On Being a Wastrel Housewife

I find myself in the not totally unenviable position of being a stay-at-home-mom who no longer has children at home during school hours, nor an onerous school pick-up / drop-off commute to deal with (my days of driving 3+ hours a day are thankfully over). So, this means that during the day I'm not always as busy as I used to be—which would be great news if I didn't have a financial responsibility to my family that compels me to want to get a job and start bringing home some bacon. So, just go get a job, right? Well... the situation is more complicated that that and more anxiety-producing (which for me, sadly, means going into a paralyzing across-the-board procrastination mode) because despite having that extra time during the day—I still have way too many family-related responsibilities on my plate to make a full-time job feasible.

I know, cry you a f*cking river, right?

So anyway, back to my bitching... on the days when I don't have something important to get done or, more likely, am avoiding some bothersome chore, I've taken to loafing around the house. Sure, I get some laundry done, maybe cook a little something for dinner, but nothing too strenuous and definitely not anything that requires my leaving the house.

So this morning (fine, it may have been more like noon, and, yes, I was still in sweatpants), I go to twitter for my daily kvetch to tweet:

"I am more than happy to live the life of a shut-in today, but a few vital errands are barring my ability to be a total wastrel today." 

Now, I was going to use the word "wastoid," (and now see that I should've cut that last "today") but that had too much of a stoner feel to it. Since I live in neither Washington nor Colorado, I opted for the more old-school term "wastrel." Being the good little English student that I pride myself to be, I did a quick check on my cel phone dictionary to make sure I had spelled it correctly. The eye-opener when I looked it up, though, was the definition—I thought the word wastrel just meant "good-for-nothing layabout", but my phone offered up a definition with a brilliant twist:

Wastrel - "someone who dissipates resources self-indulgently"

I actually laughed out loud for an (almost uncomfortably) long time because, as I sit here on the couch, watching old episodes of "The B---- in Apt. 23" on Hulu, while ordering stuff on the internet and eating peanut-butter-filled salty pretzels and drinking grape Propel—that couldn't describe my day any more perfectly. 

.....

Now will somebody hire me, please? (Oh, and pay me enough to hire someone else to pick up the kids from school, usher them through the hours of soul-crushing homework time and then prep dinner Monday through Thursday?) Thanks!