Transitioning from having a 9-to-5 job (or, more typically, a 7:30-to-4:30 job) to being a Housewife has been one of the hardest adjustments I've been through. As I've noted, this was at first a temporary assignment, which was how I talked myself into it. But as its become more and more permanent, I can't keep claiming I'm going back to work "in a few months."
Outlining the tasks.
My new coping mechanism has been to think of Housewife as an occupation. In my prior occupation, I used to have certain days I paid the bills and days that I ordered supplies; times of the day that I opened mail and that I devoted to making phone calls; days of the month that I reconciled accounts and that I ran payroll. So it's relatively unsurprising, I suppose, that I started organizing Housewifing the same way. I have laundry days, vacuum days, shopping days, bill-paying days. There's school drop-off time and pick-up time, dinner time, and now even writing time. This all makes it more palatable for me and lets me feel like I accomplish things. Without setting times and days for tasks, Housewife really tends to feel like a never-ending slog.
It's especially hard because there is no leaving work at work when you're a Housewife. You never get to walk out the door and drive home, leaving your pile of unfinished tasks behind. Nope, if you don't wash the dishes, they sit right on the counter and stare you in the face until you clean 'em. (And as soon as you do, another one pops up - it's like playing Whack-a-Mole - but that's another subject entirely).
So setting specific times for tasks - that keeps me sane.
But whose turn is it to do those dishes?
Before taking on the Housewife job, the Husband and I split a lot of responsibilities (and argued about them). I insisted that being Housewife made me Boss of the House, which everyone agreed to in the household. This means that pretty much every aspect of taking care of the house and kids is my responsibility, which is a bit of a hard pill to swallow some days. The upside of this is that I can assign tasks to the Husband (which, to his credit, he almost always accepts). Before, I saw this as getting the short end of the stick. Now, I choose to think of it as part of the job. The Husband makes the money; I make sure we have toilet paper. We're both contributing to having a nice life.
But all that responsibility, and the sheer quantity of tasks that need doing every day, can be exhausting.
All Housewives deserve some vacation time.
I realized I had succeeded at making Housewife my occupation when I was preparing to leave town to visit my parents last week. Just like I would do with any job, I moved some of my scheduled tasks around so that the important things were done ahead of time (in this case: laundry). And I knew there'd be some catching up to do when I returned (vacuuming). But for three days, I was Off The Clock! No laundry, no dishwashing, no breakfast-making, no planning dinners, no grocery shopping, no school pickup or drop off. (It was fabulous, by the way.)
It was during this vacation-prep time that I really felt I was succeeding at Housewifing.
Is Housewife a 9-to-5 job? No. It's usually more of a 7:30-to-8:30 deal. But it is a job, and I do think it "counts" as such. It takes a little time to get used to, but there are ways to grow through it, just like any position I've had.
So, when it came time to fill out my passport application, I didn't even have to think about what to put in the Occupation box...I wrote:
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Monday, February 8, 2016
Snow days are not for the weak
I try not to blog about my children directly (even though they are the reason for my being a housewife) but they are, in fact the central point of our household, around which everything revolves.
First Example: Furniture
Our current couch was chosen when we had one child. I wanted something nice looking, but functional. The husband is allergic to life itself, so we were limited to leather. We got this gorgeous curved couch. The three of us fit on it perfectly. Enter Thing 2: we still fit on the couch. However, as Thing 1 and Thing 2 have grown, and now with the arrival of the Baby, it's become clear a three-cushion couch is not enough for a family of five.
We are receiving a sizeable tax refund - due almost entirely to the Baby - and so we went shopping for a new couch. A couch that fits five. Without the children, we'd be looking for two chairs, which would fit in our house a lot better. Or we could get one of those couches with a cup holder console. I love the idea of a cup holder console, as I am never without a beverage, but it's just not practical when you're trying to fit five people onto a relatively small piece of furniture.
Perhaps I can designate Thing 1 as my own personal cup holder.
Second Example: Snow
Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a snow day on Friday. That's all cool, right? Three day weekend. Send them out to play in the snow. Good times.
Sunday night, I got the call that today would be another snow day. Four day weekend? Not cool. After three days, I was so ready to send them back to school and get the laundry done (half of which is the children's). Dashed are my hopes of doing any book-editing. Gone is the possibility of a blog post about my excitement to rearrange the furniture!
