Stay At Home Moms

People always ask me what I’d like to do.  It’s just one of those questions that you get asked a lot over the years.  Heck, I’m starting to ask my oldest son what he’d like to do when he gets older.  Parents ask.  Teachers ask.  Friends ask, and so on.  My oldest son came home with his 5^th grade yearbook recently and sure enough each kid in his 5^th grade class was asked that same question.  “What do you want to do when you grow up?”  Answers ranged from President of the United States to professional baseball player (the overwhelming #1 choice) to police officer to musician.  It’s fun to think about what you’d like to do or what you’d like to be when you grow up.  It’s sort of a sky’s the limit kind of question.  There’s no wrong answer. 

However, I think an even better question might be what DON’T you want to do when you grow up?  Or what DON’T you want to be when you grow up?  Now that would be interesting to see how kids answered that question.   I suspect there would be some great blog material there if a group of kids were asked that question.

Now, I have no idea how I would have answered that question had someone asked me years ago, but if someone were to ask me now what I DON’T want to be my answer would be quick and simple . . . A Mom.  I don’t want to be a Mom.  No way.  Way too hard.  And no, I’m not even taking child birth, breast feeding, and blow jobs into account.  Forget that stuff.  That’s the kind of stuff that as a man I simply CANNOT comprehend. 

But since I have pretty much spent the last two-plus months living the life of a stay-at-home mom, I feel that I can easily justify my answer.  And without hesitation my answer to the question of what I DON’T want to be is A MOM!

Lets just start at the top with the carpooling thing.  Now there’s nothing hard about carpooling.  I can drive from point A to point B as well as anyone.  But it’s the chaos inside the car that’s crippling.  Kids in a car are like Gremlins.  One is great.  No problem.  Two is okay.  There’s definitely the potential for problems, but two is still manageable.  Three is real trouble.  You gotta keep your head on a swivel with three.  With three there’s a chance that the interior of your car is destroyed.  And anything above three is a pure nightmare.  With four or more kids it’s nothing short of a miracle if you actually get all the kids to their destination without someone jumping out of the window.  I have seriously thought about pulling over and putting a couple of the kids in the trunk.  I hate carpooling.

Then there’s setting up playdates.  Playdates are a double-edged sword.  You need playdates in order to keep your kids from bouncing off the walls and driving you nuts, and yet all playdates really do is add more kids to the mix.  Ideally I’d send my kids to someone else’s house 100% of the time, but that’s not how playdates work.  You need to call people to see if their kid would like to come to your house, which of course opens a new can of worms . . . . the round of phone calls to a bunch of moms who I assume are thinking one of two things when some dude calls looking to set up a playdate with their kid:  #1 – Unemployed loser.  #2 – Child molester.  I hate setting up playdates.

Of course you’re also in charge of making sure everyone eats, and obviously there are more meals to be made if you have playdates over.  Now, I don’t know how to cook.  Literally no idea how to cook.  I never learned.  I never wanted to learn.  I still don’t want to learn.  I can’t cook.  So what?  But this becomes a problem when you have no less than two growing kids on your hands.  It’s an even bigger problem when no one wants to eat at the same time, and when one wants mac & cheese and one wants a bologna sandwich and when no one can agree on what to watch on TV while eating, and when you run out of ketchup on the day you serve chicken nuggets.  Things are further complicated when my wife sends me e-mails reminding me to make sure that everyone gets some fruit.  I almost cut my finger off trying to slice an apple.  Ridiculous.  I’m now looking into the contents of Sunny D to see if this can be substituted for fruit.  If so I’m good to go, but regardless, I hate making lunches.

And then there’s the whole entertainment director thing.  Am I running a cruise ship here?  I’ve filled my house with XBOX’s and Wii’s and iTouch’s and cable TV’s and sporting equipment and computers with Internet access so that I WOULDN’T HAVE TO play entertainment director, and yet  my kids are bored within minutes and looking for me to entertain them.  It’s amazing to me that if I actually schedule a few things my kids are up in arms about how I’m cutting into their summer break, but if I have nothing planned they are bored stiff.  And the things they want to do are amazing.  In the last week my oldest son has asked whether we could go deep sea fishing  and/or skiing in Colorado, and my youngest son has asked to visit his cousins in Florida.  They’ve also both asked for a new dog even though the one we have is just a year old and has more energy than any three dogs combined.  Their boredom is exhausting for me.  I hate being the entertainment director.

And it doesn’t get any easier – they have only been out of school for one week!  At this point I am going to become a serious advocate for year-round schooling.  That’s right, 12 months of school.  A few breaks around the holidays, but other than that lets keep our kids in school year round.  Well time to end this blog.  Someone is yelling at me that they’re hungry.  I can’t wait until school starts again in the fall!  68 days and counting.  Yeah that’s right, I’m already counting.