No, not the weird dolls with funny noses. Actual cabbage seedlings, poking their heads up in the flats where I planted them, obediently following package directions to "sow them indoors" x number of weeks before the last frost date. What can I say, I'm all about following directions, even when there's a blizzard outside. It's exciting to see my little cabbage babies doing what they're supposed to. They're very cute.
(I did have a Cabbage Patch doll when I was little that my grandmother made me. Her name was, intuitively enough, Cabby. She died many deaths but is, I think, still kicking around somewhere at my parents's house. I'll have to dig her out for Miss Boo, who is all about babies these days.)
Ah, the many joys of housekeeping. I read a comment on a blog yesterday to the effect of, "I just was home for 4 days recovering from surgery and I thought I was going to go nuts! How can you be home all day and stand it?"
This came after I'd had what I'd characterize as a Really Good Day-- the kind of day where you feel good and get all your work done in a good time, get 3 good meals for the family, and go to bed with the dishes washed. (All this with makeup on, no less.) One of the days where I love my job. I had them while I was working as a nurse, too, about as frequently.
That perspective is, I think, the secret; of course the woman home from surgery was going to go nuts because she was... home from surgery. You can't do anything while you're ill but lay on the couch and watch daytime TV, which is enough to drive anyone to tequila and yelling at inanimate objects. When you're a housewife, you have a job to do. To those who work outside the home and only manage to do the bare necessities when they are home, it must seem like there's not enough work at home to occupy a day. I'm a pretty organized person, but I never get everything done that I'd like to get done and I'm never not busy at home. (I force myself to take breaks, now that I'm carrying around a watermelon under my shirt.)
Think about this--there are nine million things you can do as a housekeeper to make your house more comfortable, frugal, run better, etc. While it's important to pick a point to say "enough is enough" so that you have a stopping point each day, there IS a job description of sorts.* And keeping house IS a job.
I finally put it this way to the Husband, and I think a light bulb came on in his head: A woman feels about her house the way a man feels about his job. If it's not what she thinks it ought to be, she feels like she's failing the same way that a man feels when he thinks he's failing at work. The kicker being that this applies for most women even if they also have a paying job--like it or not, people still think of the house as the woman's thing.
I think that's the real reason a lot of women say it drives them crazy to be home too long-- they begin to notice the things about their house that they really don't like, and they don't have enough time to do anything about it. They may want clean, pressed shirts and fresh baked bread, but when you get home at 6pm and have to be at work the next day at 8am, what are you really going to do about that? Aside from hope that someday you get a big enough raise to hire a housekeeper? (See, I told you it was a real job.)
I'm not judging anybody else's situation, just being grateful for my own. I'm having another one of those days where I like what I do. :)
Cheers,
Breanna
*The job description is:
1) Everybody needs clean clothes.
2) Everybody needs to eat dinner.
3) Nobody should get typhoid from the bathroom.
Everything else is gravy. :)
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