“Thank God it’s Friday,” they say. Monday is “blue” and the week is always long and everybody gets super excited when Thursday night comes because Friday is so close! Everybody loves Friday!
Well…almost everybody. Because I don’t know if they ever told you, but a stay-at-home mom’s (SAHM) busiest time is the weekend. You see, during the week, mom wakes up at the crack of dawn, makes breakfast and packs school/work lunches, gets the kids ready for school and drops them off while dad is off into the big bad world to fight the good fight! At that point, do you know what mom does? She goes home, has a cup of coffee, maybe a quick gym session if she’s about that life, and a leisurely breakfast, if she so desires, at her own time.
Now I know that a working mom somewhere is looking down disapprovingly on SAHMs everywhere and wondering, ‘What do you even do all day?’ I assure you, a SAHM’s work is never done. Indeed, a woman’s work is never done. We still have a mile-long daily list of things to do and errands to run, but during the week, we get to have total autonomy over how things will run. We get to decide when to run and when to take a break. We get to decide what TV channel is running in the background all day while we work. We get to choose silence should we so wish. We get to eat chocolate in peace. All things that are rendered impossible over the weekend.
All of a sudden, kids that are always comatose at 7 a.m. during the week are awake spontaneously by 6 a.m., demanding breakfast while turning my bed into a heavy-duty trampoline. Followed by hourly snacks, oh sweet Loooord, the snacks! Sandwich after sandwich, fruit after fruit, bucket loads of yoghurt, everything one can shovel into the bottomless pit that is an idle child’s stomach. And forget about that chocolate. They have the sense of smell of airport sniffer dogs, and they will catch you out from three rooms away. And in their version of “sharing,” you don’t get any.
You will never touch the TV remote during the weekend because not only does hubby have 962 different games to watch, but after watching CNN, he will also need to hear BBC and Sky News anchors say the exact same thing in a different accent.
So you see, a weekend is no holiday for us SAHMs. But a nasty little virus invaded our space and turned our chaotic weekend into a year! Now it was up to us to figure out how many apples Johnny had left after he gave three to Bob, and once and for all calculate the value of “x!” What used to be “Sunday laundry” just became “laundry” because apparently there are people living in your house and wearing your clothes that you just never knew about. All this while still trying to hold down your job remotely.
Looking back on this rollercoaster we’ve been through and are still not yet quite off of, I hope you can pat yourself on the back for a job well (or at least adequately) done. It’s been a time of unbearable loss, fear, frustration, uncertainty, and you’ve felt so alone. (Unless you live with your kids, in which case, you might have considered exchanging a limb for a minute of alone time). But you made it! And kudos to you for that.
Oh, and did you eventually understand why we’re always in yoga pants? Aren’t they the best for EVERYTHING?!
