Truths About the Everyday Housewife

Hey !  You!  You with the kids running around the house teasing one another,  shrieking and screaming:  

"Mommy make Ashley  give me back my Superhero Golly-Bog Transformer."

 "Mommy Billie just hit me."

 "But Mommy, Ashley hit me first!"

Yeah I'm talking to you, the one sweeping up Fruit Loops from under the kitchen table.

This is the life of most moms and especially the stay-at-home mom.  This is reality.   A stay-at-home-mom isn't lounging on the sofa watching daytime soaps and nibbling on chocolate bonbons.  She's lugging a 30 pound basket filled with dirty laundry to the washing machine.  Instead of wearing opera length satin gloves she 's wearing elbow length rubber gloves and is scouring out toilets, scrubbing  bathtubs and mopping floors.  

 Most of all she's tired. 

 

Tired of the cyclic routine that seems endless.   Fix breakfast , wash breakfast dishes, clean-up kitchen.  Fix lunch, wash lunch dishes, clean-up kitchen.  Fix dinner, wash dishes, clean-up kitchen.   Tomorrow do the same thing and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that . . .

In the mornings it's make up the beds . . . in the evening she crashes  into bed, exhausted ... the next morning it's make up the beds again.  Once a week she strips the beads , then makes up the beds with fresh clean sheets and launders  the used sheets,  folds them neatly and puts them in the linen closet so they'll be ready for the next time.  This is repeated weekly;  week after week, month after month, year after year.  The repetitiveness is numbingly monotonous.   There are moments when she'd like to scream or even run away, but she doesn't.  She bears the drudgery out of love and devotion for her family.

 She's not one of those gorgeous, 20 or 30 something  models on TV, posing seductively in a form-fitting, low cut, little black dress telling us that if we used this or that facial cream we too will look years younger, be more radiant and just as beautiful as she is.   While Ms. Beautiful Model  is touting a sixty or seventy dollar bottle of potion that's just one part of a multi-hundred dollar beauty routine,  Stay-at-Home-Mom is worrying about how they're  going to afford their monthly  mortgage payments and also pay for little Timmy or Beth's much needed braces.  It's tough living on  one income.  Yes she could go out and get a paying job but she knows most of her income would go to pay for child care.

As Ms. Beautiful Model 's perfectly manicured hands caress a sensuous  bottle of Firming Lotion, Stay-at-Home-Mom nonchalantly sits on her own hands to hide her chipped nails and ragged cuticles and tries to think of ways to live from one paycheck to the next. 

Do we really need meat this week?  How about a big pot of beans and some cornbread?  Later in the week  I could cook up some rice and add the leftover beans to them, maybe splurge on a head of lettuce and make a salad?  Or I could fix a huge tuna and elbow macaroni casserole.

Always struggling to stretch that paycheck far enough to cover expenses and then, just when she thinks she's  got it made . . . Why the blazes does the car need a set of new tires now ?  What do you mean the washing machine is broken ?   Is it just me or does the refrigerator feel a bit warm inside?   

Sure, I've been there, I know what I'm talking about.   I used to laugh with Phyllis Diller (notice I said with and not at) when she told a joke about how she had 5 children and had her milkman deliver  nine quarts of milk.  Six quarts to drink and three to spill. 

I don't think there was a single day that one of my kids did not tip a glass of milk over and I had to run to get something to sop up the flood of milk with before it ran off the table and onto the floor.  Seems I was never quite fast enough so there was always at least one meal that  required my having  to mop the floor around our kitchen table. 

And living on one income, paycheck to paycheck?   I've been there too and know just where you're at. You get that monthly credit card statement and think; "Just a couple of more payments and we'll have all of last Christmas's gifts paid off."   And then it strikes you, "Oh Dear Lord !  In just a few short months it will be Christmas AGAIN !"

 It's like being on a never-ending merry-go-round.  Round and round we go, like a dog cashing its tail.  Is it any wonder that we have those annoying  little lines at the corner of our eyes or those furrowed creases across our forehead?