"Yay, it's the weekend!" you hear your 20-something-old childless colleague exclaim excitedly. "What plans do you have?" You stop yourself from rolling your eyes and mumble something about kids and birthdays, and hurriedly escape before more questions are asked. After all, how could they know? Parents don't have weekends.
That TGIF excitement came to a sudden standstill the moment you had kids. Gone are the days when you would party until late on Friday and sleep in until noon on Saturday.
Now, it's more like "what's a weekend?" You don't even remember what it is because parents have given up the right to have those fabled days of rest.
Here are the many reasons why parents just don't – and can't – have weekends.
1. It doesn't matter that it's Sunday – your little walking, talking human alarm clock still faithfully wakes you up at 6am, and seems mighty pleased about it too.
2. You've still got to go through the same weekday motions of getting breakfast for your child (sometimes more than one if he's going through a fussy phase), giving him a shower, helping him brush his teeth, dressing him etc.
3. Your weekend to-do list is as long as it is during the week.
4. Work never stops on a weekend for you. Even if you're not going to your office, you've still got enough household duties piled up to get you through this weekend and the next (and the next and the next). Especially on Sunday when your helper takes her day off.
5. You may not have to drop your kids at school, but you still need to drop them at their enrichment classes.
6. There's no peace and quiet on a weekend for you. In fact, the noise levels are probably much higher than they are during the week.
7. Your child is as demanding on a Saturday as he is on a Tuesday.
8. Sleep-ins are a thing of the past, so much so that you start to wonder if they were just a figment of your imagination.
9. Taking your child to a birthday party on the weekend -- and staying there with him/her -- is as traumatic (even more, maybe) than a meeting with that extremely difficult client you deal with at work.
10. Two words: grocery shopping.
11. Your levels of tiredness and sleep deprivation remain constant through the weekend (see point 8).
12. You still have to provide three meals (no more lazy brunches!).
13. Whatever short breaks you have during your weekends, you use to check email and talk to the same people you talk to throughout the week.
14. There's a very high probability your child or husband will come down with the flu/a cold/ man-flu/a tummy bug on Friday night. It's like Murphy's Law for mums.
Mums and dads, I'm sure you'll agree -- we don't say TGIF anymore. We say TGIS (Thank God It's Sunday) because once the kids go to school the next day, our semblance of a weekend starts!
What's your weekend like usually? How do you squeeze in some 'me time'?
