Weekends stymie me. I’m a stay-at-home mom and I work from home. To me a weekend is just a couple days when everyone else is home all day, too. My sleep routine stays pretty much the same. I go to bed between ten and eleven, I get up around six or seven. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy sleeping in on weekends, but since I started using a sleep apnea machine, I wake up after eight hours.
I don’t usually cook on weekends, nor do I write. Household chores are either done during the week or I have the kids help me do them on Saturday. But with three teens, when we all pitch in, it’s usually a quick chore and takes very little of my time.
When the girls were young and in school all week I tried to find something fun for us to do as a family on weekends. We’d go to the park or the movies. Sometimes we’d go swimming or see an exhibit at the Science Center or free children’s event at the mall. Around Christmas we’d take the opportunity to go to Christmas events offered only offered during that season, like the carousel down at Kent Station or Clam Lights at Coulon Beach. Near Easter we’d do Easter stuff, like color Easter Eggs.
Once they started driving, they no longer needed me to entertain them. In fact, they prefer that I don’t plan weekend events that include them. They like doing whatever it is teens and a twenty year-old like to do, which is pretty much nothing, although they like to be free to do it.
It’s taken my husband and me a couple years to get used to not having them along anymore; we’ve camped all summer without them for two years now. And though we’ve joined the herd of couples who run errands together on weekends, we don’t always have errands to run. We also enjoy seeing movies, but just like errands, there aren’t always movies we want to see.
On those weekends I’m lost. Because I don’t know what to do with myself, I often feel guilty for not being productive. I don’t want to lose my weekend days to sloth and apathy. That’s what the kids do, because, well, they’re at that age where it seems like the appropriate amusement to while away their time.
But I’m a mom. I’ve spent the week at home writing, making dinner, and doing laundry; only stepping out to grocery shop, go to an appointment, or to have an occasional coffee with a friend. I do think of the weekend as a time to indulge my own hobbies, which means to finish projects I started many years ago. But even if I wake up on a Saturday morning with a plan to tackle a project, I feel like I’m squatting behind home base, waiting for a baseball to be lobbed in my direction when the girls finally get out of bed.
Their weekends are never routine; anything could happen. One of them could suddenly decide they want to go to the mall, only inviting me because I’ll buy clothes for them. They could spontaneously want to see a movie for the fourth time and under the guise of wanting to share their passion with me, they invite me. But I know it’s because I’ll pay.
I don’t usually say no, I like spending time with them and they won’t be living in my house forever (I hope). My weekends will be mine again soon enough, when I can ignore my to-do list on my own time. In the meantime, I’m happy to be the catcher.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.”or follow her on Twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.
