Books like Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom

My book group is reading this book, and I was expecting to find it trivial, possibly even annoying. I read "Didn't I Feed You Yesterday?" not too long ago, and I was pained by the author's attitude in that book, so I feared the same from this one. I was pleasantly surprised. The book is indeed a light read, but van Ogtrop is bright, clearly loves working, and thinks deeply about her role as a mother in her children's lives. Every few pages I came across a thought that resonated so closely with some of my own experiences as a working mother, that I kept reaching for a pad of paper to scribble quotes down. Her entry on perfect husbands, "Dudley-Do-Everything", leads into a meditation on loss of control, which culminates in my favorite quote of the book: "[M]uch of my life as a wife and mother is about vacillating between wanting to do everything myself and being really, really mad that no one is helping me."