I deserve flak from my female cohorts. As a young adult, I never got the I-AM-WOMAN-HEAR-ME-ROAR hullabaloo. Why Oprah and devotees, TV shows, and pop culture rattled on about the woman with all the balls up in the air, exhausted in the attempt to satisfy diverse roles. Then I got married.
And became a mother.
The breadth of the tasks in my day-to-day, not to mention the depth, is such that I actually forget a lot of what I do. It is a great much, the littlest things one tends to as a mom.
I tore out a page of our calendar for you. I usually do more lessons, and doctor visits obviously are not a regular affair. But this day was typical in the way it packed one activity right into the next:
Breakfast
Dental checkup 45 minutes away
Lunch
Groceries
Brief playdate
Return: traffic
Martial arts
Math lesson
Dinner
DisHeS
Laundry
Prep for husband’s lunch next day
It was 6:40 when I was able to sit. Come to the computer and catch my breath – for eight minutes before showering Tennyson and tucking him in. In the past, I’ve gone on to cook two, three meals ahead for the little Foodie, find my way to the end of the dish pile, and clean the kitchen. This year, I’ve let myself write.
So I give you a glimpse of my week to share a rendition of a pretty amazing show we have going in our home.
One day I walked into the master where I found Husband pacing. Out streamed from his mouth an uncharacteristically impressive list of To-Dos he had drawn up for the day. “…and I have to do oil change and detail the car and replace the tires pick up the timbau from Riverside mow the lawn get ready for Samba…”
*Pause*
*Slow exhale*
“I think….I’ll naaap.”
And he sank himself into the lounger with the grace of a deflating hot air balloon on landing.
Once I had picked my jaw up off the floor and my bug eyes had resumed their Asian size, I kicked him out, his laughter trailing him. The thing is, he’d meant it. The man really was going to take a siesta. It wasn’t just at my stunned bafflement but for the delight in the sweet change of plans that he’d crowed. It is beyond me. My husband is beyond me. Men are beyond me. If mothers so casually replaced obligations with sleep or every impulse, the human race would go extinct.
A Holistic Journey 
ROFL!
I am glad I’m not only one who’s hubby actually replaces a long list with such a short word
N A P. I must admit today I actually said, “I really just want to take a nap”, as we were driving home late this afternoon from the store. Instead I took my B12 – came planned a menu for the week, made a grocery list, helped DS find items online for his project, cooked dinner, cleaned up, put DS to bed and fell into bed to tired to think any more. 😉
Elle
LOL LOL “hubby actually replaces a long list with such a short word N A P.” So well put! I tried napping today. It was MOM’S DAY!! Sure, Mommas take a break, get away at times. But for real, I just could not wrap my brain around that one, that day.
Mom of three here, including a 20-year-old in college. At some point you eventually say “f*^# it, I simply refuse to run myself ragged one more day.” Its important… Critical even… To give yourself permission to be LAZY and take a day off every now and then! Working from before dawn to after the sun sets just isn’t worth it. That’s not LIVING… That’s DOING!
THREE. You’re amazing. And I agree. We are human BEINGS, not DOINGS, right? Turns out, there’s sure a lot to do as a mother!
Yup, I can totally relate. I’m not a mother yet but I have a mum who I sometimes wonder if she’s superhuman as she does soooo many things I wonder how she is capable of them all. and errrrr,we’re five children in the family sooo I’ll be a fool not to appreciate the efforts of mothers all over the world. Posted something on the beauty of a woman at http://soomteestar.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/beauty-of-a-mother/; I hope you like it.
I would venture to say that the larger the family, the more important that organization is…along with teamwork! 😉 Although even with 6 boys, I am not exactly what one would consider organized! lol We do have somewhat of a loose routine, but there are plenty of days that by the time I get to bed I’ve barely made a dent in the mountains of dirty laundry, and the sink is still full of dirty dishes…and as much as it can drive me nuts, I know that it’s ok. Life is short. The laundry will still be there tomorrow. I would rather play my piano for half an hour, or read some books to my little ones and savor that time, and let that pile of dirty socks and jeans wait until the morning. 🙂
I’ve been getting better at the “just being” (well, a tad LOL) but it’s always good to hear from the wise who choose not to let the doing dictate their lives. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
I agree about the we’d be extinct part. Totally & Completely.
