April 22 13

The strike is over.

mom-strike

I may start picketing another cause this morning—against new iTunes, but that’s a battle for another day because I’m so frustrated with new iTunes (yet again!) because hand-to-god all I wanted to do was download the new episode of Mad Men and apparently, that set up a sort-of butterfly effect that ended with iTunes deleting all of the music off of my iPhone with the exception of half of a Les Miserables soundtrack and the entire U2 Best of 1980-1990 album. I can’t, now, delete the music that it decided to keep and I can’t, now, put any of the music that was there back on. And somehow all of my pictures are gone too, so that’s awesome.

Seriously, all I wanted to do was watch Mad Men. Where’s my fainting couch?

Anyway, the strike is over.

Did it accomplish what I hoped it would? It may be too soon to tell, especially since I don’t even know exactly what I was hoping for. My kids are pretty spoiled, you see, and I know that it’s partially my fault for allowing them to get to this point and it’s more than partially my fault for having had a nanny for most of their lives. A nanny was a necessity for all of the years that I worked full-time outside of the house—someone needed to be there to send them off to school and collect them after school and feed them and bathe them and make sure they survived the day. They never appreciated what our three.point.five nannies did for them. And they don’t appreciate what I do for them now.

Shit got done, they didn’t know how; they didn’t care how.

My friend Melissa called it THE HOUSE FAIRY. The fact that someone is magically picking up the clothing and putting away the toys and doing the dishes and folding the laundry and cleaning out the backpacks and making sure that everything is where it’s supposed to be. Well, we haven’t had a nanny for quite some time. So, the person doing all of the house fairy magic? THAT WAS ME, by default.

I think, then, with the mom strike, that the hope was that the kids would learn two important things.

1—Mama does a shitload of stuff for them.

2—They are quite capable of doing a lot more than they think they are; they can do some of the things that I do. Carry some of my shitload, if you will.

What I do know is that this morning there were three Pottery Barn Kids lunch boxes stacked up on the counter in my kitchen. I do know that the two who eat breakfast had two bowls of oatmeal—each—and then brought their bowls to the sink. I do know that three sets of teeth were brushed and three sets of homework were brought to me to be signed. I do know that Isabella didn’t cry through the hairbrushing detangling sessions. I do know that there are three sets of pajamas in three different hampers.

Now I don’t know how long this is going to last, because I’m fairly certain these kids are still riding the post-strike wave of fear that it might happen again and Mama will just pick up and leave again and no one is quite cool with that plan of action. It’s a long-haul kind of project, teaching them this whole appreciation thing. It’s not happening overnight or over one measly weekend.

But, you guys, I’m going to take it. Because this morning was downright pleasant. And that’s one more pleasant morning than we’ve had in months.

I know that as soon as I hit publish on this post I will likely have jinxed something and tomorrow there will be fights and tears (mostly mine) and screams and foot stomping and towels left all over the bathroom floor and lunchboxes left scattered all over my house.

But maybe, just maybe, I have made a dent, no matter how small.

And maybe, just maybe, I can find me an iTunes fairy to find my music and photos and Mad Men.

photo

-
  1. Good on you and big hugs, too! I hope it all works out and when/if your resolve starts to slide, just remember that you are preparing them for LIFE and also helping them to have better relationships with every person in their future– can you imagine working with/ living with/marrying/having children with someone who never learned to pick up after themselves? You really are doing them a big favor here. 🙂

    Comment by Magoop on April 22, 2013
  2. Yeah…I know I’m a little late with these lessons, but I’m guessing it’s *never* too late with this.

    Comment by ali on April 22, 2013
  3. A little post strike fear is worth the temporary sanity it brings.

    Comment by Kat on April 22, 2013
  4. I agree — never too late. Plus, these are things that need to be revisited. We all lapse once in a while.

    Comment by Tamara on April 22, 2013
  5. Are you using iCloud on your iPhone? That can cause issues when you manually try and upload something. At night before bed, I would uncheck everything (music, video and pictures) and recheck what you want and let it all reload over night.

    Comment by Corey Feldman on April 23, 2013
-

Allowed tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>