"Loafing Around the House"

This is dedicated to all the full-time moms who work at home and all the working moms who do all this and work away from home also. And the dads who do it all, too.  It was written when my children were three and six.


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I received a letter from a school friend recently bringing me up to date on her family and describing her exciting new career.  "How about you?" the letter ended, "Still loafing at home?"

I wanted to answer her letter right away so it wouldn't get lost amid the accumulation of crayon drawings, school schedules, shopping lists, coupons and catalogues for school fund-raisers on my desk, but the phone interrupted.  It was Josh's room-mother asking me to drive first-graders to the petting barn at the Fair.  "I hate to ask you to drive again so soon," she said, "but since you don't work..."

By  the time I got back to my letter three days later, I had cooked nine meals, plus six snacks, made nine beds, washed, dried, folded and put away eight loads of laundry, vacuumed seven rooms of carpet, trimmed twenty tiny fingernails and twenty toenails, scrubbed two sand-filled heads of hair, driven five fighting kids to the Fair, driven the soccer car-pool, gone to Bible Study Fellowship and taught another Bible study at church.  (Studying for both hidden away in the living room an hour before sunrise.)

I had mopped up five spills of Kool-Aid, two bathroom floors and two bloody noses, scrubbed four toilet bowls, four sinks, one shower and one tub.  I cut bubble gum out of the dog's tail, cents-off coupons from the newspaper and five minutes off the time it took to get supper fixed, eaten and over in time for the soccer game.

I barbecued, tenderized and assembled.  I defrosted, de-boned, and delivered.  I planned fourteen dinner menus and wrote out that grocery list, called twelve ladies in the prayer chain and removed a jar full of twenty-seven roly-polies from the kitchen to the patio.

I hemmed six pair of size-eight jeans and let the hem down on six pair of size-four jeans.  I spent $40 at the grocery store just going to pick up a gallon of milk.  I read aloud eight "I Can Read" books from the library, watched three hours of Sesame Street and rocked two sleepy boys at bedtime three times each.

I poured six glasses of milk, eight glasses of Kool-Aid and one--only one--glass of Kool-Aid and milk, mixed, that Josh swore he would drink.

And finally, I poured myself into the easy chair and searched for something other than a crayon to write the letter with.  "Dear Glenda,"  I began.  "Your new job sounds very exciting.  Yes, I'm still loafing at home..."