I like the capital T and C. LOL.
You guys have to understand that God must have given you the exceptional power of multitasking…. we understand that and we appreciate that you do what you do. That is why we can nap knowing fully well the Superwoman in the house will prolly save the day….
LOL. Readers who see your comment would have no idea what a !@$% you presented yourself to be on that post of yours. Hey, everyone…check out Yakov’s Men Are Dogs, Post. I mean, women, you should read it. Thanks for the follow, Y. I think this exchange of viewpoints across culture and ocean is the stuff of blogging. Peace.
One love….. lol
I really can identify! It continually amazes me, the differences between the sexes. I guess it’s good we have each other to balance out the relationship.
I try to bear that in mind…on a good day, I remember that this world would be HORRIBLE with 2 Dianas. But often, I am frustrated. =) !! Thanks for the like. And your writing duet’s a cute idea.
My hubby (unlike me) does not make any to do list & he doesn’t analyze, plan, and fret over what needs to me done. Instead, he’ll just do it! If time permitting, if he wants to take a nap–he just will.
I’m not sure if it’s more frustrating or fascinating that my guy lives in the moment, too. I don’t know how he lived without me LOL those single years. But then again, the same holds in reverse on many grounds.
Yeah, why is it that he can just say, “I’m tired,” and bam, just fall asleep that easily! The other day my ministry-minded middle came downstairs and announced he was going to sleep. I told him, “Good night, sweet boy but before you go to sleep will you throw in a load of laundry?” He was aghast! Granted he’s only 18 but when he said I’m going to bed he really meant, I’m going to bed, not what several things can I do before going to bed! You have inspired me! Thanks for making me think, laugh and appreciate! Bless you!
Chuckle. You’re right. When I say I’m going to bed I mean I’m doing laundry dishes soaking tomorrow’s grains and looking up something for next day before going to bed. OMG. I tire myself out just reading this. Thanks for sharing!! And the word (and show) of appreciation.
writing is your me time
i would look at that as work
Chuckle.
Writing is WORK for me, too. It is careful labor. But a loving one, so yes, it amounts to ME time.
This reminds of the days when I was married; lists of to do’s, fixing this and that, feeling productive and industrious, feeling good about providing and doing my part, and then wanting to take a nap. Check… Now, how about living, I mean really really living…? That’s something I think I took for granted, mistaking these checklists for living. In the post mortem of my divorce, I learned so much about me, the opposite sex. I remember just “drifting” from one task to another. How about a shift from industrious, production orientation, to well, seduction, desire? WHAT?! Yeah, you heard me. I wonder if he would have wanted to take a nap if you approached him while wearing something revealing and giving him a certain gaze…? I tell ya, it’s one the quickest ways to snap some attention back from the dull male, or to “finding your way out of motherhood…” Just saying…
LAUGHING SO HARD. As I read on, I expected you to bite hard. Gee…Gotta show Peter this.
My web guy and I were talking about my gravatar photo last week when he saw the section where you rate your picture (or your site, I forget). He laughed hard seeing the rating options, G to X. Holistic Momma D. X-rated, right. You had to see him. Btw, the “incendiary” piece still sits in my drafts pile. I keep thinking about it but find myself writing through these other posts as they come.
Extraordinarily tired this evening, didn’t catch this earlier: Remember, it was a self-imposed list my husband was seeking to default on.
Sometimes, even the male needs to be awakened from his own self-imposed drifting… “You’re the neck which turns the head” ~ My Big Fat Greek Wedding
The quote’s common. I used it in a Greek literature class in college, too – I thought I made it up then. As to waking the man: don’t hold your breath. If he has trouble with his own list, I’m not going to go too easy over his part in mine. Although I HAVE grown a bit more understanding, which comes with appreciating his help. But I stand by the closing of my post. Men. *Shaking head*
Oh, what do I say?! 😉
LOL. YOU GOT IT!
