{"id":6525,"date":"2012-10-18T14:47:05","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T14:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/?p=6525"},"modified":"2012-10-18T15:14:03","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T15:14:03","slug":"the-baffling-thing-about-being-a-stay-at-home-mom-sahm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/the-baffling-thing-about-being-a-stay-at-home-mom-sahm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Baffling Thing About Being a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Without really planning to, I’ve become a Stay At Home Mom<\/a>, affectionately known as SAHM<\/a> on the internets. \u00a0This is a much less prestigious position than the Work At Home Mom (WAHM<\/a>), which again, is usually deemed less prestigious than just being a Working Mom<\/a>. \u00a0I am painfully aware that I’m now occupying the lowest of the low rungs of ‘healthy’ society (i.e. not the addicts, the mentally ill, etc), but I’m trying to put a happy face on it, and enjoy myself. \u00a0Because I’m assuming this is a temporary situation.<\/p>\n

Of course, the original plan was to go get myself a ‘normal’ job this fall, but then I got pregnant, and it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle to get set up at a new job for a few months, only to disappear for more months, and then stress about reappearing.<\/p>\n

We also planned our finances in such a way that we could survive off of only one of us working, or to be more precise, off of Finnur working in a job in his field, or me working a ‘regular’ (non-academic) job as some sort of engineer. \u00a0It pains me to say, but my salary as a teacher at the University of Iceland for the past couple of years wasn’t terrible by general-population Icelandic standards, but way below what my fellow engineers were pulling in. \u00a0And it has me fearing for the future of the EE department. \u00a0In fact I think these past two years will go down in my personal history as ‘Hrefna volunteers her time and energy for the good of her country – or at least a handful of students’. \u00a0And now I’m volunteering my time for my own family.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, I thought I’d have hit the ‘Bottom of the Boredom Bowl’ by mid-October, but that’s just not true. \u00a0I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of all that I want to accomplish during my me-time, although I’ve been knocking things off the to-do list at a fairly regular rate. \u00a0It’s pretty baffling really. \u00a0How can there be so many tasks hidden in a home?!?<\/p>\n

In fact, I’m starting to get the somewhat sinking feeling that the task-list is pretty endless, so it might be pertinent to set up some sort of an end-goal?! \u00a0Something like ‘Walking into a room in the house only prompts 1-2 things-I’d-like-to-do instead of 4-5’? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Another factor in not finding my boredom-bottom has been that tendrils of my old job have lingered a bit. \u00a0Only yesterday I gave a short talk at the University of Iceland<\/a>\u00a0(It’s a video-link! \u00a0My part starts on minute 23, but it’s in Icelandic. \u00a0Go there for my baby bump if you’re interested… \ud83d\ude42 )\u00a0on my experience weaving together ‘teaching and research’, and I’ve sort of agreed to write a short paper on it, drawn from my final project that I just finished<\/a> – apparently on my own time!<\/p>\n

So yes, I’m surprisingly busy these days. \u00a0If I’m not nursing a sick kid back to health (or nursing myself back to health after nursing the sick kid back to health), I’m driving around town finishing errands, or organizing stuff at home, or doing the endless laundry, or just mucking about online. \u00a0I have yet to be bored, and it shocks me.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge by far is not talking to other adults for long stretches of time, but that was also the case when I was doing my Ph.D. so there’s nothing really new there.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that was today’s meditation on my life as a sheltered princess. \u00a0I better go assemble that Ikea chest of drawers now… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

p.s. \u00a0The home is far from being spotless. \u00a0Just thought you should know. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without really planning to, I’ve become a Stay At Home Mom, affectionately known as SAHM on the internets. \u00a0This is a much less prestigious position than the Work At Home Mom (WAHM), which again, is usually deemed less prestigious than just being a Working Mom. \u00a0I am painfully aware that I’m now occupying the lowestRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6525"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6532,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525\/revisions\/6532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}