52 Ways You Know You’re A WAHM
December 8, 2008 · Filed Under Stay at Home Sanity · Comments Off on 52 Ways You Know You’re A WAHM
photo credit: dammit_jill
You know you are a WAHM when:
- The shirt your child needs for school pictures TODAY is at the bottom of Mount St. Laundry
- Your child develops a fever the night before a big presentation and then proceeds to throw up on said presentation
- You are reading a book aloud to your child while glancing at the stack of work on your desk
- You are on a conference call in your pajamas
- You have a purse full of receipts that you can’t throw away because you need to sort the personal from the work expenses and darn it, you just haven’t gotten around to it yet
- You have gone all day without looking in a mirror- on purpose!
- You know the value of a bribe to achieve relative quiet when you are on the phone with a client
- The babysitter is on speed dial, actually she’s your friend on Facebook
- There are sticky fingerprints on the lid of your laptop
- Taking deep cleansing breaths and chasing the toddler (who is teething on your Blackberry) is your exercise routine
- You eat lunch standing up while looking over your to-do list and resisting the urge to scream
- You think you will be most productive at naptime but you make the mistake of sitting down and doze off too
- You consider your office anywhere you happen to be at the moment: the living room, the car, Gymboree class, the orthodontist office, etc
- You don’t enforce your work before play rule when those big eyes look up and that sweet voice asks you to play Hide and Seek “just one more time, Mommy”
- You realize a ½ hour before dinner that you have (once again) forgotten to take the roast out of the freezer to thaw
- You long ago recognized you don’t have to be a perfect mom to be THE perfect mom for your kids
- You have come to the conclusion that you will be completely gray by age 40 and decide to buy stock in Clairol
- Your camera is always beside you to capture the moments you stay home to see
- You know for a fact that kids do not want to be entertained with new toys and gadgets; they just want you (especially if you have a deadline and their BFF at school insulted them about their outfit)
- You are a wizard at making the most out of the 24 hours allotted in a day
- You dream of ways to payback every person who has ever said “it must be so nice to sit at home”. Visions of voodoo dolls, stink bombs and forcing them to spend 15 minutes in your shoes bring you pleasant dreams
- You learned early on that WAHM is secret code for invitations to sit on every PTA committee, coordinate every carpool and be the class mom for the entire bleepin’ school.
- You also learned (albeit the hard way) that you can only participate in so many volunteer activities before you are too busy to earn a living and you feel like you have gotten on a merry go round and can’t get off
- After you learned above lesson and alienated people during the ensuing nervous breakdown, you have become an expert on boundaries, saying “no” and only spending your time on things that are really important to you, your family and your career
- You know that a little laughter goes a long way, especially when the alternative is abandoning the grocery cart, laying on the floor in the fetal position and bursting into tears
- You have had to enforce social media breaks on yourself in order to get your work done- that darn Twitter
- You are a budget expert. You know for a fact how great your finances would be if you could just stick to the budget.
- You are still awake at 2am because it is literally impossible to accomplish everything on your list unless you use the entire 24 hours allotted in a day
- You look at the dishes in the sink and breathe a sigh of relief. You can wait to do them till morning (they won’t even start to stink until Wednesday)
- You have contemplated running away but know that your family and your boss would eventually find you
- You have given up on losing the baby weight (the baby is 11 years old- it just ain’t gonna happen)
- You have re-gifted a toy that your child didn’t like back to the child who gave it to them in the first place
- You have locked yourself out of your car at least once and your home at least once, probably on the same day.
- You secretly want to have Martha Stewart banned from television, publishing books and selling magazines
- You know what it is like to open the refrigerator to a milk carton that has less than a ½ teaspoon left in it
- You have googled the answer to the age old question- “Why is the sky blue”?
- You have learned that the terrible two’s don’t even start to prepare you for the three’s
- And then the tween years roll around and you feel like you are living through an episode of Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- You realize on a daily basis it is a good thing your family is not dependent on your income alone
- You have walked into a meeting with spit up on your blouse
- You have stepped on a Lego on your way to crawl into bed at 3am, when you couldn’t keep your eyes open at the computer any longer, and your yelp of pain woke up the baby
- You shave your legs according to the season
- You cut the crusts off your husband’s sandwiches (it’s called auto-pilot, folks)
- You just write a check to the school to avoid having to sell any more cookie dough or scratch off tickets
- You have called your child by the dog’s name and vice versa
- You think the no white after Labor Day rule is stupid- who is crazy enough to wear white at all? No amount of Spray n’ Wash can stand up to the attacks a mom’s clothing sees
- You were sad to see the day that your child could tell time because you could no longer say it was bedtime a ½ earlier than it actually was
- You have considered how much your child could fetch on Ebay
- You answer your husband with a glare when he comes home and asks how your day went
- You have bundled the kids and put them in the car so they would fall asleep and you could get a coffee from Starbuck’s
- You do not complain when your boss informs you there is travel in your future
- You look around at your sweet family and realize you wouldn’t change a thing.
