Even Susie Homemaker Needs To Sit On Her Butt.
It’s has been a few weeks of rest and relaxation. I’ve had my feet up on the couch, fireplace roaring beside me with a book in one hand and a green tea latte with a shot of vanilla in the other. I mean it was winter break with three kids and a husband at home.
I mean there everyone was playing with their new toys (even my husband), getting up earlier than normal because “they wanted too” (these people can’t be related to me) and doing what they wanted and when. Buuuttttt….. I didn’t put in my DA31 (Army “vacation” form). So technically I still had to work. Unless, they all wanted to walk around in their pjs all day (like grandma convinced them too). However, at some point we needed to leave the house to make sure no neighbors where suspecting us of keeping our kids trapped inside. Let me tell you, if you knew our kids, it would be the other way around.
Instead of sitting down in between loads of laundry or singing profanities while scrubbing toilets; I felt like I needed to play Susie Homemaker in secret.
So why during the time spent purposefully together as a family; did I feel the need to hide cleaning and doing my job as a wife and mother? Was a ashamed? Was I jealous that I still had to work? I’m not quite sure.
Whatever the reason is behind my feelings; what upsets me more was the fact I cared so much about what my family saw of me that I felt like I needed to hide it. Why do I care? I don’t care about crap like that.
But then maybe it’s not that I don’t want them to see how much I’m working; it’s I don’t want them to realize how much I don’t.
Our society jokes about house wives sitting on the couch eating Bon Bons and watching tv all day. I don’t want my family to realize that’s basically what I do.
I was a smart young mom. I trained my kids early on how to clean a bathroom, empty the dishwasher and small trash cans. It’s teaching them matching skills and how to follow directions. It also taught them not all cleaning chores are for girls only. Or that boys are the only ones who can take the trash out.
So now I have three able body helpers. They have evolved into emptying the clean dishes and loading up the dirty and unsupervised bathroom scrubbing. The youngest is leaning laundry and the older two are learning about taking initiative (although that’s going to take many years).
So you see, I can’t defend the statement that I sit home all day doing nothing. I guess nothing is an understatement. I don’t do nothing. I do “things”. Just not all those “things” are homemaker related.