Americans eat crap and don't exercise because they ran out of time. They ran out of time because we live in the kind of society where we are expected to work ourselves silly to live in an overpriced culture where we are offered very little social support structure. I must have spent two hours in the kitchen today between making dinner and tomorrow's lunches. I could have heated some chicken nuggets, or bought a $5 pizza at Little Caesars, or boiled up some Hebrew Nationals (you know, the hot dog that masquerades around as if it were good for you), but instead I chose to make real, whole food from scratch. This was after I spent 1.25 hours driving home from work beause every single expressway on my way home was stop and go traffic--probably the result of more people going and getting themselves in a darn hurry...probably over something that's not even all that important in the grand scheme of things. And now I am too tired (and it's kinda late) for any kind of physical activity. For all the healthy food I eat, I feel the stress belly growing anyway. I have said it once and I'll say it again--I don't know how stay home parents can get bored unless they are feeding their kids fast food every day and/or have the money to hire a maid. My house hasn't had a thorough cleaning in months. My desires are few. I want a healthy family, daily yoga, someone to give my house a good, deep cleaning once a week, time for leisure reading, someone to deal with the bills for me, and pedicures. I've never had a pedicure and I think I deserve one.
My kids don't get the attention they deserve because I am always running out of time. Either they are getting away with all kinds of videocy so that I can get my school work done in peace, or I am blowing off school work so that I can be a real mom and do something with my kids. Tonight, feeling guilty that we haven't read a bedtime story in three weeks, I suckered Gavin into reading a story to his sister while I sat here in the dining room making a graphic illustration explaining Hemingway's Code Hero. I justify it this way--he's getting practice reading, she's getting the attention from him that she wants, and I am preparing for my next day of teaching. Multitasking, everyone is happy, right?
Time turns me into a nervous wreck. Either I'm too far behind, or I'm worrying myself silly about something that may or may not happen in the distant future, or I feel like I am running just behind the eight ball.
Time gives people heart attacks and strokes and indigestion and digestive diseases. It gives us mood disorders for which we buy pills just to keep ourselves moderately sane and moving right along so that, God forbid, we don't lose a day of work (that one day that just might help us recuperate) because someone else needs us to make them some money. So their wives can go to yoga and get pedicures and hire Alice to cook and clean for their kids.
You may see a trend emerging--my jealousy of stay-at-home-parents. In the seventies, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem wanted us ladies to feel as if we had somehow been liberated by the women's rights movement. I say we've only succeeded in trapping us into more work and responsibility than we had before we were "liberated."
