Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Let's get these definitions straight
Housekeeping: the stuff you have to do to keep people alive and healthy
Homemaking: the kid-raising, relationship-building stuff you do so that someday your family will love each other
Here's why we have to get it right--we get them mixed up all the time. If we think they're talking about housekeeping when we hear that homemaking is the best job in the world, that homemaking's rewards make it worthwhile, that homemaking is the most important role we'll ever take on, etc., we'll be disappointed. And we'll make ourselves crazy.
I once read an article by Anna Quindlen where she complained that she couldn't stay at home all day because she knew that doing nothing but worrying about defrosting freezers would make her crazy. This doesn't mean I don't understand the isolation and unfulfillment stay-at-home moms sometimes feel. And I'm a writer, too, so I get the importance of having outside interests. What I didn't like was the implication that staying at home means nothing but housekeeping. It feels like that sometimes when I'm drowning in laundry, but homemaking goes deeper.
I hate messes, I truly do, but I need to step back from the piles of dust sometimes in order to say to myself, "What am I trying to accomplish here? Have a perfect house or raise some children?" I didn't quit my job in order to iron clothes. I could do that anywhere (and get paid for it, too). I quit my job because I knew I didn't want to be apart from them while they were little (although sanity breaks still come in handy).
This homemaking stuff--being a mama, I mean--goes on for quite awhile. Sometimes it seems like the housework goes on forever, too. Housekeeping is part of the job description because outsourcing it would be difficult. I'm home more, so I do more. Plus, to be honest, I care more. I don't have a built-in dust filter like a man does. But it's only part of what I do. I also kiss knees, pull pasta out of kids' noses, take kids to the park, and break up the kids' fights.
The housekeeping is not what makes my family what it is.
I am not the best housekeeper in the world. I kill plants, I rarely dust, and I hate cooking. I like crafty stuff, but I just don't have time to make crafts a priority. The bathrooms are, honestly, gross. But I'm still a great homemaker because I do a good job taking care of my children. I want to be there for the baby smiles and the funny dinner comments. I'm lucky because I get to do that, and because I even get to do a little work on the side.
And one day, my kids will stop fighting with each other.
Homemaking: the kid-raising, relationship-building stuff you do so that someday your family will love each other
Here's why we have to get it right--we get them mixed up all the time. If we think they're talking about housekeeping when we hear that homemaking is the best job in the world, that homemaking's rewards make it worthwhile, that homemaking is the most important role we'll ever take on, etc., we'll be disappointed. And we'll make ourselves crazy.
I once read an article by Anna Quindlen where she complained that she couldn't stay at home all day because she knew that doing nothing but worrying about defrosting freezers would make her crazy. This doesn't mean I don't understand the isolation and unfulfillment stay-at-home moms sometimes feel. And I'm a writer, too, so I get the importance of having outside interests. What I didn't like was the implication that staying at home means nothing but housekeeping. It feels like that sometimes when I'm drowning in laundry, but homemaking goes deeper.
I hate messes, I truly do, but I need to step back from the piles of dust sometimes in order to say to myself, "What am I trying to accomplish here? Have a perfect house or raise some children?" I didn't quit my job in order to iron clothes. I could do that anywhere (and get paid for it, too). I quit my job because I knew I didn't want to be apart from them while they were little (although sanity breaks still come in handy).
This homemaking stuff--being a mama, I mean--goes on for quite awhile. Sometimes it seems like the housework goes on forever, too. Housekeeping is part of the job description because outsourcing it would be difficult. I'm home more, so I do more. Plus, to be honest, I care more. I don't have a built-in dust filter like a man does. But it's only part of what I do. I also kiss knees, pull pasta out of kids' noses, take kids to the park, and break up the kids' fights.
The housekeeping is not what makes my family what it is.
I am not the best housekeeper in the world. I kill plants, I rarely dust, and I hate cooking. I like crafty stuff, but I just don't have time to make crafts a priority. The bathrooms are, honestly, gross. But I'm still a great homemaker because I do a good job taking care of my children. I want to be there for the baby smiles and the funny dinner comments. I'm lucky because I get to do that, and because I even get to do a little work on the side.
And one day, my kids will stop fighting with each other.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Thanks a lot, Heather!
My friend Heather tagged me, so I'll be gullible and I'll fall for this one. I hope everyone's amused, because I hardly ever do these (doesn't everybody say that?). Oh, well, it gives me something to blog about.
8 things I'm looking forward to:
1. The kids all being at school. First thing on the agenda will be sleeping for a week.
2. Meredith being able to sit up unsupported. My arms will be grateful.
3. Nana meeting Mer for the first time. She was born the day after Nana left.
4. Someday replacing my icky carpet.
5. Seeing what kinds of people my kids grow up to be.
6. Going to SCBWI conference next year, I hope.
7. Wednesdays. Babysitter comes!
8. reading this year's new books by James Dashner and Shannon Hale
8 things I did yesterday:
1. sat on the lawn with the kids
2. broke up fights between the kids and the neighbor's kids
3. read one and a half chapters of Harry Potter 6 to Liam. We're trying to finish before the movie comes out.
