Hobson's Choice

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Let's Give It A Try

Dear readers, I've enabled diaryland's comments feature if you would like to leave a comment on an entry.

Jenny

9:08 p.m. - 2006-10-25
2 comments

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The House

I was writing about stress and housecleaning. At this point, my goal is just to keep the place free of rodents. We caught another one yesterday (god, I hate killing other mammals.) In fact, I think on those occasions this winter when we really need to make the place classy for guests, we'll just turn up the heat and hide the more visible mousetraps.

6:33 p.m. - 2006-10-24
2 comments

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Whew

Two months into the school year, I'm starting to feel the stress of a working American mother. If this entry begins to seem a little frantic itself, it's because I'm of course multi-tasking just as the modern American woman should. I'm watching the laptop try to geocode a 1000-address dataset. This is the test; can the laptop handle all my mapping needs? So I'm nervously watching as it grinds through the addresses. In fact, the screen just went blank about 30 seconds ago, and now it's back to normal. Thank god.

Anyway, stress. At the end of the day, I find myself amazed that after wrangling preschoolers all morning and racing around doing errands in the afternoon, I'm still expected to keep a clean house and get a nourishing, hot meal on the table. It makes me want to torch every copy of Good Housekeeping and Family Circle out there. And I'm only working part-time at my preschool job and at-home on my mapping job (by the way, it looks like the geocoding will be successful, just a couple more minutes). I shudder to think of the pressure on mothers who work full-time and still have to do everything.

I'm taking Airborne for a cold, and the ad on the box promises a free bottle if I buy six. At the rate we're going, we may hit that goal before Christmas. But get this, you not only have to send in the proofs of purchase but also the store receipts. In what universe would I ever have the time, coordination, and organization to save and organize a complex set of 6 boxes and 6 receipts? I mean, I'm doing good to balance the checkbooks, save business receipts for taxes, and send in all our paperwork for our flexible medical spending account.

So I say to the women of America, screw the forces which expect us to cut coupons while cooking good meals and ironing. Screw products that promise an unattainable freebie. Embrace frozen pizza (Aldi has quite a nice line of frozen pizza). Embrace drive-through pharmacies and dry-cleaners. Embrace Clorox wipes.

And then invite your critics over to do a little dusting.

6:01 p.m. - 2006-10-24
0 comments

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The Future is Now

Time has exploded in Eleanor's mind. Suddenly, she understands that there is a future, and she spends much of day working out the logistics of her future. It excites her and worries because she understands that she'll be doing different things in the future, but she thinks she will be exactly the same as she is now.

So she's worried about how college will work. She keeps setting up a schedule for herself for when she will be at home with us and when she will be at college. Currently, she will be at home on Mondays and Thursdays and attending college the other days of the week. Except that it occurred to her to worry about food and eating at college so she has amended her plan to eating at home every night. But then she wonders how she will know how to drive to get back to college.

She has a plan for bedtime though. When she's at home, Chris and I will still be able to read her stories. But on college nights, she will have popcorn and Sesame Street DVDs to help her get to sleep. She will NOT be having a roommate, she reports.

She will be burning extra copies of our Laurie Berkner CDs so that she can leave some of them at home so that I can listen to them. So that I will remember her, she says.

At some point, she will be moving back to Lexington and living in our old house, she reports. She misses it. But then she will come back home to have her babies. She will go out to work, and Chris and I will take care of the babies.

In 14 years, the worries will be all for Chris and me as she will be ready to fly and go. Chris and I will be wrenched, and she will not remember her plan to come home on Mondays and Thursdays. She doesn't know that long before that time, she will no longer want us to read bedtime stories for her.

I smile and say that she can be with Daddy and me for as long as she wants, that we can always live together, that I will always cook for her and read for her. I will be thrilled to take care of her babies. I store up this future, an alternate reality, against the day she joins the throng of adults at college, at her own home, with her own babies.

7:37 p.m. - 2006-10-20
0 comments

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Adventures

My grandmother died almost a year ago. Today, Eleanor and I were talking about her and what she remembered about her. Then we talked about the funeral, and Eleanor remembered that there had been a video display of pictures of Grandma. She said:

"They had a screen at the funeral that showed all of Great-Grandmother's adventures."

I love that. My grandmother didn't get to do much of what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted so badly to go to college. So I love to think that despite her disappointments, we can still call her life an "adventure."

7:34 p.m. - 2006-10-20
1 comments

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Toys

On Melissa the Marshall Moose (a small stuffed buffalo her daddy got her)

E: Whenever you get a new toy, it feels like your only toy.

4:13 p.m. - 2006-10-18
0 comments

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