Wednesday, April 16, 2008

How I Became an Undomestic Goddess

How's this for irony? A few years ago, after two years of being a stay-at-home other, I decided to venture into freelance writing. At the time, regional parenting magazine Charlotte Parent ran a guest column each month. Writers were welcome to submit their stories for possible publication, with no pay. One evening, I dashed off an essay about how becoming a mother made me learn how to cook and keep a clean house, and how much I enjoyed making chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I know, kind of sickening, and now that I look back upon it . . . just plain old funny.

A few months later, my mother-in-law called to rave about the essay I had written for a magazine. I didn't know what she was talking about, especially since she lived an hour and a half away. I realized she was talking about my Charlotte Parent submission, which my sister-in-law had heard about from a friend who lived in my town, etc. Imagine my surprise when I picked up a copy of the publication at my local grocery store and saw my essay -- and byline -- in print. It was called "How I Became a Domestic Goddess." The funny thing is that it apparently offended a few working moms who weren't able to be as domestic as I was for lack of time, and one even wrote a huffy letter to the editor the next month.

Fast forward three years and I am now a blogger for CharlotteParent.com. I write about the perils of being a work-at-home mother in the blog "Round the Clock." My house is anything but clean. Dinner is usually a thrown-together affair during the week. It's complete insanity, and completely opposite from when I first became a mother. Things change. Circumstances change. I love what I do. I love that I now have a beautiful home office. I don't love the fact that I have cobwebs in the corners because I rarely find the time to dust.

Read about how a typical day in my working goes in a recent post over at CharlotteParent.com. You'll see how much I've become an "undomestic goddess" in the process.

No comments: