The Housewife

                              
So, I quit my job. Which, let's face it - was not a big deal. I worked ONE day a week. Sometimes I would pick up extra during the week when my kids were at school. I did work one Saturday a month. I worked 32-40 hours a month. I would generally work every Sunday but it became an issue as I would never leave work on time, my husband's role at work changed, it was hard for us to ever do anything on the weekends as I would have to be up early on Sunday. It just wasn't working for us, so I prayed a lot about it and I ultimately felt like it would be best to take my Sundays back.

So I went from being employed to 8 hours a week to 0 hours a week. Not a huge adjustment. I haven't worked during the week in about 3 years. It's just easier. My husband has a job that is not flexible, he travels, he sometimes has to work weekends, he takes call after hours one week out of the month AND he's in school. He doesn't have time for any domestic work. He definitely helps where he can but as much as possible, I try to take the stress of off him.

I really don't feel like the term "stay at home mom" fits me because I don't take care of kids all day. I have a high schooler and middle schooler. I hate the term "housewife". I'm probably somewhere in-between stay-at-home-mom and housewife. I'm like the Director of Support Services. Or maybe I don't need a special term to make me feel important.

This weekend, I went to a wine party and the lady who was selling it was telling her story and she was talking about how she quit her job to stay home with her 4 kids and how she was so BORED and isolated. I thought- Bored?!?!?! How can you be bored with 4 kids and a husband? Literally just the meal making, laundry and driving around is a full time job.

I thought about this when I got up yesterday. People will ask me how I fill my time. Sometimes I give a snarky reply - I sing to my cat, take naps, play Candy Crush, drink wine and watch movies.....hahaha. That sounds AMAZING. No, most of my days look something like this- this was yesterday:

When the alarm goes off at 6:15 in the morning, my husband gets up to take a shower and get ready for work. I get up (no, just because I stay home DOES NOT mean that I sleep in), I make the bed, I feed the cat, I check the 12 year old and make sure she's up, I let the dog out. I brew coffee and I make breakfast. My hubby and I are modified-keto so I always make some kind of cooked eggs and a protein - so breakfast sausage, or bacon, or sliced avocado and a fruit. My youngest will get toast with hers. While breakfast is cooking - I make my husband lunch. Something healthy, balanced and packed with protein. I sit down and have breakfast with the two of them.

Then, is my relaxing time of the day. I sit on the couch for 25 minutes and drink my coffee and scroll through Facebook and read the news. Then at 7:40 - I get up and fix a hot breakfast for the high schooler. She loves herbal tea, so I'll brew a cup of tea and fix her lunch. A little less healthy than my husband's, but balanced. We leave at 8:10, I pick up 2 of her friends on the way, drop them off at the high school, get home shortly before 9.

As soon as I get home, I let the dog out again, I unloaded the dishwasher, I loaded the breakfast dishes, wiped down the counters, I threw a load of laundry in the washer, I cleaned out the litter box, I wiped down the bathroom sinks, I swept the downstairs. Then I had to do my grocery shopping. I stopped at the Dollar Store and picked up some last minute Halloween stuff, I had to run to Walmart and get some liquid stitch and sewing tape because I need to hem my daughter's dress for an event on Friday, then I went to the grocery store. I got home and unloaded everything. It was shortly after noon.

I fixed myself lunch, as I ate, I had eggs boiling on the stove and bratwurst in a skillet for my husband's lunch for the following day. I put away the groceries, and packed a snack for my daughter for gymnastics. I prepped a taco soup for dinner and put it in the slow cooker, I went upstairs and threw a load of laundry into the dryer, then went to take a shower.

I'm about to step in the shower and and my phone pops up that my oldest daughter is typing me in SNAPCHAT. Oh God. If my kids text me in the middle of the day, it usually means something is wrong.

KID: Momma. I think I'm having an allergic reaction. My lip is really swollen and itchy and burning.

Knowing that she has a flair for the dramatic, I ask her to text me a picture. She does, and sure enough, it looks like she is having an allergic reaction to something. I text her a barrage of questions: Do you know what triggered it? Did you use a new lip product, eat something new, get a bug bite? No. I'm trying to figure out how serious this is. Is she going to go into anaphalaxsis or is this just a contact reaction?

ME: Do you have any burning, tingling or swelling in your tongue and throat?
HER: I don't know.
              
