How do they do it?

I decided to conduct an experiment, and now wish that I hadn't.

I am sure that almost - if not every - woman can relate to this. There are certain jobs that one would consider essential to the normal functioning of the household, and almost inevitably they fall on the woman of the house. The funniest thing is, no matter how essential and/or easy these tasks are, if you, the woman, don't do it, it doesn't occur to anyone else to do.

So this was my experiment. I have noticed one morning that both toilet paper and tissues were finished in the bathroom.




I wondered how long would it take for someone to do something about it? To my shock and dismay, no one had bothered to change the roll, asked me for help or simply mentioned anything. So BY THE END OF THE DAY I gave up and changed the roll and refilled tissues.

All is right in my universe now.

And then I had a nagging question - how the heck did they manage all day???

I am afraid to ask.

She's got it

My parents took the kids on Sunday for a few hours. As part of the treat, they all took a bus. DD sat with Mom, and DS sat with Dad. At some point during the ride, DD asked Mom, "Grandma, do you have a baby inside?" Mom, already immune to DD's remarks, replied that she didn't have a baby inside. To which DD replied, "Bub Mommy does! She told me." Mom kept her composure, and once everyone got off the bus, Mom asked DD to repeat the entire thing to Dad. Dad must've turned a shade of green shown less restraint than Mom because all of a sudden DD said with a giggle, "Just kidding!"

Ok, one kid got a sense of humor. Two to go.

Day off/relaxation the SubWife way. Don't try this at home...

7.30 - wake up. Discover that the baby has a 101.5 degree fever. Ugh.
7.30 - 8.15 - Get the kids, who woke up half hour before us and are already wild, ready for school all the while juggling whining pre-Tylenol baby. DS has a Chanukah play, so I need black pants and white top. Something I completely forgot about yesterday. So I settle for brown pants, blue shirt and blue/white vest.
8.20 - Last minute decide to get a ride from SubHub to the supermarket, so dress myself in 2.5 minutes - not bad for winter, huh? - though do have for some time a nagging feeling that I forgot to brush my teeth.
9.10-10.05 - food shopping
10.00 - 11 - driving class (Yes, you are reading this right, I was 5 minutes late)
11.00-11.30 - go to the bank/additional food shopping
11.30 - 1.15 - DS's Chanukah play
1.15 - 2.00 - went to the liquor store and pharmacy with DS on the way to home. Must've repeated the line, "No I can't buy it for you, please don't touch anything" 50 times. Had to distract DS from tiny liquor bottles as he reasonably thought those were for babies.
2.00-3.30 - feeding DS, unloading groceries, cleaning up.
3.30-4.00 - walking to pediatrician with the baby and DS.
4.05 - reunited with DD and SubHub at the pediatrician's office.
4.00 - 5.30 - at the pediatrician with all 3 kids and - thank Heavens and SubHub - SubHub. The main reason for the visit is to give all the kids flu shots and catch up on baby's other shots.
5.15 - Informed that due to baby's fever she won't get ANY shots and thus the visit must be repeated preferably sooner than later because who needs flu shots in the middle of January? (Why couldn't she spike the fever tomorrow? Sigh)
5.20 - Informed that older kids' swine flu shot needs a boost in about a month from now. So the whole, "Please don't destroy the good doctor's office and YES, that includes the very expensive scale, telephone and medical equipment." will be repeated sooner than I would've wanted to or expected.
5.25 - SubHub asks the good doctor for the used syringes, she obliges and this time we don't get the "did you think about rehab" vibe.
6.00 - HOME at last.
6.00 - 7.00 - making supper while juggling supervision of baths, brother- sister fights, doing homework with DD, fighting organized attempts at illegal snacking all the while juggling whining baby whose Tylenol already wore off.
7.00 - 7.30 - supper with whining and at the same time incredibly wild kids.
7.35 - SubHub has had enough and sends the kids to sleep. As long as he gets to be the bad guy, I might as well enjoy...
8.00 - Unbelievable, but they are both asleep.
8.10 - 9 - enjoying peace and quiet, writing this post while eating cold soup.

And the day is not over yet since cleaning up/laundry/tons of other stuff must be done.

I wanted to finish this with the cliche of looking forward to relaxing day at work tomorrow, but towards the end of the post I must admit - it was fun! Tiring, annoying, crazy busy - but overall fun day! I so wish I could stay home with them and have more of these days... (Note to the Al-mighty, please don't interpret this as a hidden desire to be laid off...)

Quote of the month - December 2009

Was cleaning up my work email when found an article about some Australian city mayor inviting foreign women to his town full of single male miners. There was one quote there about the pool of prospective mates: the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

I loved the quote and, therefore, promote it to my quote of the month.

However, I still love the quote from Third Rock from the Sun, so I keep it too.

The last - summarized

I have been asked in the comments to yesterday's post to summarize the article about Dr. Hern, the last provider of the late term abortions in the U.S. Initially I said no, but then relented since he probably represents 30% of my audience...

The author of the article describes what it is like to do what Dr. Hern is doing. He draws a very vivid picture of a man, his reasons behind choosing his occupation and staying there despite all the hate and death threats he has been receiving for DECADES. While one might disagree with Dr. Hern's political and world views, one fact remains very clear - he is the last one in his field in the U.S. When he is gone, there probably won't be anyone willing to replace him - because of the death threats he, his employees, and family members receive on a regular basis and because of contempt from colleagues and even patients(!). While I am the first one to admit that I do not agree with the reasons some of the women choose to abort late term, BY LAW these abortions cannot performed on a "whim" or for the woman's convenience after 24 weeks of gestation. Something MUST BE WRONG either with the fetus or the mother. Those are not the cases where the woman wakes up one day and decides that she no longer wants to be pregnant.

The articles leaves off on the following questions: if a woman's life is endangered by pregnancy and the last late term abortion provider is gone, where will this woman go?

(This really is not the best summary and I would highly recommend reading the article itself and do more research on the subject. There are other options available in critical situations, but discussing them is well beyond the scope of this summary.)

The last?

It's strange how sometimes many things will come together in a string of co-incidences and, when put together, give you that eerie feeling. I don't think I am making sense, but I will elaborate. For the past week I have been working on and off on the post about abortion, mainly about extreme views on both sides of the debate. I am not quite sure whether I will post it, but for my own reasons I want to finish it. Hence no other posts.

And then I keep on seeing abortion debated again and again in the news, Congress, and pretty much everywhere one looks because of the whole health care reform business. Today I got a poll asking me to identify myself as a pro-Choice or pro-Life. For the record, I refuse to answer as neither describes my views.

Then yesterday I found an excellent article about the situation with late term abortions in the U.S. This is sort of a portrait of the last doctor in the U.S. (for some reason I though there was another one, even after Dr. Tiller was murdered) who is still performing this procedure. While I don't agree with everything he says, I definitely think that the article raises very serious questions and issues. So here's the link for those interested.