It’s true. I am an awesome mother when I have my own special things going on.
I have been doing this stay-at-home mom thing for three and a half years now and I think I am getting the hang of how to do it and not feel
1 ) Bored
2 ) Guilty
3 ) Angry
4 ) Lame
For me, the struggle has been to strike some balance between stimulation and quiet. I like to be doing things, hosting people, planning projects and parties and organizing people, and yet it is easy to suddenly feel completely overwhelmed with just the basic things I HAVE to do in my life. As a stay-at-home parent, you need to be doing things, but there isn’t always left-over energy to take activities on. It is hard to meet the needs of your mind and your body all while being exhausted and overworked. The truth is though, that you are exhausted with laundry and whining and not enough uninterrupted sleep at night, not that excellent physical exhaustion that lets you drop into bed like a rock. Taking care of kids is strange as you don’t often get the exercise you need and yet you are weary so you don’t feel up to running that mile (or even limping down the street to the grocery store). You are tired, but not tired of body. It is more like a spirit tiredness. And then you are so focused on meeting immediate demands (for clean diapers, clothing, comfort, nap-times, etc), that it is hard to let your mind pursue any deeper course. The end result? You feel dull, listless and stupid. People ask what you have been doing lately and you have a hard time coming up with anything. They don’t want to hear about potty-training success or thoughts on dealing with day-light savings and bedtimes. You feel like a lame excuse for a human being. You wonder if you should go get a “real job” so that you have something to talk about. You wonder if others see you as simply mooching off your husband (although in my household I KNOW that I damn well earn my keep. These people would starve and descend into total chaos without me, thank you very much!).
This week I was a super-awesome mother. Really, I was more patient and kind and I FELT better. This is why.
First, the sun came out. It is super cold, but look at that sun! I got out and put my face in the sun. It is amazing how much time I need to spend on the couch nursing the baby. I think people walk by and say, “Man, that woman is STILL on the couch. She is ALWAYS on the couch!”. It is necessary for me to sit a lot and nurse this kid, but it is also good to get off the couch.
Second, I have sought out “good help”. I have Inez and Zephyr visiting a neighbor woman once a week for 4 hours. It was hard for me to justify hiring someone to watch my kids for a bit when I am the one home who is technically assigned to that job, but I can see and FEEL already that this is the right course of action. I need this time to pursue things that make me recognize myself and remember who I am. Woa, that’s deep!
There isn’t time for further talk of “who I am” here, and it might be about as interesting as the potty-training update, but I can simply say that this week I felt like myself because I got time to work in the yard. I loved my day and a half of garden projects.
This is what I did on Wednesday:
I hired a day laborer to help me level this stretch of thorns and weeds. This “hedge” was truly disgusting, full of trash and rocks and small, unsightly shrubs. I can see beauty in all sorts of wild things, but this really was not one of them. The plan for this stretch of ground is a nice row of raspberries.
Carlos the worker was so amazingly effective. He, unlike me, was able to start a task and actually see it through to the end! I worked alongside him doing the easier stuff and totally enjoying his accomplishments and congratulating myself for being smart enough to hire him.
This is what my front yard looks like now:
How about that load of yard debris? I have to figure out how to get it to the recycling center. This is what the city of Portland gives us for our yard debris:
Dang wheeling cart is never large enough. I swear I could pull this thing out every week (maybe twice!). It took me a month and a half to get rid of our Christmas tree. I think I still have the trunk in that big lawn pile.
While weeding, I found this! (While you are at it, check out my mulch!). Brad loves rhubarb and as I love him, I planted a bunch to call our very own. He thought it was a goner, but there it is. Rhubarb takes a couple years to get established, and I was unsure how this might do, so I got two varieties. Here is her cousin:
I put this beauty into the backyard, which to me is still sort of a wasteland. There was pretty much nothing there but weeds and butterfly bushes when we got here, and I am still struggling with removing the blights and introducing beneficials. Blights=invasives like blackberries, straggly butterfly bushes packed together and poorly pruned, garbage and plastic in the soil, tell-tale beer bottles and the stupid bamboo that is creeping in from the neighbors’ yard. Beneficials= mulch, shade trees, compost, worms, chickens, and plants that add interest and variation to the yard.
Here is another crazy thing I am doing. While I was in El Paso last, I was checking out the “dry riverbed” thing that a lot of landscapers are doing down there, and I thought it might work fairly well here if I could just figure out how to keep it from becoming a mosquito cesspool. Ain’t nothin’ stays dry around here. I have to incorporate some drainage into my plan. What I am working on is making a dry riverbed leading to a dry “pond” that is actually a sand box. It will have large rocks surrounding it and be a naturalistic and functional place for kids to play. The “river” will start up behind the compost and “trickle out” a bit beyond the “pond”. I think it will look really awesome when I am done. Right now Brad keeps calling it my “mud hole”, but those of us with vision must live with the detractors in our lives. It is going to be AWESOME.
Putting in all the new plants has been a great joy, but it leaves me torn. My chickens are so excited when they see a fresh chunk of dirt; they simply must scratch. This means that they effectively dig up anything I put in. I tried to put all sorts of weird things around the new blueberries I put in back, (like a broken laundry hamper), but really the most effective course of action is for the plants to grow large enough to not be hurt. That will take time. What do I do in the meantime? I love my chickens, but I also love my new plants. The only thing I came up with was quarantine. Sorry girls.
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