there was a time in my life when i wanted to be an at home mother and nothing else. staying home to write wasn't even in the picture then, i just wanted to be home for my kids. i believed (and still do, though probably not to the same degree for every household) that children needed a parent home. parents are, after all, their first and biggest role models. you want your children to pick up certain behaviors, you're the only one who can really teach them by your example because there's no guarantee that someone else will teach quite what you want.

now days, of course, i understand that things are not quite that simple, but i still hold to the best thing for a child is to have a parent at home.

back then, being home for my kids was (and in many ways, still is) the biggest desire of my heart. i worked when linnorm and i got married and kept working until kitten was born. then i stayed home. and then i learned the domestic goddess routine. i was young enough, and (more importantly) healthy enough, to do cleaning and cooking and all the major care things with minimal discomfort. i planned my days around one major project and the making of dinner. seriously.

oh, stop laughing.

anyway, then linnorm and i got divorced and i went back to school full time. i was still trying to be home for my kids, but i also knew i needed a degree. today it's almost impossible to get anything that will decently support your family without a degree, especially as a woman. face it, glass ceilings are still there and most of them hover around the paycheck. with very few exceptions, we get paid less. period. go ahead and be an executive. it's almost a guarantee that the man hired after you makes more than you. so, off i went to get a degree (and it turns out i need yet another one to be marketable, but that's not the point).

unfortunately, not only did i end up going into the next city over to go to school but my kids are in a year-round district. that means i only have about 3 months in the entire year when one of kids isn't home. the remaining 9 months has at least one kid, sometimes 2, and even more rarely all 4, in house. so, i needed a sitter. i actually lucked out and found a decent sitter who was willing to work within my financial limitations (which were severe - financial aid doesn't pay quite that much) and took over the domestic duties.

and i have had very few opportunities to do the domestic things since. the children have taken over the majority of it on weekends, and saxy was cooking dinner when he wasn't working. which made sense to us at the time. taz needs someone home if we're not going to risk his progress, i was doing homework when not in class, saxy was here watching tv. besides, his cooking is daaaaaaaaabomb!

well, now i am the one home (with plans to further my education from that very location) and saxy is working, so dinner has, after many, many years, fallen back to me. and i have found myself completely lacking in ability. the biggest problem is that my timing is off. some things are done too early, others done far too late. heck, i can't even get the timing down when planning dinner because i don;t plan. today is the first day since saxy went to work that i actually pulled something out to defrost for tonight. i can bake sweet confections with no problem whatsoever, but dinner has mysteriously become beyond me.

but, really, do we really need more than peanut butter cookies to survive?