Instead, it's 4 pm and I've spent the day negotiating disputes and attempting to get the Baby to nap, unsuccessfully. I've picked up dozens of Thing 1's tissues and hung up wet snow clothes twice. The laundry is only half done. Anyone who has spent four days wrangling three or more children ... join me when I help myself to a heavy pour of wine in an hour (counting the minutes). And those of you who work in daycare, God bless you.
If this post is less than stellar, I apologize. I am writing it while playing napkin tag with the Baby.
Next week is School Vacation Week. I will be MIA, buried in snot, arrowroot cookies, and nutella. See you on the other side, when I reemerge with my sanity shredded.
-A Real Housewife of the (Snowy) North Shore
First Example: Furniture
Our current couch was chosen when we had one child. I wanted something nice looking, but functional. The husband is allergic to life itself, so we were limited to leather. We got this gorgeous curved couch. The three of us fit on it perfectly. Enter Thing 2: we still fit on the couch. However, as Thing 1 and Thing 2 have grown, and now with the arrival of the Baby, it's become clear a three-cushion couch is not enough for a family of five.
We are receiving a sizeable tax refund - due almost entirely to the Baby - and so we went shopping for a new couch. A couch that fits five. Without the children, we'd be looking for two chairs, which would fit in our house a lot better. Or we could get one of those couches with a cup holder console. I love the idea of a cup holder console, as I am never without a beverage, but it's just not practical when you're trying to fit five people onto a relatively small piece of furniture.
Perhaps I can designate Thing 1 as my own personal cup holder.
Second Example: Snow
Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a snow day on Friday. That's all cool, right? Three day weekend. Send them out to play in the snow. Good times.
Sunday night, I got the call that today would be another snow day. Four day weekend? Not cool. After three days, I was so ready to send them back to school and get the laundry done (half of which is the children's). Dashed are my hopes of doing any book-editing. Gone is the possibility of a blog post about my excitement to rearrange the furniture!
Instead, it's 4 pm and I've spent the day negotiating disputes and attempting to get the Baby to nap, unsuccessfully. I've picked up dozens of Thing 1's tissues and hung up wet snow clothes twice. The laundry is only half done. Anyone who has spent four days wrangling three or more children ... join me when I help myself to a heavy pour of wine in an hour (counting the minutes). And those of you who work in daycare, God bless you.
If this post is less than stellar, I apologize. I am writing it while playing napkin tag with the Baby.
Next week is School Vacation Week. I will be MIA, buried in snot, arrowroot cookies, and nutella. See you on the other side, when I reemerge with my sanity shredded.
-A Real Housewife of the (Snowy) North Shore
Friday, January 29, 2016
Hostessing!
I'm putting on my Hostess hat this week!
Full disclosure: I am an awkward human being. I am bad at hugs. I don't know what to do with my arms when I dance. I smile when I get nervous, which goes over poorly when I try to express sympathy. And we never hosted much when I was growing up, so it's not in my blood.
But I really like hosting things, regardless of all this. And this week we're having people over to dinner THREE times!
Which is great, except that my house is pretty much always like this:
So whenever we have someone over, I have to spend hours finding homes for all the clutter. It's exhausting, mentally more than physically, because I am also a bit of a hoarder. And today I just don't have that mental energy.
Don't go in the basement
For your own safety. The cat reigns down there, so it's all danderiffic, and there are a lot of shifty piles on the verge of collapse. And spider webs. We had a spider population, but they were all eaten by the house centipedes, so now just their webs are left.
Also, I'm totally about to hide the clutter down there, so please just stay upstairs if you visit and we can have coffee and wine and pretend that we have it all together.
It's going to be a wonderful time!
I dusted, I'm about to throw food in the crock pot, and I have three kinds of seltzer. We have a bar full of liquor - even if the bar is on an old desk. Roomba is vacuuming for me. I even cleaned the coffee table. There may be beard bits in the bathroom, but that is totally the Husband's fault, and I can never seem to clean them all up by the time he shaves again. We have multi-grain Tostitos because we are so hip (and the kids like them better).
