Desperate Housewives

I've never seen the show and don't know what it's about, but I wanted to borrow the title. A lot of people think we live lives of leisure. You know - lounging on the couch with a good book, munching on bonbons, sipping champagne - that kind of thing. Well, maybe some do. But most of us are also stay-at-home moms. Our days are filled with changing diapers, kid-wrangling, cleaning, grocery shopping, refereeing, cooking, washing little hands and faces, laundry, cleaning, giving piggy-back rides, picking up toys, reading books, and cleaning. (Yes, there’s a lot of cleaning.)

Sometimes I get to escape for a little while. Once in a while I walk to the mailbox by myself. I get my teeth cleaned twice a year (20 minutes each way with nothing but the radio making noise, a few moments to look at a magazine in peace). Occasionally I ask my mother-in-law to babysit while I get groceries (no kids crawling in and out of buggies, no shoes getting kicked off in WalMart, nobody asking me to buy something on every aisle). When the kids are asleep, I might curl up with Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh (ignore the laundry, forget the dishes, no 18-month-old crying because his ball rolled under the couch, no 5-year-old asking me what M-a-d-a-g-a-s-c-a-r spells). When I’m really lucky, I get to go on a date with my husband!

Most days I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I would love to lounge on the couch with a good book, munching on bonbons, sipping champagne (actually, lounge on the couch with a good book, a bag of chocolate chips, and a glass of milk), but I’ve got laundry to cook, supper to bathe, kids to fold. You know what I mean.