Domestic Goddess

By day's end, I have created Swedish meatballs, new potatoes, Brussels sprouts, eggplant Parmesan for one child's lunches and pasta for another's, and maybe-they're-healthy date-nut brownies. If I can't even believe it myself, I have the dirty dishes to prove it. It occurs to me that the people who create these recipes have whole staffs to clean up after them.

It is, to be sure, a domestic goddess kind of a day, the only real problem (aside from the dirty dishes, because who wants those?) being that the domestic goddess day is followed by a "bring home the bacon" overnight shift of work. 

I am often touting the advantages of working overnight--it affords me daytime hours for human being appointments and involvement with my children. But like all advantages, these are advantages with risk. Without a great deal of sleep vigilance, those daytime hours are readily consumed with daytime activities. If I am at home, it is hard not to feel that I am, well, at home, and therefore available for a certain amount of domestic responsibility. Once day breaks and I have made it through another night, the new day presents all sorts of missions to be accomplished. And in the light of day, memories of the fuzziness of the night before and thoughts of the night to come are about as reliable as the "always hotter than necessary" flame on my stove.

Thankfully, overnight work or not, home during the day or not, I don't have the desire to be a domestic goddess all of the time. Even if I were to survive, I don't know that my kitchen would. So, I work, and I manage. And I remind myself that one person doesn't have to use all twenty-four hours in every day. And that it is possible to work a few of the goddess qualities without committing to being a full-time domestic goddess. It's time for a little take-out.