Yesterday was an enormously busy day. By the time Eric and I got out of the house to go grocery shopping, it was after noon, and we arrived home with just 45 minutes to feed him, feed me, and get back out the door to a dentist appointment (mine--he doesn't have teeth yet). Then we came home, cooked dinner, did his laundry, wrote yesterday's journal entry, made formula, took our evening walk with David and Scott, and went to bed.
I continue to be amazed at what a clean kitchen I keep since I've had a baby. I guess it's the "you do what you have to do" phenomenon: bottles must be washed, the counter must be clean enough that I feel I can mix formula without endangering Eric's life, and so on. I was telling Scott and David yesterday that the way this happens, the way his laundry gets done and his trash gets taken out and the bottles get washed and filled with formula is that I now do housework at times when, before the baby, i would have said I was too tired to do housework and it would have to wait. Sometimes in the late evening I'm like a zombie moving from dishwasher to stove to laundry basket.
Do I sound like I do everything? I don't mean to. David and I check in with each other in the evening and figure out who can do what. Last night, he was in charge of Eric Care for much of the evening, for instance--though it was one of those evenings when David being in immediate charge of Eric mostly left me free to do my chores without distraction. But that's OK. David has also made it part of his morning routine to unload the dishwasher, which is a small thing that makes an enormous difference in my ability to keep the kitchen clean. Loading the dishwasher is always quick and easy, but there are times when having to unload it first makes the whole job feel like too much for me. Every morning with I open the dishwasher and it's empty, I sigh with relief and am grateful.
Anyway, yesterday was busy, the weekend was busy, so I decided to take it easy today. But "taking it easy" has looked like doing a bunch of in-box and money stuff, doing the kitchen laundry as well as Eric's laundry, feeding Eric, giving him his medicine, giving him his bath, thawing chicken for dinner and putting it in to brine, doing dishes (and I need to do another load--it's easy to get behind when we are successfully cooking at home). At one point today I was entering money stuff in the computer, monitoring the chicken in the microwave, keeping track of Eric's laundry, and keeping one eye on him while he had naked time, and I thought, it's a good thing I can manage more than one thing at a time, or I'd never get anything done at all.
My mom used to have the TV on during the day even when she wasn't watching it, and I always thought that was a little pathetic--like people who don't turn the TV off when you visit them, but leave it on in the background, and you just know that "TV On" is the default at their house. But I have taken to letting it run from 12-3 most days if I'm home, the Law & Order/Northern Exposure/LA Law triad on A&E. I find that it is possible to follow a show while wandering from kitchen to laundry room to changing table, and then TV gives me something to do when I have a job that involves sitting down for a few minutes, like feeding the baby, giving him his medicine, or folding laundry. When I get to the point of watching Home and Garden television, or Baywatch, though, it will be time to put a lock on the infernal machine.
How much TV watching does it count as if you're only listening from another room while doing housework? Today, for instance, since I also "watched" an ER rerun (the one where Jeanne finds out her ex-husband has AIDS), did I watch four hours of TV? Or does it only count if you're actually sitting and looking at the screen, in which case I watched maybe two hours? And how do you count it if you're sitting and looking at the screen but also doing something productive? What if you watch 20 minutes of a show you don't even like because the baby has fallen into a light sleep on your shoulder and you have somehow managed to leave the remote control out of arm's reach so you can't change the channel, mute it, or turn it off?
When we first moved to this neighborhood, so many people knocked on our door raising money that I put up a "no soliciting" sign. Well, it fell down down recently, and I'm already thinking I need to replace it. Just today I've given ten dollars to help fight breast cancer and joined the Jehovah's Witnesses.
OK, off to make formula, load dishes, and start dinner.
Posted by Su Penn at August 14, 2003 05:01 AM | TrackBack