Monday, January 16, 2012

Time is a B

Seriously.

I would give anything for an extra five hours a day. I know that this is a creative thought. My apologies. I would have come up with something more clever, but...

I DON'T HAVE TIME!!!

I say that phrase so much that I bore myself.

I know that my plight is not unique, that all working mothers, heck, all parents, face this issue. But lately I am feeling ready to implode at any given moment.

Wednesday was particularly bad.

It'll all started two weeks ago when Justin told me he had a nighttime commitment at work. We were still in lazy, fantastic winter break dream world, so I didn't think much of it. Then I looked at my calendar...Em's first soccer class.

Sigh...

Em's class is at six, which deep-down I knew when I signed up for it was a bad idea, but it's only four classes so I thought we could at least try it. The issue is that Eliot is still going down for the count pretty early. He eats at 5:30, gets his bath, and is in bed by 7. So taking him to the class equated to flirting with disaster. Public disaster.

But I really had no choice, so I did it.

Wednesday started off with the usual rush to get the kids ready and out of the door by 6:45. At work, we had a baby shower for a friend, which was a fun start to the day. I can't really tell you what else happened. It was pretty much the usual madhouse. I told myself that I needed to leave work by 4:30 to get soccer clothes for Em, pick up the kids, get her something to eat, and get her to class by six.

I left work at 5.

ACKKKKK!

This covers the hour between five and six, in which I was dangerously close to having a stroke/complete meltdown ala 3-year old/hair-eating session:

Pick up kids. Rush both into the car. Get Eliot into his new, not baby-bucket car seat (oh I miss that thing...). Drive to Target. Get soccer clothes, cat food, hair spray, all while speeding through the store, trying to avoid the SUPER SLOW PEOPLE who go to Target after work and trying to prevent my son from SUCKING ON THE CART BABY STRAP (oh, baby bucket, where are you now???) Change Em into soccer clothes in the bathroom of Target, while trying to prevent El from crawling on the floor (ICK).

The pants don't fit.

The mother-fing pants don't fit.

I try for 30 seconds (it's 5:30 at this point) to convince her that she can wear her jeans, to which she responds "EVERYONE WILL LOOK AT ME!!!"

Shit.

So we go to the toddler boy section and get her boys pants. (Jeans aren't okay, but boy pants are?! Whatevs...)

We buy the pants, get her changed, and end up at the rec center at 5:55, driving behind the SLOWEST person ever.

We get the boy out of the seat, into the stroller; we get the diaper bag and mommy's purse and head to class.

The class is awesome. Em loves the class so much that all the sweating, silent swearing, panicking of the last hour is worth it. And I get totally cute video I can post to Facebook. (Yes, I am that person now.)

Then the class ends.

It's 6:45. A full hour and fifteen minutes after Eliot's typical dinner time.

Ugh.

So I get the kids in the car and head home. I feed Eliot and make Em's dinner. I bathe Eliot while she eats. I get Em's bath ready and do the nighttime ritual with Eliot. I get Em out of the bath, and we review her sight words.

At 8:30 Justin gets home and puts Em to bed.

At 8:30 I sit down.

At 8:30, I want to cry from exhaustion.

But I don't. Because it would be too tiring.

Don't get me wrong. I love my life. I love my work. It's perfect for me: always interesting, always exciting. I love my kids beyond belief.

The issue may be that I love everything too much. There's just too much to do. Always.

Luckily, I have days like today to counter balance those "Wednesdays" out there. This morning I took El to meet a friend for breakfast. I'm blogging right now while Em watches a movie, and I'll head into work for a little bit. I'm not bummed about that; I'll actually get some crap done.

Then I'll have a relaxing evening at home, which I am sure will entail some playing with Barbies, with some extracting god-knows-what from Eliot's mouth, and maybe some exercise.

HA-FREAKING-HA!

2 comments:

Sarah said...

It does get better, I promise.
I have gotten really good at saying no, with no guilt, because I know that it is the best choice for our family. Good job though, getting her to soccer!

Dr. Love said...

I'm so happy you're back to blogging honey.