Addendum for Work at Home Moms: You are screwed

I just read an interesting article -- 7 Reasons Why Stay-at-Home Moms Have It Harder.

Here are the author's reasons why going into an office is easier than staying home with kids -- and my addendum for those forgotten enigmas, the Work At Home Moms:

1. Do Not Disturb Rules Are in Effect: "If some jabberjaw colleague looks eager to flap her lips, you can set my can’t-you-see-I’m-working vibe to high. Your ability to get stuff done is limited only by your own distracted mind".

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  No ferocious look, whispered threat, TV-as-a-babysitter, or hiding in the coat closet will work.  Your children WILL find you.  And ask to make cookies/paint/cuddle/go swimming/complete some other time consuming chore five minutes before your deadline.  And when you say you have to work, the little manipulator will look up at you with puppy dog eyes, twist the knife they have jabbed into your ribs, and say, "It's okay Mommy.  I still love you."

2. No One Is Undoing Your Work: "At home you pack a diaper bag and come back to find its fabulously organized contents strewn about the four corners of the empire known as [your address]. You clean up a room and minutes later it looks like you were robbed."

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  Not only are your kids destroying the house, but they are also "helping" you by rearranging your work papers or using them to color on.  Or stealing your phone to play angry birds.  Or unplugging your computer right in the middle of a carefully crafted email to your boss.
 
3. Your Partner is right by your side: "At work, a partner who isn’t pulling his weight will receive a detailed and scathing review of his performance, and may soon be receiving the contents of his workspace in a one of those don’t let-the-door-hitcha-on-the-way-out boxes.  (Note: Don’t try that at home.)"

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  Partner?  My husband and I are ships passing each other in the night... we do the 3:30 pass off -- he gets home and takes the kids so I can work until 9 or 10.  When I finish working, he's asleep.  Happy Marriage, honey.  

4. You Can Talk Like An Adult With Other Adults: "If you love your polysyllabic words like the editor of the New Yorker, or if your skill with four-letter words would make a streetwalker blush, then spending the day speaking in an upbeat, patient, and sensitive manner could be enough to make you crave a barrel of vodka and a long straw."

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  Try sounding professional on a teleconference when your four year old shouts out "I need you to wipe my butt!" before you can hit mute. 

5. Manageable Mulit-tasking: "At home, multitasking means doing the laundry, making a meal, supervising an art project, and making sure no one gets beaten to death/watches too much TV/makes a huge mess."

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  Now add respond to emails, contribute in meetings, hit deadlines, answer the phone, and sound professional, intelligent, and happy to this list.  It's a wonder I haven't been committed. 
 
6. Home Requires Constant Directives and Attention: "At home, everything from eating a meal, to getting dressed, to refraining from beating someone to a pulp or using the sofa like a pommel horse requires the skills of a hostage negotiator."

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  Because you also have to add: "Don't touch mommy's computer!  No I said don't -- okay, fine a quick email to Poppa.  But no IMing him this time... No, I said don't .... Put my phone down!  What are you thinking!?  You know that's Mommy's work folder... it doesn't need to be glued shut!!  Sonofabi... no, Mommy wasn't going to say a bad word.  Who wants a cookie? And another episode of Little Einsteins?" 
 
7. Mediocre Can Be Good Enough: "The minutiae of days spent “at home” with small children may be exhausting, maddening even, but an SAHM is consumed by the idea that the sum total of  her daily choices amounts to an intellectually, physically, emotionally, and socially capable person. Run-of-the-mill decisions and events can get blown out of proportion and seem monumental. "

Addendum for WORK at home Moms: You are screwed.  Because when you try to do everything well, nothing gets done at all.  And some days you have to decide -- job or kids? Kids normally win.  But I am still petitioning to have their school start the same time I have to go back to work.

And all my griping and whining aside -- I've been a SAHM and a Working Mom.  And I wouldn't trade being a WAHM for the world.  Because when my kids need a hug, I'm there to give them one.  Because I'm teaching them independence and patience (badly), when I have to finish a meeting before we can go to the park.  And because I get to be a part of their lives while providing for them.  I'm sure that there will be a therapist later down the line (mine but maybe theirs) to tell me that I made the wrong choice by trying to have the best of both worlds.  But right now, it works.  Sort of.