4. watched two episodes of As Time Goes By while feeding Mer.
5. tried to remove macaroni from Kyle's nostrils with tweezers. It didn't work, by the way. He needed a good nose pinch and a big sneeze to remove all the pasta.
6. sent a query to The Writer about ergonomic office products
7. wrote a couple of sucky paragraphs in my novel before giving up for the day
8. had a discussion with Mark about whether The Great Mormon Novel can ever be written
8 things I wish I could do:
1. grow perennials instead of killing them
2. finish my novel and get it published
3. earn a good living from writing
4. put my kids in cloth diapers and make their clothes
5. find time to scrapbook. Liam is the only kid who has a scrapbook. The others will just have to think they didn't have any childhoods.
6. visit France and England
7. go out with Mark more often
8. make my sisters move close by
8 shows I watch:
1. Battlestar Galactica
2. Doctor Who
3. As Time Goes By
That's it. I can't stand commercials, so it's all about downloads at our house. I watch As Time Goes By while I feed Mer so I don't get angry that she's keeping me awake.
8 things I'm looking forward to:
1. The kids all being at school. First thing on the agenda will be sleeping for a week.
2. Meredith being able to sit up unsupported. My arms will be grateful.
3. Nana meeting Mer for the first time. She was born the day after Nana left.
4. Someday replacing my icky carpet.
5. Seeing what kinds of people my kids grow up to be.
6. Going to SCBWI conference next year, I hope.
7. Wednesdays. Babysitter comes!
8. reading this year's new books by James Dashner and Shannon Hale
8 things I did yesterday:
1. sat on the lawn with the kids
2. broke up fights between the kids and the neighbor's kids
3. read one and a half chapters of Harry Potter 6 to Liam. We're trying to finish before the movie comes out.
4. watched two episodes of As Time Goes By while feeding Mer.
5. tried to remove macaroni from Kyle's nostrils with tweezers. It didn't work, by the way. He needed a good nose pinch and a big sneeze to remove all the pasta.
6. sent a query to The Writer about ergonomic office products
7. wrote a couple of sucky paragraphs in my novel before giving up for the day
8. had a discussion with Mark about whether The Great Mormon Novel can ever be written
8 things I wish I could do:
1. grow perennials instead of killing them
2. finish my novel and get it published
3. earn a good living from writing
4. put my kids in cloth diapers and make their clothes
5. find time to scrapbook. Liam is the only kid who has a scrapbook. The others will just have to think they didn't have any childhoods.
6. visit France and England
7. go out with Mark more often
8. make my sisters move close by
8 shows I watch:
1. Battlestar Galactica
2. Doctor Who
3. As Time Goes By
That's it. I can't stand commercials, so it's all about downloads at our house. I watch As Time Goes By while I feed Mer so I don't get angry that she's keeping me awake.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Children, or Broken Hallelujah
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah
-Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
It’s the fractured beauty of childhood that makes you cry. It’s the fat baby cheeks that you kiss, knowing they won’t last. It’s the soft skin and the piles of poopy laundry, voluntary kid snuggles and the screams that take your phone calls hostage. You can’t have one without the other (though you wish you could), but you know that even the jam-covered fingerprints will seem precious eventually and one day you’ll wish you’d saved them all and put them in some childhood-preserving museum. It’s all transitory and fragile—that’s why it’s so priceless and why you want to push it all away. You don’t think you can handle the threshold of childhood pushing its way outward from those little bodies into your soul. It all seems too much—the beauty that scars your eyeballs and hurts your spirit with its power. It’s not going to last. You don’t want it to betray you by leaving, yet you know it will. But it stands there, blinking its soft vulnerable eyes at you. It so innocently rips you apart and you don’t remember being reconstructed, so you pick it up and kiss it better because somehow it wants you and somehow you know that’s what needs to be done. And that’s how you scream and sing praises at the same time. You’re broken, pieces of you scattered in your children’s bodies and you sing and laugh out loud at the miracle of it all.
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah
-Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
It’s the fractured beauty of childhood that makes you cry. It’s the fat baby cheeks that you kiss, knowing they won’t last. It’s the soft skin and the piles of poopy laundry, voluntary kid snuggles and the screams that take your phone calls hostage. You can’t have one without the other (though you wish you could), but you know that even the jam-covered fingerprints will seem precious eventually and one day you’ll wish you’d saved them all and put them in some childhood-preserving museum. It’s all transitory and fragile—that’s why it’s so priceless and why you want to push it all away. You don’t think you can handle the threshold of childhood pushing its way outward from those little bodies into your soul. It all seems too much—the beauty that scars your eyeballs and hurts your spirit with its power. It’s not going to last. You don’t want it to betray you by leaving, yet you know it will. But it stands there, blinking its soft vulnerable eyes at you. It so innocently rips you apart and you don’t remember being reconstructed, so you pick it up and kiss it better because somehow it wants you and somehow you know that’s what needs to be done. And that’s how you scream and sing praises at the same time. You’re broken, pieces of you scattered in your children’s bodies and you sing and laugh out loud at the miracle of it all.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Housorexia
Some women obsess over their weight. They weigh themselves daily, count calories, and starve themselves because they hold themselves up to the magazine models and think their lives are meaningless if they don't look exactly like the airbrushed, photoshopped, rake-skinny ladies they see everyday. I don't mean to make fun of people who have this problem. It is a serious affliction. But I am lucky in that respect.
