I’m nearly a decade into parenting, if you factor in pregnancy (and I choose to, because I view pre-natal vitamins as the preparation for a lifetime of sacrifice). So it’s embarassing to admit what just occurred to me as I doled out food that morning to various mammals: parenting is the only job besides combat soldier where you wake up on the job. Sure, some lawyers work punishing hours and have been known to sleep at the office on occasion, but no one has ever walked into their bedroom in the dark of night and demanded a re-analysis of tort reform.
Not only do you wake up on the job, you frequently wake up to information which would make a lesser person try to hide in the box with the ski-clothes. Which parent among us hasn’t awakened to the fact that a) There’s a lot of vomit in their house, b) It’s someone else's vomit, and c) It’s their job to take care of both the vomit and the person who is currently generating more vomit. And need it be said that a sleepless night or two with children hosting an especially energetic stomach virus – one that causes the washing-machine to actually die from overuse – should result in a little extra bonus in ones parenting paycheck? Of course, in the real world, the extra bonus is the parent getting the stomach flu, which arrives the morning the parent has signed on to monitor a field-trip to a pig farm.
"For What It's Worth" from The QC Report blogged by Quinn Cummings.
Posted while listening, no kidding, to "Sweet Child of Mine" on the radio...
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