Llife of Leisure?

My manager at work has accused me of having a life of leisure. I know what you’re thinking (at least what my fellow moms are thinking); HOW DARE SHE!

Before I go on, I should explain that she is a wonderful woman whom I genuinely adore. And I’m not just saying this because we became Facebook friends just as instantly as we became actual friends and so she will probably be reading this. She’s otherwise awesome, really.

But she mistakes my lack of desire (refusal)to work more than two days a week with laziness, like I’ve grown too accustom to my “life of leisure”. I let her get away with this slander only once. The second time she made this accusation, I gently spoke up:

“Listen bitch, (I really did call her a bitch, but only because she really is my friend, really), I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with this whole life of leisure bullshit! I have three kids at home! What in the name of God do think could possibly be leisurely about that!”

She’s a mom too; A single mom, with a daughter who is 2. So while I know she has her struggles with spending many hours working and away from her child, she is not capable of completely grasping full time mommy-hood with THREE children. . She doesn’t understand that I go to my part time job both to pay some bills, and to take a break from my full time job which doesn’t pay well.

She can’t really know that meeting the demands of my three children, as well as trying to maintain some order in our household, is actually a lot like her job of managing a restaurant and its feisty staff, who respects her but still loves to torment her, and it’s often impossible to please, demanding customers. Take her job, and multiply it by a couple of hundred, and we have the exact same job. She just makes more money than I do, and probably doesn’t love her job as much I love mine.

She may also consider me a “kept woman” and a little spoiled, not spoiled acting but just very well cared for. I am. I can’t argue with that. But I work very hard for my family and it is important to me that my loved ones feel as fortunate to have me as I do to have them. And THAT is why they come first. That is why I can’t work until 11 p.m. or later, four nights a week, just to spend the remaining three days and nights exhausted and cranky and unable to be the wonderful patient mother I strive (and sometimes struggle) to be.

I just sat outside all alone and dipped my feet in the pool for about ten minutes. I’ve done the dishes, did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen, played with children, fed children (twice), got children to sleep at the same time, picked up the broom, put down the broom, and went outside for a moment of SILENCE:

“Screw this broom! It’s my only quiet time of the day (naptime) and I am going to squeeze in one moment of NOTHING! I don’t think the world will end if I don’t sweep the floors right now so that they can be dog hair free for the next hour.”
It was blissful. Ten minutes of doing nothing, saying nothing and hearing no one! Blissful. And while I was out there, I had to chuckle at my “life of leisure”. She thinks I lay around, floating in my pool all day, and here I am wasting two precious minutes of my ten minute break thinking “I really should get up and sweep the pool…again.”