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**A brief interruption before I get into my entry--someone signed my "notify list"! Silly how excited that makes me, isn't it?!
And now, back to my regularly scheduled entry...
I came back to work today. I didn�t feel as though I had much choice. My desk was a mess, and people were lined up waiting for me when I came in. Don�t they all know I feel lousy???
I�d really just like to quit my job and stay home all the time. Do the laundry, make supper, clean the bathroom, vacuum. In short, I�d like to be exactly what women have fought for decades to keep me from having to be.
I really want to be a 50�s housewife.
I have no huge career aspirations. Sure, I�d like to write, but I could do that at home much more easily than I do here, in between payroll crises. I�d rather do my dishes while Bo and Hope plan their wedding in the background. What could possibly be better than that?
The Boyfriend and I have already established that we both believe raising kids is a full-time job. Actually, I told him flat-out that when I have kids, I�m going to stay home with them, and he agreed. I can�t imagine leaving here at 5:00, exhausted, and going home to give my family the dregs of my attention. I know lots of women who can balance work and family, and I have no bad feelings toward them. I also know it�s not something I can do.
But with no kids on the immediate horizon, I�m impatient. Yesterday, I got up at about 7:30, made myself some tea and drank it in bed. Then I cleaned the living room and decorated the tree. After a rest (I was home sick, after all), I organized all the recycling to go out for trash pickup this morning. Then I ate some lunch with Days of our Lives, did some laundry through Passions and wrapped some Christmas presents by the light of the People's Court. When Chris got home, I was finishing the dishes. Even he commented on how much nicer it was to come home to a clean, lit-up house. I could so easily spend every day like that. Well, minus the tree decorating part. I don�t want to do that every day. I get way too emotional.
When I was little, we had a fake tree. My dad and I would sort the branches and I�d hand them up to him while he fit them into the right holes. Then I�d go to help my mom make dinner (tunafish sandwiches on Pepperidge Farm white bread, chips and sweet gherkin pickles with Campbell�s bean with bacon soup. Every year.) while he put the lights on the finished tree. Once the lights were on, Dad would hang his one ornament, a red and green bread dough gingerbread man I made in nursery school, on the tree, then leave my mom and me to decorate the rest.
After he died, his girlfriend mailed the ornament back to me. True to tradition, it�s always the first ornament I hang. Then I cry. Usually, then, I cry some more. And then I maybe cry a little.
It�s funny how something as simple as hanging an ornament can capture the spirit of my early Christmas holidays so completely. My dad and I were not on very good terms when he died. We hadn�t been for a while. But when I hold that 26-year-old piece of bread in my hand, I remember only the best and most pure parts of him.
Merry Christmas, Dad. I miss you.
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