I’m determined not to sound whiny – especially after Hubby’s comment about some of my Dilemma Diary posts – but really, working part-time is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great when your home life is going swimmingly and you don’t have deadlines falling all around you, but quite the opposite when you have sick kids, a sick nanny, a sick husband work deadlines right and left.
As a rule, childcare is short on the days you’re supposed to be home and not working (but need to be) and the days you’ve designated for the office are cut short by this or that from the home front. As a mom, you’re the one (at least I am) who has to leave later in the morning and take care of the kids before work and the one who has to come home early to let the nanny go and take care of the kids before bed.
Plus, if you’re as lucky as I am to have a daughter who loves you so much that she won’t let her Daddy put her to bed on nights you want a break (read with sarcasm), you can’t log on to continue your work until 9 p.m. And if you do manage to do so, you’ll be in bed at midnight, only to be woken up periodically by screaming children, and then struggle to fall asleep for an hour and wake up at some obscene hour to start the same day over again. Forget just being more tired than the previous day (when you thought you couldn’t possibly get more tired) – try being infinitely more in the hole at work and infinitely worse at the doomed, desperate scramble to get out.
Yes, in the scheme of life, it ain’t so bad. I have two healthy kids, a partner, a home, a job with a nice paycheck. I have the luxury of grumbling, as it were. But I make no claims to comparing myself to someone in actual dire straits. I’m comparing myself to the imagined Wonder Mom who I admittedly foolishly think exists: she is never tired, never burdened by work, financial or child-related woes, and lives a peaceful, unblemished existence . . . somewhere in an alternate universe, of course.
So, today’s verdict: Forget the decision whether to be a SAHM (Stay at Home Mom) or a working mom. I’ve decided. I want to be a Stay at Home (SAH). You know, a SAHM, but without the responsibilities of having children . . .
(blissful daydreaming for six uninterrupted minutes, aka .1)
. . . now back to work before it’s time to go home and pick up the kids.
(That was a little whiny, wasn’t it?).
The Verdict 