Irritated SAHM/housewife has something polite to say.

The BBQ Pit
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(I haven’t read all the posts. It’s nearly midnight, people. This is my usually stream of conscientiousness crapfest post.)

First, Stay At Home Mom is such an annoying title that just stops the conversation DEAD in it’s tracks. I prefer **
Toxic Waste Removal Specialist ** Or **Hostage Negotiatians ** amongst other titles du jour.

Secondly, giving up a social life, familar faces of crabby people at work who hate their job and dealing with the job that you secretly hate, but like the crappy pay, can be hard for some people.

Giving up everything you know, is never an easy choice.
Giving up security is always a hard choice.

But every mom that I know that works full time says the same thing, " I wish I could stay home full time."

And every mom I know that stays home full time wishes she could be in the work world.

[hijack]
I love staying at home. My house is a disaster. My kids are in a constant state of stickiness. The dog is always on the wrong side of the door and I haven’t seen the counter tops since the last milenneum. I hate cooking, though I am discovering my love for baking (again), and so is my waistline.

If you walk in my back door ( we have no front door step - it keeps the Jehovah’s away) there is a sign: Please excuse the mess and noise as we are busy making happy memories.

Anyone who makes crack at the conditions of the interior of my house is no friend of mine. They also know that I will jam their snotty opinion down their pie holes post hence and subsequently, I never feel bad nor do I apologize for the mess if I have unexpected company. A) because I am so goddamn happy to have someone over b)See “A” C) This is how we live. D) One crack about all the clutter and I will gladly put it in your garage while you are at work because I have keys for everybody I know, goddammit.

However, I do beat the shit out of myself in apologies about my veggie garden. You see, I am comparing myself, and wrongly so, to my sainted-but-not-dead- mother in law, who is the Julia Childs of gardening. Not a weed in her flowers. But MINE, dear God, if I started a dandylion farm, I suspect roses would pop up. Every person, SAHM or not, has their own nuerosis. This is mine and I feed it quite well.
[/hijack]

I won’t go into the psychological crapola that is done ad nauseum in Working Woman VS Natural Mother Magazine. (“I’m doing it for me to benefit us both” vs " I’m doing it all for the baby." My advice is Throw out both these magazines, and all the other parenting magazines and follow your heart and learn to live frugally.

If it is too depressing, isolating, overwhelming for you
(and it will be at one time or another, but if this happens on a more frequent basis) *there are alternatives *. Part time work. Volunteer work. Church stuff, book clubs, Work afternoons. Shave your head and join a commune, your options are as open as your mind.
I have long held the mantra that *If I am bored, it is my own fault *

If you don’t keep your mind active, like a waist line, it will go to pot.

I haven’t gotten any greif from the “Oh you a SAHM” crowd, only because, those that know me know that I will usually retort with a zinger like, " Yeah, after I watch Oprah and eat bon bons, I give the cable guy a blow job so I can get HBO free." But it hasnt happened yet.

Shit, it’s 1 am.

Tomorrow is going to really really really really suck.

Oh wait, I’m a SAHM.I can just sleep in and lounge about allllll day.

Or I can just drink a pot of coffee by noon and spend the rest of the day with the jitters doing whatever I can to fall asleep by midnight.

And my title today is **Dog Butler **
[sub]If I said anything that was useful or coherent, it was purely accidental. [/sub]

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Shirley Ujest wrote:
“I won’t go into the psychological crapola that is done ad nauseum in Working Woman VS Natural Mother Magazine. (“I’m doing it for me to benefit us both” vs " I’m doing it all for the baby.” My advice is Throw out both these magazines, and all the other parenting magazines and follow your heart and learn to live frugally."

Ah, the only thing I can add to this is that I hope that my daughters won’t have to worry about this double standard in life- if you stay home, you are “wasting” your life and/ or are lazy, but if you put the child in daycare then “why bother having children for other people to raise”. sigh Can’t win as a parent.
“I haven’t gotten any grief from the “Oh you a SAHM” crowd, only because, those that know me know that I will usually retort with a zinger like, " Yeah, after I watch Oprah and eat bon bons, I give the cable guy a blow job so I can get HBO free.” But it hasnt happened yet."

lol, do you mind if I borrow that next time I run into them?
I wish I could say never had any run-ins with that condescenders, but have had a few. The accusations that made me most upset are ones like “SAHP spend all day blowing their spouses’ pay” or “ruin their spouses career by having kids/ staying home”. Whatever.

