7,8, Coffee Break

I haven’t been writing much lately because I've been busy killing myself instead.  No, not really, but the 5.5 hours of sleep a night I've been clocking lately will surely do me in sooner or later. Fortunately, coffee!

The massive sleep deprivation is the result of trying to fit the work of 2.5 people into a single life. How does one do this you may ask? By not sleeping, for one thing. For another, you do it by rushing from one thing to the next, doing – or pretending to do – several things at once, and by never, ever sitting down for more than 20 minutes.  Unless you're at the office, then you never get up until you're pretty sure you've developed a blood clot in your leg.

Why might one do this? Well, I'm a full-time, management-level employee for a Fortune 1000 company – which takes some time if you want to do your job well, and I do. And I'm a mom of three kids – which takes some time if you want to do it well, and I really, really do. And then we're trying to re-do some of our house – which takes time if you want to do it well, and we do.

All this adds up to doing a lot of stuff, and trying to do all of it well, which isn't really possible, I know. Not stopping me from trying.

Meanwhile we're also doing things like throwing a 10^th birthday party for Quokka (and, holy shit, I've been a mom for a decade – when the hell did that happen?), and 4^th of July barbecues, and trying to fit some fun in the middle of it all. Plus there’s the whole start a blog thing and I have to feed my Pinterest addiction at some point…

But you get me, I'm really tired, and there was a whole bout of pleurisy in the middle of all of this somewhere (if you haven’t heard of it, it really sucks) so that did make me lay down and sleep for five hours one random Wednesday.

Then, just to make life even more interesting, two of my three employees decided to find other jobs within three weeks of each other (it’s really great that the job market is picking up and there are more jobs for higher pay available, but it makes it challenging to be a manager at a place that is slow to adjust the compensation structure).

Also, I'm being done in by my bad habit of being an overachiever about every darn thing – but I can't seem to figure out where I would cut back.

I like being able to buy food and make my house payment, so work is kind of a thing I need to do reasonably well. The house is really worn, and in the case of the dining room carpeting just disgusting. The new floor is a follow up to completely re-doing our kitchen in which, other than having a new counter installed, we did all of the work ourselves.  The changes to the kitchen and dining room flooring will save me time in the long run – no more scrubbing kitchen counter grout or carpeting, yay! – but getting it done in the first place is overwhelming.

New floor looking good. Worth the work, but ouch

I am completely unwilling to sacrifice any of the joy I get from momming my girls, and I can’t bear to have their summer vacation be awful just because we've decided to gut the house – so I have to fit having fun into all of the construction and work. For that matter, I want to have fun too damn it. So, there we are, wedging in bike rides and picnics and trips to the beach while also ripping out the carpeting, polishing and sealing the cement floor underneath, and then power scrubbing the whole house to try and clean up the thick blanket of cement dust.

Trust me when I say that I know this isn't good, and if I don't scale something back a bit pleurisy will be the least of my problems…like a fiery wreck on the drive home because I'm too tired to stay awake. I am pulled in so many directions by what I have to do, what I want to do, and what needs to get done so that no one dies, that sometimes I feel like I'll fly apart.  My fluffies are whisking away in this gale and pretty soon I’ll be a naked stem, crumpled and worn and bare.

But what do I give up? I've already given up aggressively pursuing my career because my husband’s career is demanding and only one of us can be on the fast-er track without having to find, hire, trust and pay for a nanny to fill in the parenting duties we will no longer have the time and energy to do. While I know that other people use this option, it’s not an option I’m willing to exercise. I made these three little people because I wanted to raise them – I can’t back out now.

Instead, I develop my career gingerly. I do good work, challenging and demanding work that pays above the average for a woman in my age group and educational level, but it’s not where I could be or what I could be doing if I didn't choose these restrictions. I have to be in a job where I can walk out the door at 5:00 and get to two schools before pick-up time, and finish working at night after everyone is tucked in bed. I need a place that offers plenty of sick time, which is eaten up quick with three school-age children. I have to work somewhere that gives me enough vacation to cover all of the school and daycare closures and holidays. I need a place that does not penalize me because I have to take kids to the doctor, and the dentist, and the optometrist, and parent/teacher conferences...

So work is as streamlined as I can make it for the moment – or it was before my employees jumped ship…

At home, I suppose we could let go of the house projects. Frankly, we can't afford to pay someone else to do them, at least not with any level of quality. We could just let them go, but we've been doing that for the nine years we've lived here and things are getting critical – like the kitchen counter degrading to the point that the sub surface was starting to rot. Sooooo, yep, gotta take care of that too.

A beautiful day at the beach

The only thing I could cut out would be the fun. Racing across the sand and jumping waves under the sun. Whizzing down a hill under giant live oaks laughing like maniacs. Sitting under one of those stately trees eating a picnic together while jays scold us and squirrels scamper through the grass. Swimming and splashing and playing and celebrating that school’s out and the whole of summer stretches before us. None of this is a must do, this is the extra stuff that we could give up without causing a calamity – but I can’t, I just can’t. 

For the sake of those sweet, hopeful girls who want to spend time with their mom and dad celebrating the sun, the summer, and our family – I can’t. Besides, Quokka turned 10. How much longer will she even want to do this with us? In just a little more time, three or four years, she'll move on and prefer to do these things with friends over us. Time is flying and on this one we absolutely can’t be late.

These moments remind us why we’re even bothering to do this – why we're a family and why we love each other. Because we love spending time together and we have a damn lot of fun while we do it. Without the fun, hard and frantic as it is to add to all of the work, the soul of the family withers.

So I set an alarm and work frantically for 30 more minutes before it’s time to leap up and rush around to make sure we get some fun in.

I guess I’ll have another cup of blond-roast, and sleep when I’m dead.