Some Thoughts About Leisure

While in college I took a handful of Women's Studies courses. One of the things that I found very thought provoking was the emergence of hobbies and leisure time throughout history. It seems that with every generation, women have more leisure time than the generation before. This has been made possible with modern day conveniences like the microwave, dishwasher and I would even argue that Super Wal-Marts and Target with their Market Pantry have made me more efficient. Going back further in time, as the middle class began to form ordinary people could afford housekeepers to clean. Hence, more free time. We, here at Ranch Renaissance, have taken a step back in history.

Granted, we did spend the morning and part of the afternoon doing family things or spending time with friends but at 9:30 pm we finally declared it was time to stop doing "stuff" around the house. The "stuff" I speak of is laundry, preparing food in our meager excuse for a kitchen, cleaning up around the house, preparing a grocery list and washing dishes. Yes, that last one is my least favorite. I miss my dishwasher. We hate doing dishes so much that we had to make a committment to one another that no one could have any fun after the boys go down until the dishes were all done. I really shouldn't complain, it's not that many dishes. We have switched to paper plates and plastic silverware but it still stinks.

I was hoping that Brian might write about what he worked on today while the boys were sleeping but he's been dying to dig into Harry Potter. I'll sum it up: He installed a new bathroom fan (and there were a lot of problems so this was quite an ordeal but only a one Lowe's trip and that was to purchase it so it doesn't really count). If he was to write about it the title would something like: "I AM A MAN!" or "Gosh, It's Quiet Now That Andi Has Stopped Nagging Me and the Fan Isn't So Damn Loud" or "Super Cool Man Installs Super Cool Fan" or "Ah, It's Down! Now I Can Have Some Leisure Time!"