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Oh, bodypoet! Your post about how you and Mr poet met made me cry.

There’s a thread going on somewhere else (MPSIMS) about the salvation army bell-ringers and people’s responses to them, and it turned into a discussion of the homophobia of the SA, and how people might express their concerns about all this. As a gay man, who was around loong ago, I was so impressed at the unpretentious concern for social justice by people who had no immediate benefit from it.

So now you’ve given me a social justice cause that I have no immediate benefit from. I promise you I will come out of the bushes, flaming sword swinging above my head next time some smart-alec slacker says one word wrong! Hope you’re around to see the carnage on your behalf.

And love to AKAMame up there in Sydney too!

Redboss

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link - here

Redboss

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Please, feel free! Mention my name! win fabulous prizes!

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And this, Shirley, is only one of the reasons I love you and you are my Hero. (You can add that to your list of titles if you want–“Bodypoet’s Hero” has kind of a nice ring to it, eh?)

Oh yes. Oh YES INDEED. You’re right…so many working moms that I know want to stay home with their kids, and feel they can’t. Trust me. My dh is a paramedic, and in spite of what my father insists (there’s my father again, he just keeps coming up in this, doesn’t he?), he does not make “almost what doctors do.”** He makes…oh, a little better than average, maybe, I don’t know. But I do know that our house payment is big, and is 1/2 of our monthly income. Of course I deliver papers for a little extra, and I do some free lance proofreading, too, but we are just getting by. We were also “just getting by” when I was working full-time, though, so things are pretty much the same as always, financially.

**

I was considering this the just the other day, but I had some soup and felt better. There is a fairly nice commune nearby (not really, it is actually sort of a scary commune), so if anyone is seriously interested, give me a holler and I’ll show you the way. Head-shaving optional, but be prepared to let the Man name your babies, and I hope you like names like “He-Man” and “Queenie”.

**

Well, bless your heart for trying, at least. Can you at least get Lifetime or something?

:smiley:

Love your posts, SU. Thanks!

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Oh this is sweet. Thank you! I, for one, can’t wait to see the carnage. Give a yell if you need backup, too.

I am thinking there has got to be some kind of alliance or coalition or something in this…we just need a nifty acronym and a nice logo now. And tee shirts, tee shirts would be good.

FWIW (having seen the other thread), I don’t donate to groups that have anti-gay agendas either. (Mostly I just donate to a local shelter for battered women.)
They just irritate the crap out of me. Like they don’t have enough problems of their own to deal with, now they want to decide how other people have sex??? I should have so much free time. I’m very glad that I live in a pretty liberal town. (For Indiana, at least.)

You SDers are awesome.
~k

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I’m the exception there. I’ve always hated working. Never had any career aspirations, except to be a great mom, and maybe do something with writing.

I was a latchkey kid from age nine or ten, and hated every second of it. And I hated staying home alone when I was sick. I know my mom had no choice; she was a single mom raising two kids. But I still hated it.

I always wanted to have kids and give them the childhood I always wanted. Hopefully, I’m accomplishing that goal.

Not to mention I just don’t do well in the workforce. I’m a very shy, solitary kind of person. I can’t handle office politics. I also hate rules, dressing up and answering to people on a daily basis. Staying at home is perfect for me.

Sheri

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No kidding. I understand that there are a lot of families out there in which both parents really do have to work outside of the home to make ends meet. I also know, though, that no one NEEDS to lease a new car every three years, or carry $10,000.00 in credit card debt, or send their kids to three different extracurricular activities every week, or go to the movies every weekend, or shop at Abercrombie & Fitch…and the beat goes on. When I hear people complaining about how they “just can’t afford to stay at home with the kids” from the window of a 2001 Lexus…well, my Bullshit-O-Meter screams into the red immediately.