But mostly, it's about good company
And after hanging out with a baby and Thing 1 and Thing 2 for days on end, it's super fabulous to have adult conversation! Come, join me, and see what it's like wine-and-dining with
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
Full disclosure: I am an awkward human being. I am bad at hugs. I don't know what to do with my arms when I dance. I smile when I get nervous, which goes over poorly when I try to express sympathy. And we never hosted much when I was growing up, so it's not in my blood.
But I really like hosting things, regardless of all this. And this week we're having people over to dinner THREE times!
Which is great, except that my house is pretty much always like this:
 |
| I just now noticed the cat in this photo. And yes, he's pretty much always like that. |
Don't go in the basement
For your own safety. The cat reigns down there, so it's all danderiffic, and there are a lot of shifty piles on the verge of collapse. And spider webs. We had a spider population, but they were all eaten by the house centipedes, so now just their webs are left.
Also, I'm totally about to hide the clutter down there, so please just stay upstairs if you visit and we can have coffee and wine and pretend that we have it all together.
It's going to be a wonderful time!
I dusted, I'm about to throw food in the crock pot, and I have three kinds of seltzer. We have a bar full of liquor - even if the bar is on an old desk. Roomba is vacuuming for me. I even cleaned the coffee table. There may be beard bits in the bathroom, but that is totally the Husband's fault, and I can never seem to clean them all up by the time he shaves again. We have multi-grain Tostitos because we are so hip (and the kids like them better).
But mostly, it's about good company
And after hanging out with a baby and Thing 1 and Thing 2 for days on end, it's super fabulous to have adult conversation! Come, join me, and see what it's like wine-and-dining with
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Fiona and I
Winter has officially arrived, with weekly snowfalls and frigid temperatures. It's one of the features of New England. And despite the fact that my car, Tres, performs only marginally better in the slick weather than my Ford Mustang did (before I totaled it in a way-too-dramatic fashion during a snowstorm), winter is a feature of New England that I enjoy. And by enjoy, I mean enjoy the New England way - that "I'll complain about it frequently but you'll never catch me moving to California" way.
The New England Way!
Winter is like a battle to win each year; something to come out of the other side of comparing chilblains and sore muscles from shoveling and swapping tales of how high the snow was and supermarket skirmishes for the last bag of ice melt in the store. Last year, we all got to share our tales of woe about ice dams and leaking roofs, and my lesser-used pots found a use collecting the interior rainfall.
Hopefully that aspect of winter stays in the past...
But this year has already reunited me with my now-familiar acquaintance, who I finally decided to name. She is Fiona, and she's a 60-year-old broad who lives in my basement. She's been here as long as the house itself, and she's growly and temperamental, an artifact of a bygone era who plans to live forever. And I'm cool with all of this, because she keeps us warm.
What's the name of your heating system?
Yes, Fiona is our furnace - or, more accurately, our boiler. She runs on oil and a measure of determination and is simple enough for even me to understand the basics of. She's got dials that do things and dials that have stopped working and sit there unused. The real secret of Fiona seems to be knowing which dials to trust. Last winter, we had ongoing issues with Fiona that the service team could not seem to figure out. Every time they came to the house, the heat worked fine. They'd leave, and Fiona would refuse to kick herself into gear. So during this time, I spent countless hours hauling my pregnant butt up and down the basement stairs, trying to figure out what Fiona SHOULD be doing, and whether or not she was actually doing it, and if not, why not... and never resolving the issue.
During our plumbing adventure this fall, my father located a broken wire that he fixed, and that seems to have resolved at least one of Fiona's issues. She now fires up reliably. But every month or two, she hums new tunes, quite literally. This month she switched to a new one quite suddenly, which caused me to run up and down the stairs several times to check on her, but she seems to be doing just fine. The husband thinks I am insane, so it's okay if you think that, too.
Just keepin' on
Now that winter's arrived, Fiona and I are trying to kick it into high gear inside the house. I cleaned my desk and the junk drawer. Fiona got a new tune and kept the house toasty despite the single-digit temperatures. We're tight, because it's just us two girls during the day...
I might need to get out more, but it's just so cold. If you want to brave the cold, you can come visit us; if Tres and I aren't running taxi service for Thing 1, Thing 2 or the Baby, I'll be here keeping Fiona company. I think she gets lonely down there in the basement.
