My daughter came home from school yesterday out-of-sorts and frazzled and said, “I want to be a stay at home kid!”
Yes, 5th grade sucks. But aside from that, apparently I’ve been making this stay at home mom gig look like good times. But it’s hard work.
Please don’t misunderstand me; It’s not the kind of hard work that you might do in order to close down a failing, unionized manufacturing plant (been there, done that) nor is it the kind of work you might do to create a business case in order to convince your company to move into a multi-million dollar market (been there, done THAT too). But I digress. Being a stay at home mom is hard work… in its own way.
Take this morning for example. I baked cookies AND cleaned bathrooms. Simultaneously! And all without giving the family a bad case of E.coli poisoning (I hope) while a seasonal craft project waited in the wings calling my name.
BTW – it turns out there’s a methodology to the bathroom cleaning thing. You clean the toilets LAST! D’ohhhhh!!! You were waiting for me to figure that out on my own instead of telling me, weren’t you? I’m aware of this weird stay at home mom initiation thing I’ve been going through. But I’m on to you and hazing is against the rules and I’ve already informed the pledge master so it better not happen again.
When the bathroom cleaning efforts are TIMED, the whole thing goes much quicker. I’m from the switch-the-cookie-pan-on-the-top-oven-rack-to-the-bottom-every-five-minutes (-and-vice-versa) school of thought. This allows the cookies to cook evenly and prevents burning on the bottom of the cookies that have been left on the lower rack for the full 10 minutes of cooking time. More importantly, it allows me five minutes only to accomplish some key segment of the bathroom cleaning process before have to pull off my gloves, wash my hands and switch the cookie pans. [don’t worry, I saved the toilet cleaning for AFTER the cookies were all done.]
Also, the craft project is halfway done but the Halloween season is upon us and time is ticking. In case you think I jest about this morning’s activities – I’ve included pics of same for your viewing pleasure (below).
And talk about hard! Wading through the thick cloud of silence that hangs heavy in the house once everyone leaves for the day really drains you. But I’ve been playing more 80’s music lately to combat that. Turns out you can’t really hear much of it though over the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Or the dishwasher. Or the zippers on the sweatshirts clanking around in the dryer.
See what I mean? Hard work.