My thoughts on housewives...

As long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a housewife. I think it was the glorified Leave It To Beaver crap I watched as a child. My mom had it pretty good when she was a housewife. She kept a very clean home, cooked nearly every night, and we seemed to go out, either for errands or for fun, almost every day. We'd lunch with her other housewife friends and their kids who were my age. Mom didn't entertain a whole lot, that was Mema's thing. Mema enjoyed throwing dinner parties and luncheons.

I was going to be the housewife and mom who had a nice house, cooked great meals, threw wonderful parties and wore nice clothes. Of course it never occurred to me that housewives had to....clean. How do you do that? And that children required first getting pregnant, and then being pregnant, and then giving birth, and then they holler and leak all over the house. And parties, well one needs actual FRIENDS in town to have a successful party. Oh and the best way to be a housewife is to maybe have a husband....yikes.

So then I decided to become a rock star, or a teacher, or a writer, or a rock star who taught and wrote, but in the back of my mind, housewife always loomed. It's like the woman's movement never occurred right? Wrong....freedom of choice baby, the choice to pursue whatever makes you happy ;-)

Then I had the 20 yr stretch where I didn't want kids, so the housewife thing flew out the window. I'd be a career girl instead! But I was talked out of every career I wanted to pursue, from teacher, to writer, to advertising exec, to cartoonist, to graphic artist, to photographer, to journalist, to mortician (yes you read that correctly) to Late Night Talk Show Host, to Ichthyologist (look it up)...so I majored in TV Production instead? I don't know, don't ask. All I know is I was hella-good at it, I don't mind saying I was top of my class in that...all of it, audio, editing, camera, on-camera and my favorite, directing. So naturally I invested time, energy and money into this and never got a job in the field.

I'd decided to not have kids, not get married, but work instead....so I did the exact opposite. Now I did work, there are those who may think I've never had a job, I've had plenty of jobs....I've worked since I was 17 yrs old. I've worked for minimum wage, and moderate wage, but never decent wage. I've worked crap jobs and crappier jobs, but never a decent job. I've never worked in my field and I never had a job I was good at. In fact, I worked in fields I sucked at! Take the things I'm the worst at and pay me crap money and NO benefits to do them, oh and make sure these jobs are 50 miles away too, and that was my career, or lack thereof.

Every job I had was the worst job I ever had. Every job I had utilized nothing of me, but required stuff I wasn't good at. Sure, put a dyslexic girl who never passed math in the accounting department....give the girl with carpal tunnel and that dyslexia again a job in data entry...tell the girl who can't write a memo to save her life, or take notes, or file to be a secretary. My favorite was have the girl with scoliosis who can't stand or walk for more than 5 minutes work a cash register in a health food store. But I digress, this is about being a housewife!!!!

So I couldn't clean, big deal...I was just as qualified to be a housewife as I was to be a crap ass secretary, and to make things worse, I was a secretaries secretary. And for no money and no benefits but I digress again.....my point is, beware of what you wish for....

Though no fault of my own, I became a housewife. And then because we're infertile but somehow I got pregnant, I'm now a stay-at-home mom and housewife....benefits YES, pay, LOL....

Okay so I never learned how to clean. How is that my fault? So I don't know how to mop, I mean I guess it's simple, Akeem did it in Coming to America after all. True, I can't bend over (bad knees, baaad back) to scrub the tub, and vacuuming KILLS my back....I can dust...kind of, I mean I have asthma so that sucks. I did learn the hard way to dust before you vacuum though ;-)

I can clean a kitchen like it's no ones business! It was always my job at home to load, run and unload the dishwasher and empty the trash, a job I'm happy to now give my husband. As for cooking....no offense to the family, I come from a line of women who really didn't care to cook all that much or didn't do it all that often. Mom had to stop after the divorce, so she 'forgot' how to cook and Mema cooked but hated it, hence I was never taught, I taught myself. Yeah I guess I can teach myself how to clean too huh? ;-)

After 20 years of cooking I can finally say with almost certainty that I'm a half-way decent cook who makes food more often than not that is edible. One dream...realized! Check that off the list.

So...now all of the sudden I find that I'm a housewife and stay-at-home mom....and it's everything I thought it'd be....but what I didn't expect was....I'm embarrassed by it. I've turned into one of those horrid women who responds "I'm just a mom" to people who ask what I do. Before I got pregnant it was even worse....I "do nothing"....$50k of college down the drain to sit at home and do...nothing.

I feel like the world's biggest loser all of the sudden. Why? This is what I've always wanted. I threw a dinner party and it wasn't all it was cracked up to be! Cleaning SUCKS! Cooking, well, sure, it's great and all, but cleaning up afterwards and getting the groceries required to cook....suck! That and they use up practically no brain cells whatsoever. Cooking is great, when you're in the mood, when you're NOT, it's hell on Earth! And where the hell does all this damn dust come from?

