20 Annoying Things about Staying at Home
1. The title “stay at home” is a passive-aggressive term. There is nothing flattering, glamorous, or remotely attractive about the word “stay.” “Too Much Woman to Be Confined to a Cubical Farm” works better.
2. Apparently, you are expected to be “at home” for someparts of the day; particularly those parts when children under the age of twelve are in your care.
3. Repairmen are not sexy in any way.
4. Nothing very exciting happens. But you need to talk, so the best entertainment is gossip and backstabbing. It is unavoidable and addictive.
5. People will say, “Well, it’s not like you’re working or anything” just moments before they a) sign you up for lame volunteer duties at your child’s school, b) dump their own brats on your doorstep, or c) redirect all their home deliveries to your front door (even the fertilizer order).
6. Cleaning the house is not a problem; keeping it clean is. If the house is as clean at the end of the day as it was when you started, you win.
7. You cannot be late for anything, or with anything. You have nothing else to do.
8. Your perceived intelligence drops by at least 50 iq points. You may have run the computer science department at MIT before you decided to stay at home, but two weeks into the new job and your kids will be asking Dad for help on the family computer.
9. You have no excuse for not exercising.
10. You have no excuse for not eating a healthy lunch.
11. You can be truly bored at the same time you are acknowledging that you could be exercising, cleaning the house, or watching someone else’s kids.
12. The minute you resign from your old position, they promote it to a higher level, increase the salary, and bestow a fabulous new title on that bitch who took over from you.
13. Your husband either a) shirks all domestic duty, which makes you mad, or b) doesn’t shirk any, making you feel guilty. Yay! Something new to fight about!
14. Your children expect you to be at their beck and call. Even in the middle of an emergency manicure, one is expected to drop everything and rush to the school over a perceived “sore stomach.”
15. You now have time to launder the sheets.
16. Even after 5 p.m., drinking with only children in the house is still considered to be “drinking alone.” What, you had a hard day or something?
17. Your children are no better behaved simply because you’re the primary caregiver now. In fact, most often, they’re worse.
18. If you dress nicely, neighbours are suspicious. If you dress like a slob, you’ve let yourself go. If you dress too old, you’re middleaged before your time. If you dress too young, you’re a slut.
19. Teachers expect you to be on top of the notes they send home.
20. You’re not supposed to be too tired for sex anymore.
From Journey to the Darkside Copyright 2007 by Kathy Buckworth. Published by arrangement with Key Porter Books