Fortunately, I have never had a huge body image problem. I also have never had an eating disorder. I don't hate my reflection or waste time despairing about how many calories I've eaten that day. I have a different disease you may not have heard of. It's called housorexia.
This is what I do: I look at the staged clean countertops, the perfectly coordinated couch cushions, and the unstained carpets in the glossy ads and think "Why doesn't my house look like that?" The children in the ads never have poopy diapers or holes in their clothes. The mommies are always smiling. And their freakin' kitchens are always immaculate! And instead of thinking something intelligent like "Those pictures were taken on a photo set where no children live," I think, "My house could look like that if I cleaned it up every night at midnight."
And how is that any better? We teach teenage girls that they don't measure up if their waists are more than twenty inches wide, and we teach grown women that they don't measure up if there are more than two crumbs on the floor. And the silly thing is that we fall for it.
Instead of thinking that I'm great for what I've done that day (kissed the kids, got them dressed and fed), I think I'm deficient for what I haven't done that day (didn't have dinner ready, didn't clean the toilets, didn't dust the picture frames). That's what makes it so pathological, just like the anorexics who are never skinny enough. The house will never be clean enough, no matter how clean it is. The distorted lens we see it through keeps telling us we can stop cleaning after we dust just one more shelf or scour just one more bathtub. But we never get to rest even then, do we?
The next thing on my to-do list is to change my thinking about my house. I'm sure I will post more about it in the future. My body is not starving, but my house is starving for some serious sanity. Next time I think something like "I'll never get all this housework done", I'll make sure to mentally add, "So what?"
That's a good question, by the way. So what? My house won't make the cover of this month's Better Homes and Gardens? My son's friends will go home and tell their mommies that Liam's mom has a messy house? Or (gasp) someone might come over and see the squalor? I'm not going to be a slave to anyone else's (imagined) judgment of my housekeeping skills.
I've got other things to do. Like feed and dress my kids.
Fortunately, I have never had a huge body image problem. I also have never had an eating disorder. I don't hate my reflection or waste time despairing about how many calories I've eaten that day. I have a different disease you may not have heard of. It's called housorexia.
This is what I do: I look at the staged clean countertops, the perfectly coordinated couch cushions, and the unstained carpets in the glossy ads and think "Why doesn't my house look like that?" The children in the ads never have poopy diapers or holes in their clothes. The mommies are always smiling. And their freakin' kitchens are always immaculate! And instead of thinking something intelligent like "Those pictures were taken on a photo set where no children live," I think, "My house could look like that if I cleaned it up every night at midnight."
And how is that any better? We teach teenage girls that they don't measure up if their waists are more than twenty inches wide, and we teach grown women that they don't measure up if there are more than two crumbs on the floor. And the silly thing is that we fall for it.
Instead of thinking that I'm great for what I've done that day (kissed the kids, got them dressed and fed), I think I'm deficient for what I haven't done that day (didn't have dinner ready, didn't clean the toilets, didn't dust the picture frames). That's what makes it so pathological, just like the anorexics who are never skinny enough. The house will never be clean enough, no matter how clean it is. The distorted lens we see it through keeps telling us we can stop cleaning after we dust just one more shelf or scour just one more bathtub. But we never get to rest even then, do we?
The next thing on my to-do list is to change my thinking about my house. I'm sure I will post more about it in the future. My body is not starving, but my house is starving for some serious sanity. Next time I think something like "I'll never get all this housework done", I'll make sure to mentally add, "So what?"
That's a good question, by the way. So what? My house won't make the cover of this month's Better Homes and Gardens? My son's friends will go home and tell their mommies that Liam's mom has a messy house? Or (gasp) someone might come over and see the squalor? I'm not going to be a slave to anyone else's (imagined) judgment of my housekeeping skills.
I've got other things to do. Like feed and dress my kids.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
cute things kids say
Kyle: I spilled milk on the floor.
Mommy: OK, you can clean it up then.
Kyle: I can't clean it up. I'm just a baby.
Mommy: We have to buy Harry Potter tickets early because Harry Potter is very popular. Lots of people will want to see it. The books are very popular, too.
Liam: J. K. Rowling is very popular, isn't she?
Mommy: Yes, millions of people have bought her books.
Liam: Is she rich?
Mommy: Liam, do you want a peanut butter sandwich?
Liam: No, I'm okay with hunger.
Mommy: OK, you can clean it up then.
Kyle: I can't clean it up. I'm just a baby.
Mommy: We have to buy Harry Potter tickets early because Harry Potter is very popular. Lots of people will want to see it. The books are very popular, too.
Liam: J. K. Rowling is very popular, isn't she?
Mommy: Yes, millions of people have bought her books.
Liam: Is she rich?
Mommy: Liam, do you want a peanut butter sandwich?
Liam: No, I'm okay with hunger.
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