My kids REFUSE to go to the nurse. They could text me a picture of their finger cut off and blood spurting out and they'd be like, "MOM! My finger got cut off. Will you come get me?"
And I'm like, "OH MY GOD! Your finger is cut off! Go to the nurse, call 911. Do something!" and they'll reply, "Nah, It's not that bad. I'll wait for you. Just come quick if you can." Drives me crazy.

So by my powers of deduction, I figure out she is not at immediate risk of dying. I take a quick shower, run to the store to pick up non-drowsy antihistamine, pick her up from school about an hour early, medicate her. Then, we went to drop off her band fee money, ran to the gas station to put gas in the car, picked up kid 2 from the middle school and dropped her off at gymnastics, looped back around to the high school to pick up her friend who was supposed to go to a band concert with us that evening.

We went home, I fixed dinner, fed the dog and cat. Kissed the husband when he walked through the door. Went upstairs and put the second load from the washer into the dryer. Then, we left and went to the concert. I love watching my daughter play her flute. It was great. Got home around 8:15 as my husband was walking through the door from picking up my youngest from gymnastics.

I heated up her dinner and loaded the dishes while she ate and we chatted about her evening. She showed me a bruise she got during practice and talked about school. She went upstairs to take a shower and I fixed cocktails for my husband and I and we lit a fire and sat on the back porch and talked about our day. It was a cool night and as often as possible we try to get porch time to re-connect. He told me about his day and we chatted about upcoming events. We played Celtic radio and just enjoyed our time.

We went in after half and hour, my youngest asked for some assistance with her homework so I sat down and did that. Then I went upstairs, took the second load from the dryer. I washed my face and brushed my teeth and crawled into bed around 10.

That is somewhat a typical day in my life. I generally have 5 hours of kid-free time during the day. Once a week I do the grocery shopping, once a week I mow the lawn and weed eat, one day a week I mop and do the bathrooms and wash all the linens....I always have extra things. This week I'm hemming a dress and throwing a Halloween party and today I made alterations to my daughter's Halloween costume while I sipped a cup of coffee and chatted with a good friend.

Someone always has a doctors appointment, or orthodontist appointment, or therapist appointment or an allergic reaction, sprained ankle, broken finger, the common cold....seriously this week is the first week NO ONE had some kind of medical appointment. But we have 2 next week.

Once a month I have lunch with my youngest daughter at the middle school. She picks the meal and the day. I volunteer here and there. I attend awards ceremonies and pay the bills and take the cars to have the oil changed, replace the tires and everything else.

I have a list of things to be done when I get to them- the baseboards in the dining room need to be repainted as does the mailbox post. There is some landscaping work to be done in my front yard and I need to re-screen our window screens, get rid of things in the garage. Those are the things that will get done one-by-one, when and if I have the time.

If I need time to myself, I take time. If it's been especially hectic I will schedule a massage or spend an hour in a bubble bath in the middle of the day or take a nap, or just lay on the couch and watch a movie, have breakfast or coffee with friends.  It's not often- not weekly but I do it if I need to. And I don't feel ONE OUNCE of guilt.

Am I bored? No. Never. Am I busy? Sure. But I can't complain because working parents have to do EVERYTHING that I do ON TOP of working a full time job. I know that my life is not hard AT ALL. I know that it is a HUGE luxury to be able to stay home and support my family and spend time with my kids. I feel gratitude every day.

I have been a full time working parent and it is HARD. I never did it well. I could never achieve the work-life balance that I desired. I always felt like I was falling short in every area of my life. As women, we are supposed to "lean in" to our jobs but also be there for our kids and make sure we spend quality time with them, and cook nutritious meals, and keep a clean house, and work out, and get 8 hours of sleep, and f*ck our husbands multiple times a week, and maintain relationships for friends and family and be happy and put together. Is this what it means to "have it all"? It's a damn trap is what it is.

I'll never forget when I was working full time for the State and I picked up my kids from aftercare at 5:15 in the evening. I had forgotten to pull something out of the freezer for dinner so I stopped somewhere to grab dinner on the way home. I walked through the front door and the breakfast dishes were still on the table, my floors were filthy, my bed was unmade, there was mold growing in the corner of my shower, dust was on every surface, there was a pile of laundry in the hallway. I was so behind on the housework, so tired, I hadn't spent quality time with my husband in weeks, what I really wanted to do was just hang out with my kids. I was failing. I was tired of resenting my husband for not helping more. I had a breakdown.

