Donna Gwinnell Lambo-Weidner

You know the question. We’ve all heard it. We’ve all asked it. Whether we’re chatting with our neighbor sitting next to us in the window seat, standing serpentine in a line at the grocery store, or sipping cocktails at the hippest place in town, me? yeah right! ninety-nine point nine percent of the time someone asks, “So, what do you do?”

When I was a Stay-At-Home-Mom the guilt over not having an ‘outside’ job in addition to my familial responsibilities left me sputtering like a dying carburetor. Out loud, I’d hem and haw about how my adventures with the frantic four left little time for anything else, but inside I was asking myself how the focacchia did my mom-peers find the time to be welders, bio-chemists, lawyers, and artists between changing diapers and cleaning up barf? And why was I feeling like I should be keeping up with them?

I get it though. Heck, before I had children, I too used to wonder what a mother did at home all day without going insane. How many times could she blow on a boo-boo, clean a toilet, or fill the washing machine?

For years, I felt like a slacker. I could see that same thought reflecting back at me in people’s eyes, too. Or at least I thought I did. Thankfully, that did change when a now, dear friend innocently asked that loaded question, only this time ending it with “all day.” Armed with an answer that had been stockpiling for years, I shot back, “Well, typically, once the children have been taken to school, I change into turn of the 20th century lounge wear, grab a good book -preferably one with little or no plot- drape myself across a plush divan, Continue reading →