Complaint: Not unexpected, I'm sure)

I’ve got a severe case of server burnout. If you’ve ever waitressed, you know what I’m talking about, even if you don’t have kids yet. If you have kids, you definitely know what I mean.

Serving people is supposed to be honorable and spiritually enriching and kind and good. And sometimes that’s true.

But today, fueled by hormones and the particular flavor of stir-crazy that comes from spending a rainy afternoon inside with two small (and generally delightful) children, I am Sick. Of. Serving.

If it’s not food, it’s drink. If it’s not drink, it’s pencil, marker, sticker, crayon. It’s reading fucking Dora the Explorer’s six-volume collection over and over. Literary swill, but it makes them happy, and they snuggle up, which mitigates the lousy writing.

Soon it will be supper time. I will have to imagine it, make it, scarf it up while mostly standing, clean it up, and wait for my husband to come home from his stimulating job. Then I will clean the house some more, and get ready to start the whole thing again tomorrow.

Yes, I know, the time has come for me to get a job outside the house. Trust me, I just need to get my kids settled into their new school, my family into a new house, and I’m Audi 5000. I know I’ll probably complain about that, too, when I’m working outside the home. It’s in my nature.

Because what I worry about is, with a job outside the home, who’s going to envision and implement dinner, clean it up and keep track of laundry, errands and other household chores? I’m still going to have to do that, too. It wasn’t fair, but that’s what my mom did. And that’s probably what I’m going to have to do.

Honestly? I feel like I have a pretty fabulous life overall. But these days my kids need me less onsite and more mentally available. And in order to be sane, I need me to have a life of my own. So I guess I’ll have a more cluttered house when I work outside the home, but I’ll take the dust bunnies if it means I can use those parts of my brain again.