I have transcended the superwoman stage. Now I purposely do not make lists. I try to remember everything and place the agenda for the day and week into the boxes of my mind because I’m thinking it’s good exercise to keep me from dementia. Truly, after raising 3 children and going to grad school and full time work during it all with little sleep for fifteen years, the kids have flown, the pieces of paper are framed, and my life is amazingly easy. Now I take a nap with Jim because washing windows all morning has worn us both out. 😉
Dementia!! You beat me to it. That’s along the line of where I was going in Part 2!!!! Oh, the wOnderful challenges that keep us women strong!
An emphatic nod of agreement with your last sentence.
YUp. THAnk you. lol
One reason why I appreciate texting. I can text my husband things “to do” and he can’t tell me he forgot 🙂 Great post…and can totally understand what you’re going through!
So I’m laughing bc 1) I have an old post on texting (where he is TOO caught up in texting when I talk LOL. Shoot, I think I need to repost that as part of this miniseries.) 2) Yes, he’s begged me to text him the lists bc that’ll spare him the nag and my feeling like a parrot, the list won’t evaporate in his mind, and he’ll get it instantly. We had to settle for email bc I don’t text. =) Glad to hear from you, Kate.
I think you should definitely turn this into a miniseries! I will have a lot to say and relate to…I’m sure. Probably you’re right about not texting. We need to hold on to some memory building devices for our minds. Them as men and us as moms 🙂
“need to hold on to some memory building devices for our minds.” LOL Was thinking about the miniseries (which is on, with Part 2 out just now). I may hold off on the texting post….for Valentine’s. LOL.
My mother, back in the day when housework really was hard work, slaved nonstop from about 7 am to 11 pm, but she always took a 10 minute nap after lunch and swore that was what kept her going. She’s now 98 – and still can’t sit still doing nothing! Women are SUPERMAN.
Gee, 10 min are all she needed, eh? The age she has made it to will tie right into Part 2 ha ha ha ha. Don’t want to spoil it.
YES, Superwomen we are.
I want to apologize for the male species…but not on naps. Military members have it a superhero power, for we never know when our next bedtime is. Kind of like camels and water.
Apology accepted and
salute.
I know what you mean about people doing the most unfathomable things at times. How the thought of an upcoming busy day leads to a siesta might seem perplexing (although a brief rest does allow for a moment to charge the batteries so to speak). 😀 Fortunately, both men and women are enigmatic creatures. It might make for challenges in understanding perspective at times but that’s what keeps life interesting. Hmm, think I’ll go take a nap before I get busy for the day. 😀
Interesting is the word, isn’t it?
Earn your naps!
LOL
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There’s the wonderful side of ‘just being’ – that eventually someone else will get desperate and the ‘doing’ will get done. It takes a lot of skill, patience, practise and experience, to choose when to ‘be’ so that someone else can ‘do’ I learned this a little late in life, but I think, I have learned it pretty well.
To BE so that someone ELSE can do. LOL
My husband will love that. Shoot – that’s his philosophy. LOL
i even wrote about how that works …. how i often find things get magically done …. here’s it is
https://anitaelise.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/how-to-organise-your-cupboard-quickly/
🙂
That’s why, if the wife passes away first, the husband is not too far behind her!!
My aging brain has used up all its battery from the last two posts. Why is he not too far behind?
Here’s how much my husband rocks: he gets our children up and on the bus in the morning, makes their breakfasts and lunches, all before I open an eye. Oh, and he coaches our sons’ soccer team. He also takes siestas, but I can’t complain.
Love,
e
He earned his zzzzs for sure. Can we clone him? But I wasn’t fair to my guy. One of the things that drew me to him was his hard work in the dirt (dirt being whatever I didn’t want to do lol).
I expect too much.
