The curse of the mama schedule
I have two small boys at home. They are both pretty interactive little boys (which translates variously as “strongly attached” or “made of velcro” depending on the day). I have daycare for Small Boy two days a week, days on which I used to get a fair amount done – or at least enough to feel as though I had gotten a fair amount done – but as The Boychen grows older and more adventurous (which translates variously as “curious” or “highly destructive” depending on the day) I’ve found that my single-son days are hardly more productive, work- and/or adult pursuits that replenish the spirit-wise, than my double-son days.
I am not one of those people who can get by on a fistful of hours a sleep a night; on the contrary, getting only a fistful of hours a sleep at night brings me dangerously close to a return to the post-partum depression days. Staying up late and working, or waking before the boys (who are early risers), is simply out of the question at the moment. I can work after the boys go to bed until about 9:00 or 9:30 but then it’s time to start getting ready for bed.
Here’s the problem: I find that when I work right up until bed-time, when I lay me down to sleep my mind is racing with ideas, reviewing that poem I wrote or thinking about that journal I might submit to. A phrase comes to mind, a better way of closing out that stanza that was troubling me. I’m wide-awake, as wired as if I were hooked up to a caffeine-IV drip. Last night I was awake until 2:30 this morning – the new 2:30, that is. (I got a lot done – one submission package completed and ready to go out the door and a group of poems picked out for revision and submission to a second journal – but it’s hardly the ideal situation.) Fortunately today is Sunday and R and the boys are over at The Farm for lunch and a little afternoon stroll with the grandparents and I can recover. But when that sort of thing happens on a Tuesday night it’s a bit of a disaster the next day.
So what’s the solution? Only work until 8:30 in the evenings and then spin-down with a book or TV? But Small Boy only goes to bed at 8:00 – that’s hardly any time. Crunch all the work in on the weekends when R takes the boys? But weekends are family together time. It’s a real time-crunch. The hours just are not there and when I steal them from the wee hours, the wee hours take their revenge.
It’s just where I am these days, this is what my days look like right now, but I’m having a hard time accepting it gracefully.
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I read this post nodding furiously to myself. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES. In an attempt to make peace with my home situation, I’ve devoted the past week or so to kids and housework–no writing, so no pressure–but it honestly hasn’t felt any less like a strangling. I often wonder if it would be better to give up aspirations for a few years until both girls are in school and THEN continue my work… after rediscovering my identity and relearning how to write, of course. *sigh* If you figure out where extra hours are stored, please do let me know!
I’m on the countdown to 2010. That is when all my kids will be in school full-time and I will, finally, have a few free moments to myself! Hang in there!