Working Mom: Vol 1; Issue 1: Flying in the Face of Martha Stewart and Alpha Mom

I got the idea for this while getting my car’s oil changed*. I almost wrote getting my oil changed, but realized that even though that may have given me the energy and power I need to keep at this Life as a Working Mom, alas, the lube and oil shop didn’t offer transfusions. Thus, it was just my car that got the needed pep that day.

As I was saying, I got the idea for this issue while getting my car’s oil changed. In the waiting room was an eclectic mix of magazines from Family Circle to Sports Illustrated. I don’t have time for scorecards. I don’t have time for Family Circle, either, but it was there, I was captive, and on the cover was billed an article promising to tell me how to de-stress the Holidays**.

I had just survived a particularly stressful Christmas Eve, replete with vomit, head wounds, and crying kids from a very over-stressed Mommy who resorted to yelling because she had no other outlet. “I should have gotten my oil changed earlier, just so I could have read this article!” I thought, with beads of sweaty excitement on my upper lip. I eagerly hoped they’d take their sweet time gooping out the car’s engine so I could savor the tips.

Oh, the heart was willing, the article was not.

Listed as tips to taking the stress out of the Time of Giving and Gnashing were suggestions that only served to stress me even more. Exactly like suggestions on how to economize by only going to the beauty parlor once a month instead of every two weeks, these holiday tips were just as unhelpful:

Bake only two kind of cookies instead of six. Ummmmm, yeah. Was I supposed to be trying to make six different kinds of cookies? Am I supposed to be trying to make TWO kinds of cookies? I managed to bake one kind of cookie this year, and most of them went undecorated. It was fun, the kids enjoyed it, that’s what counted. Last year, cookies were from a pre-made cookie dough from the refrigerated section at the grocery store, baked in haste on Christmas Eve so Santa could have a treat. But wait, according to Family Circle there is hope, I could ask friends to do the same, and then we could swap cookies at a festive cookie swap party. Yet, crumbs, that assumes I have friends who have the time I don’t, have the desire to bake, and we could actually find a time we could all meet and have this jolly get-together.

For Christmas dinner, pare down the fare by cooking fewer than five courses. Spend the saved time for a walk in the snow or a chat by the fire with friends. Ignore the fact that I have no snow, or fireplace, or friends with time to visit on a day already packed with their own stress bunnies. What got me was that I was to cut my five-course dinner to something smaller. Dinner at our house is one course, maybe two if I manage a dessert. I’d like to say the reason is I don’t have plates enough for anything more, which is true, but in reality I simply don’t have the time to prepare and then, very important point here, SERVE separate courses. If I get to sit down at dinner while everyone else is still eating, I’m winning the game. I was feeling pretty good that I managed a rib roast with some veggies this year. So the rolls were pre-made, I’ll live with it. So I forgot to put the (frozen) pies in the oven and we didn’t have dessert. Hey, no one seemed to miss them. Life was good, even if I did sit down to a half-cold meal by the time the kids’ meat was cut, drinks were poured, bowls found, spilled drinks cleaned up, drinks refilled, salt cellar filled, paper towels folded quickly for forgotten napkins, dropped forks picked up and dusted off, and more meat cut because two of the kids don’t want to eat their veggies but were still hungry.

Wrapping got you down? Try just wrapping with just two different types of paper and two different types of ribbon. It will be simple, yet elegant. Geesh, I’m supposed to be using RIBBON, too? There’s supposed to be some sort of decorative essence to the wrapping? For presents we send out to family, I wrap them in plain white paper, and have the kids color on them. For presents at home, it’s simple holiday wrapping paper. I have taken to putting simple curling ribbon on the presents, one color assigned for each person, so the non-readers of the family can tell who can open what present. Presents to me are easy to find and don’t need this complicated ribbon scheme, as there usually are none as I’m the only one who manages to shop or make presents. I was up until 4:30 one morning wrapping presents with whatever I could get my hands on. As long as it’s obscured in some way to hide the contents, isn’t that good enough? (The answer, by the way, is YES.)

Trim my to-do list. Write down all I do to prepare for the holidays, and cross off those tasks that weigh me down. This assumes I have fluff in what I do. Here’s my list of what I do:

Shop (on-line).
Help the kids make something for Daddy.
Get a tree. Decorate said tree if we get a chance.
Futilely ask friends if they want to come over either for Solstice, Christmas Eve, Christmas, or some other day for a bit of camaraderie.
Wrap presents.
Take the day off for Solstice for fun and relaxation and try to manage a nice dinner that day even if Life, as it always does, schedules must-attend things then.
Make a warm cozy breakfast Christmas morning.
Open presents.
Make dinner Christmas evening.
Let breakfast, dinner and present carnage sit for several days as I find time and energy to clean up.

That’s pretty much it. Remember, cookies and festive wrapping are optional. Carols? Only impromptu. Wreath making? Yah, right. Scrapbooking? You’ve got to be kidding. Christmas cards? Yah, they’re on their way out, along with the last two babies’ birth announcements. If I cut out anything from that list, well, it’s too bad I can’t count on Santa to help out.

So, dear Working Moms and Working Dads, here are my two suggestions to you for de-stressing the holidays.

First and foremost, ignore what everyone else is supposedly doing (really, how many of you working parents out there actually make six kinds of cookies and a cook a five course holiday dinner?). Do what you want, and need, to do to celebrate the Season. If that means no cookies, haphazard wrapping, and a simple dinner, then whoopie! That’s YOUR celebration.

Then, take a walk. A friend of mine suggested this after I told my Christmas Eve of Doom this year. When adults can’t behave like adults anymore, get out of the house, away from it all, and take a walk. So you get to bed at 5 am instead of 4:30 in the morning. You’ll feel better, and you won’t have an anxious pit in your stomach for the next year, where you’ll be hoping you don’t make the same mistakes because, hey, you took a walk instead and didn’t have a chance to yell at a toddler on the night Santa is to arrive.

Realize, of course, that I don’t do any of these, but I plan to next year.

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* Having someone else change my oil instead of myself or my husband caused me a certain amount of cringing. Really, now, I should be able to change my own oil, it’s not all that hard, and I have rebuilt carburetors after all. But, there comes a time in one’s life, while working full-time and raising three young daughters, when you realize you would rather be doing something else other than be under a car getting slick and grimy. I mediated my shirk by refusing to pay $20 for them to change my air filter and did it myself (and fill up the windshield wiper fluid reservoir to boot) for $11 in parts.

** Sorry, I was unable to find a link to the actual article, you’ll just have to go to your local library and look for the early December, 2005 Family Circle for further humility. Like you have the time to do something like that. Just another example of what The Woman says you should do, and what Reality says you can. Instead, just take my word for it.