What housewifery means to me

I turned 35 on Sunday. I'm not sure I'm taking stock, or whatever one does as one year becomes another, but it has prompted a little evaluation of the way things are, particularly in the context of my housewifery and my blog.

In the course of explaining in my college class yesterday how a recent written assessment was enjoyable for me, in response to a colleague's assertion that assessments aren't fun,* I happened to mention that I blog. In the break, someone beside me, who I am rather drawn to, and who has shared the odd moan with me in the nicely conspiratorial way in which friendly alliances can be built, asked me what I blog about. I began: 'Oh, I started it while I was on maternity leave; it's about my life as a housewife.' This pricked up the ears of the two in front, and then another in front of them, and we had a little chat, in which I felt I wasn't properly representing myself. I mean, I was a housewife, I still do all the domestic work (or at least am responsible for it, delegating some bits). But even I don't really recognise that conceptualisation of myself.

On the way home, I met an old neighbour; in the course of our chat, I mentioned that I'm back at work and quite happy about it, and he said 'yes, gets you some of your identity back'. That's the econd time someone (another man in late 30s/early 40s, from London) has said that to me. This is what I struggle to explain: I don't feel I've lost any of my identity, or that my identity has changed. I am still the same. My priorities may have changed - I'm no longer out on the p*** every night, and nor do I want to be - but that part of me is not disappeared, or muted in me. Perhaps to the outside world - to people who don't know me.... So my external face might be different; new people I meet have different expectations or assumptions of me when I say I have a baby, or I'm on maternity leave. But what I don't say is 'I'm a mother'. That is still not how I conceive of myself; that's not how I identify myself. I'm Peggy. I'm a 17 year old in a 35 year old body. I'm a generation x-er, a slacker into music, I'm a drinker, a bad dancer, a smoker who hasn't had a cigarette for a long, long time. I like cooking, I like baking, I like personal finance and domestic efficiency. But the two lists aren't mutually exclusive.

So I looked last night at other people's blogs about housewifery, to see if I identify with those. Lots of American 'stay at home moms' (or SAHMs) seem to have God. And lots of these (possibly all) are rather sanctimonious about their vocation, and earnest about the blessedness of their lives. Several are retro, their authors into vintage, playing with a historical concept, role-playing, almost. Some posts, like 'School of Housewifery', are about being rubbish at keeping house. It's ok to be rubbish in the home as it is to be rubbish at maths; your skills lie elsewhere, somewhere better - the workplace, the arts. These posts are meant to be funny, full of pratfalls about juggling a hundred things. But I find them slightly undermining, somehow, of the value of domesticity (we don't need to be successful professionally, socially and domestically because domestically isn't important) in the same way I find the former overly earnest about the importance of their job. There's something interesing here, politically, that I'll try and retrun to another time.

But for now, Peggy at 35 received:

GoodFood 101 Cakes and Bakes
2 Cath Kidston (vintage domestic prints) tea towels and a carrier bag holder
Sunflower seeds ('For you and Babs to plant together!')
Some peacock orchid bulbs
Kimya Dawson's Alphabutt (album of children's songs)
An Alessi lily bird soy sauce bottle

I think this means my friends think I'm a housewife. And I'm pleased about that, because they recognise that that's partly about being brilliant and well-rounded, and it's partly a bit tongue in cheek. Because I'm a hundred other things as well.


* I think it's interesting that I found the assignment enjoyable because I was, for once, allowed to be a novice; my day job requires me to write as an expert. For this other woman, students she sees see writing as a chore, and essay writing a means to an end (passing the course), rather than an end in itself (consolidating and extending understanding/learning). She totally missed the point of the session - about using writing for active learning - about thinking differently about how and why we get our students to write, and using writing tasks differently, to inspire interest, motivate students and help them to learn. Not just as a hoop to jump through before you can progress.

Wow, where did January go?

Blimey, this month just disappeared in a daze.

Recently, I hypothesised to myself that parous women have memory problems (there's a link goes here to an observer news item) for a while post-natally not because we're wired to remember nothing but our babies, or because we go wibbly-brained in the puerperium, or because we're chronically sleep-deprived*, or any other scandalously patronising reason, but because in the absence of work, or school, or other regular activities involving temporal patterns and temporal conventions, and travel, and down-time, and head-space (the vital processing / consolidating type), it's very hard to get events and memories into any sensible order. My head is, post-partum, just in a bit of a jumble, all the time. There's nothing to add order or delineation to my memories. I remember conversations (well, snippets), but can't place when. I don't link things that happened in a day with things that happened the same evening. Weeks are a bit of a blur, and I can't remember what days things happened on, or what I was doing last Friday, say. To me, this is all about temporal signposting. The days have lost their particular meanings - Mondays and Fridays can be interchangeable now; though I have the 'no Terry for 5 days' and 'Whoo hoo, Terry for 2 days' thoughts/feelings - but that's not the same as the Sunday evening terrors and Monday misery and Friday pub elation that were with me week in, week out, for, ooh, 20 years. Not since Babs and I had very regular daily activities when she was 4-16 weeks old, and I knew what day it was by what we were doing, have I really felt part of the world. When my dad died, our weeks changed. I'm not sure how much the two things are related; I just know that after the few weeks of back and forth to mum's I felt wrong, and I worked out that it was that I had no pattern namore.

