Life Is But A Drink

I think I’ve dragged on about this in the past, but I’m going to drag on about it again some more right now. Because I honestly think it is one of the hardest things about being a working mom. It is undoubtedly the thing that causes me the most stress in my sometimes-less-than-successful attempt to balance work and my family.

And that is getting to work late or having to leave work early in order to drop off or pick up the kids.

Usually, my husband and I have this whole drop off/pick up the kids thing down to a science. Nearly every day, I drop the kids off in the morning and, nearly every day, he picks the kids up from school.  And this works OKish. And by that I mean that I usually walk in the door at my office right on time. If there is bad traffic, I’m late. If traffic is really light, I’m a little early. But, most days, I’m right on time.

If I have something I need to be at earlier in the morning, my husband is usually pretty open to screwing around with his schedule so that he can drop the kids off.  And, if he has something after school that will make it hard for him to pick the kids up, I can generally screw around with my schedule and be in a position to leave work early to pick the kids up. And that works on the rare occasion that it needs to work.

But, as my husband has been out of town for the last two weeks, every single drop off and pick up has fallen to me.  And while that would be bad enough if it was just the standard drop off (where I walk in the door right on time) and the standard pick up (which requires me to leave work about 1 1/2 hours earlier than I should), it has been two weeks of non-standard drop offs and pick ups. Of course.

We started out on the wrong foot.  Last Monday, the very first school/work day that my husband was out of town, there was a mini-ice storm and because this whole area panics at the sight of anything that is white and wet, they delayed the start times at both of my kids’ schools.  And so I had to send an email to my boss to let him know that I would be a few hours late and that I would try to call into the meeting we had scheduled at 9:30.  The good news is that I was able to call into the meeting and the kids were super awesome about playing quietly in the basement while Mommy made her very important phone call, but…

Then there was the night that I got stuck in a meeting.  It ran way over and then I had to jump in a cab and get back to my office to get my car and then drive like a crazy person to try to get to my kids before their respective schools closed.  I called both schools ahead of time and told them that I might be a little late, but that didn’t make me feel any better about the whole thing.  Besides, do you know that they charge you a ton o’ money for like every second you are late?!?!  I somehow managed to get to both of them on time, but they were both the very last kids at their schools.  #workingmommyfail

Then there was the mom guilt about not getting my son to Tae Kwon Do last week on Tuesday or Thursday, like I was supposed to.  And he really wanted to go to Tae Kwon Do.  (Mommy, why aren’t we going to Tae Kwon Do?)  So I left work early AGAIN on Friday so I could get him to a class before the week wrapped up.  Because he deserved it. {And can I tell you a secret?  He hasn’t been to Tae Kwon Do this week either and it’s Friday. I know, I know.  But, people, there’s only one of me and there’s 7,999,999 other things that are taking precedence over Tae Kwon Do this week.  And he hasn’t asked about it this week – yet.}

Then there was the call I got on Monday afternoon that my son was in the school nurse’s office and was crying because his ear hurt really bad.  So, I frantically cancelled a bunch of afternoon meetings, called and made him an appointment with the doctor (thinking EAR INFECTION EAR INFECTION EAR INFECTION!!!), and then ran out of my office at 1:15 in the afternoon to go get him at school.  When I got to school?  He was playing with his friends like he didn’t have a care in the world.

ME:  Hey, the school nurse said you were crying and said your ear hurt.

SON:  It did.

ME:  But now it doesn’t?

SON:  Nope.

ME:  Did it hurt when you swallowed or did it hurt all the time?

SON:  It hurt when I touched it.

ME:  Did it hurt on the outside?  Or the inside?

SON:  The outside.

WTF?!?!  This was an important detail that the school nurse didn’t relay to me.  Apparently, he’d bumped it and it hurt.  And now it didn’t.  And here I was at 1:45 in the afternoon, when I should be at work, with a kid who was decidedly not sick and definitely did not have to go to the doctor.  Oh so typical.  I cancelled his doctor’s appointment.  (We ended up going to see my doctor instead…I’ll share the insane story sometime next week.)

Argh.

And then there was the dinner meeting I had to skip out on because I had to get the kids.  And the breakfast meeting I couldn’t go to because I had to drop off the kids.

And then there was the fact that I actually had to board my dog at doggie daycare one night because I had an early meeting at the White House (yes, that White House) the next morning that I ABSOLUTELY NO WAY NO HOW could be late for and he was going to have to go to doggie day care anyway during the day because the dog walker wasn’t coming because it was Wednesday and the dog walker doesn’t come on Wednesday but I couldn’t risk having to drop him off at doggie day care in the morning in addition to dropping off the kids at their two different schools and somehow make it into the office 20 minutes earlier than I usually do.  The math just didn’t add up.  But I felt like maybe (just maybe?) I could make it all work if I dropped him off at doggie daycare the night before. The small slice of peace of mind it gave me was worth the extra $20.

The good news?  I actually made it to my meeting! 

It was basically the only thing that went smoothly these last two weeks…