When I was a teenager, I’d decided one day that I was over going to the grocery store with my mom. The last thing I wanted to do every Saturday was wake up and go to the store. My mom wasn’t having that.

I come from a single parent home and we had a routine. Saturday was shopping and Sunday was laundry. There were no ifs, ands or buts. Although the exception was during Field Show season, since we often had a 7 a.m. call time (or earlier), in which case I guess we went either when we got home, or if the event took an entire day, we went Sunday morning.

As part of the school regiment (Tall Flags baby, represent!!!) and that meant that every Friday night I’d be at either a football game or a basketball game and then the group would almost always gather for pizza afterward. Friday nights I wouldn’t get home until pretty late.

Proof.

Left hand side, middle row in all red

On one particular Saturday morning, I was more tired than usual and my mom came in to tell me it was time to get up and get to the grocery store. I proceeded to tell her she could go to the store her own darn self, I was sleeping in. HAH! Now, at this point in our lives, I’d decided I wouldn’t be eating my mom’s food anymore because I didn’t like anything she cooked. In fact, I’m not really sure I did eat much those days. I can’t recall nightly meals. Maybe I lived on boxes of mac and cheese at the time. Who knows. So it’s not like I helped her with the grocery list because I didn’t really eat. As long as I had milk and cereal, and mac & cheese, I guess I was good.

Anyhow, She wasn’t having it, and I’d be going to the grocery store come hell or high water. She eventually won the argument and I do believe I went grocery shopping with her every Saturday until I started working.

Being a mom now, I often compare the way I handle our shopping and chores to how it was done by my own mother. For a few years I was a single mom of 2 small children myself. I had no choice but to drag them to the store with me. Once I got married, that was the end of taking the kids to the store with me. And especially now that 2 of my kids are old enough to stay home alone for a while, and watch their little sister to boot, the last thing I want to do is take the kids grocery shopping with me. Occasionally I have to take Jessalyn along on a store run, and every time I say to myself that I’ll never do that again. It’s not that she misbehaves or throws fits when I tell her no, we will not be buying whatever it is she’s asked for, it’s just that I get so distracted and end up forgetting half the items on my list. If I need Jason to go to the store with me, our first option is to leave Jess home with a sibling. I just don’t like taking any kids with me when I’m grocery shopping, or even running other errands. Am I alone in this?

I can’t understand why my mom would put her foot down once I was old enough to be home alone, and MAKE me go to the store with her. If I didn’t want to do something, I can tell you, I’m pretty sure I was a miserable little twit and did my best to make her miserable as well. And yet, week after week she’d tell me I had no choice, I was going. It’s not like it was quality time together as long as I was being a little wretch because I didn’t want to be there.

So I ask you, gentle reader, if you have someone available to watch your child(ren) do you take them shopping with you anyway? Do you prefer to wait until there IS someone available so you won’t have to take them to the store? Are you like me and avoid running errands with your child(ren) at all costs?

I might have mentioned here that we don’t really go to many local establishments. Mostly chains. I don’t know why bit this is all across the board, from where we shop to where we eat. However there’s a local restaurant (that’s actually branched out to 3 locations) that has been a local favorite for years. Unfortunately they seem to have lost something in the customer service department.

Jason, Jess, Christian and I went to our favorite Italian place, Lascari’s, on New Year’s Eve. Once we were seated, which didn’t take all that long, the wait for our server felt eternal. The wait for our food was even longer. However, we kept in mind that it was New Year’s Eve, and our server mentioned the kitchen was short staffed. I thought that was understandable, so I didn’t complain.

But last night. Oh my gosh! My aunt, Jess and I went there for dinner. We were debating between eating there or ordering in. She checked the wait time. It was Saturday night around 5 p.m. and was told the wait for a table was only about 10 minutes. We decided it would be faster to just go in and have a meal. Big mistake.

First, the wait wasn’t actually 10 minutes, but closer to 20. Ok it was a Saturday and of course there would be a wait. When we were seated, a very outgoing and charming guy came over and said he’d be our server. Let’s call him Julius because that’s his name. So Julius seemed to be very enamored with my gorgeous aunt and I was all but invisible. Lovely. We ordered water for us and milk for Jessalyn. Jess took a drink and all of a sudden her straw seemed to explode and milk flew all over the place. I checked out the straw and saw a hole in it. I took the straw from my water and placed it in her cup. Julius wandered over to flirt with my aunt some more and asked if Jess preferred to drink from a grown up straw. I assured him no, hers had a hole. So he brought her a new one, but didn’t give me a replacement straw for my water. At this point my aunt ordered a cappuccino only to be told they were out of espresso beans.

