When you have a career and an expectation of the number of hours you’ll spend working in a given week, you adjust your mental capacity of normal around that amount when deciding whether you had a normal work week, a light work week, or an exhausting work week. Your exhaustion is partially related to whether you expended the amount of energy and time you expected to expend, and by how much more or less. When I was a Speech Pathology Aid by day and a waitress by night for a summer, I worked really long hours every day, but I had an afternoon break in between and a mental shift from one job to the next, so 13-16 working hours felt normal but losing my break in the afternoon between jobs (and increasing my day to 15-20 hours of work) put me over the edge. It’s relative.
People know with their brains that being a stay at home mom is a job/career. I don’t know if we always realize that fact in our hearts… I’m guilty of this too. My kids are really great (they really are!) and I have a loving, supportive husband, so being in my situation is rather posh because I love what I do and I get to do it everyday. So yeah, this is a job, but it’s a breeze, right? I wish! I have a job as a mom. A meaningful, exciting, wonderful job, but sometimes, it is still a JOB. I still need mental shifts to other topics and breaks between tasks. I need to come “home” from “work” and take fun time by “myself” and with “my family.” Except that all those quotation words blur together for me and it is often hard to see the distinctions! Can I have time for myself while at work? Can I be home without working? I’m with my family all day; for me, what does it mean to have fun with them rather than work? Because it’s all right here in the same roles and the same location!
I got sick last week and it was so miserable. I posted about how great and helpful Matt was… he stayed home on Thursday morning for a couple hours so I could sleep and then he headed to work and I made it through the rest of the day on my own, brain-fuzzy and nauseous. I started feeling better and Rissa got sick, puking all over her crib during her nap. My neighbor, Peg, came over in the afternoon to just sit with us and be another lap and pair of hands for my kids because we were all struggling. Sick Mommy, sick Riss-Riss, neglected Zach-a-bean. Peg is so great. And then Matt came home and helped some more and by Friday, I was back to my normal Jaime self.
When I get “back to Jaime,” I celebrate with housework. It is a sickness! When I came home from my week-long hospital stay after my C-section, I was SO excited to do the dishes… I was back in my house feeling like my normal self and taking care of things like I am usually able to do. Whee! So Friday, I cleaned my whole house. We were planning a really fun evening with dear friends and I was so excited about our time with them! When they left, I wanted to already have a peacefully clean house so I could enjoy the rest of my weekend now that I finally felt better, so I wanted everything done before they got here. I cleaned and I felt great about it… Jaime was back! I could do more than sit on the couch and drink 7up!!!
Our time with friends was ALL that I’d hoped and more. I felt like our home was the Haven I dream of it being for all of us. We all relaxed and enjoyed one another and talked and shared and ate dinner and played with our kids and just spent time loving and being loved. It was beautiful. That ended, they went home, and reality crashed in.
The relaxing, enjoyable weekend I planned for myself turned into Matt getting the stomach flu that Rissa and I had, putting him in bed for the rest of the weekend. Weekends are usually my “time off” from my job. Not the whole thing, of course, but for periods of time on Saturdays and Sundays, Matt loves to spend time with our kids while I take a break and have Jaime time. This did not happen this weekend after our friends left. Since this is a job… now I’m in overtime. I’m still at work and I’m not getting a mental break or a switch between tasks. In fact, we’re adding to my workload because I’m caring for my sweet sick husband as well and I’m doing his part and mine and I’m still with my kids all day long, except now by myself… on a weekend!
Now it is Monday again and Matt is thankfully feeling better and is back at work. And I’m back to work as well, but I feel like I never left. It’s like I went to work last Monday, slept in my office until Friday, went out with friends on Friday and completely enjoyed myself, went home, got called back in to work the weekend, and now I’m still here on Monday, but there is no one to cover for me or to give me a break. If we don’t have groceries, that’s on me. If my allergies are acting up and I don’t feel 100%, too bad. I’m just working straight through. It’s mentally exhausting and I don’t know how to handle this.