Old meme but true meme. Allie Brosh has perfectly captured the Grownup Responsibility Spiral I catch myself in all the time - I'm gonna be responsible! I'm going to cook a real dinner every night instead of eating frozen Safeway generic mozzarella sticks and/or two bowls of Raisin Bran! I am going to take a goddamn toothbrush to the goddamn dingy bathroom grout! That pile of clothes in the bedroom? Gone! I am a fucking ADULT here.
And it's worse now that I'm going to be a mom. Mom = competent grownup. It is known. One of the reasons I am having the Wee Baby Seamus in the first place is so I have an incentive to get my shit together. The trouble is, now I have to get my shit together. And I don't think I'm quite ready to get it up to mom standards. Sitcom-dad standards, sure. I can cook dinner, half-assedly wipe down the bathroom sink and remember to put my socks in the hamper most of the time, but dusting? People actually DUST? Oh god, I have to remember to run the dishwasher EVERY DAY? Right now Max handles most of the housework with no complaint because he is the Felix to my Oscar, but I'm already starting to feel terrible that I'm "letting" my husband do the work I should be doing because I'm The Mom. If Dad has to do the work then Mom has failed.
That's how it worked when I was growing up. I've seen what it did to my mom, who is a world-class martyr, and the guilt trips she's laid on me over the years are nothing compared to what she does to herself. On that path lies danger. I must avoid it.
So last night I avoided it. I played Skyrim for... eight hours? Holy fuck! In the process I also ate way too much blackberry-chocolate-swirl ice cream and finished it off with brie and crackers. I think. I came out of my usual RPG coma at 2:30 am with a dirty ice cream spoon and brie rinds and half a box of crackers in front of me, so I am pretty sure that's what I ate. It's all a blur. A vast, sweeping, gorgeously mountainous blur full of badly rendered facial features. God, that font they use for all the lore! Not that I mind vast quantities of lore - that's a plus in a game - but I'm sitting there on the couch squinting at the TV trying to read pages and pages of lore that's aimed at people who've played all the Elder Scrolls games already (I haven't) and trying to decipher the olde-timey-high-fantasy font. You can tell which system an RPG is meant to be played on by the size and font the lore is done in, and very clearly I'm supposed to be on a PC.
This is the downward-turning part of the grownup achievement spiral, where you just get overwhelmed by All The Things and give up. On this path lies danger as well. I should get out of bed and go do things. But I'm soooo pregnant and tired and my feet hurt! Pregnant ladies should not have to do things! They are delicate flowers and getting out of bed is too much for them! Other insidious benevolent-sexist tropes! Waaah!
I better stop blogging and get on with All The Things before I turn into Phyllis Schlafly.
