Being a housewife is not easy

Oh dear, I have almost forgotten my passwords to sign in. I better start writing again. I was so busy during the first week of my sabbatical trying to adjust myself to "housewife" style. Believe me it is not as easy as we think when we are always on "part-time" basis.

I still make it a point to wake up at 5am everyday. This is to ensure that I do not have to adjust my wake up time when I have to get back to work. When my son has boarded the school bus at 6am, I was kind of lost at my first Monday of my sabbatical as I usually would proceed to the hawker center to grab breakfast and catch the bus to office. At that moment, I did not know what I should do. I thought maybe I could get back to sleep again for another 2 hours. But I just could not get on to bed. I guess it is just a habit in me that once I wake up, I will not get back to sleep again. I had breakfast, read the newspaper, watched 1 or 2 disc of HK VCD till about 9am. This is relaxing for me.

Then I start running errands from 9am. Like going to the bank, supermakert, returning books for the kids etc. Don't think these are small issues, but it will take up alot of time since they may be a different locations. By the time I finished all these errands, it was almost lunch time.

I grab a quick lunch and mind you, I can have full one hour rest at the office. But when I am at home, I normally just rest for 30 minutes. The tough part for me is the afternoon schedule. My son has extra classes from Monday to Thursday. I usually have my father or neigbour aunty to pick him up. Since I am free during these periods, I just want to try and do it myself to spend more time with him. You know it was so diffcult for me as I am seldom out under the sun between 2-3pm. I felt like I would faint anytime during that 10 minutes while walking from the bus-stop to his school. The other thing that I could not take it is his school bag is so heavy that I had shoulder ache after picking him for 3 days. I cannot image how a kid can manage such a bag when adult find it a problem. He has packed according to his time-table but still it will not be any lighter. Sign....

Then it is time to run through his homework and revision. This is again something I realised that when we are with them for such a long time, we tend to loose patience easily. I keep telling myself to be calm as this 5 weeks will be my only opportunity to be full time with him. After dinner, spend a little chat time with him and have to get ready for him to go to bed.

When he has gone to bed, I have to start clearing my own emails and pending issues that I could not finish during the day. By the time I could take my shower, it would be almost 9pm which is no difference when I am at work.

In the office, I had a schedule of what I have to do each day. But at home, there is no fix schedule. Anything can happen anytime. I have to adjust accordingly to each situation. Honestly speaking, during the 1st week, physical and mentally, I was very tire, more tire than when I worked. By they time I was on bed, I just felt that I am half dead. Now I am adjusting better. We need to give credits to those who are staying home full time managing their role so well.