Did I mention that this is the first year the child has not been enrolled full time in camp while visiting? It is her big summer holiday, but here in Oz, schools get a two week winter break. There is no camp for the two full months while sprog will be here. She\’s too old for day care. Guess who gets to play full time child minder?
Today was the first time in four days that I\’ve seen the internet outside of my classes and e-mail.
Dr. Maude and mini-Maude are now over their jet lag. Now I\’ve got child lag. IE, they go to bed at night and I struggle to stay awake a few more hours to get some reading in. Dr. Maude nabs the internet first thing in the morning before heading to the lab, then the child grabs it. I\’ve been trying to be nice and let her do her teenage thing; I know it\’s hard, and I don\’t want to interfere. I spend the morning trying to get more book reading done, and inevitably just fall asleep with my head down in my lap, the book lost somewhere on the floor. Around noon I start to snap out of it and find the kid still glued to the internet, chatting to her friends. I grumble, work on an essay for class, and wait… and wait… by 1pm I have lost my patience and confiscated the line. The child must shower, and shower now.
Between 1 and 2 I get about an hour of respite while she primps and preens. I\’ve got two bosses on my back, pounding on my virtual door about web assignments not yet done. I\’ve got two classes, LFB, TCC.ORG, and whatever else. Responsibilities, let alone the \”fun\” part of scanning 70 updated news feeds and a friends list. All in an hour. By 2pm, she needs lunch, which she can\’t fix for herself. After lunch, she needs entertaining. We spent yesterday at the library and museum.
I am so damn exhausted. I sent my mom a brief e-mail last night; \”dear mom, you followed your three kids, their playmates, plus additonal children around for eight years without turning into Andrea Yates…how?\”
Two more months of this. Our internet connection isn\’t fast enough/strong enough to network it out.
I like it better when she\’s at camp all day. So convenient of her father to have me be the guardian all day long, every day, then come the weekend he wants a \”night off\” to himself to go out on his own. I wish I had time to nurse my alcoholism and desire for live drum and bass, too.
My relationship (and subsequently, my life) has regressed into this strange simulacrum of 1950s housewifery. I feel like my only options are a constant state of Valium-induced stupor, or ripping my bra off and running after some drug crazed rock band in search of a utopia of equality (which will be shattered once the guitarist manages to knock me up and then leaves me at home to take care of the kids). \’70s era feminism is making a hell of a lot more sense to me these days.
Send me sanity in a bottle.
EDIT: it\’s just so convenient to have a girlfriend who works/schools from home. But did I ever get asked if this was okay? No. Didn\’t even get the option. If I wasn\’t so fucking impossibly gimpy, I\’d be running out right now to get any shit day job I could find, out of spite. Then let him deal with the situation. christ.
