"It’s like trying to read with somebody asking “Whacha’ reading?” every other page, or paragraph, or word. But it’s not just your feet-up-with-a-book time that gets interrupted — it’s all your time. Your sleep – interruptible. Your meals — interruptible. Your conversations — interruptible. Your relationships — interruptible. Your work — interruptible. Your very thoughts — interruptible. This is an exhausting and socially isolating part of motherhood."Yes.
"We all know parenting is hard work, but we also know it’s not the same as work. Mothering does not mean the same thing that working does. ... By work we mean something that pays money. By work we mean something that gets done. Parenting is something that you don’t finish, like you finish building a house or writing a play. It is something that will always demand you to be responsive in some way or another.”
Exactly.
"You are busy being interrupted. You are busy responding. It’s not that you’re not doing anything, it’s that you aren’t getting anything done. And it’s hard. It’s really hard."
Defeating, too.
".Last summer I hired a babysitter to take my kids to the park while I cleaned my house.
“Wouldn’t most mothers prefer to go the park while somebody cleaned their house?” a friend asked me. She had school-aged kids, she worked full-time and she really craved some time in the sun with them. She was busy and needed time to unwind and “do nothing.” I did not crave time in the sun with my children to “do nothing.” I craved just getting something done."I have a lot of things I'd like to get done. Sigh.
Hat tip: Megan
6 comments:
I think this post explains my new found love of crafting. I never had any desire to do anything even remotely crafty before having a kid. Now I do. I think it's because it's something that I can finish. It's not like cleaning the house, which with a kid is like shoveling in the snow storm. It's not like parenting, which is like shoveling in a ... That sense of completion is just huge. It doesn't matter if what I complete is silly. It's complete and that's what matters.
Right?! I went back and looked at a old book blog post I wrote because the concept sounded familiar. In What Mothers Do, the author discusses interruptibility, too. It's true. It is a rare moment when I have time to immerse myself in something so completely. It was one reason I was so happy when Rachele mentioned the Pay it Forward on FB. A reason to do crafty things!
My problem, and I know I am not alone, is that in the rare chance I am Not interrupted,I still can't plan my time that way. I always have to expect interruption and thus plan my time accordingly. Then out of the blue I will get a whole hour of time and instead of appreciating the lack of interruption, I find myself regretting that I didn't know I could have planned one of those longer tasks!
Rachele, Yes, yes, yes. Darr will sometimes leave to take Hen out to breakfast on weekend mornings. If it's a good day, they can be gone for hours. If it isn't, they might be back within 20 minutes. Not knowing which it is means I can't plan how to spend my time. I might clean thinking it'll be a good day and I'll have time to myself after chores but if it happens to be a bad day, I've wasted the only me time I had.
How I resemble that. Know what I do with the 1.5 hours I have during the week when Erin and Robin are at school? Clean the house. Know why it's a disaster right now? Because I've taken that time as "me time" the last few weeks. I fell guilt all.the.time that the house is a disaster, that it takes me multiple days to do one single complete load of laundry. But my kids get read to constantly, I'm there to answer every question, And Megan, I'm with you there on the crafting thing. I"ve never knitted so much.
we can't win! and yet we're so lucky to be able to stay home, blah blah. I still wouldn't want to do anything else, but this was validating. yeah--downtime for me=double time chores the next day.
I appreciate Rachele's first comment! talk about the Full Catastrophe!
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