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
The New England Way!
Winter is like a battle to win each year; something to come out of the other side of comparing chilblains and sore muscles from shoveling and swapping tales of how high the snow was and supermarket skirmishes for the last bag of ice melt in the store. Last year, we all got to share our tales of woe about ice dams and leaking roofs, and my lesser-used pots found a use collecting the interior rainfall.
Hopefully that aspect of winter stays in the past...
But this year has already reunited me with my now-familiar acquaintance, who I finally decided to name. She is Fiona, and she's a 60-year-old broad who lives in my basement. She's been here as long as the house itself, and she's growly and temperamental, an artifact of a bygone era who plans to live forever. And I'm cool with all of this, because she keeps us warm.
What's the name of your heating system?
Yes, Fiona is our furnace - or, more accurately, our boiler. She runs on oil and a measure of determination and is simple enough for even me to understand the basics of. She's got dials that do things and dials that have stopped working and sit there unused. The real secret of Fiona seems to be knowing which dials to trust. Last winter, we had ongoing issues with Fiona that the service team could not seem to figure out. Every time they came to the house, the heat worked fine. They'd leave, and Fiona would refuse to kick herself into gear. So during this time, I spent countless hours hauling my pregnant butt up and down the basement stairs, trying to figure out what Fiona SHOULD be doing, and whether or not she was actually doing it, and if not, why not... and never resolving the issue.
 |
| Fiona, doing what she does best. |
Just keepin' on
Now that winter's arrived, Fiona and I are trying to kick it into high gear inside the house. I cleaned my desk and the junk drawer. Fiona got a new tune and kept the house toasty despite the single-digit temperatures. We're tight, because it's just us two girls during the day...
I might need to get out more, but it's just so cold. If you want to brave the cold, you can come visit us; if Tres and I aren't running taxi service for Thing 1, Thing 2 or the Baby, I'll be here keeping Fiona company. I think she gets lonely down there in the basement.
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
Monday, January 11, 2016
Post-Holiday Funk
Full disclosure: I am writing this post while drinking my coffee so that I can bravely tackle the Christmas lights next. Every year it's the same; the lights come down and they sit forlornly on my kitchen floor for days (sometimes weeks) until I get it together enough to carefully roll them up and put them away.
Part of the problem is that I insist on putting them away in their original boxes. I've debated ending this practice, but that's just pushing the chaos of tangled wires to November, and I try to keep the Hanging of Lights Fun to a maximum. So every January 'tis the season for re-packaging hundreds of lights...
I think this is why people make New Year's resolutions. They're like mental coffee, spurring you into action in the dark days of winter when all you really want to do is curl up in front of a toasty fire with a blanket and slippers and sip something that warms you up from the inside. (Maybe this is just a Northeast Thing? I don't know if the same sentiment rings true if you live in Arizona.)
The gingerbread's been eaten, the lights are down - if not away - and the carols have all been wrung out of us. I somehow let New Year's slip by without making a resolution, and now I just feel purposeless. I've managed to be just good enough at being a Housewife that I can't dismiss continuing on in this fashion as an option. I don't really want to add daycare, after school care, and a 9-5 to my daily repertoire. But I also can't see myself being a Housewife for the next couple years, so it's going to have to happen at some point. Is it time to find a job, or do I refocus on writing, like I did in November? Can we afford to continue to have me stay at home?
For now, I'll resolve to write at least one post a week. Unless I get that job, because then I won't be "just"
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
 |
| Insert lame joke about how they're hanging over my head here |
I think this is why people make New Year's resolutions. They're like mental coffee, spurring you into action in the dark days of winter when all you really want to do is curl up in front of a toasty fire with a blanket and slippers and sip something that warms you up from the inside. (Maybe this is just a Northeast Thing? I don't know if the same sentiment rings true if you live in Arizona.)
The gingerbread's been eaten, the lights are down - if not away - and the carols have all been wrung out of us. I somehow let New Year's slip by without making a resolution, and now I just feel purposeless. I've managed to be just good enough at being a Housewife that I can't dismiss continuing on in this fashion as an option. I don't really want to add daycare, after school care, and a 9-5 to my daily repertoire. But I also can't see myself being a Housewife for the next couple years, so it's going to have to happen at some point. Is it time to find a job, or do I refocus on writing, like I did in November? Can we afford to continue to have me stay at home?
