WANTED: A Wife

Forty-one-year-old woman with husband and three kids seeks consort/right-hand lady/stand-in to cut a sistah some slack/work out some things around the house when she just can’t take it anymore…

Must be in love with children—even when they cry, whine, ignore parental orders and slap box literally every five seconds for no other reason than that a fellow sibling looked in their general direction. This love runs a full 24-hour cycle; be prepared for middle-of-the-night duty, when you will get smacked in the head at will at all ungodly hours of the night for water/puke/pee/sore tummy/diarrhea duty that could include several 3 a.m. jammie and bed sheet changes, some stomach rubbing, and a lot of cuddling until they’re back off to dreamland, even if you’ve got to be up at 6 a.m. to iron school clothes, pack lunches and book bags, whip up a healthy breakfast and make sure the little funkmasters’ molars, pits and booties are clean enough for public scrutiny…

Must be able to use your “free” time during school days to scrub the house spotless, sort, pre-treat, wash and fold mind-boggling amounts of grass-, poop, and sweat-stained clothes, schedule all appointments with the cable, plumber, HVAC and lawn guys and somehow make it back to the house from the grocery store/dry cleaners/post office/random errand run before or after the stupid “four-hour window” so as not to lose the appointment you sweated two weeks to get, and be proficient enough in fixing all of that stuff to know when you’re about to be snookered for all your cash by male service providers who think your lack of a penis makes you a complete idiot/ATM…

Ability to (quickly) whip up meals that would make Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio slurp and ask for seconds an absolute essential; if you can’t anticipate the likes, wants, needs, desires, and dietary restrictions of everyone in the house and make said meal healthy enough to pass muster with the Today Show’s Joy Bauer, you’re an epic fail and need not apply. Ditto if you don’t have ESP or the uncanny ability to catalogue in the recess of your brain the whereabouts of every… single… solitary… random… thing… that belongs to family members, who will be much too busy to put their things away, let alone find it without uttering, “Where is [insert said random stuff here]?”…

Should be prepared to balance checkbooks, five-person schedules, and all doctor and dentist appointments and room parent, PTA, church, neighborhood association and community service volunteer assignments with grace and never-let-‘em-see-ya-sweat aplomb; driver’s license a must, as you’ll be the one scooting from one corner of town to the other to ensure your young charges make it to soccer/ballet/trumpet/Mandarin practice and countless after school activities, somewhere in between all of that other volunteery stuff you’ll be doing.

Oh, and yeah: Be ready to screw like a porn star. In full Victoria's Secret fashion show runway-worthy costume. Especially in the middle of the night when you finally make it to the bed and your hot head hits the cool pillow and you’re thisclose to that two-hours-worth of sleep you’ll squeeze in before that middle-of-the-night, “I threw up” slap you’ll be getting…

Base salary: Less than minimum wage. Bonuses come in the form of occasional hugs, kisses and the rare “thank you for all that you do” declarations (usually negotiable after total emotional breakdowns and threats of bodily harm).

Serious inquiries only, please. Weak, shabby, faint-of-heart women need not apply. Suckers definitely welcomed.

Editor's Note: "Wanted: A Wife" was written exclusively for Parenting.com's The Parenting Post. To get great mom-to-mom advice and tips on childrearing and motherhood, visit the MyBrownBaby Page at Parenting.com.