few months so Dan had purchased it for me and was hiding it away in the trunk of his car for the next occasion to present itself. Consider an occasion presented.
The therapist waved at us through the window as Dan pulled out the surprise. Point — husband.
It’s okay. I was a winner too. I got a good night’s sleep and during the session I made a wisecrack that caused our therapist to laugh so hard he almost stopped breathing. That has to count for something.
Oh, and I got to take Dan home with me and keep him. Mmmmmm.