Wifeliness is Next to Laziness

I don’t want to be yet another voice criticizing this woman, as she’s already gained some notoriety and some infamy.  However, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t visit her website and then return to it a few weeks later to see if it was really and truly, as the kids say, “for reals.”  And it is.  At least I think it is.

She’s created an online scrapbook of images of 1940s and 1950s housewife aesthetic. You know, the time when wives stopped doing things and just started buying them.  Actually, I should correct myself. Her site doesn’t read as a scrapbook because she doesn’t make anything.  Rather, it acts as a catalog of what to buy to become, I guess, happy.

I’m technically on maternity leave until the middle of August.  However, I officially quit my job a few weeks back.  This was very difficult for me for reasons much too predictable to go into.  But here’s the crux of it.  While I feel that staying home is going to be valuable, I worry about people assuming it’s to ascend to Ms. Cox’s (excuse me, Miss Cox’s) ideal.  I’m worried about people assuming this means lots of time for shopping and lunches and daytime T.V.  And while those things will be present, they’ve become drastically reduced since I’ve made this choice.  One reason for this is that one income means that we’ve made a conscious choice to be poor — poorer than I’ve ever been.  But here’s the irony: we’re not actually going to be poor.  We’re just going to be moderate.  We’re going to have one car and one refrigerator, and our kid is going to get toys, but maybe only one at a time.  I’ll use my dryer when the sun isn’t available and eating out will be celebratory.

I’m lazy and for me the easiest and most immediate thing I can do to make myself feel less crazy about the world is to simply differentiate between needs and wants.  For example, I need you to respect me.  I want you to have disdain for Miss Cox.  Oops, I guess I’m not as perfect as I thought.