I'm Feeling A Bit Put-Out

Motherhood and making a home can sometimes feel like you're living in isolation.

Take today for instance. Since I'm housebound and the 98% willing prisoner of my darling duo, I try to have a life online. So opening my various social networking websites, I find status messages littered with the excitement of having a life offline. Events, dates, trips, shopping sprees, spa adventures, parlor appointments, marathons, book sales, seminars, forums, lessons and cooking classes. You name it, I've probably read about it on someone's status message.

And I am green with envy and blue with longing.

It didn't use to be this way. Probably that's why sometimes the funk hits me extra hard.

Time either flies or stops
when you're a SAHM.

Staying home was an unforseen development in my present incarnation. I quit working when circumstances pulled the rug from under me but I really opted out of pursuing anything career-oriented afterwards. After all, I've been working for almost half my life so I felt it was as good a time as any to "retire" for awhile. I stayed home to raise the girls and be homemaker, mommy and wife. No yaya. After the episode with Oona's willful yaya, I'm fine with asking help from my mom and sister. (If the girls are going to pick up any bad habits, let it be mine. I'm working on not having any too, by the way! Helluva job, but that 'What the hey!' Oona picked up from me means trouble in the future, I just know it.)

Stripping away the work element exposed more woodwork and forced me to really define myself without the external veneer of the titles I used to hold. It wasn't easy and it scared me at first. Working had been most of my life and gave my days purpose. What and who would I be without it?

Embracing the change took awhile and it's still a work in progress. Generally I'm happy to say I have never felt lighter in years. I was surprised that I would come to look at it as an exciting interlude. An adventure before another adventure begins, after the kids are grown and I can do some serious damage to the creative world again.

But then there are days like these when life out of the career lane feels like the world is just passing me by. The mommy lane feels faster sometimes when I have to deal with running after the girls, running after schedules, running the house and most often, running late with everything! Always running. Then suddenly everything quiets down and I fall right smack into this funk when I realize that all that running I do is in a small circle revolving around the girls.

My life is a one-ring circus. Sometimes. Like today.

*Sigh* I think I'll go lobby for a hug. Offline.