…a full deck

Dear Journal,
Just when life’s little snow globe is settling, things get shaken up again. I’m feeling bereft without my daycare daughter. I tended that girl from birth for two years and suddenly one day, Mom stops work and she’s gone!
Oh, and in other news, I’m expecting. T.

Here I go, I’m working at home. I’ll put the baby to nap, and run down to my basement office and work! Oops, I just need my day-minder, Oh, yeah, and the baby monitor. I’ll just mentally shift gears and get this work done. All I need is this notebook, and those receipts. Working at home is going to be so easy. I just walk downstairs ... I don’t need anything but, oh yeah that telephone log to return all those calls.

Now I’ll just ... take that checkbook to enter all reimbursable expenses. I don’t need anything, except for that box of envelopes outside in the trunk. [1]

Okay, one last look around, the arms are full. Items are stuffed in the neck of my t-shirt and in the waistband of my sweats and now am I ready to go downstairs. It’s a good thing. . . working at home.

On my way into the dark, cavernous den, I stop and drop everything to toss in that load of laundry. I make a mental note to remember to whip out a belated card for the brother’s birthday last week, …and take those books and preschool CD’s back to the library. Better write it down in my day-reminder—when I remember where I left it.

The littlest one wanders out of the TV room, his educational programming ended. He is so cute when he insists that I get off the computer so he can have a turn “working.”

He is back watching TV, maybe he’ll nap too—I need just one more hour. Don’t they take naps in daycare too? I only work one or two days a week, so it’s much better at home.

I whiz by the post office, whip by a fast-food drive-by for lunch, drop off a negative for a photo shoot, zoom by the printer, skip by the office supplier, pick up paint for the front door and slip into the library. Rats I forgot the overdue books, but I’ll pick-up some more challenging CD’s, and the dry cleaning.

Back home I reward them and me for driving around all afternoon with that ever-so-nutritious pizza dinner.

Dear Diary:
One hour. Wow, what I could accomplish if I had just one more hour in the day! Maybe I’ll get it when they go to sleep tonight because right now it’s time to pick the oldest up from school, change clothes and play the wife again. Wee, T.
P.S. Get me off this coaster!

It’s a new day. Babies grow and toddle off to pre-K and come back six foot tall and seventeen. Where did just one more hour, or day or year go? Did the time disappear while the baby was napping?

Everything changes, yet some things remain the same: There is still no time.

Reality bite: Well, I was at home. Were there benefits? Who knows?

[1] Inklings of Steve Martin in The Jerk?