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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hm. [u][b]For me one of the key themes of this thread is the growing burden of being a working mom[/b][/u]. I don't know about others, but it takes every drop of strength that I have to cope with my 10hr days plus commute, get food on the table, comfort, listen, help with homework, baths, make lunches, finish dishes, plan the next day, catch up on work email that has come in during the home shift... If I get 15 minutes of downtime for myself, it's a rare night.  Weekends are packed with as much kid time as possible, chores, and work (so I can get out by 6 during the week).

Now, before you say I should not have such a time-consuming job, well, it wasn't intended to be that way. And it was not like this ten years ago. But the recession changed a lot of things for those of us lucky enough to keep our jobs.  I was a SAHM for a few years, and a big-time volunteer, party organizer-a lot like OP, fighting to build a community.  However, i went back to work when I realized it was now or never find a job in my field again. Just as well, as DH was then out of work for some time.  Now we both work, and there is not much respite.  Golden handcuffs, if you will.

Our neighborhood is indeed a ghost town. And I am part of the reason. But the thought of organizing a block party makes me weep.  The only way I can imagine being back in a Norman Rockville world is to uproot us all, sell the home and reestablish somewhere totally different. [/quote]
I agree with this poster. Both my DH and I work full time as a result (to quote another poster), our kids are in after care and we all do not come home until 6 - 6:30 each evening.  The kids get their friend time during aftercare as all their friends are there as well.  I feel a little sorry for the kids with stay at home moms as they don't get the same "friend time" that my kids get.  Ironically, my eight year old son recently read the Wimpy Kid book about summer and he moaned about how "everyone" does nothing but laze around all summer while he has to go to camps.  However, I simply asked him "how many of your friends don't go to camp"? and he came to realize that ALL of his friends go to camp - so that is where he will see them.  My daughter loves seeing her friends and hasn't complained yet.  Anyway, if you want to organize play time for your kids, find out what their friends are doing. If they are in aftercare, see if you can enroll them at least 2x a week there so they can have fun then.  
I don't have an answer to your other point regarding the "community feel"; as I also live in Rockville (western side closer to Potomac) and we have had several block parties (not formal block parties, but someone will have a party and invite all of the neighbors).  Our kids are all basically the same age and on weekends they run around the neighborhood, ride bikes or scooters or we meet each other at the local (walking distance) pool.[/quote]

I think these two posters have hit upon it.  I don't even have a demanding job; I have chosen to downshift myself into a "mommy" type of job, but it still takes every drop of energy and then some, until I am scraping the bottom of the barrel and running on fumes, to get through my days.  The commute, the job that begins when I get home, the mental stress of trying keep a home running on top of everything else, the emotional toll of being "on" for DC and DH. . .it's all such an unbelievable, far harder than I ever expected, job.  I really feel like our society needs or maybe is in the middle of some type of paradigm shift in lifestyles.  Because I was with my parents this weekend (my mom was a SAHM), and she was like, 'Oh, you could decorate your powder room this way. . you could swap in some black towels for something diffrent. . maybe reframe this picture in a black frame. . .jazz it up a bit." And my mind was just like, "I can only deal with the basiss:  work, get my children, get them home, make sure everyone is fed, bills are paid, clothes are on people's bodies, clothes are clean, landscaping is neat but basic, husband is barely contented."  I just have to get those basics taken care of; it is a sheer luxury to me to consider something like a new color scheme in my powder room or creating a sense of community in my heighborhood.  I have truly come to think of those things as LUXURIES because, even with my life stripped down to the basics I have listed above, the lifestyle in this modern age which we (society? women? other? I?) have created, it's just unsustainable. Well, I am just rambling here, mostly because it's only Monday but I am already exhausted because I spent half the night tossing and turning in insonmia for some unknown reason, with snippets from the BBC whcih was on the radio working their way into my consciousness as I tried to sleep! AGH![/quote]

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