Confessions

It's not even 10 a.m. and I'm already day dreaming of going to work. Who longs to go to work? Stay at home mothers of obstinate girls and cranky boys. Jimmy has mastered the sound of an angry dinosaur dying out in the woods. It makes me want to turn myself inside out. Yesterday I explained to Jane that she would see her cousin, X-Man, again in the fall. So she has decided today it is fall. She's been wearing her fleece hoodie and sunglasses, and insisting I do the same. In honor of fall, I defrosted some roasted pumpkin and made chocolate chip pumpkin bread.

Last weekend we picked 43 pounds of peaches and 30 pounds of tomatoes. I oven dried some tomatoes and canned them with garlic and olive oil, froze the rest. Half the peaches have been made into butter and canned. I was going to do the other half today. After I did all the dishes.

The kids are having *a day*. So we're all having *a day*. My mother says this is why most people with two small children don't can things. The thing is, I like to cook. It gives me a concrete thing that I can do every day. Like I'm contributing and have something to show for it. You know, other than the food crusted, scabbed up kids, and the toy and book littered floor.

I'm a great wife and an average mother. I was never the girl who dreamed about having babies. Pregnancy didn't become me, I didn't really enjoy it and I'm not very happy with what it did to my body. There are women out there who were just made to be mothers. My friend, Stephanie, is one. She's got four little girls, three of which are under two and a half. She does everything good mothers do and then some. She looks lovely doing it and genuinely enjoys it all.

Our country has an image of mother. I do not like to tell people I stay home with my children. I think it implies that I don't have marketable job skills, that I couldn't make a living so I got married and had kids. I think it implies that I wear yoga pants all day, clap along at Mommy & Me time, and carry fruit snacks in my purse. That I have goldfish crackers and sing along to Elmo's World music in my mini van. I am not that person; at all. But people will treat you that way. It makes me want to show them my closet of suits and fabulous shoes and say, "Look! See? I'm more than this." I want to do math for them, discuss Neil deGrasse Tyson and write a million dollar business plan.

The character, Ellis Grey, from Grey's Anatomy said, "I gave birth to a child, Richard! That makes me a mother. It doesn’t make me inept. It doesn’t make me less of a woman. It doesn’t make me less of a surgeon, no matter how much everyone wants it to."

I chose to be the parent that stayed home with our children. I agreed that it was the best thing for them. I knew it would be a sacrifice. But on days like today, when all that I will accomplish is not having my kids maul each other, I dream of work and look for the light at the end of this tunnel.