I bought White Trash Mom, the Handbook this weekend. I think I am going to love this book. My real hope is that it will crush my expectations and bring me back to reality. My reality. The reality that I, being the major breadwinner in our family, must work.

Here is the list of things that I simply cannot do without the threat of losing my job, my mind, and the minisucle amount of time before bed I get to spend with my daughter. These are the things I seem the other mothers doing, in designer sweats.

• Walking her to her classroom every morning. Instead I drop her off on the corner and make sure she waits for the safety lady to give her the go ahead to cross. If we are early I can take her to her daycare and she can ride the van to school, even more "special".
• Picking her up from school and being the first person she tells her day to.
• Volunteering to help the teacher.
• Volunteering
• Serving on a committee. All the meetings are either in the morning or right after school.
• Picking my daughter up from an after school activity. (Due to what amounted to begging, she will be a girl scout this year because I got permission to block out the last hour an half of one day per week to go an pick her up)
• Serve or prepare a dish for the Teacher Appreciation Monthly Luncheons.
• Eat lunch with my daughter in her lunch room.
• Take my daughter to Back to School Swim night-night being from 4-6.
• Chaperone more than one of her field trips per year. (She was the only, and how is that even possible???, kid that was not taken home from the kindergarten Zoo field trip)

I am sure there are more, and possibly even less because right now I am having my own little pity party.

I always thought that the struggle with coveting would be about material things: cars, houses, clothes, and stuff. This year it seems even harder for me to take Anna to school and see all these other moms casually talking to one another in various stages of dress, ready to go to the gym or home to finish the breakfast dishes. I never knew that I would struggle so hard to be understanding when I hear stay-at-home moms say they just don't have time to get something done. This is such a myopic view, I know, but some days it just really gets to me.

Rant over. Besides, if I had to choose to be at home with a nursing baby and a two year old I would take every bit of what I wrote above back. But once all the kids are in school or Mother's Day Out? well that is what I am comparing myself to. See, totally myopic.