It was a hazy day in August when I started thinking about the upcoming school year. The kids have moved up to the next year and I was about to head back to working in the school. Since the end of June, when the schools shut their doors for the summer holidays, I had every day; a whole summer to myself. And then, we were on the cusp of going back, I was left wondering what I have done with all of my free time.
Wait, you took the whole summer off? I did. And I didn’t come to that decision lightly. I had planned on going back to the shoe shop for the last few summers, however, I don’t think that my back and knees could handle it. Besides, I kept getting heat stroke last year during the summer, I had no desire to experience that again. The job search for temporary summer jobs was not great. A lot of people had lined jobs up from Easter, leaving me on the back foot. Rather than get upset, I made the decision to take the entire summer off and would head back to work when the kids went back to school. As for earning money, well, I still have this beautiful site to help fund my lifestyle.
The first morning that I woke up without the alarm clock felt surreal. For the first time in months, I was allowed to wake up naturally, or as naturally as I can as a mother of four children. Instead of a screaming alarm clock ripping me from my sleep, I was woken with gentle kisses on my cheeks from my youngest. I slept two hours later than I normally do. And for that first day, I achieved nothing. I revelled in the nothingness. The house was already tidy, I didn’t need to go shopping; there was nothing stopping me from spending the entire day in my pj’s, sipping coffee and doing nothing. There was peace. It felt as if I had reached Nirvana. I stood in my kitchen, thinking about the quiet life that I was about to experience during the next few weeks. I’m not going to lie, if it was possible for me to retire or go back to being a stay-at-home mum, at that moment, I would have said yes.
As the days moved on, I realised that I was losing track of my time and what I wanted to do. That first day of bliss should have been the only day that I took off. Instead, I allowed that feeling of freedom to roll over into the following days until the washing had piled high. But I didn’t stress about it. The summer was still stretched out in front of me. I had time. We all know where this is going because we have all been there. I looked at the calendar, realised the day, and felt my heart fall out of my arse. How did the summer move so quickly? I had achieved nothing. A whole summer to myself and I hadn’t even finished reading a full book. Maybe the idea of being a stay-at-home mum again would not be the greatest idea.
Spending everyday being in charge of my own schedule, not having to go to work or answering to anyone else, it was wonderful. After a few days, I knew I was getting off track and it would not end well. I knew that things would get on top of me. There were the dishes (I have a dishwasher), the washing (it’s a massive washing machine), and god knows what else that needed dealing with. They weren’t major things. Of course, there were major things that I wanted to deal with. The bathroom(s) needed painted, the Little’s bedroom needed a coat of paint too. And maybe the living room and the hallway need a revamp as well. I had also planned on writing, never mind reading, one of the books which has been sitting in my WIP pile. My TBR is massive too. My goal had been to read one book a week, which worked out to be around 8 books during the summer. Did. Not. Happen.
Now, it’s November. Christmas is coming at us fast. Things have not changed much. I’ve gotten a bit more organised with this corner of the internet (this is the third week in a row that The Weekly has been published), the upstairs bathroom did get painted, and I’ve made the decision to publish sections of my latest piece of fiction, Downspiral, right here. How have I managed to get all of this done? My husband has started taking the kids out on a Saturday morning to the park. Actually, the kids are out of the house five days a week when school is in session. . . maybe there might be something to being a stay-at-home mum after all. Those books aren’t gonna read or write themselves.
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