Mother of the Year

I was chatting with one of my friends from college this morning and she told me that her parents are staying with her. She was saying that she really needs a break and I wondered how long they were there. I let out an audible gasp when she said 3 weeks! I love my parents but as an adult I have no desire to live under the same roof. When I had to stay there last year after the hurricane for 9 days I was going crazy. When you live with someone for any short period of time it is like they are invading your space or vice versa.

My mother has been watching Nate since I had to go back to work when he was 11 weeks old. In the last 4 years he has become quite attached to his Grammie and she misses him when she has a day “off”. Nate sees it as a normal day and I see it as having to have my house clean at all times. My mother is having surgery next month and I am looking forward to not having a clean house. That may sound weird, but having floors that you can eat off of at all times is exhausting. When I come home from work I want to spend time with Nate and Love and not worry about doing the dishes and dusting. I want to put Nate to bed and relax in bed with a book or magazine. Spend an hour watching Revenge and not being stressed about folding the laundry. I also don’t want my weekends bogged down with chores while Nate plays and Love relaxes. I want to not feel stressed about running errands or visiting friends because it is cutting into the time I have left to clean and hopefully relax for an hour or so Sunday night.

I was so relieved when Tara said that her mother is obsessed with laundry (even doing it on Christmas!) and keeps rearranging her kitchen. My mother is obsessed with my dishes. She cannot stand anything in my sink but I normally do the dishes after dinner and anything after that sits in the sink until I am making dinner the next night. She insists on hand washing everything even though I have a dishwasher and it drives me nuts. She also puts things away and then I can’t find them because they are in the wrong drawer or cabinet. I rearranged my kitchen counters before the holidays and my mother told me she was so glad I did because you can see them from my living room and it was a mess. My counters are always clean but she didn’t like where I had things and now she thinks it’s much better. So do I, but I would never tell someone their counters are a mess…okay so I told her that hers are a disaster after she said that to me…but it’s true and she admitted it because she does have crap all over.

Tara and I agree that it’s nice to have help with the kids but instead of paying someone to watch them you pay the price by having your nosy parent watch them. I am not Suzie homemaker and I fully admit it. I also have no desire to be the perfect housekeeper or mother of the year. I have a full-time job that takes a lot out of me and come home to a second one. I’m doing the best I can and although I’m not perfect I think we do okay…and so does my family and that’s all that really matters.