Evening and Morning and the Problem of Time
At 5:15pm last night I sat in the living room facing west, the setting sun streaming through the window into my eyes. This position was quite deliberate. I tend to seek out the sun in mid-winter. I'm happy to report that by this time of day last month the house would have been lit only by the streetlights because the sun would already have finished its evening descent.
Upstairs I had a sick boy napping. Poor thing had been coughing all day. We spent much of Wednesday afternoon at the doctor, waiting, waiting, waiting. He fell asleep in my arms in the waiting room. When we got home I put him in bed to nap and he woke up not long after crying about the doctor. Must have had a nightmare, though everyone at the doctor's office was very kind (if slow).
Days like these I find myself wishing I was a housewife, with nothing but laundry, cleaning, and cooking to do. No deadlines. No projects waiting for me. No emails piling up from people waiting for files. Then I could be fully and completely with my son and not have work things nagging me at the back of my mind.
Ah, to be home, truly home. I'd like to make real breakfast each morning for my guys and real dinner each night, with a homemade dessert, and have the kitchen completely clean by 8pm, ready for breakfast the next day. I'd like to feel like I am directing my household tasks rather than feeling that they are yanking me around and I'm stumbling along behind. Are these things possible when you work full time? Surely they are. How am I 31 years old and still unable to do this?
I read blog posts from women who stay home and I feel sharp pangs of jealousy. This may seem to make little sense, I realize, since I am at home almost all the time because I work from home. But working from home and not working are not the same thing, folks. When you work at home you have the rare privilege of seeing all the jobs you should be doing both at work and at home piling up at the same time because you don't really have time to do it all.
I had such good intentions on Monday and Tuesday evening this week to get all the laundry caught up since my husband was out of town. What a nice surprise it would have been to come home to every speck of clothing, every towel, washed, dried, folded, ironed, and hung in its place. Nope. Didn't happen. Though I was close to my goal until Calvin threw up on my bed last night. But I shouldn't complain, I guess, because I did spend some of my time working on my quilt, which I need to prioritize if it is ever going to get done.
There just never is enough time, is there? The sun comes up and the sun goes down and still things are left undone. It's funny that this post should come the day after my post about all my cleaning and home improvement projects. Slightly bipolar of me, I know. Oh, well. That's just February affecting my brain. I'm sure I'll be back on top this weekend.
