Ours is not to reason why...

I've thought of some other reasons to work besides the fulfillment of smacking grammar into cast-iron minds with a balsa-wood 2x4.

* Food--I'm a fan!

*Air conditioning--don't stay home without it!

*Eating out--with the way I cook, this is a definite necessity.

*Braces for the kids--so they can eat my world class "makes leather look like butter" steak.

*Movies--no self-respecting media junkie would deny herself this staple.

*The Internet--so my husband doesn't run screaming out of the chaos with his hair on fire.

*Girl clothes--for the little girls.

*Boy clothes--for the ginormous boys.

*Me clothes--because finding big mama clothes to fit mama's big butt don't come cheap.

*Mate's clothes--because if I don't buy him clothes he will wear them UNTIL THEY ROT OFF HIS BODY. I tested this once--wasn't pretty.

*The laundry monster--I can manage to wash the clothes but I can't manage to fold them. They sit on one side of the bed until the we can roll off on that side without actually changing altitude...the mattress gets a little lumpy, but, hell, nothing gets broken. Although I can't fold the clothes because, no matter where he is in the house when the cave troll hears the fibers being pressed he comes charging in to jump on my folded piles like Charlie Brown jumping into a pile of leaves, nobody every bothers Mate when he sits in our bedroom and watches the Kings lose...ever--so he can get lots of laundry folded and nobody's the wiser. However, for reasons known only to himself, he doesn't fold laundry during the summer when I don't work. If I don't go back to work, that puppy's gonna take over the block.

*My self-worth--If I could manage to clean the house, this would not be a problem, but I'm hopeless. I'm sitting right now at a table filled with an ungodly pile of crap, and it's like it doesn't even register until someone comes by and I suddenly see it through the eyes of a sane person and then I'm like "Wow--who gave this woman her license to procreate?" If I didn't work, write, or knit, I'd have nothing tangible to prove that I earn my oxygen and the cubic footage of flesh storage it takes to sustain me on the planet.

*My conversational reserves--If I didn't work all I'd have to talk about would be my kids--who are mostly only cute to me--and the characters in my books--who (hello) DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST!!!! I need to go to school and teach so I have something to talk about that happens somewhere besides my over-stimulated gray matter--otherwise, I AM the world's most boring human.

* Self-betterment--If I'm not teaching literature, all I'm reading is crap. (With the exception of Roxie and the Yarn Harlot--that's good stuff:-)

* Getting the check--I don't do direct deposit because Mate and I were so poor for so long, it still tickles me to drop that puppy in the deposit envelope and watch it make my bank account fatter. (The fact that our living expenses have multiplied geometrically since our salad days does not diminish this satisfaction in the least.)

* Teaching my children by example--if nothing else, by negative example. For instance, I've told them both that they need to take a home ec class in high school, because they need to learn that real food has names.

* Sleep is overrated--that's what I've been told, anyway.

* Running water--two thumbs WAYYY up!

* Yarn--still the best excuse ever for shaving a sheep.

So I've got reasons to go on...but that didn't stop me from jumping up and down with my arm in the air going "me me me me me me...I'LL do it" when Mate and I were discussing who gets to take all of Tuesday off to take the kids to the big kahuna of orthodontist appointments. I mean, you have to stay sane to stay circumspect, right?