Tuesday, December 15, 2009

This isn't good

Here's Penny on the couch watching television.


That's right. She's eating her breakfast on a tray in her pajamas at 10:20 a.m. while I scramble to finish my interviews for a story. I'm not sure how this happened, but I hate to see life at my house on the day before a big test. I might just be tossing her handfuls of Skittles while Dora plays on a loop.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

A change in direction

Here's my thoughts about parenting about four years ago;
Hard is an all-day meeting after a night binge drinking. It's an hour commute. It's trying not to listen to your co-workers personal phone conversations.
Hard is NOT staying home with your children. The modern world has taken all the struggle out of this noble endeavor.
Here's a daily log of how my life got so easy and ways I try to complicate things.
I stand by this. I do think that most of the difficulties in staying at home to raise children are self inflicted. Sure it's boring building a block tower for two consecutive hours. And who doesn't hate Dora. She's totally creepy. Staying home is filled with lots of little annoyances, but what job isn't annoying at times?

My difficulties mainly revolved around my complete and utter lack of self-confidence.

"Ooooh... (whiny me) I don't fit in. Suburban moms are bitches. They just don't get me."

Give me a break. People are mostly just people, no matter what they do or where they live. There are bitches pretty much everywhere. I just didn't feel like I fit in, so therefore I didn't.

But as I felt more sure in my role, even without the minivan or the minimansion, these problems just took care of themselves. Life has become unbelievable easy and carefree.

So in my best effort to remain an outcast not only in my circles but in all of society, I'm going back to school. Competent parenting is so much less funny than the days when I felt like complete-and-utter failure most of the time. So I think the days of this parenting blog are at an end.

That's not to say I won't completely relapse as the kids enter the teen years and they begin hating me with every fiber of their being, but they are not the most pathetically interesting thing in my life right now.

Right now, that's reserved for going back to school.

So I think I might start writing occasionally about that. Who knows. Perhaps there are other SAHMs turned overaged college coed out there just waiting to relate to my rantings and ravings. Maybe I just feel better after I publicly confess my feelings of inadequacy. Whatever. From now on, my Dirty Little Secret will dwell mostly on my new adventure.

NURSING SCHOOL (said in echoy type voice).

But because I love it so, and it's not even relevant anymore, here's my Top 5 list of staying home with your kids. It's always been one of my favorites.

Top five reasons staying home is easier than working.
5. Power naps are near impossible on the oddly stained couch in the ladies lounge.
4. No chance of being fired.
3. A working women couldn't be this tan without a sunlamp.
2. Never hearing your child cry when she has to leave daycare.
And 1. It's never necessary for you to buy an outfit on the way to the office because the laundry is just not a priority.
That's gold. Comic gold. And really more true than I realized when I wrote it. Here's to realizing the last four years have been the best gift I could have ever received.

Cheers!!!!