Identity Crisis: I’m a godforsaken HOUSEWIFE!!!

Starting out with a side notial tangent. Every once in a while my site stats show me that someone or a few someones are spending their whole weekend reading every single post of my blog. And I feel like, “Should I have a warning on this thing?” Like: Reading this whole blog about my life in one sitting could be detrimental to your health! Small doses, people, small doses! I’m mostly kidding. Its just kind of like, wow, I wonder how my life comes off–7 years of my writing-in one sitting? Shudders!

Anyway, but this is the subject of my whiny-ass self today: Housewifery, how did I get here? And why does it feel like the end of the world? I mean, eeew.

Nik has only been working at the new job for a day or two now. and I have been hit with this feeling I did not expect. I feel so…so…housewifey. In all the negative forms of the word. Nothing too much has changed, but ugh. It feels like a kid and housework drudgery prison all of the sudden.

I started out as a single mother, and felt very fortunate to work part-time and also be able to spend a lot of time with my kids. And also to be able to homeschool, which is really a fortunate thing to be able to do when you are a single mother. And then, despite our financial stresses, when Nik moved in after I had Avery, it was like we were true parenting partners. We shared everything and worked out house/kid stuff together. I have not really had too much of the issue that many women have where their husbands don’t readily do “women’s work.” (Now the quality of some of his housework skills are another issue entirely, but that will be left for a different whiny blog post. But his kid-tending skills are top notch.) But still, although he was definitely a contributor to the family operation, I worked, I managed the money, I provided the money. I was “HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD” on the tax return, I was the House Manager. and that seemed significant.

But it isn’t so much that I have a power trip on running things (well, maybe I might admit that I can be a bit of a control freak…) but more that, it is actually pretty COOL to have a almost full-time parenting partner. It has been really fun to be able to have the flexibility to spend a lot of time together as a family. And even when he started working for D, it was a job we shared. We decided almost daily who was going to work for D and who was going to take the kids to school or whatnot. D was just an extension of our family anyway. Helping him out was just an extension of what we already do to help everyone out who needs help in the family. I did more of the “medical” work for D, but Nik put in significant hours there vacuuming and doing laundry and making oatmeal and tea.

So, I’m not sure why I am now all the sudden and surprisingly so jealous or whatever that he gets to go off and leave every morning. Part of it is that I miss him. I miss Sully. I miss their presence in the house. I don’t quite know why it is different than when Sully and he would be down the street at D’s house. Because it was so close? Because I knew exactly what was going on there and we were almost interchangeable? Because many times he would take Avery with him so I didn’t have to deal with a 2 year-old? Because it was part-time enough that he could still come home and clean the kitchen? I don’t know. But I guess it felt still more like a partnership.

Part of this is the baggage of the whole role of “housewife” which just typing the word makes me cringe. Stay-at-home-parent isn’t that much better. I know (believe me I KNOW) that being a stay at home parent is WORKING, and working 16 or more hour days. And raising kids is ‘the most important job” blah blah blah. And Nik says things like, “your job is way harder than MY job.” Which, I know his job, and it is kinda true. But it also feels like platitudes. Society does not value housewives, or the work of raising kids and keeping a house whether you are working outside the home or not. It is society’s slave labor. You raise kids which is essential to the function of civilization, but there is very little respect for it. I grew up with a working mother who put down stay-at-home-moms. (“What do they DO all day?”) Without recognition that what working moms are doing is essentially contracting out their child-care labor to child care providers and teachers. My mother’s house was mostly spotless because it just wasn’t USED as much as my house is. We were never there. We got up at 6:30am, got dressed quickly and left for the babysitters, where we had breakfast and went to school. Lunch at school, snack and playtime after school at the babysitters and home by 6:00pm for dinner, maybe a bath and bedtime, five days a week. That is just not even long enough to make a mess. My house, by comparison, is USED nearly every second of the day. By the time we were too old for a babysitter, we had taken over much of the housework and laundry for ourselves. The sheer manual labor was just not needed. My mom had only make and clean up after one meal a day. Pfff! That’s nothing compared to the constant meal,snack, meal, snack, meal, snack restaurant I’m running. I clean it up only to have it be messed up for the next meal. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see anything at all wrong with working parents and child care. It is just, don’t be all like, “I work full-time AND I am a full-time parent.” Um, no. You are not. I recognize that the mental responsibility of parenting does not end when you put your kids in child care, but you are sharing the job, you are parenting part-time, and you are not putting in the manual labor and clock hours that a stay-at-home parent does. No shame in that, it is a legitimate lifestyle choice. Just be honest about it.

And the fact of its “choice-ness” is also under debate. I know that there are parents who do NOT have the choice of staying home. I also know that there are parents who DO NOT have the choice to work. Or in both cases, it is a cost-benefits analysis that we all must make that does not always make each choice equal. We still do not have enough money to put my kids in daycare right now. It would cancel out the work that we do. I know some parents choose to “work for daycare” in order to maintain their careers, and that’s fine. But others don’t have the kind of career where working for daycare is worth it. They do more good at home rather than say, taking complaint calls at Comcast for $10 an hour. I put a high priority on democratic educational principles and I value the ability to let my children direct their own education, as well as giving them the one-on-one individualized education they need instead of throwing them in school to receive a bogus special ed label. But others don’t have this need  or do not have the opportunity to pursue it. So, I know this falls under the “first world problems” umbrella and essentially I’m being a big baby about this whole being left behind to be a housewife thing. I get that it is a privilege that I am lucky to have.

