“I think moms put a lot of pressure on ourselves trying to balance it all. It’s never going to be perfectly balanced — the sooner you know this, the sooner you can relieve some of the pressure you put on yourself.” ~ Denise Richards

There are days I feel like I’m spinning plates:

• work
• housework
• laundry
• renovations
• three different children’s needs
• school functions
• sporting events
• cooking
• menu planning
• grocery shopping
• car maintenance

and then I’m supposed to throw self-care and exercise in there.

I must, of necessity, prioritize. Work (obviously), the children, laundry, menu planning, grocery shopping and cooking take top priority.

Coming in second is housework, school functions and sporting events.

Lastly, trailing in the dust, there is renovation, car maintenance (when it pops up) and then self-care and exercise.

When you’re the only one doing the work because you’re a single mother, it’s exhausting. Trying to balance the income and bills, attempting to contribute to your savings account, and then car snafu’s (like a chink in the oil pan causing all the oil to leak out) which results in the need for a rental car. So you pick up an extra shift each pay period which takes you away from home another day and makes you more tired.

Then an email for your homeowners insurance — unless you replace the roof and some of the siding by the end of next April, your house will be listed as “uninsurable”– never mind that they raised the insurance from $952 annually to $2650 per year. Newsflash to the insurance underwriters ** the new roof was already in the works ** and I’ve been trying to get siding to replace the rotted siding but nobody expected a Covid-19 pandemic to reduce the workforce and put lumber mill orders way behind.

I love to run. Running is my biggest self-care activity, next to coffee. However, sometimes, priorities get moved around and self-care gets stashed in a corner. Yesterday, I went on my first run since early June. It was lovely. An opportunity to put the dogs in their kennels, head out the door with my favorite podcast and just do something for ME. No phone calls. No texts. No “Mooooooom!!!”

Now what I’m about to say will raise some tail feathers. I believe in equal wage for equal work. I believe that women are capable of doing many things better than many men. BUT . . thanks to the feminists who have pushed men to the wayside – -we’ve been told we can have our cake and eat it too. As the old Enjoli perfume commercial used to say, “I can bring home the bacon . . . fry it up in a pan . . . and never, never, never let you forget you’re a man . . . cause I’m a woman!” Well folks, this woman is dead-ass tired.

And for the record, I don’t even like cake.