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« Could I BE any more GROUCHY? | Main | I've been waiting for this day all summer »
I wonder how many more times I will be able to get away with this.
September 30, 2003
The boys are having one of their "slumber parties." They don't know it yet, but a "slumber party" is a desperate attempt for mama to get some peace and quiet before the usual bedtime. It always involves letting the boys sleep in the same bed. Sometimes a flashlight, sometimes there's popcorn. Tonight there was an admonishment that they MUST. STAY. IN. BED. (and to please try not to hurt each other). The light was put out about 45 minutes before Monk's usual bedtime, and mama sat in the kitchen with her head on the kitchen table for a little while.
I can here them in there - which is against the rules of this particular slumber party - but I'm not going to go in there. I'm just going to sit here and wait for there to be silence in that general area so I can go about my nightly business. I might even sleep in Monk's bed, after I change the sheets.
It has been. A Day. And not for any reason other than I am tired. Friday can't come soon enough. Work is stacked up for me, and home is also busy. Very busy. Monk has outside the home activities just about every day of the week, I have about a thousand lincoln logs that I need to find and return to Connections, library books are overdue...all of this stuff that really clearly indicates that I need a vacation, but it's not looking like a vacation is imminent because, frankly, I have too much work to do at work.
At work, I'm busy trying to help organize my part of a webraising that will be taking place in November, working on my blogging class, trying to get a volunteer to teach a Photoshop class (which starts in, like, TWO WEEKS), working on pulling some stuff together for a curriculum project we've undertaken, and doing a bunch of general paperwork that is required for the day-to-day operations of where I work. Plus other stuff that I am conveniently allowing myself to not think about for now...I'm sure I'll remember it all when I'm at work tomorrow (oh yeah shit, I need to submit my freaking timesheet.)
The boys just burst from the bedroom, talking about being BORED. They are tired of playing "tomato" - which, apparently, is a game where they both curl up into little balls on the bed, pretending they are "tomatoes" and roll around all over. Coley no longer wants to play that game. He'd much rather throw Lincoln Logs all over the living room (someone PLEASE remind me to NEVER EVER EVER get lincoln logs from connections again.)
Anyway, I allowed myself to look at some paint chips today. I'm getting excited about painting that back room, and I have found someone who will be able to help me. He has all of the painterly supplies that I need, plus he has a vested interest in helping me out. Plus I will make him food and stuff in exchange. I'm very thankful to be getting some help. VERY thankful. I think he also might help me repair my fucking gate so it doesn't scrape the ground when I try to open and close it. This is a good thing.
I'm tired. I'm so so so terribly grouchy right now. And I'm thinking about my questions from yesterday - about reframing that "On Strike" post to focus more on what parents need - what choices would we WANT - rather than what is currently available. I gotta tell you, there's a false dichotomy between those who work outside the home and those who work primarily inside the home. Working outside the home is not necessarily what I would consider child abuse or even, as I termed it, "abandoning your child to the state." The issue is not the number of hours you spend in the presence of your children. The issue is the amount of time you spend being fully present with your children. And not only that, but what are the options you would like to have that are currently unavailable to you.
For me, my living/working situation feel so tenuous as to be frightening. I have no idea if I'm going to be able to keep my job in a year if our funding runs out. And if I don't keep this job, I can't as of right now think of a single job that I can take in the evenings that would pay me what I'm making now - enough to live. And this home is not sale-worthy in the least, so I don't have the option of "just selling" and getting on. I'm thankful that for now I have the ability to make the choices that I have made, and I really don't tend to dwell on the tenuousness of those options, but I do on occasion get pissed off about the fact that I am THIS close to being unable to support my ideal lifestyle, which isn't all that extravagant. And that takes me right into being pissed off that there are people who can't even get to where I am, in a position where they even have a tenuous relationship with something resembling an ideal situation.
It makes me mad that we're so tired, and that we don't have time to form communities for ourselves and our children. It angers and frustrates me that our economic system places more value on working to create product than it does on working to nurture our children and each other. It pisses me off that my children will be indentured servants to the debt we are creating ever day. A fiscal debt. An emotional debt. An environmental debt. A TIME debt. We are borrowing all of these things from our children without the ability or intention to pay it back.
My argument is that the world will not cave in upon itself if we all "worked" a lot less (and by "work" I mean doing meaningless tasks for profit rather than meaningful tasks to fulfill need). In fact, the world would most likely benefit from a slowing of production and unnecessary work. So, that's my ideal. My ideal looks like a world where the needs of all people are fulfilled, including the need for some people to stop. To slow down. To NOT work. It's not laziness that compels us to slack. It's sanity.
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Comments
If only people could see this-- that sometimes those who seem to "do nothing" are really living more fully. Now that I'm not working, money is really tight, and I feel guilty about it, and don't know what to tell people when they ask what I do. I always think the things I do aren't real-- the editing and writing, etc. aren't legit unless paid. And that I'm lazy because I'm not trying to find some work that will give me a "career". How much more acute this must be when raising children, when it's clear that this culture doesn't see this as the most important work of all.
Wishing you a very, very, very good night's sleep Dru. Perhaps the boys can find anothe vegetable to imitate?