How I Learned Quickly That Children are In Fact Not Easier to Deal With Than Co-Workers

When I quit my job to become a stay at home mom, I had these images of walking to farmers markets with my daughter, who would be dressed in a beautiful sun dress and we’d purchase organic things that we would take home and turn into meals.  It would all be very earth mothery and Zen and what not.  Then I woke up and realized we live in the Tundra, thus we have a farmer’s market about 3 days of the year, and also walking there from my house would only be done after a great deal of whining and bitching on behalf of both my daughter and myself.  

After the Farmers Market we would take a drive to the local story hour, where I would relive all my childhood favorite books through my daughters eyes.  We would end that visit by purchasing a book which we would go home and read together, thus cultivating in my child the love of books that I have always enjoyed.  Instead of this idyllic celebration of literacy, I brought my daughter to story “hour”, which began early and lasts about the length of a child’s book- approximately 4 minutes.  So basically we were there for two minutes of a story since we made the mistake of showing up on time.  During these 2 minutes my daughter managed to run past the classic children’s books and dump all the books off the shelf that featured a little Hispanic cartoon character and her weird fox friend.  My darling girl then whined about wanting to get all the books, until I finally made her leave and go home with me with no book at all.  

After reading the book we’d purchased at the book store, I pictured Nora going into her room where she would escape into a world of make believe with all of the MILLIONS OF FREAKING TOYS SHE HAS and I would clean a few things (because I would never let the house get to messy) and then I’d sit on the couch with my legs crossed nicely and read a book.  What actually happened is Nora continued her tantrum from the bookstore for another 5 minutes, had a time out, then came out of her room and proceeded to say forty billion times, “What can I do now?”.  Meanwhile I had thrown out all thoughts of cleaning because every nerve I had at this point was shot.  Plus, cleaning is stupid.

Then I imagined G.R. would walk into the door, excited to see his calm and happy family after their fun day of togetherness.  It would be a soothing and calm environment and he’d be so proud to be making the sacrifices that came with having a stay at home wife, because just look at how wonderful his family turned out to be!  Instead, G.R. walked in the door and I barely made eye contact with him before complaining in great detail about how “his” daughter had acted all day and how I was totally done and there was no dinner made and unless he wanted to make dinner himself he could just order us all something because I was going to our room to lay down and look at People magazine and think about the fact that I had quit my job and ruined every body's lives.