Stay at Home Series – Episode 1: The Working Mom

I’m basically starting these series to bore you guys senseless or make you guys laugh out loud. Also, to practice writing and continue writing on my blog, considering, I’m not going to be traveling much or getting my reading done in the speed with which I usually do 😉

These are stories from my own experiences of trying to deal with the lockdown – in India. Today, we’re entering the start of week 3 of being indoors. The lockdown started a week back, but we had traveled back from Delhi on 15th of March, so had self quarantined ourselves from 16th of the month itself. My daughter’s day care had shut down from 16th March too, and we started working from home as well. So, 2 weeks has made me an expert mad-woman. Hence, the rambling posts. Enjoy, or ignore, totally your call guys 😀

Episode 1: The working mom, who is now the stay at home mom

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I’d always wondered how some of my friends could do it all. I’d envied women who happily stayed at home looking after their families and cooking up exotic dishes. I even more envied the women who worked, cooked, played with their children, looked after their parents and in laws, had successful hobbies and were happy doing all this. Because, I, couldn’t figure out how to do it all without losing my mind. That’s why, I never even attempted it.

On the first day of the first week, I tried not to panic. I woke up really late and then rushed my 4 year old to brush her teeth. We managed to finish breakfast and I had logged in ON TIME. Yay!! I had positioned myself on the dining table and I made my daughter watch a lot of ipad, while I took my morning calls.

“Mommy, I don’t want to watch anymore“, she whined, an hour later.

WTF?!! I thought to myself. Out loud, I said, “but sweetheart, you can watch as much as you want today :)” I tried un muting my call to contribute something worthwhile on that irrelevant meeting in parallel.

An hour later, we were playing. My partner was in his own version of a lockdown, having stolen the kid’s table as a makeshift table in the guest room and locking the door in. Lots of privacy. Argh. While I get free access to no privacy and a big table. We should have bought that study table ages ago. Darn.

I had zero idea how to manage cleaning and cooking, in addition to focusing on work and listening to my daughter. I really missed child care. I will give the child care teachers extra love when all this is over, I thought to myself.

So the first day, I split all my time between trying to occupy my toddler and trying to get some work done. That’s how it went in fact, for the first three days. By Wednesday, we realized, we were walking in a house muddier than the streets outside. We had run out of clean bowls and spoons, my daughter had lost all interest in watching ipad, or any screen (Osho was right it seems. Too much of something does saturate one out of it. If only that worked with alcohol). My partner, being Mr. know it all and Mr Do it all, and Mr. take all the praise and compliments from the moms, decide to take charge of the situation and multitask, become an efficient home maker too. We should really give men a chance to prove themselves you know? We really discriminate a lot against them 😉

Obviously, my luck ran out, when my partner realized I was taking undue advantage of his will to work and contribute and demanded equal rights.

So, as we enter week 3 of the lockdown, here is how I’m managing being a stay at home mom and a working mom. Also, a little advice, don’t follow the below, if you’re one of the superwomen I was talking about at the start. These steps will make you question your capability 😀

• I work 5 hours a day – don’t tell anyone. After many interruptions by the child during important and useless calls, my manager agreed it would be better if I could hand over child-minding duties to my enthusiastic partner for a few hours, to work. The Swedes are right. You can actually get all or most of your work done in 5-6 hours in a day, huh! Also, Im trying not to think about the fact that others in my team are working a lot more and that I might be the first one to get fired when all this is over. Shiites!!
• My daughter watches a lot of screen now. We have thrown away the ‘no screen time monitoring’ parenting ideologies to working peacefully. The child is happy, the boss is happy. Win-win?
• My managers and clients have made peace with the fact that we will listen to Peppa Pig or nursery rhymes or get introduced to each other’s children during conference calls. its quite entertaining actually 😀
• We cook one huge bowl of daal/lentil soup to last us the whole day. Its got carbs, proteins, minerals from the veggies. We don’t need variety now because I hate cooking, and I said so. Also, my daughter loves daal so that’s all that matters 😀
• I have swapped running with yoga and jhaadu-pocha (Hindi for sweeping and mopping). Yes, I was a privileged Indian who had help for these chores, until two weeks back. I’m not complaining. In fact I have a new found respect for the people working for me 🙂 I’m going to double their salaries, I’ve decided..

And with all that flair of failed parenting, not creating exotic dishes at home, and yelling at your child in the middle of a client meeting, we end the first episode of the episode of the Stay At Home series.

Tune in next week for another useless ramble in the series!!

Now to the actual fun part – Hearing about your experiences!!

I’d love to know if you absolutely hated this post, or enjoyed reading it?

How are all of you managing work and home expectations? Any disaster stories recently? 😀