A Feeling of General Malaise

Holy crap! Is it Wednesday already? Sheesh! I have completely lost track of time since about Thursday of last week. When Justin, who had been promised by his boss, and who then promised me that his traveling would be next to nothing and that he’d be home a lot more…like maybe three weeks home instead of three weeks gone, got assigned to a three week long project that was scheduled to start first thing Monday morning.

Justin ran out and bought us steaks and bought me flowers to try to keep what he thought would be an explosive reaction down to a minimum. Instead of feeling out-of-my-mind angry, I just felt disappointed and defeated. Because I knew he was irritated at the circumstances behind this assignment. Because now that Gavin is in kindergarten there’s even more for our family to balance until we get into a good morning routine to get the kids to daycare even earlier than before school started. Because I was tired of leaving my office at 5pm and not making it to daycare until 6:25pm. Because I was tired of preparing barely nutritious and/or appetizing dinners for the kids in the evening. Because I was tired of drill-sargenting the kids into eating the aforementioned pathetic excuse for a meal, then chasing them up into bed by 8pm. Because I was tired of being up until midnight because I have so much to freakin’ do for work, or school, or the house after I get the kids to bed. And because I knew there was nothing I could do or say that would make things change so that I, we, could have Justin home with us.

Then I got to work for a sizable portion of the weekend. We launched a new channel for our customers that everyone is incredibly excited about, even me. But in order to support customer notification about this new channel, I worked Friday night, Saturday morning, had a conference call Saturday afternoon about it, had to work more on Saturday night, and again Sunday morning. And since Justin had to be at his location first thing Monday morning, he left around 7pm on Sunday evening. That made for an incredibly short weekend. This weekend isn’t looking promising either since Justin will come home late Friday and need to leave again Sunday evening, and I am scheduled to work on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Thankfully, there are a few bright spots for me to try to focus on: I spoke with Gavin’s kindergarten teacher and she said he is doing great (he won’t talk about school, so I was afraid that it was going poorly for him). We also have a birthday party to attend for one of Gavin’s little friends from daycare. He cannot stop asking when we will be going to the party and I kind of suspect he may have told the child what we bought him. I’m also working with my friend Andrea on coordinating a little baby “sprinkle” for Kari and Dave’s second baby, due next month. It will be so nice to sit with a bunch of other gals and just ooh and ahh over cute baby clothes and have some tasty food (just don’t ask me what that tasty food is yet…haven’t gotten quite that far in the planning). I also found out that my mom is able to come out again this year on the weekend of Justin’s company holiday party. I’m always so happy when she and I can spend some time together, and I love that the kids look forward to her visits as well. The nice thing about her coming that weekend is that it allows Justin and I to attend the holiday party and then stay the night at the hotel so that we don’t have to worry about playing Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who will be the DD. It also allows us to stay out later, sleep in, and remember how fun it was before the kids were around–not that we don’t have fun with the kids, it’s just a different kind of fun–like cutting up everyone’s food and threatening Time-Out while barely tasting your own dinner that you’re wolfing-down.
So…while that is nearly three months away, I can’t wait: date-night with my husband that includes a nice dinner and dancing, a few hours away from my kids that I love (really, I do), and being able to spend some time with my mom. We’re also trying to plan a trip to visit Justin’s family, so while we don’t have the details hammered out, it’s another item to look forward to while I try to get through the next three weeks without losing my mind.