I am one of those people, I’ll admit it. I’m the kind of person who is not a Type-A personality, I’m the kind who is not always on the go, I’m the kind who doesn’t a have million things to do right NOW. I’m what those other people would maybe call lazy.

Now, I don’t think I’m lazy. I think I’m incredibly time efficient. Somehow, it seems like I do a great deal of what those go-go-go people do, but I still have this abundance of free time. My son is a lot like me, and I’ve really tried to sell him on how being proactive with tasks can actually give you more free time, and he’s starting to get the gist of it. I’ve noticed him knocking out his homework right away so he can declare later that he has all day to play Xbox now, because his work is all done. And I high-five him.

Now, I can guess what you’re going to say. You’re going to stand up and shout, “But, wait, you don’t do everything that other people do, you self-admitted lazy ass! For one thing, you don’t work!”

And to that, I will say, yes, you’re right, I do not work full time. I will even admit that working full time really was the biggest obstacle in my pursuit of perpetual free-time. However, even when I worked full time, I found ways to use my nifty time efficiency skills to get as much free time as I could. For example, I kept a larger case load than anyone else in the clinic, and I provided top quality services to those clients. But, I organized my meetings and visits in such a way that I did them all in the mornings and then had the afternoons free. After proving that it was consistent, I was granted permission to take my “lunch” hour and breaks at the end of the day, and given permission to take my paperwork home with me to do. So, instead of working from 9-5 with a half hour lunch, half hour breaks and doing paperwork there from 3-5. I got to leave the clinic at 2, remain on pager in case of emergencies, pick up my son at day care and do my paperwork after he went to bed. If I hadn’t been good at my job and good at making time work for me, then that never could have happened. But, being a full-time WOHM was very challenging. It took a lot of creative time management to pull off in a way that gave me the lazy hours I crave. It was very hard to be a high quality employee, high quality mother, high quality wife and provide myself with time to be a high quality me. So, I am not going to deny at all that my life is easier since I’ve been able to quit full time work.

But, ironically, it’s also true that some of the biggest Type A personalities I know are stay-at-home-moms. Boy, they find ways to be on the go every minute of the day. I just don’t know what they do that keeps them so busy!

Well, I do not scrapbook. Maybe that’s it right there. Maybe I gain ten years of free time added to my life because I refuse to scrapbook. I keep an actual Scrap Book for each of my kids. One of those big hardcover books with the manila pages in it, to which I have taped their birth announcements, first locks of hair, newspaper clippings, outstanding artwork, etc.. But, I don’t scrapbook in the verb sense, with the themed albums, the cute stickers, and the parties. Nothing against people who do scrapbook, I just don’t.

I’m not a big socialite. That seems to be another time-eater of SAHMs. It seems to take a lot of time to schedule and organize all those group outings together, to the mall, to the playground, to the library. Groups of about 5 moms with their gaggle of kids in strollers and baby carriers all together to have the big group experience. That’s not my scene either. They seem to enjoy it, or even thrive on it, but that’s never been my thing.

But, then there are the solo moms I know who just always have something going on, somewhere to rush to, something they have to get done, and they’re always in a big hurry. I don’t knock them for it, I think it’s just the way they were programmed. They need to honor their own drives the way I need to honor mine. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s just that it’s taken me a long time to embrace and own my own need to slow down and respect my personality, rather than apologize for it or feel lacking in some way because of it. Partly because there isn’t really a positive name for my kind. The others get coined, “Type A,” and well, who doesn’t want to be an A? Who wants to be B? Or they’re “go-getters,” they’re “driven,” they’re “achievers.” And that’s all fine, I really don’t begrudge them that. But, where’s our nice title? We don’t really get one, because we live in a society that respects being busy. We live competitively, like our lives are a race to be won, so there just isn’t an appreciation for people who choose to take the long way, and stop and smell the roses, and live in the moment, and do all those other things that we, as a society agree we should do, but really just spend our time furiously cross stitching the phrases onto pillows instead.

See, I think there are two kinds of “go-getters.” I think there are the people who are born that way, and then there are the people who feel guilted into keeping up with it. I have no problem with the people who are born that way, that’s just who they are and I respect that they’re different from how I am. But, the people who are guilted into it kind of bother me. Because if they’d come out of the closet and join our ranks, then maybe we’d be able to come up with some more favorable terms for who we are than “lazy,” or “slacker,” or “underachiever.” It would give our rebellion a more positive appearance if we had more numbers, showing that we do achieve things, we do in fact “go and get,” as well as the next guy, but we do it in our own timeframe.

Because life is a race. It’s a race to get done all we want to accomplish before we die. There are plenty of things I do want to tick off that list, and a lot of them I have already finished. There are personal goals I want to accomplish, things I want to do and places I want to see before my time is up. But, I would consider the biggest thing I want to accomplish is that I want to really experience the life I have, I want to know and own and be the time I have here. Like I’ve said, that means different things to different people, but for me it means slowing it way down and taking it all in.

For me, being a SAHM lets me have my days open with the little one. I can choose our activities according to our moods. We can stay in all day if we want to. We can run errands all day if we need to get out of the house. We can go to the indoor ice cream stand near the library and spend an hour and a half eating Blue Moon while walking around the man-made replica of the St. Croix river, tossing pennies into the waterfall and making wishes. We can sit and read books for two hours, then watch an hour of Scooby Doo, then take a nap. We can clean the house and do the laundry (she loves throwing the fabric softener ball into the washer), or we could play Don’t Break The Ice until my head is ready to burst. I know I don’t fill our time the way a lot of other SAHMs do. I don’t fill our days with back-to-back activities. We aren’t structured at all from morning to after-school. We come and go as we please, and sometimes we do nothing.