"We are paying someone to clean the house once a week!" I declared to my husband. I needed that for my sanity. He didn't argue with me. He completely agreed. He could see my struggle. So how did I do it all when I was working full time? I didn't. I paid someone to clean my house once a week, I paid someone to watch my kids, I paid someone to mow my lawn and I spent almost as much as my mortgage eating out. I SUCK at managing my life. I was tired. I could not do it all.

When the kids were sick it was the worst. It'd be a random Thursday and we'd get up and get ready for work and one of the kids would wake up with a fever. It usually went something like this:

Me: Kid 1 has a 101 fever. One of us is going to need to stay home with her.
Husband: Well, I can't because I'm leading the team meeting this afternoon.
Me: Well, I have a speaking engagement at a conference in Columbia. I cannot no-show to it.
Husband: Uggggh. I'll reschedule my meeting but I CANNOT miss two days in a row. You have to take off tomorrow.
Me: Okay.

There would be arguments about who's job was more important that the others. Sometimes we would both take a half day so that we didn't miss a whole day. We were lucky-  we've always had paid time off but a lot of parents don't. It was difficult during those years.

The world is not designed for working parents. Everything is during the day. Awards ceremonies, school events. Kids bring home field trip permission slips a week before. Guess what- if you're a nurse you have to have your schedule approved a month in advance. There is no chaperoning your kid's field trips. Your kid wants to do an after school activity? They need to be picked up. My kids both did chorus in elementary school and needed to be picked up at 3 pm. My husband took his lunch at 3 pm to pick up the kids so they could participate. My youngest needs to be at gymnastics at 4 pm everyday. Many working parents cannot do this. Many working parents have to say "no" to activities that their kids might enjoy or might enrich them because it just does not work with their schedule. Working parents get f*cked all the time.

I've always been fortunate to work jobs where I had flexibility. Even when I had a job where I traveled, I worked from home 50% of the time and I could make my own schedule. I was fortunate that I never had to miss anything. I volunteered a lot and we made huge sacrifices to make sure we spent enough quality time with them. It was SO HARD. I was SO TIRED.

When I got laid off from my job 4 years ago, I took a year off from work to re-charge. It was great. I had a clean house. I spent a LOT of time with the kids. Every Monday I volunteered in my daughter's 3rd grade classroom. It was a time of recovery and rediscovery and I was fortunate to be able to have that time. After a year I went back to work in outside sales and marketing. I was fortunate to have flexibility but it became difficult again. As my oldest daughter began to navigate the tumultuous world of middle school it became clear to both of us that I needed to dedicate my time to the family. Plus, my husband's role changed at work and it involved more travel. "The kids need you here," he said to me. He was right.

I've been fortunate that every time I've ever lost or left a job it's been in combination of a job change or some sort of promotion for my husband. I have always felt strongly that God will provide and he has.

So, here I am again. I feel good about it. Last week I had a lunch date with my husband and we were chatting about me quitting my job and he reminded me, "It's just a few years." He is right. These are the last years with them before they become adults. It is an important time. I could not ask for a better man. He truly values me and he tells me all the time, "You do too much." If the kids ever say anything about me not working or just working 1 day a week he'll chime in and say, "Your mom works just as hard as me." If I mention that I'm spending all his money he reminds me, "It's OUR money."

People will ask if he gives me money and I laugh. There is no allowance. We always pool our money regardless of what my employment status is, always have. Even when we were in high school. We budget together and it's not an issue. Not that it matters, after the bills are paid, all the rest basically goes to the kids.

So, right now I am only a mom. That doesn't mean that I think that a woman's role is in the home. If she feels strongly that her role is in the home- then she should be there. If a woman feels like her role is in the workplace then she should be there. Having the option is a huge privilege. Many women don't have a choice one way or the other.

People need to do what works best for them. As my kids needs have changed we have adjusted our lifestyles to those needs. In 2 years, when my youngest is in high school and my oldest is driving - maybe I'll go back to work. Maybe I'll go back when my husband is done school. Maybe I'll wait until my youngest graduates. Maybe I'll work from home. Maybe I'll write a book. I don't know what the future holds but I do know that it is bright and that the universe is full of abundance and that I won't regret the time I've spent with my children.

And to the working parents out there- just know you are doing the best that you can, don't beat yourself up if you miss awards, know that it's okay to use paper plates and to let the clothes live in the dryer, y'all are the true MVPs and you have my utmost respect.