So now I have what I want. I'm a housewife and a stay-at-home mom. They always seem to go in that order, housewife/mom....why is that? Am I really a housewife first, mom second? I seem to think not. My husband on the other hand, that's a different story, he thinks housewife first, mom second, well no, maid first, chef second, then mom. :-)

Everything I know about cleaning I learned from Chris. He taught me how to do laundry when I was 32! He's a great house cleaner! That dude could make a fortune cleaning houses....we can thank his Mom, who taught him how to clean when he was a child. My little issue now is....he was upset that I took a day off of house cleaning last week. Sorry...William nurses, on average, ten hours a day. He'll typically only nap while on the breast. Not only does that leave little time for housework, but NO time for me and my needs. You know, like...EATING! That thing I just don't do since William never let's me. LOL....Napping? As a woman with fibro and chronic fatigue, I'd like to nap. I'm on Dr's orders TO NAP but since little Willy does't nap, mommy doesn't either.

Yes, I clean, and yes, I cook, I cook food I can't eat! LOL! Here's my point. I think the role of housewife and stay-at-home mom has changed since the idealistic 1950s. I could be spit-ballin' here, but it seemed back in the good-old-days mom's would bottle feed their babies (as was very common in those days) and then put them in a playpen while they cleaned the house, in their high heals and pearls. LOL, okay, no heals, no pearls.

Dinner was hot and ready on the table when the bread earner walked through that door. Couples would often go out on weekends, leaving little ones with family or baby sitters. Houses were clean, the men folk were fed, women had dish-pan hands, babies were....babies...who cried but it was best to "let them cry it out"...you know, the Ferber Method, only it wasn't called that back then. Back then, you didn't want to hold a baby too much for fear of "spoiling" them, and don't even talk about co-sleeping or baby wearing....just...not something that people did or if they did, they didn't admit it, at least not in the western world.

From what I've witnessed, things have changed. Almost all of my friends who are moms are stay-at-home moms. They are not like the 1950s housewife either. In fact, they'd never even say they WERE housewives, because in their eyes, they aren't...they are MOMS...who stay home. It seems the quintessential housewife has taken a backseat to the new millennium power-stay-at-home mom. Babies first....husband second.....house third....pets....ugh....do they even exist anymore? (Of course they do but let's face it, they don't rank as high)

My friends keep neat homes for the most part. But the home is not their top priority. Neither is their husband's meal being served 'on time'. In fact, some dudes have to fend for themselves! Every woman I know puts her baby and/or children first. More and more modern mom's are breastfeeding these days, and it's not like bottle feeding. It can be VERY time consuming, and virtually impossible to do anything else when you nurse.

If you have a comfort-nurser like me, then you're really tied down. Not that it's a bad thing, not at all, but I must admit, while I sat here on Friday evening breastfeeding my son, in the back of my mind I did think, "there's laundry that needs folded and that dishwasher needs emptied, reloaded and run again." I'm not going to ask my husband who works his ass off to do it either. It just won't get done today! I have to be comfortable with that realization. Tomorrow....it'll get done tomorrow.

So the husband comes home and volunteers to do it himself, but then let's me hear about it all day.... :-) What's more important, nourishing and soothing your screaming son, or putting away a glass into the cupboard? Most people will say it's the kid. I think Chris has that 1950's way of thinking of housewives....house first, hubbies second, then babies and...do we even have dogs?

For right now, it's the living things in my life that hold the most importance. Without a solid marriage, William won't have a complete and strong childhood....husbands are important (even when they give you crap like he does! LOL!). Babies at this age NEED to be held and loved and given your full attention... especially a little preemie who spent his first month of life living in an isolette, hardly being held or talked to by anyone but me and Chris when we visited (and Mom and Dad too).

Nothing is more important to a breastfeeding woman than breastfeeding your child, especially a preemie who needs those antibodies more than ever. And since I have a colic baby who moans and cries all day, comfort nursing is the best thing for him. He'll burn fewer calories sleeping on me than he will writhing and screaming all day. That means things like housework and cooking, and for me, eating, are no longer priorities.

Yes, my child needs to live in a clean and sanitary home, and he does. But if a dish resides in the dishwasher 24 hours longer than initially intended, it's not the end of the world.

Most modern moms don't "let them cry it out" anymore. You can't spoil a baby before the age of six months...and is it really spoiling to hold your baby? I don't think so. Every mom I know holds their babies all the time. Many sleep in the same room with their babies. None of my friends "Ferberize"their offspring. Heck, a lot of my friends don't even have their kids attend pre-school.

So our houses don't look like they can be photographed without prior warning for Better Homes and Gardens....is it the end of the world? Some of our meals come via a drive-thru, or God forbid, the "man" of the house pitches and cooks, which more and more men these days are doing. Laundry sometimes piles up. Housewife doesn't equal maid anymore in these modern times.

These days, we are moms first, wives second, 'house'wives....third. After all, they're only babies for a brief time....laundry lasts a lifetime!

(BTW, I still love my dogs, so to prove it, I'm posting a lovely picture of them for you to enjoy! Enjoy!)