And I ask myself, “Where did they all go?”
About Me
We’ve Taught Her Well, Just Not By Example
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.
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.
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.
Redesigning Cars in My Spare Time
When I’m not pondering the great questions of the universe like whether to risk getting peanut butter in the jam jar or jam in the peanut butter jar when using one knife to prepare a sandwich, I like to invent things or come up with ways to improve on things that have already been invented.
This week I’ve been thinking about cars. I have two major beefs with Vinny that I think could be remedied in the 2008 Toyota Sienna. Heck, I’d buy a 90’s model Astro if it came with this first feature.
1. Short Pointless Errand Child Care Device (SPECCD) — I came up with this device last Thursday as I was running short pointless errands with my way-past-naptime kids drifting in and out of consciousness in the back seat. Every 3.5 minutes, I would have to stop, take them out of their car seats, corral them into a store or post office, complete a 2 minute task, gather them once more, strap them back in, wait for them to fall asleep and then take them out again for another quick stop. Laylee begged with actual words to be left in the car. Magoo just gave me that look that says, “I don’t know how but at some point in my teenage years I will make you pay for this day of torture and humiliation” and then he bawled like a 2-year-old.
What they don’t realize is that I’d like nothing better than to leave them in the car if I had any assurance that they wouldn’t be kidnapped or nuked to death in the hot summer sun.
There has got to be a way to equip a car with a built in babysitter, possibly a “bot” or “cyborg” of some kind. If it was a kind, nanny-type of cyborg, you could leave it in the car with the kids and a sawed-off shotgun. If it was more of the turn-on-its-master-and-take-over-the-world variety, you could give it your credit card and let it pick up the cilantro for you while you snoozed in the car with the kids. The possibilities are endless.
2. Silent Automatic Locks — I am a door locker. Much to Dan’s chagrin I lock doors constantly, keeping out thieves, solicitors, bad guys of all kinds, and sometimes Dan or myself. But at least the kids are safe… alone… in the house with all the knives and nonorganic shampoos.
I’m pretty serious about this, even in the car but sometimes I forget. Then frequently as I’m driving around, a vagrant, hooliganite-ish teenager, or traveling street performer will walk or unicycle up beside my car and my hand will jump to the automatic lock button. Then comes my dilemma. Do I trigger the loud lock, letting the person know I’m locking them out because I think they look creepy or do I leave us unprotected to save their tender and possibly psychotic feelings?
I tend to think that most people who look creepy already know they look creepy and the last thing their self-esteem needs is for me to rub salt in their wounded egos by giving them the you’re-creepy-door-locking signal.
Tell me. If you’re reading this and you are creepy, do you know you’re creepy? I suspect you do so wouldn’t it just hurt your feelings if someone locked the door whenever you came around? You could be harmlessly creepy. Maybe you just have really bad teeth, large nazi tattoos and a sweet spirit. Who am I to judge?
It’s like someone running away and hiding their infant under a blanket when I come near because they know I’m baby hungry. Maybe I am, and I know I am but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna eat your child. You should just keep one arm over the child for protection, then snatch and lock them up when I get far enough away that I won’t notice.
So for now that’s what I do. I keep one finger on the trigger as they walk by and when I think they’re far enough away (this distance varies based on their apparent hearing loss or iPod volume) before giving them the big creepy repellent click.
I would not have this problem if my locks were silent.
What features would you add?
the reasons: Band-Aids, sun in the Pacific Northwest, reconciliations, samples at Costco
Monday Business
Erin and I have booked our flights and rooms for BlogHer. Some other fun people will likely be joining us. I’m already taking notes on what I want to learn and picking out shoes. Are you going? Would you like to go? The women at Mommybloggers are generously paying for someone’s conference pass and entry is easy this year. The deadline is Friday May 18th so go check it out if you’d like to share a Diet Sprite poolside with me this July in Chicago.
Some kind and obviously blind people have nominated me for a couple of Blogger’s Choice Awards. I’m only about 3 billion votes behind the other nominees so if you’d like to help soften my defeat, vote away. If I get at least 3 total votes, I will likely write a quality blog post sometime this month in your honor.
Dan Shoulders My Heavy Load
So normally I’m the one who does all the blogging in the family. Not only do I blog whenever I feel like it on this site but I also blog once a week at parenting.com. Dan skips off to work his 40-60 hours at MegaCorp and I’m left to do all the blogging on my own.
This week in honor of Mother’s Day the boys are trying their hand at MommyBlogging so we can all have a much deserved break. Please head over and read Dan’s fabulous post and show him the love… in a platonic, supportive-geeky-internet-friend-of-his-wife sort of way.
Just Take a Plate of Cookies
Note to self: When meeting the new people next door, say something innocuous like, “Welcome” or “Cute kid you got there.”
Do not compliment them in detail on their bold new kitchen décor… in their kitchen you cannot see from the front door… in their house that you’ve never set foot in.
When speaking to a stranger you hope to become friends with, it’s never a good idea to begin a sentence with the words, “Not that I was looking in your windows, but when I was looking in your windows I noticed…”
Awkward.