Gears

I am forever changing gears.

Monday mornings I stumble into work (overtired) and trying to remember where I left off Thursday. It's exciting stuff because I don't get to DO the projects, I only arrange billing for them. Because I support four people who each have five or six projects at any time, I end up "changing channels" pretty often. I also have a side list of administrivia that just keeps plodding forward, but must be attended to on a regular basis or it bubbles over and makes a mess.

I try to keep my mind on work. Some days that's easier than others. In the summer, it's a crap shoot depending on who I leave my children with. This year, I have a great babysitter. I can be assured that the kids are safe, happy, and even doing some reading and math practice now and then. (She's studying elementary ed in college - JACKPOT!!! And she has a POOL at her house!!! This helps to fulfill the chlorine quota for the summer.)

So the gears turn, I push electronic paper, and wait for the time to come when I can pack up and go home. Try to shift up into Mommy mode on the way home from work, to cook dinner, take it out to the deck, play in the yard, and then catch up on the laundry magically somehow. Sometimes I feel like people are deliberately throwing wrenches in my gears. My husband left the house yesterday at 1:30. His brother had called minutes before to say "let's bring all of the kids to swim at Nana & Papa's." This was sort of a surprise to me as I'd had other things planned. PTA duties, paying our bills, ....exciting Sunday afternoon chores.

So I was planning on making a big pasta dish for dinner so that I could have leftovers each night this week... this is "soccer camp" week. Every night, 6 -8 pm. (I'll have just enough time to put my sneakers on, when I get home from work, before it's time to head to the field.) Mom sits in a lawn chair on the sidelines thinking of the 3,000 things she should be doing at home, while the kids run around and get sweaty, dirty, and exhausted (with a side of cranky) for two hours. Drag the little darlings home, clean them up, and THEN start laundry.


Yes, fun. So, back to Mr. C. Also known as "P.O.W." We are at that oh-so-delightful stage where the kids are basically making me half insane and so I get frustrated with HIM a lot because he can't read my mind. My hairdresser calls it "the Ice Age"; I prefer to think of it as the Cold War Era. If we don't nuke each other by the time both of the kids are 21, a few walls will come down and maybe we'll be ok. Maybe. (We're half way there. Only 12 more years to go. Can I please spend a week, um, month totally alone at Camp David? then I'll be nice for a while)

Of course the Mr. has his own agenda which I am often unable to decipher. Because, of course, being different from mine, it MUST be wrong.

Uh, he decided that we needed one of those "fire pits", and hey, I did want one. Sure. It was more or less a bribery attempt on his part but it was good on paper. He headed on up to a big box store and in the back of my mind, I figured he'd be returning in 45 minutes, maybe an hour, and that would put us reasonably close to Other Brother's arrival at the family pool.



So I worked on my PTA stuff. Then I did a few other things. Then I did a few MORE other things like cleaning out a bird feeder. The "someone has to do this" things that drive me crazy. The things you do when you think someone is going to be interrupting you at any moment to go off and do something else.

Ha.

After two and a half hours had gone by since he'd left I called him... with a "where ARE you?" Yes, I knew where he was, but that was supposed to be done by now. These calls never go well because I wait to call until I am convinced that the car has either been repossessed or totalled, and I'm annoyed to find out that he's "fine" and just didn't get around to giving me an update on what the EFF is going on.

Meanwhile at this point I was trying to recalculate the agenda for the rest of the afternoon to figure out if it was worth it to still go swimming. A little voice in my head was saying "but I want to swim toooo, all I have been doing all day is work". The other voice was starting to shift into dinner/ evening mode. "We have to cook this stuff tonight or we'll eat sandwiches every night this week. There isn't time to swim AND cook"

Ultimately, I gave in. I swam. Much longer than I wanted to. (Well it was not ME swimming... them.... which meant country drive in for dinner....) So I did not cook - now I have no dinner for tonight. Anyone want to run by the soccer field and bring me some dinner?

Seriously.