Fingertips

There's a lot of stuff to be done.  For anyone, these days.  Jobs to work, houses to clean, grass to mow, places to go, meetings to attend.  The car needs to get checked, the mower broke down, somebody is sick, and there are appointments on top of appointments.  Plus we have all these tweets to write, comments to make, photos to post, emails to both reply to and send.  At least those are all at the touch of a fingertip.

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Of course, this pressure, this stuff, is only amplified for moms.  There's more to do, and we feel like we have to worry if all that we are doing is enough.  Are your kids doing enough activities?  Are you feeding them well enough (whatever that means for you...are you eating organic, vegetarian, gluten-free, or just generally avoiding fast food enough?)?  Are the kids developing the way they're supposed to enough?  Are you breastfeeding enough?  Playing with them enough?  Letting them independent play enough?  It's too easy to think about all of these things.  Because now, also at the touch of our fingertips...photos and videos (and the accompanying OPINIONS) of kids doing things that your kids aren't even THINKING of doing yet, whether it's rolling over or speaking Mandarin.  

Don't worry, mine are just concerned with finding crumbs enough to eat off the floor.

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And there's just a lot to do generally, day-to-day and week-to-week.  Meal planning to meal prep, now they want a snack, the toys need to be picked up again, wipe down the high chair, clean out the potty chair, change another diaper, wash the seventh load of laundry.  Just keeping a household at its basic level of functioning requires quite a bit of finesse.

And coffee.  Finesse and coffee.

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But then I hear my sweet grandma, mother to SIX, casually talk about waxing her floors ("because Friday's were my floor-waxing days, y'know"), or ironing everyone's sheets, and I look around my own house scattered with crumbs and toys and think BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...NOPE.  Do we really have more to do these days?  I don't know.  Ain't no floor-waxing going on around here.  Much less every week.  And true confession: I do not own an iron.  Never have.  Not in this house.  Nor do I want one.  Praise the Lord Tyson doesn't need to wear a dress shirt to work every day.  Or any day really.  Hell, I'm lucky in the summer if he even bothers to put a shirt ON.

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And then I wonder...did everyone do this?  Was this like an expectation?  Sheets and underwear ironed, floors waxed, bread baked, and everything?  Like, all the time?  Heaven help us.  Would some 60s version of a housewife walk on in here and silently critique me for my lack of wax on the floors and countertops smeared from sticky fingertips?

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Thank goodness we don't have those expectations for each other.  Not even for ourselves, now.  I'll stay here, with my crumbs and un-waxed floors, my smears and my wrinkled sheets that sat in the drier for two or three days.  I'll relish in the fact that, actually, I don't have all that much to do today.    After all, that 60s housewife?  She'd probably be pretty jealous of me.  I just ordered groceries through a few taps and a swipe of my fingertip.  #technology #allthepraisehands

Good thing I didn't iron those sheets.