to find proper real grown up life excruciatingly tedious?

[icecold]

i was really really good at being a teenager and a 20-somefink......now Ive had kids, have been in the same job career for 6 years, have been maried got divorced, have a mortgage......

Its rubbish

My life was quite transient before marriage/kids..it has been an internal battle to 'settle down'

Its crap

I dont want to talk to people about the ins and outs of child rearing/ mortgages/ pensions/ holiday destinations/ feta cheese.

In 2 years i will be in a position to be able to travel and work. would i be a terrible mother to disrupt my dcs childhoods because im bored and restless?

How the fuck do you all get through every day?

How do we get through everyday?

We escape to MN, don't we? Personally I spend much less time on here when I'm having a fun/busy/interesting time IRL.

icecold, would you be happy under a tree in the snow?
Yabu to like moving...but sounds like you had an awesome holiday, if you can have holiday happiness everyday then go for it!
DH is changing careers next year (fingers x-ed) and we'll live where the work takes us

I also spend a lot of time outside. Like a lot, just looking at lizards and bees and stuff.

We have even had a camp out in the back on a work night. It was fun! We put up the tent and cooked on the grill and just slept out for the night for no particular reason.

I also live in a remote area so it wasn't a noisy car hell, but it's something fun to do.

I don't mind the house stuff (I like a tidy house) or the baby stuff (I love my DD) but I felt exactly like that about my job.

Every week I'd fantasise about doing something crazy like racing through the office throwing paper around and yelling 'what's the point of it all?' or simply hanging up on a conference call mid way through and going to sit in the park instead. I hated the banality of it all - 'did you see X Factor last night/did you see the Apprentice?' etc etc.

I was definitely not suited to office jobs that in involve doing the same banal tasks over & over. I don't know what I am suited to, exactly, but not that.

icecold, I totally know how you feel. I find for some reason that whenever I have both the dishwasher and the washing machine going together - the household running functionally - I just get this overwhelming sense of the mundanity of my existence.

Of course you should take your kids abroad! They will be fine. Stability is good, but experience and adventure is good too. Their stability will be you. Read a book called 'The Seven Year Hitch' about a family travelling the world in a horse-drawn carriage and bringing their kids up along the way.

horse - if we choose outside, do we get to build our own shelter or use a tent or something? And does it have to be here, or can we transfer to a tropical beach? And if we choose inside, will there be people there talking to us about hedge funds and yak milkshakes?

Being grown-up is a bit rubbish. I wish I had enough money to pretend not to be a grown-up (by paying other people to do all my grown-up stuff for me).

By the way, evening classes are sooo grown-up. If you get a babysitter, you should go and share a bottle of vodka on a park bench with a friend and chat up some boys. That's not very grown-up.

God, thank fuck for this thread! DP and I often talk about which of our colleagues / friends are "real" grown ups, we are definitely pretend ones, we put on a good act but I really really don't care about some of the shit my friends who are also mothers obsess about: organic milk, phonics, the exact timing of activities so that Octavia / Henry (not Harry) / Augustus naps at the right time to allow for the bedtime routine, how much sugar there is in a petit filou, Peppa Pig being a bad influence...... oh my fucking god, shoot me now if I ever have a whole conversation about any of those things! We survive by having as many days / evenings "off" as a couple that the GPs can allow us (bless them) and doing a LOT of things separately with friends, overnight beer/curry trips, gigs etc. And FWIW, bollocks to those people up thread who say you had the children so now your life has to be all about them and you can't disrupt them by doing something for yourself. If that were true there would be no divorce for a start and no-one in the services would have kids. I adore my gorgeous children but I do not start and end with them and when I have a week or two where it is all about them, I get very tetchy and guess who is on the receiving end of that? So no, to conclude OP, YANBU!

horse RIGHT NOW, under a tree in the snow sounds great...but i understand the question ...can we wear lots of technical gear? how long will the snow last?...fuck it, i dont care...id still rather be outside under a tree in the snow, than inside. the idea of never going outside makes me rip at my clothes. I feel a bit hot and faint

on a darker note...if you had to either stamp on a kitten or sleep a night in a bed of dog poo, which would you do?

iis thats more like it!

i have been fantising about taking lots of drugs. Just for a weekend of course-then back behind the facade. Drug of choice used to be LSD...dont even now if you can still get it there is probably something much much better these days?

haha trixie i havent paid much attention to the details about why peppa-pig is a bad influence, but i knew it. I laffed today, because my DDDdad was round and commented on how posh peppa-pig is. Maybe it is his fault.

iismum, no shelter aside from tree/caves/inside a tauntaun.
You may live on tropical island (or anywhere else, goes for inside too...you can live in the White House if you choose).

icecold, technical gear is ok, as long as it's not a James Bond jacket that turns into a tent or something.
Dog Poo bed everytime...I think the last time I stepped on a snail I cried.

It's the talking to other grownups and pretending to be one that gets me. I have to go to the bank, buy things in shops and one day soon DS will be at school and I will have to talk to teachers younger than me and make out that I am one of them.

You know those movies where aliens or zombies or similar have taken over and the survivors have to pretend to be aliens/zombies to get from point A to point B? I am terrified that the other grownups will spot me pretending to be one and all hell will break loose.

On the other hand we are just about to move house and I am very excited about it, but mostly because I get a whole new toy house to play with. I also like having a car because I haven't lost that "Ooh, look at me driving a real car!" excitement. I don't give a crap about mileage etc: I am flying the Millennium Falcon when I go round University Roundabout (as, I suspect, are half the other mutters).

