World's Brattiest Woman

I'm a huge brat. This is not an epiphany for me. Frank would tell you I've been a brat for a long time and he's not exaggerating nor does it hurt my feelings. I like to have things my way (and I usually do). I enjoy pretty presents and expensive bags and shoes and clothes. This is not to say I'm vain or shallow because I'm neither of those - I blow dry my hair without a mirror or hairbrush every day for pete's sake. Some days I don't even brush it (it's short so you can't really tell). That aside, I own up to the fact that I'm an enormous brat, made even worse by Frank spoiling me and giving me what I want.

So why then, is this topic blog worthy? I don't know that it even is, I just realized that my brattiness has taken on an entirely new dimension recently and it's the brattiest I have ever been.

I don't want to work anymore. There. I said it.

I've had jobs since I was 15 years old. I always liked having a job and working. When I graduated from college I tried to take some time off before entering the grown up workforce. It lasted a month before I felt bored and lazy and had to get a job. When I first started teaching I did that plus waitressed at night, both for the money and to be around people instead of home alone in my single girl apartment. I've always been proud of having a job and have always been dedicated and reliable and blah blah blah.

No one really likes working, I get this. Even when you've found your life's true calling and what you do fills you with a sense of purpose or worth or whatever. At the end of the day, work is for jerks. If work were fun, as my friend Nicky says, they wouldn't call it work. And so even when I was saving the world one poor neglected child at a time, I still had resigned myself to this unavoidable fact. So why now with the internal whining and tantrums? (I stress internal here people, I'm not throwing tantrums or whining out loud about going to work. Just in my head. And now on the internet.)

Maybe part of it is the total life suck that is my job and how after 4 and a half years of working for the real life incarnation of Michael Scott and Mr. Pitt combined (with none of the humor), I just can't take it anymore. When I compare that burnout with the way more important things happening in my life right now, I just want to run screaming. Not that I ever cared about ordering the correct type of sock or helping decipher stereograms (I swear to God), but at least before I could fake it.

But it's more than I don't want to do this job anymore. I don't want to do any job right now. I want to be home, cleaning things and unpacking those last few boxes. I want to spend my day trying to figure out where the old man smell is coming from in my bathroom and get rid of it. (More on the old man smell later. Seriously, it's killing me.) I want to make dinner and fold clothes and be home when Frank gets home from work so that we can eat together.

It's bizarre really. I'm no housekeeper and we've never had a typical home life because of our shifty work schedules. In fact, my aversion to any type of housework usually borders on violent. There are so many better things to do than dust and straighten. My friends and I have talked at length about how we're definitely going back to work after we have babies because eff that, we're not the kind of girls who stay in the house with a brat all day, vacuuming the lamp shades. In fact, all of those friends had babies and went back to work and here I am, baby not even born yet and I'm looking for my apron and string of pearls. Whaaaaat??

Is this a particularly strong onset of nesting? Perhaps brought on by my crazy work schedule whereby I'm not home till late at night and I work lots of weekends? It's possible. But if I think about teaching in a classroom right now, I don't want that either. Again, the desire to just be home doing domestic things is overwhelming. It's not even the desire to be home on the couch with a tub of ice cream, which would make a little more sense. Oh no, I want to pull out my standing mixer and bake things from scratch.

Obviously I'm not going to up and quit my job to become a stay at home preggo. Just saying that right now, I wouldn't mind it if I did.