Well, one too many people have gone and done it.  They’ve asked me a question, and it’s been one that’s been asked enough times that I eventually started thinking about it.  That’s never good, because then I write about it, and then you poor people end up reading it.  The cycle can be broken, people.

     And the question is: (wait for it) “How can you stand being a housewife?  Don’t you get bored?”

     The answer is:  “…um…no…why do you ask?”  It boggles my mind that anyone who’s known me for five minutes would get the impression that I would stay in any situation that bored me for longer than a ten-count.  If I am in a situation that I have to “cope” with, I get out of it as quickly as I can, and usually with very few concessions to grace or delicacy.

     Of course, there are unpleasant things you just have to deal with, because it is worth it in some way to do so.  In those cases I try to dwell on what makes it worth it.

     I’ve been a farm hand, a groundskeeper, a receptionist, a leasing agent, worked in retail, in restaurants as both a hostess and a prep cook, I’ve worked at a gas station, and in an office.  I even had a home office there for a while.  I’ve also been a home health aid/housekeeper/companion for a severely disabled person.  I’ve done assembly line work in a factory.

     I took all of those jobs seriously.  I tried to give every job my best attention while I was there.

     But being a stay-at-home mom is great.  Yes, there is a lot of work.  Yes, there have been times when I have felt like my entire life consists solely of cleaning up other creature’s bodily excretions (infancy:  nursing and diapering alone is an eight hour a day job.)

     Still, now that the kids are in school I’ve got a little latitude.  There’s a certain amount of stuff that has to get done.  Evenings and weekends are my work hours.  I don’t consider them to be free.  That’s when I’m “on duty” doing my job, being a mom.  Except for some exceptions, that’s what I consider my “work hours” to be.  But I get to spend my work hours with my family.  My work is my family, and not something that adds stress and distractions that get in the way of those connections.  My family is my number one priority, and there isn’t even a close number two priority.

     Work hours used to be 24 hours/day, 7 days a week, and that got pretty difficult.  But now the kids are in school six hours a day.  I have “time off” from work.  And I do the same sorts of things that people without kids do on their time off. 

     I work out, read, write, run emergency errands for friends, have other stay-at-home moms over for visits, and I do housework in between.  Like, if I get stuck in the middle of the story, it’s time to blast some Godsmack and fold laundry and let the mental gears spin until they find traction.

     If I over-do a workout, I can take a fifteen minute hot-tub soak.

     If I’m having a bad day, and all of the health and safety requirements of a decent household are met…I can pop a movie into the DVD player.

     I take the time to prepare elaborately artistic meals from time-to-time…when I feel like it and it seems like it’ll be fun.

     I am sometimes stressed, sometimes overworked, sometimes feel taken for granted, sometimes get tired of having to be the one to make everything better when I don’t always know how…

     …but I am never bored.

     My mom always taught us that the only people who ever got bored were boring people.  If you were bored, it was because you lacked intellectual curiosity.  You lacked imagination and inventiveness.  She considered boredom to be a personal failing akin to ignorance or laziness.  The phrase “I’m bored” was always met with some sort of strenuously unpleasant task…most often splitting, cutting or hauling wood for the furnace.

     I don’t understand being bored when left to your own devices.  Sure, I get bored in situation where I am required to pay attention to things I’m not interested in and that do not take all of my mental and physical capacity but don’t leave me enough leeway for day dreaming or fidgeting…but being a stay-at-home-mom isn’t one of those situations.

     Housework is brainless.  I don’t have to be “there” for it.  I just plug in the “floorwashing” program, and I’m off into my head having adventures with my characters in a place I invented all by myself.  OK, sometimes its adventures with invented characters…sometimes it’s me and Pat Robertson in a one-on-one cage deathmatch (hyperbole, for those who do not recognize it.  I in no way advocate the brutal beatings-to-death of slime-ball televangelists who promote a culture of mindless hate, superstition and spiritual onanism.  Especially not with folding chairs or lengths of chain.)

     Whatever.  I guess the point is, I’ve got a pretty sweet set-up here.  It’s not easy.  It’s a lot of work, it makes it difficult to have a social life…but it works and I’m not bored, and I don’t feel, as some have said, that it is a “waste” for me to be at home.

     Not just anyone can be a stay-at-home mom.  Some people let it get to them that other people look down on them.  Some people feel like they are betraying their “womanhood” by “settling” for a traditional role, or some other stupid ideological bullshit.  Some people believe that they should be doing “more”.  I might have other talents and other potentials that I’m not developing…but that can be said for anyone, really.

     At the end of the day, right now, right here, at this point in my life, I’m really happy and satisfied doing this.