What about today that is so important. People, I have one last PTA meeting to attend in an official capacity. Then, I retire. If you can’t hear the joyous giggle in my voice, then I need to record.  My son’s school, while very important to me, has also consumed almost every waking moment of the last 5 years for 9 solid months. Plus, some time during the summer.

Mentally and physically, I am drained. There is a lot of work and effort that goes into it. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it really is a thankless job. Well, maybe not totally thankless. Every time a teacher makes a copy, a student gets a worksheet, I think there has to be some thanks somewhere. We make the copier lease payments. It stretches our minuscule budget and there is never enough (which is why I am officially on a budget for PTA spending) to go as far as we need it.  Yet, we get it taken care of.

So, I am retiring. It will be bittersweet, but for once, I can be a worker bee. Not a leader bee. It will be nice…even if  a little sad.

I hate nagging.

My husband is kind enough to take my nagging most of the time.  However, he unwittingly brings it on himself.

How? How could such a paragon of virtue open himself up to the tortured ranting of a woman with too much on her plate?

Lack of peripheral vision.

He can only see what is in front of him, not what is going on around him. Great when you do the job that he does. Bad when it comes to helping me out in the house.

We had an agreement when I turned this blogging/writing/child raising thing into a full-time gig last summer. He would help out in the house. The bad thing is? He has no idea how. I blame that on his mother. He can’t see what to do. So, when I tell him “honey, I really you need to unload the dishwasher” for the umpteenth time, I really feel like screaming “listen here jackass, I don’t give a damn how thrilling the latest economy news/facebook/twitter/news is, get off your fucking keister so I can clean the damn kitchen”.

Today, we had a talk. I like to call it a “come to Jesus” meeting. I told him that I was quitting. The only thing I was going to do was to turn myself into a version of me that is somewhere between June Cleaver and a Stepford Wife.  Of course, he was completely against the idea. But what really bugs me about that? He gets so freaking melodramatic. “I know I have to change. I haven’t done a good job.”

I really just wanna say, “you know, if you would just do things we agreed to on the list, you wouldn’t be saying that, I wouldn’t be nagging the ever loving shit out of you and life would be all “kittens and lollipops” or some hippie BS like that.

So, that’s where I am. Feeling like the royal bitch queen….it’s not a good feeling to have.

Figures.

Yes, I said that “F” word. Sorry. I don’t like the”F” word, but in this case, it fits. He’s the jolly old soul who’s belly is like a bowl full of jelly. Whatever, he’s gorged on cookies and milk and walks around like a hippo on two legs. Yet it’s ok. He’s Santa.

Let me tell you something, look at wealthy men built the same way and you will see an extraordinarily hot woman clinging to his arm. Let me tell you something else, it’s not because she dreams of climbing on top of him and screaming “let me get up you, you pot-bellied stallion, and ride!

Umm…nope.

It’s your green mister, your jack, your big hefty wallet and that fantastic pre-nup you gave her.

We are supposed to do it all,  but let me tell you something, I am tired of doing it all. I work, I volunteer, I am the secretary of the PTA. Yet, it’s not enough in most peoples eyes.If I compared myself to other mommy’s, I would be an A++ #1 slack ass.

My friends and I call those Moms “Super Mom “insert name”. Seriously. Do these women with the perfect hair, immaculate make-up, ultra fit body, I can do it all and will do it all and put you to shame attitude, live on nothing but air and ritalin?  Tell me your secrets. I beg you.

Because we have been led to believe we can do it all, but only if we keep doing everything else.

Then the criticism kicks in.

If I swear, if I say I have had a hell of day and need a drink. People are like “you’re just gonna get drunk” and then you are branded a drunk. Even if the bottle of vodka in my freezer has been in there for six months and is more than half full!  Lord help if you mention that you are horny and wanna get laid. That just doesn’t work for that June Cleaver/Betty Crocker appearance we are supposed to exude.

So, I shall haul my ass back to the kitchen to make more Christmas goodies. Something I actually enjoy, but believe me I am not juggling this task with 50 others. It’s Christmas, I am taking it easy…and fixing up a nice goodie plate for Santa Claus.

Maybe he will bring me something nice.

What a farce.

Whoever said that women were equals obviously doesn’t have a vagina. I just read the piece at www.copyblogger.com about James Chartrand finally outing himself as a woman.

That’s right, a woman. The blogger you have come to know and respect as Men With Pens has had to use a pseudonym.

I am livid.

