Best Job Ever.... I Think

People tend to think that being a stay at home mum is like a long boring vacation where the stay at home mum has lot of time. I know this is something that we talk about a lot on so many platforms. Fact is as a stay at home mum, I have to fight myself from aggressive job hunting and remember why I chose to do this. Yes this is a choice a woman has to consciously make and reinforce every so often. This is because from where I sit, the pressures of a regular office job and the demands look like holiday. See, I’m that girl who started cooking real meals for the first time in her life while in 3^rd year. Not out of necessity but rather out of embarrassment. All the boys in my crew could cook and so much better than me. I could easily have lived off take-aways and strategic visits. My mother tried but I was more interested in my bike and the everything else far from the kitchen so do not ask what kind of mother I have… she really tried. 

Any hoo the point is, I am not particularly good at this keeping house thing. I am trying to figure it out a husband and 2 kids later. At least now I know my cooking won’t poison anyone but sometimes I just wish to be back in that high pressure newsroom. It’s so much easier than overseeing everything in the house. That’s everything from construction to gardening to house-keeping and of course the kids.

Today little man didn’t want to go to school. First he woke up late, then He didn’t want to wear his clothes. Had to bribe the guy candy by candy to get him across the road to school. Then start him off at the playground so that he can remember how much fun playschool is. 

Come back home to find baby is awake and his agenda is to play with mummy. He loves to watch mummy sing and dance for him, so she does as she changes his diapers and nurses him. He sleeps, the construction guys are here, with a long list of needs. Then the mother moment! Baby is awake, nursing construction guys need this that and some of that too, the water guy is here, he needs he wants, house-help is also demanding attention… these moment will occur at least 3 times in a day. The people may be different. The trash guy, the landscaping guy, the watchies, the groceries guy… name it. Before I sit to relax its time for little man to come home… if you have an active 2 year old you know the next break you have is when he’s asleep. But Baby is now fully awake… somewhere there hubz needs his time, supper needs to be made, served and fed, baby wants to coo and s mile with no one but you. Its 10pm the living room looks like 10 storms passed through it. I think baby might be ready for his bed now, might is the key word. I put baby down, everyone is asleep. I lie down in bed. I didn’t call… I didn’t visit my recuperating family, I didn’t get around to finishing this and that document, that other proposal is 2 lines long now, yey. Argh tomorrow I’ll try again to do everything and see how far we go.

See, the newsroom on an election day is so much easier, get your assigned story to follow, run like a maniac to get the hourly bulletin up on time for 8-10 hours at least there might be 10 minutes here for lunch, five minutes there for tea, a decent bathroom break. See? Lunch, tea, bathroom… luxuries in my current job description. Then I go out there and someone can barely hide their disappointment that you have no job or title beyond mum… jeez. For now, I will proudly be mum. 

The luxuries of a decent meal, a decent bathroom break and a relatively streamlined day will have to wait until I’m sure my babies can handle themselves for about 8 hours a day without me and can tell me all about it at the end of the day.