Sometime after Women’s Lib was kind enough to reinvent us & redefine our purpose in life, we decided it was necessary to become Super-Women. It would no longer be enough to cook, clean, do laundry, grocery shop, pop out babies (using only natural LaMaze techniques, of course) then carpool them around all day long, become Girl Scout leaders & peddle cookies at the same time, we deemed ourselves capable of even more.
Now we were Equal. We were about to learn, however, that Equal meant Overworked and Exhausted.
We couldn’t stop our quest for Equality until we turned ourselves into Super-Women. Nobody could tell us we couldn’t. We could work a full time job, then come home & bathe the kids while the home-made dinner was simmering on the stove, then run out & mow the lawn after loading the dishwasher, sort through 67 mis-matched socks while vacuuming & talking on the phone, organize a fundraiser for the Hairless Cat society, and prepare a counter-argument in Word for tomorrow’s murder trial. When we turned the lights out at 2:30 in the morning, it wasn’t until the checkbook was balanced, the bills were stamped & ready to mail, and the guest list for Hubby’s 40th surprise birthday party was written out.
3 ½ hours later, the alarm clock rang & we had to get up and do it again. Amen; do it again.
Drive the kids to school after pulling chewing gum out of little Susie’s French braid she begged for this morning. Check. Fill the car with self-serve gas, drive-through Starbucks for an extra-grande Mocha Latte with skim milk & Splenda, of course, and don’t forget to charge the cell phone in the cigarette lighter while E-texting the prosecuting attorney that Superwoman is on her way. As the IPod hits the car seat, it runs her pantyhose, requiring another quick stop at Wal-Mart……no time right now for Victoria’s Secret, tsk tsk.
Lunch will have to be a high protein bar because there’s no time for a proper meal. In the land of Super Woman, she runs herself ragged to the point of collapse. But she does take 114 different vitamins & natural supplements to replace everything she’s draining out of her poor body every day by doing too much, too often, and for too many.
But still there is more she ought to be able to do! There’s Mommy-And-Me classes at the local Y, circuit training at the gym, baking for the annual church sale tonight, helping Tommy with his 3rd grade math homework which looks to her like ancient hieroglyphics, and the book club meeting to discuss a Meaningful, Non-Fluff piece of fine literature, naturally. And let’s not forget the 5:30 pm appointment at the dentist for that abscessed tooth she thought wouldn’t swell her face up to the size of a cantaloupe. Nope. Can’t put that off again. Thank goodness for laughing gas……at least she’d be in La-La-land for a while and that was something to bring her mania down a notch, right?
Uh oh. Tonight is Thursday which means hubby-dearest is expecting his usual ‘back-rub’ & hoping it leads to something a little more meaningful later. Wink-wink.
Is it too late to shoot Gloria Steinem, I wonder?
How is it we were so ‘oppressed’ before Women’s Lib opened our eyes, I wonder? This liberated-and-Equal Super Woman longs for the days when a wife was expected to hang laundry on the clothesline using real wooden clothespins because she didn’t have the luxury of a dryer. The simpler times, when the TV had 5 channels, all needing to be changed by hand….GASP. The good old days when the most pressing thing on her mind was whether to watch My Favorite Martian re-runs or The Honeymooners to see what cleverly snide remark Alice would be making to her bus driving husband? Or how aggravated Norton would make Ralphie-boy this evening?
Yep, life sure did get complicated when Mrs. shortened her name to Ms. When she traded her housewife status & leisurely-but-boring annual vacation in the Poconos for a 2 hour time-out in an oxygen bar, after a rushed high-colonic in the health spa while Madam Elsa worked to squeeze out some stubborn blackheads on her carefully made-up face.
Then Versus NOW: From Suffrage to Suffer-age?
Sigh.
I’ll have to cut this story short, I’m afraid, since it’s now 5:00 & time for me to buck the rush-hour traffic for my 22.5 mile commute home, where the second half of my day will promptly begin. But hey, I can do it……I am, after all,
Superwoman.
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