I am sitting in the courtyard of the Smithsonian after just perusing the National Portrait Gallery. In what, my friend derisively commented, is a need to justify any time away from my children - I offered to drive her to DC for a job interview.

Now granted, she is in town from Seattle and only had a few days to visit with us, so the drive time is, in itself, some BFF QT.

I thought a half day off, a few hours to wander alone in DC, might be a welcomed respite from my normal daily bubble of burgeoning three year olds… and it is. Just the act of finding something to wear that was a step up from playground, a step back to how I used to dress… was an adventure. Driving without reaching behind me to fulfill snack requests, offered an intellectual freedom I don’t often enjoy.

We had lunch when we got here and I walked her to the Hotel Monaco for her meeting. Then, I just started walking. I walked around blocks, up to the sculpture garden, the mall, over past the spy museum… I just took in the pace of an adult walking alone on a city sidewalk, so light, so carelessly relaxing.

Shall I stop in for a cup of coffee? Settle down at a table and read for awhile? And here is the living reminder of what you cannot ever entirely explain to someone who is not a parent, without being somehow misunderstood. It may sound as though you resent the imposition of parenthood, if you luxuriate in momentary unrestraint. But even as I sit, so in the now, so loose and easy and all grown up, I miss them. I wonder what they are doing; I envy the people who are with them at this moment. The fact that I just wrote this, sitting alone and uninterrupted, is such an unusual leap out of my day to day.

And the taste of it reminds me that I will have more and more time, to myself, as they grow older and become more independent, and the pangs I feel when I think of the hours I am missing this evening whisper of how short it all is, and of how quickly it goes by, as repetitive as that is to say here, there is truth in the platitude.

I haven’t blogged in a long time have I? DH has been working very long hours and watching him has prioritized the financial for me in such a way that I am trying to focus on somehow making my full-time at-home presence count in some materially concrete way. I do think it is nice for my kids to have me there, but honestly, my staying home has more to do with the double bill of daycare held up against the modest income I command as an undiscovered novelist / underpaid and unmotivated secretary/ and very tired and haggard waitress.

Yes, it bothers me that I am not bringing in actual currency. I got my first job at the age of 14, paid under the table at the Paoli Pancake House… anyone remember that place? Subsequent jobs like movie theater concessions, real estate weekend office help, waitress times 10, etc. etc. followed. At last count I have held over 35 jobs. And it wasn’t so much that I needed the money, it was more a sense of pride, a desire to make my own way, to control my own life on a material front.

Now, after a few freelance gigs dried up, I started selling things on Ebay. It is addictive, actually. Like gambling – watching the watchers, waiting for an auction to end and the email notifications in the morning that let me know I have items to ship and an increase in my Paypal account balance. My kids are sick of my constant email checking, of going to the post office (they now beg to be allowed to stay in the car – too bad for them this isn’t the seventies!). But it has relieved a mild depression that set in as DH worked harder and I felt more and more useless to help us climb out of the debt that naturally occurs when suddenly one person’s income is supporting four. And I buy as well as sell. I have already outfitted the twins with snow pants, footwear, one winter coat and rain boots via a few pretty fabulous Ebay deals that everyone else missed because it’s hard to get excited about snow in August. If you had told me how much time and energy I would be spending planning wardrobes a few years back I would have laughed it off as pure absurdity. But it is the hunter gatherer instinct in our day and age. I am providing, scouting and foraging for items we will need so that we can save in the long run.

I have great visions of preschool starting, and of spending those four hours a week (laughable isn’t it?) typing away at another book… one that will be marketable and engaging to more than ten other people… and then, THEN I will be able to take on some of the responsibility for the worldly half of our venture. So there you have it … an inside look at the mind of a stay at home mom revealed.

I haven’t blogged in a long time have I? DH has been working very long hours and watching him has prioritized the financial for me in such a way that I am trying to focus on somehow making my full-time at-home presence count in some materially concrete way. I do think it is nice for my kids to have me there, but honestly, my staying home has more to do with the double bill of daycare held up against the modest income I command as an undiscovered novelist / underpaid and unmotivated secretary/ and very tired and haggard waitress.

Yes, it bothers me that I am not bringing in actual currency. I got my first job at the age of 14, paid under the table at the Paoli Pancake House… anyone remember that place? Subsequent jobs like movie theater concessions, real estate weekend office help, waitress times 10, etc. etc. followed. At last count I have held over 35 jobs. And it wasn’t so much that I needed the money, it was more a sense of pride, a desire to make my own way, to control my own life on a material front.

Now, after a few freelance gigs dried up, I started selling things on Ebay. It is addictive, actually. Like gambling – watching the watchers, waiting for an auction to end and the email notifications in the morning that let me know I have items to ship and an increase in my Paypal account balance. My kids are sick of my constant email checking, of going to the post office (they now beg to be allowed to stay in the car – too bad for them this isn’t the seventies!). But it has relieved a mild depression that set in as DH worked harder and I felt more and more useless to help us climb out of the debt that naturally occurs when suddenly one person’s income is supporting four. And I buy as well as sell. I have already outfitted the twins with snow pants, footwear, one winter coat and rain boots via a few pretty fabulous Ebay deals that everyone else missed because it’s hard to get excited about snow in August. If you had told me how much time and energy I would be spending planning wardrobes a few years back I would have laughed it off as pure absurdity. But it is the hunter gatherer instinct in our day and age. I am providing, scouting and foraging for items we will need so that we can save in the long run.

I have great visions of preschool starting, and of spending those four hours a week (laughable isn’t it?) typing away at another book… one that will be marketable and engaging to more than ten other people… and then, THEN I will be able to take on some of the responsibility for the worldly half of our venture. So there you have it … an inside look at the mind of a stay at home mom revealed.

CCMOMC used clothing, toy and baby equipment SALE at the United Sports Training Center will be on September 12th & 13th, 2008
9am-Noon