Being a grownup has precisely these things going for it:
Driving
Sex
Mild substance abuse
Being able to watch 18 films
Deciding what to do at weekends
Swearing
Having snuggly babies to squeeze

The paperwork, cleaning and conversation sucks.

Take the kids abroad and save them from a future of pretending to give a shit about house prices before it's too late. Save yourselves (it's too late for me)!

ice - drugs definitely help with the having-to-be-a-grown-up problem - as long as you have reliable childcare lined up for a good while afterwards (like, at least three days if you're going to be as ambitious as LSD! Which I believe does still exist.) Nothing so shockingly grown-up as having to deal with children when you really, really need to be in bed.

One grown-up thing I really struggle with is going to bed at a sensible time. Every day I vow to myself that I will turn the light out by 1030, so I can spring out of bed full of the joys of spring in time to do the school run. Every evening I am so relieved when the treadmill of childcare, work, supper, bedtime, tidying, blah blah blah ends and I can finally do my own thing that I can never force myself to do it and always go to bed far too late. Why doesn't school start at 11?!

live how you want to live, stuff how you think grown-ups 'should' behave.

i know quite a lot of people who have gone their own way - DHs best friend is an artist who does some graphic design on the side but many of his friends in turn are full-time 100% artists who do no paid work at all just occassionally sell work and live very very very frugally. it's not for me but i admire their choice.
we spend a lot of time outdoors and have friends who make their living guiding or teaching outdoor activities on a seasonal basis - and they have children and everything
my best friend is currently in a small country in Asia working and spends about one year in every three abroad.
i think it's knowing them that gave me the confidence to go freelance this year and i'm far more mainstream than them but LOVING being my own boss an working my own hours. I feel so FREE!

You know those movies where aliens or zombies or similar have taken over and the survivors have to pretend to be aliens/zombies to get from point A to point B? I am terrified that the other grownups will spot me pretending to be one and all hell will break loose

THIS is it exactly!!

Ahhhhh...im so glad yous lot feel this too

or...sometimes, i think i am in a game show, or its some kind of trick like Candid Camera or similar...was there a film with that welsh bird and that american husband actor, like that?

maybe you need to explore why you have a need to change things all the time

i get this i was always this way, i was always restless i loved change but would soon be bored. i moved often, changed jobs, got bored in relationships then i realised i was never really happy with what i had and it was about me no one else (but yes everyday things that need to be done is boring totally agree)

i still quite like change (the thought of living in the same hours for 30 years, going to the same place on holiday, same restaurants horrifies me) but i feel at last settled and do nto have that need for change all the time

and book a weekend away if you can

opener - I total feel that too. Sometimes I feel a bit panicky about my children not having a proper grown-up mother.

Having kids even makes grown-up stuff less fun:

Driving [to classes, parties, etc., with a baby seat in the back and a family friendly car]
Sex [once the kids are in bed, if you have the energy and don't make too much noise]
Mild substance abuse [on the very rare occasions you can get decent childcare to cover you for long enough to recover, which takes a long time now my poor old body is so grown-up]
Being able to watch 18 films [once the children are in bed]
Deciding what to do at weekends [as long as it's child-friendly, or not so un-child-friendly that the children will be unbearable]
Swearing [but being careful not to do in front of the children, or at least not to do it in front of the children when a proper grown-up is also present]
Having snuggly babies to squeeze [but not having anyone to give them back to when you feel like doing something else.

sigh

michael douglas
catherine zeta jones

(adding meat to the bones!)

horse dog poo for me too...i apologise to the snails, its too late by then of course. it is very upsetting though

I just think if you do stuff you like to do all the time it can get boring or become negative - too much of a good thing etc. Like if you eat too many cakes you get fat.
I think life needs to be balanced between work & leisure. That's not too say you can't do work you enjoy, but even when you do enjoy it, there are still boring parts!

But you need mundane things to make the good stuff seem more enjoyable. I think it also helps to live in the moment & enjoy the small things.

Swearing [but being careful not to do in front of the children, or at least not to do it in front of the children when a proper grown-up is also present]

hahahaha....i swear in front of the kids all the time . But you are so right...NOT when there is a real grown up around.

Oh, I know.

I am dreading whatever a playdate is because then I will have to make polite conversation with other parents and they or their children will twig that I am not doing this whole grownup thing properly and the DC will be teased for having a weird mum. I will let the mask slip a bit and it will become apparent I am not One Of Them. I was shit at toddler groups as well.

Arrgh.

horse, if we go for indoors, can we have a massive glass-house like at Kew, with enormous trees and water features and stuff, attached to our indoors? And maybe a sort of artificial river?

Mary, I think you are right about living in the moment and enjoying small things. But I'm not so convinced about mundanity being necessary to make the good stuff seem better. I travelled loads in my 20s and had very little mundanity and it was brilliant. Not at all bored of constant fun and hardly any responsibility.

YANBU

I haven;t had sex (regularly) for 3 years - in my 20's I wouldn't have gone 3 weeks

I am single and between the 3 kids, work and life I can't find myself anymore - add increasingly aging parents into the mix - happy days

without my mates I'd disappear

But don't panic opener, because I know at least a couple of parents from DD's school who are not really grown-ups either. The trick is to work out who they are whilst carefully keeping the mask in place for all the others.