Lady of Leisure

My mom calls me a lady of leisure because I'm on maternity leave now. When one is self-employed, the concept of maternity leave is a bit different. Basically, what that means is that I have not scheduled myself for any work. So from now until Pitt classes start (and I email my clients to tell them I'm back in the game) I am on free time...perpetual, endless, agonizing free time.

Monday wasn't too bad. Parking court took up the majority of the day, what with the traveling by bus and the untimeliness of the system. Yesterday was a nightmare. I woke up like usual and dusted and swept and mopped the entire house. The entire house. This took longer than it ordinarily would, just because even the act of wringing out the mop is more difficult when there's a child with feet inside your larynx. But I was still done by noon.

I had the whole day to make Corey lunch and dinner, watch MTV, finally write thank you notes from my baby shower...which leaves me with today wiiiiiiiiiiide open. I scrubbed the shower curtain in the back yard, used the scrub brush and got the kitchen floor again (Emily of New Moon style) and the bathroom smells like a Borax+Lemon juice dream.

So what do I do now? People have listed suggestions: dive back into my book proposal for my grad school manuscript, knit things for Baby Love, go for long walks, read. I just don't know what people DO when they find themselves with time off. For the past six weeks, I haven't even taken one DAY off from grading papers and working on projects. Now I find myself faced with boundless free time, yet unable to travel more than 45 minutes from the hospital, drink alcohol, or walk more than 15 feet without needing to sit. I tell you, it's just mean.

For the first time in my life, I am on a vacation where I'm not sneaking in a writing assignment, working in a pill factory, or able to drink wine. It doesn't feel very leisurely. I think I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon churning ice cream by hand and watching either one of those pregnant and 16 shows on mtv.com OR finding illegal episodes of Dexter to catch up on.