When the big kids get home, things shift a little. I’ve guarded their time as closely as my own, so they do have free time in the afternoons and evenings. Free to finish homework, and read, or play, or watch TV. They have extracurricular activities and Tae Kwon Do, but I refuse to bustle them around from the time they hit the door until the time they hit the pillow. When they get older, they can organize their time the way they want to, and if they need to be busy all the time, then I figure they’ll set their lives up like that, but for now, they seem to enjoy the freedom in the afternoons that I provide.

My life isn’t just a never-ending stream of inactivity. I have challenges for myself. I take on things like martial arts, or volunteering for a cause, or a part-time job. I’ve been able to keep my own balance.

Being able to be at home with my kids right now is a luxury for me. I appreciate how lucky I am, since it takes more than just planning and hard work to be able to survive on one income (if that’s what you want to do), it takes a stroke of good fortune, which for some reason, we’ve been graced with. I feel almost like it would be disrespectful to squander that luck by using this time in a way that doesn’t fit who I am. To be able to set up my life the way I want to like this is one of the big things that I get to mark off my life-long “To Do” list. I get to be at home with my kids and be the lazy mommy.

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I’m not. I swear to you, I am not. But, I feel all the time like the lead singer for a one song band. I’m the Lili Taylor character in Say Anything. “I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about cleaning. And I’m going to sing each and every one of them tonight.” Except, instead of a rollicking “That’ll Never Be Me”, or “Joe Lies,” my songs are: (the title hit), “I’m Not the Maid,” “I Was NOT Put Here to Clean Up After You,” and my all time favorite, the melancholy ballad, “There’s Got to Be More to My Life Than Cleaning Up Other People’s Messes.”

I don’t know whether I live with a bunch of primates or whether they’re just normal people and my expectations are too high. I know my mother (and her mother before her) was a neat freak. We had a cleaning person who came once a week, but my mother required that we clean the house before the cleaning person arrived. Not to impress the woman, but because she didn’t want to waste the half-day of cleaning she bought with the woman doing dusting, or making the beds, or cleaning the mirrors and windows. She expected deep cleaning from her cleaning person. So, my sister and I cleaned the bathrooms, did laundry, wiped down the kitchen, dusted and vacuumed every week before the cleaning person came. Actually, the vacuuming and bathroom cleaning was done mid-week, so those things were done twice a week, once by us and once by the cleaning person. Anyway, you get the idea, you could go into my mother’s house any given day, any given time and it would pass the strictest inspection. I thought she was nuts then, but now that I realize the cost of cleaning help and the value in making your kids do chores, I appreciate her reasoning more.

Somehow, I’ve dropped the ball. My mom used to refer to my house, endearingly as “The Filthy Little Hovel.” And then we’d laugh. I’ve already commented on my family’s sense of humor in another entry. I really do think she meant it to be funny, though. I thought it was funny anyway.

My house is not as clean as the house I grew up in, but I can’t really gauge how it compares to other houses, since I assume that whenever I’m invited over to someone’s house, they vacuum and dust and put everything away right before I get there, like I do when I have company. So, I can’t get a glimpse of how they really live.

But, this is how things go, this a snapshot of this morning: I get up and go to the bathroom. The toilet paper roll is empty, even though I just filled it yesterday. I get a new one from the cabinet (which I can reach from being seated on the toilet, meaning anyone could reach it from there, too, even the person who used the last piece of toilet paper) and replace it. I wash my hands and go to dry them on the hand towel and see a piece of crud (Toothpaste? Cream cheese?), grab it down and toss it in the laundry and put a new one out. I go into the kitchen to start the coffee and my feet get sticky from something that someone had spilled between 9 pm last night and 6:15 this morning. I clean it up with a soapy rag, I’ll have to mop (again) later. I get my son up, make him breakfast, he has a small spill and starts spazzing because the napkin holder on the table is empty. I get napkins for him in a hurry and fill the holder. And that was literally just the first fifteen minutes I was awake. There’s more to add, but you get the point.

I yell, I pout, I go on strike, I use behavior modification, but it’s like I’m a zookeeper accidentally locked on Baboon Mountain indefinitely. These people I live with, they’re like a different species or something. I don’t understand them!

I put them to work, and the older two are good at it. They vacuum, they dust, they change cat litter and fold laundry. My husband is very helpful on CLEANING DAY. He really does pull his own weight when he’s sent with a list of chores. It’s the in-between that makes me crazy. I want to have a cleaned-up house so that my day runs smoother. I mean, the whole purpose of going through the effort of replacing the roll of toilet paper, putting out clean hand towels and keeping a napkin holder on the table is so when you need those things, they’re there, ready for you to use. But, it seems I do all the replacing and never get to reap the benefits! I go around and tidy up, and tidy up, and tidy up, and I never enjoy making the messes that I have cleaned up. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Wasn’t he also rumored to have a closet packed with a dozen sets of the same suit? Maybe Einstein had an idea there. I fantasize about going total minimalist. Living like a Franciscan nun, with just the necessities in barely furnished rooms. Bed, desk, dresser. Table and chairs and cooking appliances. Couch, rocker, television (I’m not a nun, afterall). But, I’m sure my family would find some way to make it all sticky and misplace half of it anyway (“OK, who used the bureau and didn’t put it back?”)

But, I have to admit, the final song on my cleaning album is entitled “Someday, My House Will Be Clean and Quiet…and Then I Will Hate It.” I know this is the hustle and bustle of family life, this never-ending battle against clutter will eventually end when the kids are off at college and have their own places to muck up. Then I’ll have endless hours of peace, when everything will be exactly just where I left it, and I’ll remember these days fondly, because like Carly Simon said, these are the good old days. No matter how grimy they may be.

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