Undomestic goddess

Some time ago, I was required to complete some form or another which asked me to list my occupation. At the time, my days were solely occupied by being a stay-at-home mum (and were they occupied!!!). Rather than writing 'unemployed', 'on maternity leave' (or worse, 'confinement leave' - ugh!!), or *shudder* 'housewife', I wrote in my lovely pink pen, 'domestic goddess'.

According to the ladies who received my form, this answer was gold. I appreciated their mirth and resolutely stuck to my belief that they were laughing with me, not AT me...

Lately, I have begun to think I should have written 'undomestic goddess'. Because there does not appear to much about me that is domesticated anymore. I am quite the disorganised headless chook, running hither and yon trying to catch up with my life. Hence the blogging hiatus, and the fervent desire that in my next life, someone designates a full contingent of staff for mine own self.

The past few weeks have seen countless bloggy stories running through my head, only to be chased away by other things, such as shopping lists, school work and bank balances. I sat down the other day to calculate where my time goes during the working week (not the weekends, mind you. They're a whole new minefield of ballet lessons, swimming lessons, boot camp and washing), and it went something like this:

Time spent at school (actual paid work): 16 hours
Time spent driving to and from school (including working days with two different drop-offs for childcare): 10 hours
Time spent looking after girls, cleaning house, food shopping, generally attempting (poorly) to alleviate domestic chaos: 15 hours
Time spent preparing, cooking and cleaning up after meals: 10 hours
Time spent trying to get children into bed (this includes the whole bath, pyjamas and book-reading malarky): 10 hours
Time spent making school lunches: 3.5 hours
Time spent preparing and packing for the next school day: 2.5 hours
Time spent hanging up, folding, or putting away washing: 5 hours (and let's face it, it's slap-dash at best)
Time spent at boot camp or travelling to boot camp: 4 hours
Time spent preparing work for school: 4 hours
Time spent tutoring: 3 hours
Time spent walking Archie and Daisy: 2.5 hours
Time spent standing in my loungeroom lamenting the mess: ??????
Time spent actually holding an uninterrupted conversation with my husband: ooh......ten minutes?

Given that there are 120 hours in five days, the above tasks leave me with 34.5 unaccounted hours. In other words, on average I have 6.9 hours a day for emergency runs to the supermarket late at night for forgotten items, phone calls to my mother and Telstra, watching Underbelly on a Sunday night, and sleep. Which means that the 'sleep' category usually scores a paltry 5 hours. Sad, pathetic, and entirely true.

As you can probably deduce, time spent blogging has been reduced to nil.

I blame boot camp entirely (not my undomesticated goddess-ishness and general disorganisation). There's four hours right there I could be using to spill my guts to all and sundry, when instead I am in a large church (yes, that's right - a church!!) attempting to minimise the gut spillage over the top of my trousers.

So I suppose that's the truth in a long-winded nutshell, really. I have selfishly sacrificed my blogging time for boot camp, thereby leaving my thoughts running wild and my mental health in sincerely dodgy shape!! But all is not lost. Boot camp only goes for another blissful, excruciating 6 weeks, which means that at the beginning of December I can rest my sculpted derriere on a comfy seat and blog to my heart's content. It also means I'll have to find some other way to keep the blobbiness at bay over the silly season....

Basically I can promise you (with hand on heart under sore pectoral) that I am still here. Collecting stupid and funny things my children say and do (said Phoebe yesterday, "Dad, if you have no bum, then you can't eat 'cause you'll die"). Thinking of random things to blog about (Seriously, George Calombaris, you try being a SAHM for an extended period of time, make all your child's food from scratch, wipe it off the walls after every meal, and THEN criticise mothers who feed their children store-bought baby food. Sheesh). Contemplating the finer points of managing household finances (So, we got two invoices for our unbuilt house in one week. With a grand total of $110, 000. In ONE week. How do you think the kids enjoyed their baked beans for dinner???) And missing my blogging community (Yes, I do miss you. Weird I know, but true).

You might ask how it is that I am blogging right now?? The fact of the matter is, the Mouse woke me at 5:50 this morning, inconsolable. I had planned to get to the 7am session of boot camp this morning (yes, lazy, I know!!) but she nixed that by screaming-crying until right about the time I should have been doing hurty things on an exercise mat. So I had a pyjama morning instead, and have already done the dishes, and the washing, sent the children to ballet with a proper breakfast in their tummies, and relieved my bloggy itch. Oh, and the Mouse is back in bed, fast asleep. Little cow.

If I sacrifice half an hour of sleep a night from here until the end of November, I would have my blogging time back again. It's do-able, sure. Just don't ask me to give up Underbelly, ok?