For now, I'll resolve to write at least one post a week. Unless I get that job, because then I won't be "just"
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
Monday, December 7, 2015
Finding Inspiration
As my struggle with mediocrity continues, I did have an inspirational moment last week that spurred me to continue my housewife journey less grudgingly.
Thing 1 had to learn about our family history for a girl scout badge, so I pulled out the research that The Husband conducted several years ago to share with her. The most fascinating things are the old handwritten census documents, offering once-every-10-years snapshots into the lives of our predecessors. Reviewing the cold, faceless facts that someone took time to scribe 100+ years ago is a reminder of how good we really have it today.
Take my ancestor Max, a "Day laborer" with a plethora of children to support. His wife, Anna, who after caring for a multitude of her children and keeping house for years, wound up widowed and keeping someone else's house, as well. I can guarantee that no matter how good they ever had it, she never found herself sitting at her tablet at 11:30 in the morning, sipping coffee while the baby napped, listening to the radio and writing her musings on life down to share.
I've been wondering, off and on, how these women did it, even 50 years ago. I don't think that my subpar cooking skills or beginner's knitting skills would really be any better back then. And yet, through no merit of my own, I have a thousand more opportunities every day. Opportunities that can be spent any number of ways that were completely inaccessible to my ancestors.
[Oh, and I did finish that novel draft. I literally did a song-and-dance routine around the house once I hit 50,000 words, put The End, and submitted it. 2016 might be the Year of Novel Editing!]
Onwards and upwards!
A slightly preachy-
Real Housewife of the North Shore
Thing 1 had to learn about our family history for a girl scout badge, so I pulled out the research that The Husband conducted several years ago to share with her. The most fascinating things are the old handwritten census documents, offering once-every-10-years snapshots into the lives of our predecessors. Reviewing the cold, faceless facts that someone took time to scribe 100+ years ago is a reminder of how good we really have it today.
Take my ancestor Max, a "Day laborer" with a plethora of children to support. His wife, Anna, who after caring for a multitude of her children and keeping house for years, wound up widowed and keeping someone else's house, as well. I can guarantee that no matter how good they ever had it, she never found herself sitting at her tablet at 11:30 in the morning, sipping coffee while the baby napped, listening to the radio and writing her musings on life down to share.
I've been wondering, off and on, how these women did it, even 50 years ago. I don't think that my subpar cooking skills or beginner's knitting skills would really be any better back then. And yet, through no merit of my own, I have a thousand more opportunities every day. Opportunities that can be spent any number of ways that were completely inaccessible to my ancestors.
[Oh, and I did finish that novel draft. I literally did a song-and-dance routine around the house once I hit 50,000 words, put The End, and submitted it. 2016 might be the Year of Novel Editing!]
Onwards and upwards!
A slightly preachy-
Real Housewife of the North Shore
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Unfinished Business
I'm going on a brief hiatus as I am attempting to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year (National Novel Writing Month). Last year, I wrote a story that only made it to 30,000 words; I am hoping to both finish my novel AND hit 50,000 words this year. This is infinitely harder with a 6-month-old, even though I'm not working (outside of the house) like I was last year.
There will be a lot of unfinished business this month as a result, including the stocking I was supposed to knit (half a toe done); cleaning the basement (may never get around to that one); and field trip planning (7 down, 5 to go). Somehow I do have to plan a birthday party for Thing 1 so I don't lose my parenting status.
It is hard to let things pile up after making some real headway the last couple months on things I've let slide for years. And thanks to the holidays, I know that it's going to be insane around here until January. Trying to wear ALL THE HATS, when I'm just
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
There will be a lot of unfinished business this month as a result, including the stocking I was supposed to knit (half a toe done); cleaning the basement (may never get around to that one); and field trip planning (7 down, 5 to go). Somehow I do have to plan a birthday party for Thing 1 so I don't lose my parenting status.
It is hard to let things pile up after making some real headway the last couple months on things I've let slide for years. And thanks to the holidays, I know that it's going to be insane around here until January. Trying to wear ALL THE HATS, when I'm just
-A Real Housewife of the North Shore
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)