Juggling Mom.

When my oldest daughter was in preschool, we were big fans of Mary Rice Hopkins. She writes songs for young children, but several for mommies too, and I loved them. Juggling Mom begins:

I juggle as a mom,
But life goes on and on
And I struggle when I wear so many shoes.
First wife then a mother
Then a sister to my brother
And I struggle just to juggle all I do.

I hear you, Mary. I'm a wife, a mommy, a daughter, a sister, an employee, a volunteer, a friend, and much more. I have a job to go to, a house to maintain, meals to prepare and serve, sports and activity schedules to maintain and chauffer kids to, small wardrobes to maintain...oh heck, if you've got kids you know what I mean. The list of needs that you have to meet is neverending. (At my current count, I have been interrupted 11 times while writing this to deal with requests for popsicles, asking if ten minutes is a long enough nap and can I get out of bed yet, and many other random things. Daddy is sitting six feet away, but they can't seem to see him.)

Moms need a break. We need some time just for us. It's universal. We find that in a million different ways: we read, we do crafts, we go out with our girlfriends, we play sports, we write, we watch TV, and on and on.

I game. I fell in love with it years back with Legend of the Red Dragon, fighting hordes of rabid chipmunks and flirting with Seth Able. Played my allotted time each day, and wound up attending a meet up of local players. So much fun. Down the road I discovered Sims and all the fun little expansions, and had a blast decorating my little houses and building my little families. (And yes, I drowned them in the swimming pool. Do you even have to ask?)

My drug of choice these days is Guild Wars. In February of 2007, my husband Kev thought he'd give it a shot. I got curious, asked him if I could try it out, and never looked back. My outgoing, chatty personality combined with my love of computer games made MMO gaming an irresistable new world to explore. It's so much fun for me to sit down for a while and play in a fantasy world where I can rain fire down from the heavens onto anything that annoys me.

As a bonus, I do this with other people who live in places that completely fascinate me. I played in a group with seven other people recently. There were people in the group from Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Japan. They are all people that I'm friendly with, and probably the closest I'm ever going to get to visiting these countries. We play a video game together, but we also share photos, websites, and stories about our daily lives. I love people, and getting a peek into how they live is wonderful to me.

The downside of this is that fine upstanding private school mommies in their 30s are not really supposed to game. We are supposed to scrapbook, and knit, and have mommies morning out at Starbucks, but we are not supposed to play MMOs. That is reserved for pasty guys in their 40s who still live in their moms basement. Thus sayeth the stereotype.

Have I mentioned that I hate stereotypes? Moms want to play too.

Juggling Mom.