A quick update for those of you following yesterday's post re. my potential initiation into the life of a mermaid: no deal. In fact, my hair may be behaving even more obnoxiously than usual thanks to the new styling foam. And now I will have to traipse back to Ulta to return the product and of course, take a quick moment to spray myself with 100 different perfumes. At least I will get to employ my Extremely Polite skills again.
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This is the first blog I will have written under a time crunch. I know it sounds preposterous that a person who stays home alone all day could have things to accomplish in a time frame of any sorts, but I do. Everyday actually.
I realized two minutes after the children started school last year that most people think I am wandering vaguely around the house strumming a lap harp and staring wistfully into space all day. I am routinely asked by family, friends, strangers, and children how I fill my family-free hours. Or, as the younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes likes to put it when I tell him I have to hang up because I have things to get done, "How can you possibly be busy?! All you have is time!"
The second most-asked question I receive as a stay-at-home person is, "So, are you getting a job?" This one still throws me for a loop sometimes. I rack my brain -- have I been unknowingly jabbering away about how badly I'd like to escape the comfort of my home to go to work? Did the spouse and I somehow procure a second car in which I could travel to a job? Are we mismanaging our income to the point that it is necessary for me to contribute to the family funds right now? Think, Sarah...really try and remember... Aha! That's right, I remember now!
No. (And no. And no. And no.)
"Really? Well, maybe after you've had some time to yourself you'll want to get a job next year?" Maybe, maybe not. Right now I don't think it would be wise or compassionate for me to abandon the work I do here everyday.
Unlike the authors of The Career Within You, a 2010 book dealing with career selection, I do think keeping a home and the people within it clean, comfortable, and exposed to beauty requires not only physical skill, but intellectual aptitude as well. The authors expostulate that stay-at-home work requires only a modicum of complex thinking and objectivity, and little to no aesthetic sense whatsoever (and they were only referring to stay-at-home parents, not the scores of people who choose home keeping without children around). This outlook is unfortunate, since it minimizes the oft-occurring synthesis of creativity and thought that flows naturally in the home. Plus, more importantly, this view casts a "littleness" on my work that I think is invalid.
Luckily for me, TCWY is simply a book, and one that I can choose not to take too seriously (it also has creepy illustrations of unicorns, so it's definitely headed back to the library ASAP).
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