Skip to main content

Priceless moms

I often joke about being the recipient of the Mother of the Year Award -- usually when I've done something horrible or neglectful or stupid as a mother. So imagine my delight to learn with this breaking news story that I am, in fact, this year's recipient of the coveted award! One of the funniest e-mails I've received in a long time -- I'm just replaying and replaying and replaying it.

In other news, I read today that if stay-at-home moms were actually paid for the work they do on a daily basis, they'd be earning over $122,000 annually. Not bad. And working moms would be earning over $76,000 in addition to their at-work salary. (With that kind of cash, I could actually hire the nanny, personal trainer, and chef that I long for!)

I happen to think what we do is priceless, but this gives it interesting perspective.

I suppose, too, we're paid in other ways...snuggles, kisses, tiny hands holding ours, sweet voices singing made-up songs. It's nice work if you can get it.

Comments

  1. paddyandhenrysmomMay 5, 2009 at 9:28 PM

    It is the best job, that's for sure, even if I don't always appreciate it. Padraic calls me his sweetheart and had me make a "heart chart" that shows with many rows and columns of hearts how much I love him. He's since turned it around and said it indicates how much he loves me, Daddy, and Henry. If I could save time in a bottle....

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...

Grown-up words and what to do about them

We know our children are little sponges who soak up all our words, actions, mannerisms. They are often parrots, but even more often they are fun house mirrors, amplifying and exaggerating our own idiosyncratic behaviors until we cringe, laugh, or hang our heads in shame. Yesterday while cleaning up his toys, Sweet Boy got frustrated trying to put one of his train pieces together. Instead of crying or raging like he would have a few weeks ago, he threw the toy down and yelled, "Oh, fuck it!" Oh. My. Lord. The air was sucked out of the room. We were suspended in time and space, frozen as our eyes met. I took a split second to consider my options: (1) Freak out and yell at him---scare him into never saying it again; (2) Ask him to repeat what he said, because maybe I heard it wrong and I don't want to overreact; (3) Ask where he heard that word, stuff his mouth full of soap, then call the offending child's parent immediately (a la The Christmas Story ); (4) Ignore it so ...

Why I Occupy

I marched in the Occupy Philly protest last Saturday, and I've been trying to find the words to describe it all week. People who know me look puzzled when I tell them, and I've been trying to explain why this movement has taken root in my heart. Last Saturday, for a few brief hours, I stood up to the anxiety, anger, frustration, and fear that has gripped me for the last few years. For a few brief hours, I marched with people who want better for me and you and this entire country, people who may be ideologically different but stand together because they believe there’s still hope for this democracy, that there’s still a chance that our government will take action for the people and not for the corporations that fund their campaigns. There’s a perception that the Occupy Wall Street movement is simply a mob of young, disenfranchised 20-somethings who have nothing better to do than sleep on city sidewalks to disrupt the lives of those of us with jobs. Revolutions are ...