Livid that this woman could not make a living as a female. But using a male pseudonym could get herself from the grips of the welfare system to where she was earning a decent living and able to purchase a small home and do outrageous things, like feed her children and clothe them.

James Chartrand had a good education and good skills, but as a woman, she hit a plateau. She wrote the same things, using the same voice, using the same skills, but as a man? She became “certifiable”.

“There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions — often none at all.”

Needless to say, her pay rate increased exponentially.

“Taking a man’s name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the income of my true name, with the same work and service.

No hassles. Higher acceptance. And gratifying respect for my talents and round-the-clock work ethic.

Business opportunities fell into my lap. People asked for my advice, and they thanked me for it, too.”

Really? Really.

I want to scream at these Corporate Suits who have no fucking clue. No, screaming isn’t good enough, I want to staple their heads to their desks and invite every woman who has been discriminated against to come in there and all start talking simultaneously. So, the only thing they hear for the rest of their lives in the unintelligible babble that they feel is all we are capable of producing.

Am I just talking about men? Hell no. The vast majority of women in the corporate world have a chip on their shoulders and they are not going to let another woman look better than them by a long shot. Why? Because that woman has had to dig and claw her way to the top, doing things she shouldn’t have had to do–and no, smarty pants, I am not talking about sex. But, she has to had to take less pay for better work. Less respect for better work. So, trust me, she is not going to let that other woman show her up.

So, where does all of this leave us?

Read the article. It leaves us exactly where we were 161 years ago when in the small town of Seneca Falls, NY the first Women’s Rights Convention was launched. I grieve for my sex, for my sisters who fought for us so valiantly at at time when we had no rights.

I grieve for the daughters being born to mothers who are still struggling to find a voice in the world, just like James Chartrand.

“Truth be told, if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world than it does about me.”

~ James Chartrand

When did life become so fucking hectic?

Yes, I said the “F” word. I have been known to swear like a sailor. Actually, more like been known to make them blush.  But, I digress.

Who in the hell said that we have to do it all?  I mean, we do it all in most cases. Housework, laundry, yard work, cook meals, shop for groceries, take care of the kids, PTA, go to soccer games and when we get a break in our “easy life” gussy up like a French Whore and screw like a nymphomaniac sex machine who is multi-orgasmic and wants as little foreplay as possible. Oh and then there are the jobs that many of us hold.

Seriously?

I think Betty Friedan said what I am trying to say best:

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don’t blame the women’s movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.

speech, New York City, January 20, 1974

Seriously though. We do it to ourselves. We want to over compete with the next woman. It’s like if we don’t do enough, we will not measure up in some sick way and that measuring up to others is essential to our being
Whatever.

I say screw those people.  Be yourself, dammit.

I like to sleep. That’s the bad thing. If I can stay in bed until six I can sleep for days. Seriously. Let me roll over onto my stomach and I am gone until noon.  However, I am not allowed to sleep like that. My nine year old wakes me up wanting cuzzles and if it’s not him it’s my husband rolling over with Captain Happy and thinking that poking me in the heiney with it is going to rev my motor.

Yeah, right. He can take a cold shower and date his left hand for all I care at that point. I will even draw a face on his hand if that makes him happy.

So, what is this magical drug called sleep? It is something I can magically create? Or is it that elusive tease? Taunting me with it’s sexy, sultry, slinky goodies and letting me know that its erotically crafted lap dance only lasts for a few minutes and that I have to pay out the ass in order to get any real action.

What does that mean for me? I am always running, never sleeping and wonder if my thinning hair is due to stress or little fairies slowly yanking it out at night trying to remind me of all that I have to do the next day.

I call this blog “Stopped At One” because that’s what I did. I stopped at one. One child. No more. One and done. Am I happy about that decision? You betcha. Oh, there were times I had the pangs of motherhood hit my loins like Lawrence Taylor sacking Joe Theisman.

Unlike Joe, I got up, took a shower and moved on.

So, where does that leave me? Stressed out, on a caffeine drip, and with these blackened caverns under my eyes that I try to fill in with concealer. Good times people, good times.

Would I do it all over again? Damn straight.  I love that sleeping angel more than I love life itself. He is the reason I do push myself so hard. I want to inspire him, encourage him and no matter what, never want to hear him say “well, Mom was never there”. So, when I am trying to cram 12 hours worth of work into 8 and running like a lunatic, you know why. All for that little bugger.

This blog? It’s an outlet. You never know what I will say, when I will say it, or how. But you can better believe it, I am going to say it.  Life’s too short to keep it all in.