You bring home the bacon, I'll fry it up.

Yeah. I'm gonna quit my job.

I've just spent the whole morning neglecting my child so I can get my work done. I'm glued to the chair with my laptop in my lap, trying to keep one eye on the roving little monster. At one point I looked up and he was slithering in behind the DVD player and came out with BLACK SHIT in his mouth. Does anyone know if eating dust bunnies is hazardous? I'm pretty lenient when it comes to him eating diaper boxes and his board books, figuring paper products are just a source of fibre. But I think I draw the line at dust bunnies. I gave him a straw to distract him. I think that's a safer option. (If my father-in-law is reading this, he's probably twitching violently. Never met a more fastidious man! Hi Chris! Don't worry, I was just kidding about letting Angus lick the soap scum off the shower curtain.)

I started working from home because I was rebelling against the whole stereotype of stay-at-home mom. At first I was happy to play house. I was thrilled with our new place when we moved in and all I wanted to do was cook and clean. But, the novelty wore off and soon the reality sank in at just how monotonous and soul-sucking it is to do nothing but wash dishes and clean the floors and cook and change diapers day in and day out. I became so desperate to do something else.
But now I realize that when I was being created, I missed out on the multitasking gene that most women/mothers supposedly have. Since working, the house has gradually slid into a disgusting kind of chaos. I joke about it, but it actually really gets to me. My mother always said, "A cluttered house is a cluttered mind." My mother is full of wisdom. I usually don't listen to her and then she turns out to be right and I wish I had listened to her.

Anyway. My point is, some women can do it all. I have no idea how they do it. Some women manage it all and have MORE THAN ONE kid. Baffles me. I have a friend who has two boys still in diapers and another one on the way! SHE'S CRAZY!! But she does it.
I am not going to pretend that I can do it all. I simply can't. Someone has to keep the house running and someone has to cook and someone has to nurture this little growing person. Plus, when I started working, Angus was napping for a total of five hours during the day and he was still a little lump that couldn't move. Now. NOW. NOW he naps for two hours IF I'M LUCKY, and he is most definitely on the move, AND that whole Velcro baby thing that I mentioned. Now he expects me to engage with him and pay attention to him.
Mothering doesn't come naturally to me. I often forget that I'm supposed to be offering Angus food. (I KNOW, I KNOW.) Sometimes it doesn't occur to me to change his diaper for about six hours.
So as you can see, I really need all my brain power just to not fuck up my kid.

I'm a thinker, not a doer.

I need some accountability today.

I intended to get a big chunk of work done last night while Aaron was at fire practice and Angus was in bed. I got distracted by TV. LA Ink was on! I couldn't miss that! And then American Idol! And then a new episode of LA Ink, followed by Hoarders. Yeah. Work? Didn't happen.  I even attempted to bring my laptop in front of the TV and work during commercial breaks, but when the commercials came on I found myself completely forgetting to work, even though my laptop was on my lap and my head phones were on. Durrrhhhh.
Do you have any idea how much extra time I would have in my day if I didn't watch TV? Let's be honest here -- the REAL reason we wear two-day-old socks (I just bought a pack of 20 pairs of socks so I wouldn't have to do laundry), the dishes sit in swamp water for three days and my unfinished work nags in the back of my mind constantly, is because of the hours spent zoning in front of the TV. And it's not like I watch quality programming either. No. Well, sometimes we watch the History channel and actually learn something. But my favorites, I will admit, are the reality shows. I'M the reason these awful shows are on TV.
I curse the TV for being such a time suck. I'm trying to imagine what Aaron and I would do if you took TV away from us in the evenings. Talk? Pay attention to our child? Clean up the house? Exercise? Go for walks? The mind boggles. However, I like TV because I get to participate in things without actually DOING them. Take Survivorman. Would I ever purposely get myself lost, alone, for a week in the Amazon/Labrador/Alaska/Papua New Guinea, would I ever eat scorpions/seal blubber/seaweed, would I ever drink my own pee, would I ever dog-sled with my fly open? Probably not. But I like to think my life is enriched from having watched someone else do it.

He feeds himself.

I gave him this can of toddler food, (which are little puffs full of preservatives and sodium) because I had run out of things to entertain him with, and he managed to get the lid off and dumped it all over himself. He's not interested in toys. Brightly colored, plastic, beeping playthings? SO not fun. But scissors and a plastic bag? LOADS OF FUN! 

So far today I've let him play with my laptop case, an empty cigarette pack, a twist tie, my shoe, my purse, a sharpie, and a toothpaste tube. All completely unsanitary and unsafe. Whatever, I was supervising him. It's not like I'd ever actually let him SWALLOW a battery. Sheesh.