I also aspired to get some sort of career started again in Vancouver, and the dynamics of still living in Portland make that a lot more challenging. Part of my bitching and moaning is that again, we are in a sort of stasis of uncertainty for another six months because of Nik’s damned job. Jobs are good. Money is good. But at least when we were on the “we’re moving” path we were DOING SOMETHING and knew what direction we were headed. I’m back again, for six more months to “Should I get rid of stuff because we are moving? Should I paint the walls because we are staying? Should I work on getting involved in my new (downtown) church because we are staying? Should I keep up my contacts with the Vancouver homeschool folks because we are moving? Should I look into housing in Vancouver? Should I look into housing on the east side of this town because transit is getting ridiculous where I live now and it is a long commute for Nik?” I’ve been in limbo for going on FOUR FUCKING YEARS now. I’m just burnt out.

Part of me is like, am I bummed because of the particular job that Nik is doing? Because it is in MY field and it is a job I could do? Nik is a fucking corporate banking wonk. That I couldn’t do. This job, I could walk in and do tomorrow. I have IDEAS! I have SOLUTIONS! Why can’t we job share like we do with D’s job? Then we could both have kid time and outside work time. Nik told me, way back when we were thinking about moving to Toronto and he would keep his bank call center manager and coach job. He said he could get me a job there. I said I could NOT work on the phones and I don’t know banking. He said he would make me a TTY operator and I would learn banking. Which I could do, but I could not work at his job, which was training and coaching the staff, because that meant listening in on their phone conversations which would be a challenge for me. Point being, he would have his work and it would be separate from me. I might still miss him during the day, but I wouldn’t want to be involved in his job.

Before he left to come down here, there was a job opening in Toronto that he would have really liked. It was working for the government for $500 a DAY to make their websites accessible. Since he instead chose to knock me up and then come down and take care of my pre-eclamptic self and wailing larvae of an infant, he turned the job over to a friend of his. He basically coached this friend, who did not have the skills and experience that he did, into being able to fake his way through the interview. His friend got the job, and since then, he has coached his friend through the job. His friend is now getting his feet under him in the job in his own right and doing fine at it, but for a long time, it was a lot of phone calls and chats back and forth where Nik would help him do the job on the side. He was happy for his friend, but I could tell there was a bit of envy there. Like, in mock boo-hoo tones, he would whine “I’m doing this job and HE”S the one making all the money!”

I have helped Nik significantly with this job, and I imagine I will continue to help him for some time to come. It’s not that he doesn’t have the skills and won’t be good at it. He has a lot of knowledge and he is a good teacher. He is enthusiastic and patient, and he will get his feet under him with this. Its more that the both of us together make an awesome employee because of our combined skills. But he will get the paycheck, the acknowledgement, the break from the kids, and the bullet point on his resume. I will get nothing (except now I will spend HIS money instead of him spending all of mine!) He knows some aspects of the job better than me, but I know many of the aspects of the job better than him. I’m better at Braille and Braille technology. I’m better at low-vision tech. I’m better at working with very low skilled people and with people with multi handicaps, I’m better at assessing needs, etc. I’m better at understanding the world of government service organizations, disability politics and nonprofit environments. And everyday we go over the things that he is inexperienced with and I give him my ideas or clarify what is going on. But soon, he will catch up and be fine without my intervention. The job ain’t rocket science, as it were. And I do have confidence that he will do a great job if he decides to go this route for the long-term. He will make his way and his own identity, and I will….

….be stuck at home doing dishes and wiping butts!!!!

Waaaaah!

It’s not like I couldn’t get more involved in life outside butt-wiping duty. If we do stay here, I am imagining that D will hire another attendant and I will go back to being “emergency attendant” and thus will have one less butt to wipe. Then Avery will sooner than I know turn into a little kid and there will be another butt that wipes itself. I basically  revolve around the periphery of three different worlds. The UU church world (which includes a lot of social justice opportunities) the homeschooling world (which includes a lot of teaching opportunities) and the disability civil rights world (which includes a lot of advocacy opportunities. ) There is a lot of philosophical overlap and challenge there, yet none pay worth a shit. But I don’t know if pay is what I am looking for. (Although some would be nice.) If it was, I could throw A and N in school and Avery in daycare and go get a job, especially if Nik will have health care benefits through his job. I want to be involved in the kids education and growing up, and I do realize that I am still stuck in baby jail with Avery to a large extent. That will not last forever. I fully expect to turn over their education to them almost totally by say, 8th grade or so and just be an advisor/guidance counselor/funder. The fact that they are 5 years apart makes it seem like little-kid-dom is lasting forever. Just when Aaron and Naim were releasing me from baby jail, I got thrown back into it with Avery. (Nik says this is his fourth time and only my second. I said, No way! I give him credit for my oldest step-daughter and for Avery, but for my step-son and for A and N? Uh-uh. He doesn’t get full credit there, only partial. Because it is the day-in and day-out of it that makes it baby jail, and he didn’t have that with his son or A and N. And I get double credit for the twins, so essentially, we are even. Ha!)

I’m sure I will get into the groove of housewife-hood without a partner in a couple of weeks when I get some of my own routines going again and adjust. But co-parenting full-time is nice. And sometimes working out side the home is nice. I really do wish we could job share and do a bit of both. Also because the two of us would kick major ass at that job….AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

Okay, okay, I need to go wipe some butts now.