We Can Do It! (Right?)

I think I may have been being too negative lately, finding fault with too many things in my life, and rather than finding commonality of experience with my fellow mothers, I may just be reinforcing that feeling that we all have from time to time, that we are in some way failing. Failing ourselves, our partners, our bosses, and worst of all, our kids. When we work, we think we fail for not spending enough time with the kids, or not dedicating enough time to our office. When we stay home, we think we fail because we aren’t providing for our family monetarily, or we’ve “wasted” our expensive degrees, or our various talents “just” caring for our children.

Well, today I call bullshit.

My focus today will be on the working mother, because that’s what I am, and that’s where my insecurities lie. When I went back to work I felt so guilty, shouldn’t I WANT to stay home more? How could I pay a stranger to care for my precious angel? Am I calling in sick too often because she has an ear infection?

Bullshit.

I’m done feeling bad about it, (at least for today) so I’m listing all the awesome things that there are about being a mom who works outside the home, I’m not saying anything against mom’s who stay at home, or who choose to work at home when they can, but my experience lies in working full time, at a job I like, in an office, outside of the home, with a kid in daycare for 9 hours a day, something that has always caused me an unnecessary amount of guilt.

So, here it is, 10 things that rock about working outside of the house

10) Coffee made by someone else. Work is always a good excuse to go to Starbucks in the morning without anyone counting else your pennies, you earned it, you get your Venti Skinny Vanilla 3 times a week if you want. The office coffee, while not great, is, at the very least, not made by you and is therefore more awesome than the coffee at home.

9) Having an excuse to shower and brush my teeth and put on a bra every day. I know this seems like a little thing, but when I was staying at home, there were many days when I never bothered to put a bra on, and would realize at 7pm that I had not brushed my teeth. This was because I didn’t have anyone to impress or anything I was required to do. In some ways, it was liberating, in others, it was lazy. I like that I have a reason to get up and stumble through a bare minimum of required grooming every morning.

8) An excuse to buy nice clothes from time to time. As a mom, its really hard to buy things for ourselves, but when we work in an office, we are required to have at least 3 pairs of pants other than jeans and 5 shirts other than t-shirts with ketchup on them, and to get those clothes, we must purchase them, thus, we get to look nice for at least 8 hours a day, and occasionally go shopping for ourselves. Rock.

7) Grown up conversation. Ooh how I missed this one when I stayed home. Did you watch a particularly quippy episode of the Office? Who to comment on it with? The baby? At work I can discuss things; television, movies, politics, music, world issues, my husband, anything I want! There are only so many times I could read Fox in Sox during the day, and so many conversations on the color of the sky I could smile through. While phone calls were nice, having a face to face conversation, about anything, with a grown up, is so liberating. Grown ups don’t as “Why?” after everything you tell them, they don’t automatically say “NO” when you ask them nicely to do something, and most things are not a fight. I never have to ask my supervisor to please stop strangling the dog and get his panties on. I can even drop a swear from time to time where the situation warrants and not worry about it being repeated at preschool with a follow up note and frowny face sticker.

6) Quiet time. I am guaranteed one half hour, and two fifteen minute breaks every day. I can choose what to do with them, be it eat lunch by myself, read a magazine, do cartwheels on the lawn, whatever, that’s MY time, and I don’t even have to beg a husband for it.

5) Contribution. Again, I am not saying that stay at home mom’s don’t contribute, they contribute a huge amount to their family. What I am saying, is that it is really cool to contribute funding to my little family. When I was at home, I always felt like I had to ask for money, I was given $50 a month to be “my” money, which was normally spent on one sandwich at Port of Subs and baby food or clothes. Other than that, I had to ask for it, and that was degrading. If we had done it longer, we probably would have had a better system worked out, but I hated it when my husband would come home, see that I hadn’t cleaned, give me that “What did you DO all day” look, and then, I would have to ask him for money so I could buy underwear that acctually fit me. Now, I can just grab my purse and head to the mall, totally liberating.

4) Letting the kids get social interaction. I was a LOUSY stay at home mom, let me just say that first. My kid never got social interaction with other kids until she was in daycare. I didn’t have a car, so I was pretty much limited to the house and the 2 mile vicinity around it, I was also very short on local mommy friends, thus, it was just me and Lil and PBS kids, which ends at 11. We watch A LOT of TV. I am very grateful to daycare for giving her something to do other than watch Sesame Street and run in circles. She has learned Spanish, sign language, colors, shapes, problem solving, science concepts, writing etc. and that is in no way thanks to me.

3) I resent my husband a lot less often than I used to. When he gave me that look, and I had to ask him for money, I kind of hated him for that. When he wanted to go out on the weekends and leave me home with the baby, like I was EVERY OTHER DAY, I wanted to kill him and make it look like a shaving accident. When he asked me what exactly I did all day, I acctually kicked him once. Ooh, and when he refused to get up at 11am on the grounds that he had only had 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep that night, I almost threw the baby at his head. Now, we both work 9 hours, we are both tired, we share the chores and the parenting because it is no one persons “job”. He is much more likely to stay home and let me go out on a weekend because he knows how much I need to decompress as well, and since I’m working, we can acctually afford a babysitter from time to time so we can *gasp* even go out together. I don’t know how this would have turned out if I hadn’t started working outside the house again, but I do know that the time I was staying home, was one of the hardest our marriage ever endured.

2) My cubicle. Its mine. Only mine. I don’t have to share it, it doesn’t have mysterious sticky substances on every surface, I have tiny toys on top that bring me job and are not chewed up or confiscated to play tea party with. I have pictures of things I find funny, pictures of my dad, pictures of my baby and my husband, it gets decorated on my birthday, and I can post my many awards and accolades on its walls without fear of smudgy fingers touching them. Someday, I hope to have a whole office, with a door to close. At home, the only door I can close and except SOME privacy with, is the bathroom, and even that is not a guarantee.

1) Seeing her face when I get home. She is SO excited to see me everyday when I come home. Giving her a chance to miss me is one of the best things we can do for each other. When I drag myself home after a long day, looking on to another long day tomorrow, seeing a smiling pink person waiting at the door saying “MOMMY! I missed you SOOOOOO much!” makes it all worth it.

So there you have it, 10 things that I love about being a working mom (outside the home) Is it perfect? Nope. Do I wish that sociology and biology would combine to create a better option than the Stay at Home vs Go to Work dichotomy? Oh yeah. But for now, I’m a working mom, I’m tired, I’m cranky, my family eats canned or frozen vegetables when they eat them at all, but, I don’t regret my decision to go back to work. Getting away from my house for 8 hours a day makes me a better mom for all those reasons and more. Here’s to all of us working moms, whether we are working at home, out of the house, or working on being a mom, its all work, and we are all doing it the very best we can!

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