Anyway, it's now the end of January, and I remember thinking back in September about going back to work on Jan 13th and how close it felt, and yet now Christmas feels like miles away and January has been a blur despite the temporal signposting of work (part-time maybe doesn't make the difference). I don't know, but possibly because, with all the other things going on -

writing the thank you letters
getting cards out (almost) on time to my 8 friends with January birthdays
dispatching ex-tenant
dealing with remaining tenants' anxieties
fixing up flat
angsting about (not) finding new tenant
sorting out house rental
finding new childcare at very short notice
negotiating the childcare contract
writing a coursework assignment
going on more course dates
re-acquainting myself with the MOSES project
likewise the Safety Culture project
sorting out dad's tax return
catering and hosting a little party
oh, and keeping the household going with shopping and cooking (nod to T for some good cookin' for a whole week of early hometimes) and laundry and the occasional bit of cleaning

- I haven't really had the head-space to process, let alone consolidate things.

Anyway, suffice to say, it ain't because I've had a bloody baby.


* Babies do sleep, y'all; and you know what? You can train them: to sleep at sensible times and to stay in bed (going back to sleep) for decent durations.

Two weeks offline is a long time... but two weeks back on is even longer

Virgin - who wrote with such sensitivity from one department when we informed another of my father's passing - upgraded our broadband service in November. They didn't ask us. They didn't request details of our router and its age/sophistication/capacity for greater speeds. They did write with two days' notice and tell us it was happening. And then, one Monday, they did it. And then, suddenly, we had no internet no more. We waited, and it didn't come back. We switched the box back off, and back on again and it didn't come back. And we waited. And it didn't come back.

My boss had emailed a week earlier to tell me (and a bunch of others) that she'd/we'd been commissioned to write a paper on the project that ended when the baby came, and that she'd appreciate our input. Virgin put paid to my contribution by allowing me no access whatsoever to the internet, though we had a perfectly functioning wireless LAN. Which was nice.

I phoned Virgin a lot, and they kept me on hold a lot, then they made me follow instructions to set up the box with new passwords, and nothing happened. Terry phone them, and stayed on hold a lot, and followed the same instructions, and nothing happened. And they never really told us what the problem was, or how or when it would be fixed. As one week turned into two, I quietly cheered the fact that this majorly got me off the hook with work (because I really, really feared I couldn't make a sensible contribution and would show myself up as a bit useless), but I pined for t'internet. In the middle of week two, I realised this was probably my longest time offline since I started my PhD in 1996. And then I pined some more. They phoned us back a couple of times, but I was out. The messages they left gave the central switchboard number, so we went through the options and went interminably on hold, and whoever took our call treated us like we were starting a fresh enquiry - no continuity.

But then, after two weeks, and following 25 minutes on hold in a call I returned because when they called 4 minutes earlier the baby was almost asleep on my boob, they fixed the fault. Allelujah.

So I checked my email, and skipped over the many, many emails about the paper, to the one that said that hooray, today, after two weeks' hard grind (of which I had no part), it had finally gone. And I felt a bit guilty. But I got over it.

And then I got a text. 'Call for proposals has just come out. Closing date two weeks today. Would really appreciate your help on this.' Damn.

Gosh, damn, it filled me with fear and dread. Paper-writing is bad enough, but bid-writing? Actually coming up with ideas? Yikes. And then having to come up with a reasonable literature review after a year out of the game? Ouch.

Worse, this was the day Terry finished work for three whole weeks, his first holiday since the baby was 3 weeks old; this was the day before my brother arrived from the States to sleep on our floor and commute far to work but then hang out with us in the evenings for a week; the week I'd scheduled to spend 2 days doing homework for my course; and the week before we were due to go on holiday. Rubbish, rubbish timing. 'Oh well,' said the boss, clearly thinking she had it worse, having just had three weeks on the paper. 'Oh well.'

Anyhoo, my brother came, we saw picked him up and saw T5 (I like!), Terry worked Monday to Wednesday despite having 'finished', my brother hung out, the anticipation of work made me very, very grumpy, and then I did my two days promised on the bid. And you know? It was ok. And my boss, whose stinginess with praise and professional brilliance conspire often to make me feel very small and rather dim, was pleased, impressed, complimentary and grateful.

My homework didn't get done, but after 4 days of procrastination we booked the holiday, and then after a few days we went on holiday, and it was lovely.


And then we came back and we turned on the router. And we had a wireless LAN. Which was nice. But no internet....