Now, I can also understand finding out that you are just not bloodydamned able to tolerate staying home with the kids all day. These last few months I’ve started to go utterly bugfuck. I also don’t think people should be judged who make that choice. The folks who don’t WANT to stay home, and try to make like it’s a financial issue so they won’t “look like bad parents”…they rack me off.

We live like pretty much everyone else in here seems to…except unfortunately we rent. We totally live paycheck-to-paycheck. Our big luxury is our DSL and digital cable…but we almost never eat out, we almost never go to the movies, and we usually go camping for vacations. Mind you, I’m not bitching; I’d rather raise my kids than put them in day care. I’m just saying…we’re not going to be leasing a Lexus any time soon. :smiley:

Oh…oh no…don’t tell me you actually think Lifetime is worth head? I mean, damn…I’d be willing to give the cable guy head for permanently blocking that crap.

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Ouch! Oh man, hama scores again! :smiley:
You can tell I don’t watch much tv. We don’t even have cable, so mostly I watch Teletubbies and Balto about fourteen times a day.

Although, I dunno…you don’t enjoy those sappy movie titles? “A Lonely Woman Marries a Real Creep”, that kind of thing?

Actually, if I had my druthers, I’d go for TLC or Discovery. I like Medical Detectives, etc…and Law and Order reruns. Otherwise, I guess I’ll stick with Teletubbies. ~k

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Random musings:

I’ve done just about every work/home combination known to man, and I’ve found that working part-time is right for me and my family. I work 7am-2:30 3 days a week, so I’m home when my kids get off the bus. That leaves me 2 days a week to get stuff done around the house and to volunteer at the school. If I am on the ball, my schedule also occasionally allows me to have lunch with a friend or time to go shopping at the mall. I live for these times. :slight_smile:

I make enough money to pay for frivolous things (new furniture, nice clothes) which makes me feel good about my contribution. But I’m home enough to know that I’m not depriving my kids of a mom. I couldn’t live with myself if I had a big, old house at the expense of being home with my kids.

We sit down as a family to a home-cooked dinner most nights except during soccer season. I think it’s important to do that no matter what the circumstances. Even if that means a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sammies.

It’s very nice to get raises and promotions. It does wonders for one’s self-esteem. It’s also great for my soul to see my daughters’ eyes light up when they see that mom is serving food in the cafeteria line.

My house is usually cluttered just enough to mortify me when someone comes by unannounced. I have piles of papers/magazines everywhere. I’m working on it, but not stressing about it. I hate to dust. As I tell my mom, the dust will be back tomorrow. There’s no guarantee I will.

I am very secure in my marriage, but working gives me even more security. There is no substitute for knowing that you’d be able to take care of yourself and your kids should the unthinkable happen.

I wish I had more time to exercise. Or, to be politically correct, I wish I was more dedicated to finding the time to exercise. I feel better when I get the blood flowing on a regular basis.

The key to life is finding the right balance. And it’s sometimes tricky to do that when you’re a woman because society sends us such mixed signals all the time.

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I thought it was worth bumping this thread to tell you all this True Story.

My Aunt B. (YOU decide what the “B” stands for) had a semi-private conversation with a friend of my mom’s. Small towns being what they are, word got back to me, naturally. The basic gist of it was:

Aunt B:…So, why do you think bodypoet quit teaching?
Friend of Mom’s: I suppose because she wanted to stay home with the babies, besides which daycare for two little ones would cost so much it wouldn’t be worth it. And she had that long commute, you know.
AB: Well, we (meaning her daughter, who also teaches special ed in another town, and herself), WE think that she probably got fired.
FOM: Oh. Well. Hmmm…

I ask you, is this sad or what? My mom was having a cow about it. I tried to explain to her that this is the type of remark I would absolutely expect from people whose Number One Priority is MONEY. They cannot imagine that I might possibly choose to leave my teaching position (one that required two hours per day on the road) to stay HOME WITH MY BABIES.

Geez. What goobers.

[/ear-injuringly strong language]

~k