You know, it’s astonishingly common for women to not understand feminism until they have children. Because until that moment, things are fairly equal here in the west. After that moment, however, things get quite unequal. My partner has these things called weekends, where he thinks he gets to do nothing. Because, you know, he’s worked 7 hours a day for the past 5 days. Don’t get me started 🙂 I am reading this fabulous book at the moment called The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb. The Tagline is why women need wives and men need lives, and it analyses the social structures that keep men and women jammed into gendered stereotype roles. Fascinating, I tell you 🙂
LaUGHing. “My partner has these things called weekends….” Wow, the book does sound tempting. I’m about to pick up the Signature from the library, btw. I had to reorder when it went back out to the host library bc I hadn’t had time to pick it up. Really interesting, astute opening thoughts, Sara. Hmm!
If lawyers can charge for shower time (after all, they are thinking about their cases) then what’s wrong with men relaxing and thinking on behalf of their partners? Men typically concern themselves with the larger picture, scanning the horizon for opportunities and threats while leaving their wives to concentrate on everyday activities knowing that the perimeter is safe. Naps are really (N)avigational (A)ids to (P)erimeter (S)ecurity.
Literally
laughing
out
loud.
M, if only you guys really were thinking of us during half-time.
Work is really
(W)omen’s (O)bligations (R)ealized (K)eenly
He he.
Ha ha ha! Similar goes on in my household sometimes!
YAH!
I’m that way too – never a boring moment and usually doing more than one thing at a time. But it is nice to know that when I die I will have used all my energy and not wasted any of it. Does that make sense?
Laughing. YES, of COURSE it makes sense. LOL.
He realized I will finally (agree to) rest
in my grave.
I couldn’t agree more! Every time I give my husband a to do list he’s already making faces and saying how tired he is. I can’t take a nap without thinking about getting ALL the chores done, I don’t know how they do it!
“I don’t know how they do it!”
It’s a gift. LOL
Ha, ha ~ please ‘high-five’ your husband for me 🙂
That was a great read, and truly impressed with mother’s around the world…a full-time, 7-days-a-week, 24 hour job and I think so under appreciated. But the greatest gift is that children love their mothers unconditionally because of this sacrifice ~ such a wild life for the wife 🙂
HAHA ha ha. HIGH FiVe?!! You??!!
The kiddos (and their daddies) don’t luv us for the sacrifice. They won’t know the depth and breadth of what we’ve done for another few decades – and even then, only the girls who refill the MoM’s shoes. LOL
A little testy, eh D. 🙂 And I do so love my afternoon nap. –Curt
Testy, who – me?
Oh, I knOw you guys just LuV it.
*wrinkle nose*
Being a grand parent helps as well. 🙂
Haha. My man has a motto about chores ‘it will still be there tomorrow, and if it isn’t, i would have saved on all that energy wasted.’
*shaking head* How
efficient
of him.
Well written with furiousness yet grace at his cluelessness.
LOL!!! Furiousness….and grAce(?) you say…ha ha ha.
You show up just when I’m thinking of you.
Yes we men do have our limitations, but remember that a woman uses her two brain hemispheres to do all the multitasking stuff that leaves a man watching on incredulously because he can only use a single focus single hemisphere at a time. So why do women keep men with all their limitations? We are useful for breeding.
LOL At least you’re good for something.
(Still doesn’t offer a compelling nuff reason why we keep you around after giving birth.)
Now I’m running scared!!!!!!!
That’s RIGHT!
Looking for shelter now.
Lol, it would not. We need to relax more. 🙂
Hey, I thought you were on my side.
I should write about the joys of sex after 50. Perhaps it’d serve as a reminder that there needs to be time set aside for simple pleasures.
=o
Go for it.
I’m afraid it’d get rather risqué.
I said to do it because you spoke of sIMPLE pleasures. =) Anything beyond that, I can’t endorse publicly.
*looks up at ceiling*
And thank you for the follow.
