Lua's Heaven

"Where is Papa's mama?"
"She's in heaven"
"I've been there."
"I bet you have. What was it like?"
"Pink."

Where is the $%*&ing maid???

When I decided to be a stay-at-home-mom, I didn't think much about the "home" part. Mostly I was excited about the "mom" part and thought the home would take care of itself. How wrong I was. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time cleaning up after my kids than playing with them. I often hear myself saying things like "I'm sorry honey, I can't read to you right now because I have to scrape last night's dinner off of the dishes". How pathetic is that? Yet it has to be done.

I've been talking to a few of my friends that stay at home with their kids, and the consensus is that none of us is cut out for being a housewife. Sadly, that is exactly what we are. This new generation of women who've decided to be at home to raise their family is quite different from previous generations. We are well traveled, well educated, often older and have experience being part of the workforce. We are used to having intelligent conversations with other educated, working adults on a daily basis. The most important thing that sets us apart is that with us, this being at home thing was a choice, not an expectation. And more often the choice was made without prior knowledge of all of the housework that goes into being a housewife.

Mostly, what I'm wondering is this: What did I do (perhaps in a past life) to deserve the hours upon hours of laundry that I clean every week? Is the food that I am forced to scrape off the floor under the highchair retribution for all of the times I refused to help my mom clean the bathroom when I was twelve? Or did I actually bring this work onto myself by foolishly imagining I was going to be home playing intellectually stimulating games with my offspring all day? The fact that I have a college education, that I spent time in the larger world and have professional goals for myself does not change the fact that the cat puke on the kitchen floor needs to be cleaned up. Imagine that. I actually chose to clean up puke for a living.

It would actually be kind of funny if it wasn't so...true.