The “westerners” (i.e. europeans & north americans) always, always go for small talk when we bump into them. On weekdays at the water cooler the typical opener is “How are you?”. You’re expected to respond with “great, blah… and you?” then you go your separate ways.

Ah but on Monday morning or after a long weekend, the opener is “How was your weekend?” (On Fridays after work, the pub talk starts with “any plans for the weekend?”. The answers to this question are varied, it can be a curt “It wasn’t bad, you?” to a long retelling of what fish they caught or movies they saw. Me, my favorite answer before was “it was very relaxing”.

Pre-baby, my weekend ritual was to breeze thru housework, finish whatever I was reading during the week, watch telly AND spend hours & hours relaxing. I take long baths complete with bubble bath, oils, salts & candles to finish my aromatherapy. I spend weekend time on myself. It’s even better if my husband is off-duty on weekends. We give each other massages & I get him to give me a foot spa!

Two-years after my little boy and I can only sigh. With a toddler in the house, there is no relaxing. Not even during his naps, the only time I can fit in some housework. One- to two-hours of washing dishes and cooking meals/merienda, loading the laundry & ironing the clothes. And of course weekend is family time. We go out, we play in the park, do family things.

I cannot contemplate taking out my foot spa materials, it will attract my son like a fruit to a fly. Aromatherapeutic baths? Well if you count playing in the bath with my son, then yes, I still do that. I can’t even go to the loo alone now.

For what it’s worth, I love the weekends even more. Sure there’s less ‘me’ time, but there’s more ‘love’ time.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 2:37 pm and is filed under family, motherhood, napansin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.