You are hilarious and so correct! I think it is a universal truth. My hubby will nap at the slightest inclination…To Do list yet to be done and I’m like REALLLLY!?
“at the slightest inclination…”
………..!!!!!!!!@#$%!
you made me laugh. I’ve always been impressed at the female ability to multi-task. and you are right, without us in so many ways the human race would not be far long for extinction. I sometimes find it hard to do all that I need to for myself and my work. I can only look at women who are mothers in addition to everything else in admiration for how they manage to fit thrice as much into a day.
Ha ha ha. Sweet of you to raise your hat to the moms, D. I have nO idea how they do it with more than one child.
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Such a nice read…
I was a typical Husband for the first 4 years of our life together, which include 2 years as a father too… but for the last one year, we just swapped our roles to some extend and I could really feel the heat 🙂
Now she’s working, teaching in college and I sit at home and work, or pretend to work…
How much I can work during day time, with my little daughter running around and demanding everything under the sun in a span of a few minutes and I have to feed her too….
I never had an idea all these years, how my mother managed everything in our home and my wife for these many years, now I could get a small hint…
Salute to all wives and mothers 🙂
HA! THANK you!
Sleeping is for bed time! You’d have to be pretty disorganized to ever need a nap. Motherhood/parenting isn’t some chore comparable to washing a car. It’s an all-day, all-week…and with the calendar, all-month drain.
Anything more than twenty minutes after such probable calming, time-passing tasks deserves a kick in the rear. We men are such emotional, lazy creatures…
Ha ha ha I haven’t gotten to how emotional you guys can really be. I appreciate the self-flagellation.
=)
Well if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! I nap too now. 🙂
LOLoLoL…Yeah, but we always deserve ours. LOL.
This made me laugh out loud…REALLY loud. Loud enough to wake the sleeping man in the room down the hall.
As you know, we got back from vacay yesterday. In the door and five minutes later the bags are unpacked, laundry started and gift wrapping commenced. Hubs has a list, too. You know what he does? Opts for watching football all afternoon. He called it his “transition time” back into reality.
You gotta admit that it’s probably not a bad way of thinking.
Lmao…I know ALL about trAnSiTion time. Oh, that’s a whole post. Gee, I guess it’s a bona fide term among that species – my guy used the exact same word. He comes in from the PARK, the PARK, after wAtching our boy play his heart out with OTHER KIDS, and goes straight to the couch (where he shuts eager eyes) to TranSiTion into being home. I swear this is a post.
*laughing and crying, as i always do with you*
You TOTALLY need to make that it’s own post. From the park??!?!
And, in case you haven’t noticed…my TrAnsItiOn back into work is getting distracted by my awesome bloggy friends.
Maybe I should nap?
“Maybe I should nap?”
I DARE you.
I KNOW you wouldn’t
if you could get a slice of
chocolate cake out of it.
And I am so tempted to but I really have to move on…the line-up of posts for the month (eh hem) getting impatient. I’ve needed to leave this incredibly fun topic of guys and girls but couldn’t resist squeezing in the Best Gift for Her bc I had to tattle when he really asked for more coupons yesterday.
I LOVED that he asked for more coupons!!
I can so identify with the man needing the transition time! Let’s just say, transition time usually lasts most of the evening and most evenings, while I am still buzzing around the house and then he wonders why I could be tired. The suggestion for my tiredness? Get more exercise! Lol! 😀
LOL We really are masochists.
Reblogged this on Musket and Magic and commented:
Good point. Sleep is good. But chores are necessary. And guys are bad at using many word in line.
I must resist mightily the temptation to caption this with an emoji.
And here’s a relevant link to an old episode of the Honeymooners!
(But read this first.)
Glad you enjoyed. =) And thank you for resisting the emoji. LOL.
I appreciate the follow. Welcome. =)
Diana
Reblogged this on idk wtf im doing lol im crazy and commented:
A very entertaining read. Wait. I mean, this woman is pointing out perceived differences between the biological sexes. I’m triggered.
=) Glad you enjoyed. Thanks.