You're Never Alone Again

I think one of the things I have really discovered in the last year or so is that once you become a mother you are never alone again. Even if you "go out" there is the ghostly presence of your child next to you, causing you to call and check in while you're out and about or go to their room first thing once you walk back into the door. However you become adept to doing things with child even if it's easier without and it's because of this I somewhat sneer at my husband and my friends. They whine about how they have to go to the store with the child and moan can't you keep them since it is easier to go without them?

Why yes; yes it is. Believe me I know how much easier it is because while my son is not that bad (yet) he still whines and cries and reaches and it would be so much easier to go without. However I do not always have that luxury (as is the case today) and when I have days like today I so much more appreciate it when I can do little things without my son underfoot. Like say grocery shopping? And today it was so much more frustrating since he refused to take a nap before we went so I finally had to corral him in his playpen so I could take a shower and then get in the car to run errands. Which of course five minutes into the car ride he fell asleep and between paying the water bill and going to HEB he got a cat nap which we all know what that does to toddlers so now he's running around all juiced up and there looks to be no nappy break for me in the near future especially since I have to work a party tonight.

Now this is not a mad at husband blog because it's not like he is sitting on his ass doing nothing; he's out in Sweetwater helping friends move back here. But still it's kinda hard when you are by yourself all week with the child and Saturdays/Sundays are the two days you get help during the daylight hours and look oh no you have to tackle one of those by yourself. It's like being told last minute at a desk job you have to come in on Saturday too bad so sad. And it's not like I hate being a SAHM (previous blog ascertained that) it's just on some days when there are things I discovered this morning I needed to do today and I was like "Fuck" when I realized that Albert would be out of town. So I'm having to do all this on a day when normally I could leave the boy at home and get all my errands done in less than two hours.

And that gets back to the meat of the blog which is that all moms are never home again. There's something about being a female that makes society think that suddenly we're expected to do it all on our own even if we're married or working. How many of my friends are working moms who work and in some cases go to school and come home and are expected to do a majority of kid duty just because? Or in the case of SAHMs who of course do nothing but sit around all day on our fat asses eating bon-bons, watching daytime TV and drinking wine (it's sarcasm people look it up)? Because we are at home people seem to think that we do nothing so it should no big deal to run around and pay bills and grocery shop with our little on in tow because our husbands work and need to rest?

I get the need to rest part; my husband works hard. So I do give him downtime and now he comes in of his own choice and plays with the boy as soon as he walks in. However women do not pregnant by ourselves; therefore on matter whether we work or not is irrelevant we should not be expected to do it all almost on our own. We need time to ourselves and even if we're doing something for the house like bills or groceries we should be able to go and do it by ourselves without having to take the kids. One of the most frustrating things when my son was in the first year is how my sister and husband would call me to go get something for them since I was at home? I finally snapped at my husband "Yes I'm at home but do you know what going out to run some asinine errand for you entails? It entails making sure the boy is clean, making sure he has formula, water, diapers, wipes and other incidentals in his diaper bag. Then I haul it all plus baby to the car and drive to the destination only to haul it all out again for a freaking five minute transaction at a convenience store only to repeat it to bring you cigarettes. You can see why that's not a good enough reason for me."

Sometimes I like to be alone; completely alone and it doesn't happen very often anymore for a couple of reasons. First off I don't really want it and second because there's just no way. Albert is once again the only worker who has the pager so he gets paged a lot so if he's not late coming home he's gotta go out because some dumbass locked themselves out of their house. And it sucks because we don't get time together alone but thems the breaks of life I realize that; it's just an ironic thing because while I bemoan never being alone I never really want to be.