About once every 4-6 weeks I quit. My other job, that is, of being mother, wife, cook, cleaner, driver, accountant, doctor, and laundress. Usually this is precipitated by a one to two-hour cleaning spree where I have picked up and put away a hundred belongings of other members of my household. I scurry from room to room, muttering . . . “what the heck? I can’t believe this – why is this here? Oh, gross. (finding dirty clothes, dirty dishes, or trash).” I get discouraged and depressed quickly. It doesn’t help that those family members seem to disappear when I’m trying to get things picked up. Sometime after the first hour, I realize that I could spend a solid week of waking hours just putting things back to their right places, and I still wouldn’t be done.
That’s when I quit. I decide, no one else seems to care, why should I? Same with making meals. I rush home from work and picking up my daughter, go straight to the kitchen and start preparing dinner. Sometimes I have to clean up messes before or during cooking. I’m always in a hurry to get dinner on the table so we aren’t eating a 8 PM. I usually do it by myself, or I have to ask someone passing by to set the table or chop a vegetable. I decide to quit doing that too.
My “unemployment” doesn’t usually last that long. I don’t like that my kids suffer when I decide to stop cooking. I don’t usually tell my “employers”, so I squirm when Chuck asks “what are you planning for dinner?”. “Um, I don’t have anything planned – feel free to fend for yourself.” It actually takes them about four days to realize that mom is on a roll here. “We’re out of milk.” Chuck observes. “Do you want me to get milk?” Have they really become so helpless?
Honestly, I do enjoy the break. I come home and go straight to my bed one night (something my husband does frequently). Another night, I finish a book I have been reading. I get all my laundry folded and put away another night. At some point, I decide that I want to cook a meal. Things resume back to the way they were, and I feel better, even though I haven’t accomplished anything.
I realize that I need to approach the problem differently – I need to insist on help, and make my children and husband pick up after themselves, and follow up on my requests, and have a schedule and a plan. In the end, I realize that it’s just one more (or twenty more) things for me to do, and so I don’t do anything.
Until I quit again.
