GETTING MY MOTHERING MOJO ON

SARAH ASLETT - 11 Jan 16

Towards the end of last year I got pretty bogged down with all the things I had to do, the things I did do and things that were never going to get done. My mind became increasingly cluttered and stressed and over burdened by the demands of work, housework, my son, my husband and everything else that goes with it. There was always hoovering to do, always emails to respond to, always a dinner to cook. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with myself and my inability to get everything done. Everyone elses houses are always tidy, why was ours never ever tidy? We’re never even here for fucks sake. At one point I was actually getting up in the middle of the night to hang up washing so it would dry in time. I would voluntarily opt out on reading my son a bedtime story, so that I could get dinner started so we wouldn’t be eating at 9 o’clock again. I was giving a little of myself to everything, meaning nothing got my full attention, nothing truly ever got done or finished and well, I was fucking failing at everything.

However since the Christmas break I’ve changed my outlook a bit, I think it was having time, being off schedule, stepping back and thinking about what is important. What of all these tasks, chores and demands are actually life and death and what ones am I just getting hysterical about? Well most of them, as it turns out. All that really matters are the basics, that we get up, get dressed, get the kiddo to where he needs to be, go to work, function, eat, sleep, repeat. It doesn’t matter if we eat dinner at 10pm, at least we are eating. It doesn’t matter if we haven’t hoovered for a week, no-ones going to die from a bit of carpet fuzz. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t change the fucking air-wick filter or bleach the kitchen sink. It doesn’t fucking matter.
And then I started thinking about all the things I am doing, all the things I manage to fit into each tiny little day. How from the moment I get up at 6.30am every morning, I’m on it. There’s no down time, no rest. I’m going from here to there, to work, to the supermarket and back again. Even when I do take a lunch break its to run errands like buy nappies or post letters or fill up with petrol so I don’t have to do it at the end of the day, so I can get home sooner. I plan ahead, I multitask, I make shit happen. I do the online food shop in bed before I go to sleep. I drive kiddo to where he needs to be, I dance in my seat all the way there because he requests it and because it makes him laugh. Its 7.30am and its raining and its dark and I’m jigging about like a twat to Little Mix and he’s peeing his pants at how ridiculous I am. I make lunches whilst making dinner, whilst hanging up washing, whilst tripping over three cats who are constantly at my feet. I clean the sink while he has his bath. I answer the never ending  “why? why? why’s?”.  I am an all singing, all dancing fucking bionic woman. I am awesome, I am woman, hear me fucking roar.

Obviously I don’t do all this alone, I have a brilliant husband who is doing his bit in the background of this self-involved article. Assembling train tracks, building towers, washing up, mopping up snot, picking up and dropping off, all alongside his own full time job. I don’t do it all, I do half of it all or at least I try to. But for this moment, I just want to remind myself that I’m actually doing a really good job. I am keeping it all together, even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. I am productive, I am capable, I am not failing, I am successful.
I am mothering the shit out of life.

SARAH ASLETT

MUM, WIFE, WORKER, CAT LOVER. TRUTH IS I'M A SOCIALLY AWKWARD WINE DRINKER WHO WATCHES TOO MUCH GREY'S ANATOMY AND EATS FAR TOO MUCH CAKE.

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