Back when I was a single, carefree woman who bathed her cat and took time to dust the tops of doorframes, I imagined parenthood. I imagined it in the hazy, abstract way you try to look into the future. And, in my impossibly tidy vision, there were no diapers lying in the middle of the living room floor or dried corndogs in my coat pockets.

What I did conjure were rose-tinted walks to the park, marathon book reading sessions, baking cookies together, playing games… (and this is where the needle slides across the album and screeches).

I hate to play. There I said it. I hate kid play. I don’t like pretending to make dolls talk. I don’t like driving trains around on tracks. And I don’t like running in circles outside trying to convince us all I’m a space ranger.

I suppose that means I’m a bit of a curmudgeon.

But, criminy. I played as a kid. I loved it. And I’m done. Now, when I’m not frantic with laundry and dishes to do, groceries to buy, small toenails to clip and wine bottles to open, I want to sit on my derriere. I want to watch them play. I don’t want to actually engage in it myself.

I dodge play the way most parents do: muttering that I have to take out the recycling first, that I need to marinate the chicken and blow my nose and sweep the floor and, oh, I’m a little tired, I just need to rest for a minute…

I’ve decided, though, that this technique is passive aggressive. Instead, I’m going to sit Milo and Belle down and talk honestly. I’m going to assure them that they’re loved. That I adore their imaginations and like nothing better than watching them in action. That I’m here for reading stacks of books and baking the occasional batch of butterscotch blondies and for conversing. But that I don’t want to play.

They will remember my heartfelt outpouring for approximately nine minutes before Belle thrusts a doll into my hands and Milo pleads with me to go to the backyard and I start muttering about chores that need to be done and how I’m simply dying to sit down.

But at least I will have tried to be forthright.

And the kids will know, for sure, that their mom is a big, dull dud.