Manic Monday

In the old days, when I dreamt of a fantastic life as a domestic goddess, I envisioned having ample leisure time. I would care for my husband, our daughter and our two dogs while still having plenty of time to write a novel, have a blog and organize everything in our house. And then reality set in. While that’s certainly not what actually goes on here, at least I put forth a gallant effort (in my eyes, in comparison to nobody, but whatever).

The truth is: I’m not as fit as I’d like to be, I do not clean as much as I should and I don’t spend nearly enough time working on my novel (or any time but that’s irrelevant). Sometimes I find it difficult to get motivated. I think I am not very good at managing my time. Lately, the tantrums have been wiping me of all my energy; it takes a lot of mental strength to handle that without losing your cool.

One of my biggest disillusions about stay-at-home motherhood is that Mondays would no longer be Mondays. I mean, it would just be another day. I would always feel like every day was a weekend and I would no longer have that dreaded lump in my gut that started somewhere in the middle of Sunday afternoon couch time. While the lump has long gone away, Monday is still Monday. I still have responsibilities. I have to grocery shop. I need to make a meal plan. The laundry pile is growing. I still have to walk the dogs, deal with the clutter and empty the dishwasher. Maybe it doesn’t matter to the people next store if I do all these things but it does matter to us. It’s our house. It’s our lives' and things need to go a certain way in order for everybody here to be happy.

Sometimes, especially in what feels like it should be the end of winter even though I know we probably still have at least another month, the day-to-day starts to feel a bit mundane. I’m sick of being stuck indoors. Last week we had a taste of warm weather, just enough to get the bug, and now it somehow feels ickier than when it was 20 degrees outside. There is mud everywhere. Everything is brown. I’m tired. I just want to hide under the covers with a book. I wish I could call in sick.

While I can’t have a sick day, I do have the luxury of deciding what I want to do today. I have the sweetest little girl, who wants me to “play kitchen.” She also just told me, despite my unwashed hair and lack of makeup, that I “look beautiful today.” I wouldn’t trade that for a million sick days.