hausfrau

(borrowed)

I bet you thought I wasn't still planning to quit, since I haven't talked about it in a while.  Not so.  And what will I do when I quit?  Well, yesterday I read on APW about how great it is being a wife.  Specifically, the kind that takes care of the house.  I think I may have a somewhat romanticized notion of what it must be like to be a stay-at-home-wife.  Yet, on any given day, I would rather do stuff around the house then go to work.  So.

Things I like to think I would do as a stay-at-home-wife

1.  Wear A-line dresses while vacuuming.
2.  Work out on a daily basis.
3.  Happily fix all the stuff broken in our house, even if it requires going to the specialty hardware store.
4.  Read all the books I've been wanting to read.
5.  Bake.
6.  Plan healthy and interesting meals for the family.
7.  Grow an amazing vegetable garden.
8.  Start wearing makeup and actually doing my hair.
9.  Pay all bills on time and have a perfectly balanced checkbook and budget.
10.  Decorate my spotless house in a creative and vintage-y way that really reflects my personality by refurbishing items of furniture I purchase at the Salvation Army.



Things I actually do on the weekends

1.  Wear various sweatpants and yoga pants, and leave the dirt right were it is on the carpet.
2.  Struggle to motivate myself to get in one good run or one yoga class per weekend.
3.  Happily fix anything in our house that is broken and can be fixed in under 15 minutes with at most one trip to the Home Depot.
4.  Periodically throw out all the magazines that I subscribe to that build up on the front hall table.
5.  Purchase Rainbow Chip Deluxe cookies.
6.  Grocery shop exactly like my mother, which involves coming home with ground turkey and boneless skinless chicken breasts and a bag of spinach, then trying to figure out meals for the week based on what's in the house.
7.  Clean all the weeds out of the vegetable garden, then suddenly realize it's mid-July and I haven't planted a single seed.
8.  Shower (sometimes).
9.  Periodically write stuff on the budget we have, and celebrate the fact that another month has gone by without any utilities getting shut off from neglecting to pay the bills.
10.  Rotate the plastic placemats based on the upcoming holiday.

I do realize that I may be able to do a lot of the items on the first list with slightly more time, but it's good to remember who I actually am while fantasizing about my life as a stay-at-home-wife.