nobody plays them the way you do

Ooooops.  My NaBloPoMo got borked! What happened? Well, life happened. More specifically work happened. Got me some heavy deadlines and demands and boom a few weeks of 40+ hours in the office and all my NaBloPoMo dreams done evaporated. I was sad but so so SO tired. All my usual responsibilities fell by the wayside. The kids were denied their park time, the house denied its ministrations, the husband denied…well, you get the picture. After two weeks of Mommy-in-the-office, it took several days to catch up around the house and then BLAM T-day and wha? Today is December 1st!?! NaBloPoMo 2008: FAIL.

Man, twas so tough working that much. I think one week I clocked close to 55 hours. Needless to say that week was not a productive week in terms of cooking, baking, baby-wearing, gardening, walking, cleaning, checkbook balancing, and dreaming. Twas a productive work week, but the shizzle hit the fizzle at home. How do people do it? There was night when I came home LATE and I remarked to Wade, “If I hadda do this all the time, we’d have to have help.” There is simply limited time in a week and keeping our house running requires major investment. (Although, I’m sure that if this were my gig all the time I’d have more methods for dealing with it, so it wouldn’t be exactly the way we experienced it, but, just WOW.)

Part of the reason that I have taken on more of the raising and rearing of the chillens is that I’d rather do it than pay someone else to do it. I also have the wonderful good fortune of having a job that is extremely flexible.  However, there are times when, due to deadlines and other responsibilities, I have to be flexible in order to make things happen for our little company. This includes 14 hour days (20 hour days pre-kids) on occasion. Pre-kid they were no problem cos it was just me and the partner. Now they are more challenging what with the 7 am wake-up call no matter what. As a result, some of my other responsibilities fell to the wayside. C’est la vie as now we are back in the saddle, but there were a few moments when the laundry was piled up high and the garden was dry that I wanted the luxury of having some help. Again, how do people do it with two parents working full-time and no help? What do people do?

The one good things about being forced to write (or forcing yourself to write) is that you have to sit with yourself and pause and reflect on what is happening in your mental mindscape. I found that I actually enjoyed sitting with myself. Finding myself in front of the keyboard with an objective made this meta-experience much more mindful than the spontaneous surfing (gawd, what a great metaphor!) that I usually do. In spite of my busy weeks, I found myself missing this space and the generous time I’d allowed myself here. So thank you for reading and thank you to my wonderful co-blogger who makes this all happen.

–

Also, thank you to Ms. Elyse who nominated one of my entries for Five-Star Friday. What a great blog and a great honor. Thank you!