Dirty Jobs: Stay At Home Mom Tops Them All!

My family has taken a liking to watching the show "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel. If you haven't seen the show, the host, Mike Rowe, finds himself in generally gross situations each week. Many involve bugs, excrement or dead things. At the end of each show they ask if the viewers know of a dirty job, and ask for submissions. ( http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/splash.html )

Well Mike, I have a dirty job for you. Come be a Stay At Home Mom for a day! Moms know what I mean. The daily messes we deal with can match cleaning up cow poop any day of the week. Think diapers, spit up, crayons on the wall. And there is the wonderful, exciting world of stomach viruses.

Before I had kids, I had the "Donna Reed" ( http://www.donnareedshow.com/intro.html ) view of being a Stay At Home Mommy ( or SAHM in cyber speak) You know, everything perfect, the house immaculate, the kids shiny, clean and well behaved. Then, I had kids, and became a SAHM. Reality is a cruel state of being.

Now, I love being at home. Being with my kids is wonderful, and I wouldn't change a thing. But, the ideal out there is that when you are a SAHM your house is clean, and your life is perfect. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

First of all, you are actually AT home, in your house, living there all day with you kids. It gets messed up. Stuff gets pulled out and moved around. When you go to clean, the little ones come right behind you and mess up as you go. I figure they kind of view the clean living room floor as a blank canvas awaiting their latest creation of toy art.

My oldest daughter liked to "cook". She had play food, and a play kitchen, but it was way more fun to use the entire box of Nesquik to cook. And don't even get me started on the play washer and dryer that was always full of water and mildewed doll clothes.

My youngest, she the artist in the family. She loves a blank wall. She works in all mediums, crayon, marker, pen, pencils, sidewalk chalk, lipstick, nail polish. I see a future for her as a famous muralist. She may have gotten a bit of this from her older sister. Once, while painting the upstairs hallway, I cam upon the words "I Love You" written in pencil on the wall.

Being as my youngest couldn't even hold a pencil, much less write at the time, I knew the big kid was the guilty party. Being the great housekeeper that I am what did I do? I taped off the phrase and painted around it. Then I bought a frame and framed it. Okay, it's not traditional interior design, but I like it!

The daily living messes are nothing to sneeze at either. Dishes from meals and snacks. Socks that never seem to find their way to the laundry basket, and paper. Homework papers, mail, magazines, business cards, artwork - the list goes on and on.

Lest you think our progeny just run amok and are undisciplined savages, they do have chores and are made to clean up. But life just gets messy. Come and deal with that for a day Mike!