Oof [more to do lists]

[rebeccmeister]

Do people often say to you, "I don't know how you do all the things you do!" I hear the phrase a lot, and it annoys me immensely. Probably because I can't think of a good comeback. It should really be something about not having small children or a television, or maybe something about how far behind I am on reading books.

This morning is a good time to point out that all of the doing-of-things can come at a high cost, which scrottie is fond of pointing out. I'm definitely a zombie this morning, and I still have a big pile of ambitions for the day. There are the more routine chores of laundry, bread-baking, yogurt-making, and pancaking (snacks for the week), plus I have a work date with J to work on manuscript writing this afternoon*. In the midst of it all, I need to remember to go in to the lab to check on one cricket. And it would be really nice to actually assemble the conduit hoops so I can bird net the strawberry plants. I have a feeling the last project will get sacrificed. Maybe I can shoehorn it in on a weeknight.

Oh, and it's time to put more paint on the oar. I should photograph that painting as it progresses. It's amazingly ugly right now.

And if I'm going to get a dress for annikusrex's wedding, I'd best be shopping for it some more. I can wear my bridesmaid's dress from my brother's wedding as a fallback, but it would also be really nice to acquire a good spring dress that I could wear for both weddings and tea parties.

When I go through days like these, I spend a lot of time thinking about how much harder everything would be with small children in tow. I bumped into my friend J with his son B at the farmer's market yesterday, and they always drive that point home. B is a wonderful kid, who gets dragged along to all sorts of adult things with his parents, and he really asks for little in return (wanting to show me his progress in a video game, for instance). J and K do a great job of balancing out parenting responsibilities, too. I can tell you what things in my own life would get sacrificed pretty quickly: gas-powered lawnmower, gas-powered vehicle, little/no vegetable gardening, fewer things cooked from scratch (yogurt, bread), one-stop grocery shopping at the big supermarket. But that's not my life, and I don't know if it ever will be. Certainly not in Texas, and if it ever is, hopefully it will be in a place with amazing amenities like public transportation, curbside recycling, sidewalks, and consolidated shopping districts.


*It turns out he too gets depressed and angry when he's spending long hours by himself trying to write. Even introverts need some level of social interaction.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

We continually say "how on earth do people with children manage it?"
Especially when we've just spent the whole day doing things that absolutely have to be done -- fixing the car, installing cabinets, cooking for the week -- that wouldn't be viable if we had hourly kid stuff to do.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

I really think the bulk of the change amounts to paying other people to do many of those things for us instead of doing them ourselves.

I can also totally understand why it would be a good idea to have one parent switch over to being a stay-at-home parent. When you start calculating the costs of childcare PLUS paying other people to do household projects, suddenly the economics of having one parent do full-time parenting make more sense, so long as that one parent can still find ways to get in some adult time.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

First point totally true, which shifts the question to "how do they AFFORD it?", esp. with second point in the mix. Whew, is all I can say.