Take this job and shove it...

Being a mom is hard work. In fact it may be the freakin' hardest job on the planet. Not necessarily space, but you get the idea. It's thankless, overlooked, underestimated, and looked down on. So yes, I have had many a moment when I have thought that Johnny Cash was a man of wisdom. And no, I ain't workin' here no more. But then I put on my big girl pants and deal with it. Luckily, I'm not alone. I'm not sure if you all know this or not, but we all think that from time to time. Even the most lovely, put-together mom has occasionally locked her child in a room with Elmo and wished her the best of luck... At least for an hour.

One of the things that makes it so difficult for we modern women to be stay-at-home moms, beside the lack of Donna Reed, is feminism. Women's lib. Hear me out. While I would never argue with anyone trying to burn a bra, a new-fangled torture device if you ask me, I will argue that making us all think we are capable of everything, makes the normal just that... normal.

Think of it this way, our parents want us to do everything they didn't do and unless you're an Armstrong or a Glenn, that's probably reaching for the stars. Be ambitious, do anything because you can. And that is true, but what if that mindset permeates your gray matter so throroughly that it shifts your perception of normal. Now the extraordinary is just plain normal, and good old fashioned normal is now mundane.

By telling us we can do anything have we doomed ourselves to anxiety over having it all? I know that happened to me. And I'll be Frank. I like being Frank. He's fun. It pissed me off. Really steamed my clams. I felt like I had to have everything and have it now. Oh society, you clever devil, you made me crazy and then made the meds to handle it. I started with kids so naturally if I didn't get my career going now, I would never have one. And that would be the end of the world. That's what the Mayans were talking about. But it doesn't have to be this way.

I've been told that there's time. That I've got my life ahead of me. You know, by golly, I suppose that's true. With the medical advances being made and my stubborn German heritage, I'm bound to live to my eleventy-first birthday. Bucket list! So there is time. A crap ton of it. But I would never go back and change anything... even if I could (read: when I can) because these little buggers have made me who I am.

I know I have changed so much there is not a word for it other than "like, whoa", and all because of them. I wouldn't be nearly as clever if it weren't for them, or quite as medicated. And I definitely wouldn't be as ambitious. So maybe hippies burning their bras helped me by giving me ambition to think outside the "Susie Homemaker" box. Who knows? All I really know is that I still sometimes want to take this job and shove it. And that's okay.