"What Do You Do?" I Don't Anymore.

Carolyn Hax had a discussion in her online advice column about how to answer the "What do you do" question when you are a stay-at-home mom. It got lots of comments. I weighed in with mine as both a stay- at-home mom and a person with a disabling mental illness.

My comment, revised:

You guys, you think you have it bad in the conversation department as a SAHM? Try being a permanently but invisibly disabled former SAHM! I dreaded the what-do-you-do question just like you do while I was a SAHM, because it truly did immediately and obviously reduce me to the status of dryer lint in the interrogator's eyes. They'd often follow it up with "When are you going back to work?" 

** Oh!! I just had an "I shoulda said" moment! "Oh, I'm not going back to work. I'm transitioning into a SAHG position when my kids reproduce." **

But now that I'm a former SAHM, I yearn for the good ole days when I at least had that true if disreputable  description to offer. As a disabled person who really doesn't do much work-wise or interest-wise despite having plenty of time on my hands - except for running a Facebook community page and dabbling as a blogger, which don't mean shit to the professionally inclined since they're strictly volunteer - I usually just go blank. Tensely, anxiously blank.

What should I say?
 
"I'm disabled?"
"I have a terrible mental illness?" 

"I used to be a SAHM? (Or that latest brainstorm: "I'm in training for a SAHG position?"
"Who are you again?"
"I read a lot?"
"I brood?"
"They just let me out on probation for knifing someone who asked me that question?"
"WTF?" 
 "WTFlyingF?"

I like the answer someone I read about always gave to the question "What do you do?" 
"For money you mean?" she answered.