My break out role into television will be on the show "Hoarders."

Today I'm going to write about writer's block. Not very interesting, I know. But I feel like the only way I can get through the block is to just WRITE something. ANYTHING. I've tried writing in a Word document. I've tried writing in a notebook. But both times as I've stared at the blank screen or page, I've just felt as blank as the page I'm staring at. So I'm going to try the whole blog thing again. This is for myself, mainly, but somehow the idea of having an audience helps the words to come out.

I feel this pressing urgency to write about Angus. I know that this time in his life is so fleeting, and since I have the memory of an Alzheimer's patient already, I know that it's important to document everything, otherwise I'm going to forget! I don't want to forget anything! Already I know I've forgotten certain things from the last few months of his life, and that just makes me panic. The reason I write is so that I can hold on to these memories. It's the same reason those people on Hoarder's hoard things. They can't throw anything away because every little thing represents a memory of their life. Why are we so desperate to hang on to the past? I don't know the answer to that; all I know is that if I don't document everything in writing, I'm going to end up on Hoarder's. I'll be living in the last uncluttered corner of the house, wearing adult diapers because I can't find the toilet anymore. You'll find dead, flattened cats under piles of shit that have taken 30 years to accumulate.
Nobody wants that, now do they?

I should be working right now. I've been doing transcription from home for the last two months. At first, I was incredibly proud of myself for figuring out how to find employment from home, without any experience. I work for two amazingly nice people, who are reflexologists by day, and have a transcription company by night. They pay slave wages, but they're just so freaking nice, that I don't really mind.
I don't mind the work, because it combines what I like best; the English language, and not having to move much. I find something very therapeutic about typing.
But lately it's been losing it's appeal. Currently I'm transcribing a University interview with a dry, boring, uppity science major. I've done a lot of these, and it's the same boring old questions directed at the same narrow-minded, boring people. This particular student incites rage within me. She talks about how her father says of her and her three siblings, "As long as I have a doctor, a vet, an accountant, and a lawyer, my needs are covered." I want to climb into the computer, and slap this girl a little bit. She talks of how her parents are very encouraging of what she chooses to do, "as long as it's nothing artistic."
SLAP!
She even talks about how her mother got her bachelors in electrical engineering, and never used it! Now what is the point of that? I don't think it's the most important thing in the world to get a University degree. But then, I didn't even finish high school so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, supposed to be working. I have a very small time frame in which I can work; when Angus sleeps. It's about two hours during the day. Unfortunately, that's also the only time I get to myself, so I often all I want to do is surf the Internet and Google things like, "How to get rich without having to do anything." And stalk people on Facebook.
I complain about not having any time to do anything, and I complain about how the house is always a mess, but the real problem is actually probably my organizational skills. I am terrible at managing my time.
It takes me about two hours to wake up in the morning. I turn on The Mom Show and sit on the couch blinking, guzzling coffee and feeling hatred towards the morning, while Angus sits on the floor eating cardboard. By the time he goes down for his morning nap, I'm FINALLY awake and have stopped grumbling and swearing and bumping into walls. This is the time I start working, but then I get hungry, so I make breakfast and surf the net. By the time he wakes up, I haven't accomplished anything, and then the next three hours are spent entertaining or pacifying my Velcro baby. (That's a reference to the Separation Anxiety he is going through.)
Then he goes down for his afternoon nap, and I'm tired and I want to nap with him. Sometimes I do, and then hate myself afterwards because I didn't get anything done. Sometimes I "work."

Anyway, the point is, some people manage to shower and get dressed in the morning. Somehow I always miss that part because I'm too busy... doing what? I FEEL busy, so busy that it makes my head spin, but NOTHING IS DONE!? I don't get it.

The mess drives me mental, but I HATE HATE HATE housework. I feel like I'm always doing it, but it never gets finished.  And the reason I hate it is because I never feel a sense of accomplishment. You do the dishes, but then you have to eat again and make more dishes. You clean the floors, and your husband stomps all over them in his dirty boots and you have to clean them again. You do laundry and your baby barfs on himself and makes more laundry. You wash the baby, and he smears food in his hair and have to wash him again.
IT NEVER ENDS!
I guess it's a fact of life. I know I need to just accept it.

Angus is awake. I kind of went off in a totally irrelevant tangent. I wanted to write about Angus but I just didn't get there. I almost said "and I haven't accomplished anything," but I HAVE! I broke my block.
As a chronic under-achiever, this is good.

Pure Evil