I am self-employed and often visit clients during the day, but I’ve been experiencing a lull and so have been playing at being a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) for a few weeks. Conventional wisdom holds that being a SAHM is The Hardest Job in the World, and frankly I’ve been a bit perplexed by this designation, because it’s been a piece of cake for me. Then I started listening more closely to the complaints of other SAHMs and suddenly realized: You all are doing it wrong. This is how to be a SAHM:

1. Stay at home.

2. Send the kids elsewhere, preferably a place where they are safe and cared for by responsible adults. (I think this is where most of you are going wrong. In no circumstances should the children and the mother be “at home” at the same time. That way lies madness.)

3. While you are at home, eschew anything that smacks of work: no housework, no yardwork, no freelance work, no work work — you get the picture.

Following these simple steps, I had a lovely day today. After dropping off Aitch and Dog, I met a friend at the wildlife refuge for a run. It was a beautiful sunny morning. The trees have broken out in fresh green leaves that are almost transparent in the bright light. Conditions at the wildlife refuge were nearly perfect, with high pressure and a slight wind. Between the high winds, the mosquitoes, the black flies, the green flies, the other biting flies, and plover season, there are only about three or four good running days a year at the refuge, and we hit one.

The refuge is a well-known bird sanctuary, and today we saw two wild swans and some sort of egret. We kept running into thick clots of gnats on one side of the road; a birder helpfully called out to us, “Sorry about the gnats, but they’re attracting the warblers!” The warblers were attracting swarms of birders huddled at various points on the path. At one point they blocked both lanes of a two-lane road. We literally had to stop and push a few people and their huge tripod-mounted binoculars out of the way to continue our run.

So how, you may ask, does one support such an indolent lifestyle? After the run I gathered up all the loose change in the house and took it to the coin machine at the grocery store. $304.31! (Ironic, isn’t it, that when I cashed in the voucher I ended up with that 31 cents.) It took me about 15 minutes to sweep all that change into the little slot, and when I finished my fingers were black. I felt like such a mom busting out my Wet Wipes from my diaper-bag-fashionable-enough-to-double-as-purse-even-when-no-baby-in-sight.

You may be wondering, what kind of people are these that they have $300 in change lying around unaccounted for? I’m wondering that myself. For most of my life I would not have left more than a few pennies unspent. When I lived in Tunisia they made coins that were worth about half a cent US, and by the end of each week I would have gathered them up to buy bus fare or bottled water or something else that I needed.

The last time Husband and I cashed in our change, we had enough to go out to dinner at Tru in Chicago. I like trendy food — all the better if it is actually good — so I was intrigued to read this article in the New York Times (registration required) about the newest directions in Chicago dining. Lollipops of foie gras encrusted with Pop Rocks! An electric sugar cube! Cinnamon smoke! How much of this can I get for $304.31?