Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sheryl Brennan at MamaWriters

Welcome Guest Author Sheryl Brennan!

Posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009by Eliza Knight

sherylPlease join me today in welcoming Celtic romance author Sheryl Brennan to Mama Writers! Today she’s going to talk to us about her Mommy Strike.

After thirteen years of working a full time day job, writing part time in an attempt to jump start my career in romance fiction, and being a single mom to three very capable girls ages 13,12, and 8, I decided I was done with being stressed out over the undone chores, mounds of laundry that more often than not contained clean as well as dirty children’s clothes, and all manners of accompanying whining, arguing, bickering, and drama.

Therefore, on February 23rd at 6:45 am in the morning I called my sweet cherubs (NOT) into the dining room and wrote the following words in onyx permanent ink on a crisp snow colored piece of poster board:

KIDS UNFAIR TO MOM! MOM IS ON STRIKE!

I proceeded, through gritted teeth and a joker-like smile to let them know what the strike entailed. With a rigid index finger, I pointed to each of my daughters in succession and proclaimed, “I will no longer, cook, clean, or do laundry for you… you… or you. You can either work on an every man for himself basis or cooperate to get the chores done. You choose.”

I think they thought I was kidding, but this was no early April Fool’s prank. When I came home that evening, I was armed with a new attitude and several 8×10 sheets of copy paper bearing slogans adopted for my cause. With double-sided tape I cheerfully posted them on each and every door of the house.

“Labor unfair to management”
“MOM: It’s who’s NOT making dinner”
“Ask not what your mother can do for you, but what you can do for your mother”


The epitome of my signage was a personalized affadavit to the world I proudly hammered into my front yard that read: “Parents of the world unite! Rebecca, Michela, and Areana’s Mom is ON STRIKE. Say no to Housework!”

You can only imagine how many car horn honks I recieved, which made my plight so entirely worth the extra effort. (grin) Operation embarrass the children was a success.

For dinner on the first evening of the strike, the children made themselves spaghetti, then convienently “forgot” to clean up the mess. They further celebrated their new found freedom by going to bed past their bedtime and neglecting the daily chores so harshly put upon them by the enemy— MOM.

Me? I celebrated my lack of stress with a call to my publicist and a nice warm bath, then silently relished in the fact that when the kids would ask why they didn’t have clean underwear for tomorrow I could gleefully reply, “Guess you’ll have to learn how to use the washing machine. I’m on strike.”

To tell you ALL of the funny and not-so-funny things that happened during my hiatus, I would need a weeks worth of blog time, so I’ll skip to the most important part— THE END.

The MOMMY STRIKE lasted a full thirty days. Yup- that’s right, thirty days. You wouldn’t believe how much writing I got done in this time with only having to care, cook, and clean for myself, but the payoff was much bigger than the extra time I gained.



Read more at

http://mamawriters.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/29/welcome-guest-author-sheryl-brennan/

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