After waiting what felt like an eternity (mostly because I was trying to entertain and 3.5 year old) he came to the table to let us know our “food should be out in no less than 3 or 4 minutes.” Did you catch that because I did. No LESS than 3 or 4 minutes. We joked about it after he left the table. Turns out he didn’t misspeak after all. It was good 15 minutes before the food finally came. In the mean time, Jess had crawled under the table and found a stray tomato from someone else’s dinner. I put it on the edge of the table where it sat the entire time we were there. Another thing that sat there was a puddle of milk from the straw explosion and my useless glass of water. Jess had put her holey, milky straw into my water glass. So now my water is all cloudy and nasty looking. I put it on the edge of the table so he could see it was no longer drinkable, but he NEVER asked if I would like a new one.

Ok, so the food comes and about 2 seconds into it he asked my aunt how her food was. Again, I’m invisible.

We had quite a bit left over. Jess’s pasta, my aunt’s pasta and half of my sandwich. He asked my aunt if we’d be needing 2 boxes. I looked at him and said 3 please. He looked totally perplexed. I pointed out Jess’s food, my aunts food and then my sandwich. “Oh. Uhhhh ok” and off he went. A few minutes later the guy who boxes up food came over and started packaging everything up. They have a policy where they pack it up for you, but they never actually touch your food. If you have a sandwich, they ask you to put it on the paper to be wrapped. First, he didn’t bring the paper, he was just going to be tossing my sandwich into a box. Second, he straight picked up my sandwich with his bare hands and plunked it in the box.

Moments later Julius came over, dropped the check and said have a good night. Not, I’ll take this when you’re ready. You pay at the table! They’re lucky she had cash because he had no intentions in coming back to the table. He also didn’t ask if anyone wanted dessert, but my aunt fully intended to get tiramisu to go.

The more I thought about the crap service, the more irritated I became. I ended up going to their website and sending a nice long account of just how poor our service had been. I also mentioned that it was once one of our favorite local eateries, but we have no plans to return there any time soon.

I’m not one of those people that actually complains to a company, but this is out of hand. The past two time I’ve been, I’ve had completely crappy service and that’s not acceptable. If they want me to spend money in their place, they need to step up their game. Oh well, I won’t know if they do because I’m not going back got for quite a while.

You know, with the way people are trying to spend their money more wisely, and going out to dinner is more of a luxory than it once was, you’d think the staff would recognize this and make sure to take care of their customers. If someone’s going to be spending their money on going out to eat, wouldn’t you want to do everything in your power to make sure they had a pleasant visit and will think of your establishment when they go out again?

I don’t want to assume everyone knows what SAHM actually means. It means Stay At Home Mom. Meaning I don’t go to work and earn an income.

As of this week, my husband will be out of work for 5 weeks. Our only income at this point is unemployment. And believe me when I tell you I’m not AT ALL confident that we’ll be getting those checks much longer. The California economy is in the toilet right now. Yesterday it was announced that because CA lawmakers couldn’t come to an agreement about the state budget, they will be laying off 20,000 state employees. How much longer before the state says, sorry, there’s just no money to give the tens of thousands of unemployed people in our state alone?

CNN reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued 10,000 layoff notices Tuesday, affecting a wide spectrum of

state agencies and employees, in an effort to deal with the budget crisis, a spokesman said.

Another 10,000 layoff notices might be sent Wednesday, the spokesman said. All the layoffs would take effect July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

Anyhow, we’re a one income family. We’ve obviously cut out all unnecessary spending to try and make that final paycheck and unemployment money carry us through. A problem I’m starting to see is that Jason is now competing for the same jobs with ousted CEO’s and people that were much higher on the food chain than he’s ever had to compete with before. People who used to make six figure incomes are now having to settle for lesser jobs just to be employed. This means taking jobs that Jason, and others like him are well qualified for, but can’t get because someone who had once never dreamed of taking “that” job, are now forced to do so, just so they can stay afloat.

One of my biggest frustrations comes from the recruiters. Wait wait wait! I’m not going to slam recruiters here so if you’re a recruiter keep reading, please.

I’m glad that he gets calls and emails from recruiters telling him about job opportunities. While none of these opportunities have panned out, it’s nice to know people are looking at Jason’s resume and think he’d be a great candidate form Company X. Where I find myself the most frustrated is when they call, tell you about an “opportunity” and send you the job description, then ask you to let them know if you’re interested or not. So Jason does just that. He reads it over, sometimes sends it to me, and then replies back with yes, I’m interested. Over and over that’s it. There’s never any kind of follow up saying, thanks for the interest, the position has been filled. Thanks for the interest, but Company X doesn’t feel you’re qualified. Thanks for your interest, but we’ve just hired some other poor unemployed sap that’s getting paid $50k less than he’s really worth.

Jason even had a face to face interview with a recruiter who was acting as a screener for the company that was hiring. Jason left the preinterview feeling really good and hopeful. The recruiter flat out told him he was a shoo-in. Guess what? That was the end of it. Jason emailed the recruiter and I’m not really sure what came of that.

