So what do you do all day?

I will probably annoy some women (and maybe some men) with this post, but remember, blogs are full of opinions, and opinions are like noses (and behinds): everybody’s got one and sometimes they smell.

I once had an older male patient who was in with his sweet wife, and when he figured out that I only worked in the office 3 days a week (and remember, I work from 8 am to 6pm), he asked me, “What do you need all that time off for? To rest?” chuckle chuckle, haha. Except I think he was serious. No, really.

I asked his wife if she worked outside the home, and she said “no”. I looked at him and said, as nicely as possible, “I do what she does in the two days a week I am not working here”. Needless to say, I don’t think they came back very often, but then, I wasn’t too upset about that.

Moms are the hardest working persons on the face of the planet. Unless you have a nanny, in which case, I hate you. This is a subject that I know is bounced around and blogged about all the time, but I still decided to do this. Do you want to know what I did today, on my “day off”? I woke up at 6:30 am, after having this weird dream about trying to find a new purse in this extremely cult-like store, (okay, enough of that, I don’t even carry a purse), and jumped in the shower. By 7:20, I had dressed the two year old, packed his lunch, and got him and his cousin in the van for the 15 minute (one way) drive to preschool. Stopped for a biscuit, cause I didn’t have time to feed said two year olds, dropped them off and was back on road.

8 AM: stopped by office to pee and drop off paperwork that I spend an hour every nite that I work dictating (yes, in addition to the hours spent treating patients, I spend at least an hour talking about it). Went through mail, wrote instructions to staff and left.

8:30 to 9:30: volunteering at school, and yes, talked a little too, with some cool teachers.

9:30-9:45: Went to bank

9:45-10 AM: Went to library to drop off extremely overdue books, that I hadn’t gotten time to read.

10-10:30: Went Walmart to buy gifts for boys’ class and school, and a family that needs some extra help. Also ran by mall to pick up last minute gifts; you say, “it’s not last minute yet”, I say, “try shopping with 3 small children”.

10:30-11 am: Drive home to drop gifts off, pee again, and pick up cake Hubs called to see if I could bring if I was at home (which I wasn’t, I was at Wal-Mart when he called, he said, a little squeakily, “WAL MART??? Why are you at WALMART???” See, I have a little problem, I spend a little too much money sometimes at this store, and he was not happy I was there, should have lied.) So to make up for being at Wal-Mart, I drove home to get his cake and of course to pee.

11 AM to 12:30 PM: Dentist appointment

12:30 to 1:30: Lunch with the Hubs and his coworker (one of my favorite people in the whole world, who laughs at my jokes) and of course pee.

1:30 to 2 pm: drove to get 2 year old from preschool and stopped by to get ingredients for meal that Hubs requested (okay, I suggested his favorite meal and he agreed; I did this to make him forget my wal-mart trip earlier).

2 to 2:40: picked up caboose, drove home, unloaded groceries, loaded caboose back in van

2:40 to 3:00: picked Monkey and Weatherman up from school, plus the carpooler

3-5 PM: did two loads of laundry, vacuumed main areas, mopped sticky spots that took my socks off when walking across them, started dinner for everyone, loaded dishwasher, patted boo-boos, got a splinter out.

5 to now…cleaned up kitchen, put loads of laundry up (oh, I did eat my dinner), bathed Caboose, argued with him about what pjs to wear, and am now sitting here, writing about my day.

In all seriousness, all my life I have heard about equality for women, women should work outside the home, stay at home moms just “gave up” and are clueless. No…I say NO!! All my friends who have kids near my age only want to be SAHM’s. We all want to be home. It’s flipping hard to work outside the home and do everything we need to do as wives, moms and home makers. There, I said it. We, as women, make the home. I like making my home a “home”. And I read somewhere in the last little while that a recent study done shows that the happiest, most successful marriages and homes have the women doing most of the house hold chores. Now that doesn’t mean men can’t help out, but let’s face it–men see their home through rose colored glasses. Sure, Hubs would know when he had no more clean clothes, but dirty dishes and floors and counters and overrun garbage doesn’t make him break out in hives, as it might make me. I don’t love doing all the house work, but man, do I love the results.

I want to have it all. I wanna bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, eat it, clean the pan and do it all. But I can’t. I choose to do a few things as well as I can, not a bunch of stuff haphazardly. I have the best of both worlds; the boys love the days I pick them up from school, and I love being home to make our home a refuge from the world. I also love (most days) my job. I just wonder how far women really have come in our quest to be “equal”. I don’t want to be June Cleaver, but I wonder what kids today would be like if more of us were “at home” for our children more often. Or for that matter, our husbands. Okay, Okay…go ahead and write me hate mail now. But if you’re like a lot of my friends…you know you want to tie that apron around your waist and bake some good home-made cookies.