Here is a completely fictional scenario that is not at all about me and my life:
Imagine an eight-months pregnant woman has a deep desire to clean and organize the basement playroom. One evening she asks her husband to carry the heavy vacuum cleaner downstairs so she can suck up all the itty bitty bits of dried up Playdoh that are scattered EVERYWHERE.
The next day she spends the bulk of her afternoon picking up toys and sorting them, but doesn’t have time to vacuum. Before you know it, the kids have spilled the contents of ALL of the toy boxes all over the floor AGAIN. But then, without being asked, the woman’s husband cleans up all of the toys over the weekend!
On Monday morning, however, the woman notices that the floors have still not been vacuumed and the Playdoh bits are starting to spawn snippets of paper and assorted other crap. But her husband did remember to bring the vacuum cleaner BACK UP THE STAIRS without it ever so much as being turned on.
In this purely hypothetical scenario, dear readers, is it safe to assume that the husband has some sort of floor blindness? (And also zero nerve endings on his feet because how do you even walk on that shit?) Perhaps it’s a cognitive defect related to detecting dirty floors in general.
And also crap piled up on surfaces. But that’s a different story.
The End
DAILY SNACK
My in-laws were over the other day.
While I was in the kitchen getting supper ready,
Colum was busy clearing off the living room rug
So I could vacuum.
Oh sweetie,
Thank you for making it look like I vacuum on a regular basis.
That was nice.
Lest my readers mistake my fast and flippant tone for serious criticism, I think it may be time to lay forth some basic
Playground principles. One is that this is not a blog about how to parent well or properly. I don’t pretend the circumstances of my life have somehow landed me at the pinnacle of parenting know-how or that I have any universal knowledge on the topic at all. Most of my understanding of children and child-rearing is drawn from my own personal experience as a mother of two, big sister to three, first cousin to twenty-some-odd, and very brief foray into the world of professional nannies. This is augmented by countless books, articles, websites, and blog posts about pregnancy and childbirth and childrearing. So I speak the language; but put me at the corner of Pacific and Dundas with my own screaming toddler and newborn baby and I have no idea what to do.
This is a blog about how it feels to be at that corner. About what I’ve tried and what works and what doesn’t. About what’s going on in the wider world that might impact our lives as parents. About what kinds of stuff might be worth getting and what’s garbage. I’ll complain about my kids and I’ll brag about them. I’ll bitch and whine and gossip. Blogs are of a transient nature and what’s bugging me one day might not bother me in the least the next.
Still, insofar as all the content is filtered through my perspective it might behoove me to make clear any biases I have. I am not interested in any stay-at-home versus working mom arguments. (Though I thought I might be for a short while; it is all so stupid. Here’s the best rant I could find on the internet on the subject and it’s not even written by a mother.) I think any suggestion that women should participate less vigorously in the workforce than men, for whatever reason, is complete nonsense. But choosing to work at home caring for the children is just as admirable as working anywhere else. I do not have a fulfilling and promising career to return to. I probably wouldn’t even be able to get a job (especially in this market) that pays much more than full-time childcare for two kids costs. I enjoy taking care of the kids and I generally dislike work. But I cannot, simply cannot, bring myself to identify as a stay-at-home mom. For one, I’m almost always working some part-time gig or another to make ends meet. (I even worked full-time throughout the last half of my pregnancy; note the complete lack of blog posts during that period.) But it’s mostly because I want to work. Not full-time for now while the kids are young, and not doing menial tasks for someone else. But I need some external validation and a role to fill when the kids begin to need me less. I am jealous of both worlds: the moms who tuck their children in and fold the rest of the laundry and go to sleep satisfied that their day’s work is done, and the moms who love their children just as well all while contributing to the working world and the family’s finances. There is no right way.
Other biases include a procrastinating perfectionist’s attitude to housework. If it’s not going to be done right, then don’t do it at all, I say. That isn’t working around here so well these days as nothing is really getting done. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then I’m on the highway to hell. There is absolutely no moral rectitude involved in scrubbing your bathtub; if you can afford to have someone else do it, by all means. I tend to be fiscally left-wing, but a social libertarian. I think I might be agnostic, but still identify as Catholic. I have no ethnic identity, though, beyond my Canadian-ness. I drink a lot, a lot, of tea. And I have lately started to wonder if I shouldn’t have kept with the Latin and become the definitive modern voice of the classics. Puer puellae rosas dat. The boy gives the girl the roses. A boy is giving roses to a girl. You see? There’s so much room for interpretation … this will undoubtedly cast the longest shadow across my blog.
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