Look, if you’re a recruiter and you’ve stumbled upon this post, please take this to heart. Don’t tell someone they’re a shoo-in and NOT FOLLOW UP. Ok, so he didn’t get it, please send an email saying as much. There’s nothing harder for both of us than having my husband’s hopes lifted by a recruiter with yet another “opportunity” only to never ever hear back from that person again. Just send a simple, I’m sorry but you’re not the guy.

And if you are a recruiter that stumbled upon this blog post, thank you for what you do. Thank you for helping people find jobs they otherwise wouldn’t find without your help. All I’m asking is that you remember the people you’re trying to help are worried sick about their future and that of their families. Please, just send a follow up if they didn’t qualify. That’s all I’m asking for. That’s all anyone wants. They just want to know, and not wonder for days. Just write up a little script or something that kicks off a rejection email. We all just want to hear something, anything.

Pretty much every morning I come downstairs, have a look around, and feel completely overwhelmed by the “stuff” on the floor that shouldn’t be there. Everywhere I look I see little bits and pieces, shoes, toys, books and clothes all over the place.

This morning I gathered some of it together for show and tell. I’m willing to bet you’re giddy with anticipation! Well wait no more because here it is!

Items that weren’t picked up in the camera’s eye:

a broken piece of chalk, plastic lemon, 4 zip ties, caitlin’s shoes, (I forgot to lable) 1 of Jason’s shoes, plastic grapes, more trashy bits I don’t want to think about and so on and so forth.

This isn’t even all of it, but it’s a pretty good sampling. I see more shoes and more of Jessalyn’s clothes. There’s also a laundry basket with clean clothes waiting to be taken upstairs.

It’s a losing battle staying on top of everything here. But I’m not going to complain, not today anyhow. Instead, I’ll just get my daughter the juice and food she asked for, and then clean up the mess. Shouldn’t too hard since it’s all in one spot now.

Have a fantastic week everyone.

May your floors be floss free, just like mine will be in a few minutes!

This week we visit my nemesis, housework.

Unfortunately, being a stay at home mom, the brunt of the housework falls squarely on my shoulders.

1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?
2. Are there any that you like or don’t mind doing?
3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it’s needed?
4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?
5. What was the last thing you cleaned?

1) What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say  it again. Doing the dishes. Our apartment doesn’t have a dishwasher so everything has to be done by hand. Because of that, getting the motivation to keep up with it and make sure it’s done in a timely manner doesn’t always happen. I’d like to say they’re done every night and I wake up to a clean kitchen. That’s just not the reality though.

2) Are there any that you like or don’t mind doing? Hmmm. I can’t really think of any that I *like* doing. I like the results of every chore, but actually doing them? I don’t mind folding clothes. Oh, I guess I like cooking dinner. But that doesn’t seem like a “chore” to me.

3) Do you have a routine throughout the week, or just clean as it’s needed? I honestly wish I had a schedule. I’ve tried to impliment one, but it never worked out. I’ve tried the Flylady program, but I’ve never really stuck with it. I also wish I could say I clean as it’s needed, but sometimes it goes beyond that. Sometimes, I clean after it’s been needed for days and I can no longer stand it anymore.

4) Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules? I’m not even sure what this could mean. I suppose that would make my answer no.

5) What is the last thing you cleaned? I gave the coffee table a good scrub down.

That brings me to a question of my own. In your own household, how are the chores divided? Do you share the workload with your spouse/kids/whoever else lives there? Are they equally divided? If not, what’s the reason for that? Here’s what it’s like at our house:

Me:

• laundry
• dishes
• cooking
• straightening up
• vacuuming
• dusting
• cleaning bathrooms
• mopping
• grocery shopping
• gift buying
• schedule keeper
• taking out the trash

And pretty much anything else that doesn’t include the following

Jason:

• Earning an income
• Paying the bills
• Putting away his own clean clothes

Caitlin:

• Putting away her own clean clothes
• Keeping her room clean (hahahaha, yeah right)
• Keeping her bathroom items in check (again, hahaha)
• spending as much time on MySpace as possible, oh wait, that’s not a chore, but she works it like crazy. Trying to get that girl to do chores… Well I just don’t want to get into that conversation right now.

Jessalyn:

She’s actually a pretty good little helper. she wants to be involved in pretty much everything except the vacuuming. But she helps me put away her clean laundry, she’ll “help” wash dishes, she loves to “help” me cook. You name it, she’s willing to give a little hand whenever possible. Well most of the time anyway.

And Christian:

Well, since he doesn’t live here anymore, He really only needs to keep track of his stuff when he is here. He also helps me clean up the living room from time to time.

Well there you have it. A thrilling look into the inner workings of the Tucker Household. Thrilling isn’t it?

Now it’s your turn. Either comment here or copy the questions onto your blog, online journal, or create a facebook note and link back so I can read your responses.