What does your day look like?

Good morning! Lots of interesting thoughts running through my mind this morning. For one thing, it’s amazing to me that something like R2D2 can have so much stuff stored on/in it. I mean, I have two full-length manuscripts stored on it plus a whole lot of other stuff. Just an incredible thing that we have at our disposal today.

As I was milking Zoey, I was thinking about the different things I’ve walked into this morning and comparing them. These things happen, you know, when you are sitting and milking a goat. For example, the humidity this morning has been palpable. The humidity and the spider webs are very present this morning; the only real difference is that the fog is diffused and while you can feel and see it, it easily moves and you are able to walk through it as opposed to the spider webs which are very concentrated and must break in order for you walk through them. I don’t purposefully break spider webs, by the way, but if they build their webs where I must walk, something has to go and it isn’t me. Or, in another way of looking at it, I do have to go and therefore the web does as well.

This guy (or girl--I don't know how to tell the difference) was sitting there when I was driving off for the first appointment (which I found out had been changed to 12:00 rather than 11:30 while en route). Just sitting there. Cute little bugger. But I couldn't help but wonder where Kitty was because she needs to take care of this thing, cute or not.

Lastly, if you have only two children, you really have nothing in common with me. Perhaps that is harsh. Perhaps I should say you really have very little in common with me. Especially if you have a husband who is willing and able to help provide taxi service. Say you have two children, a boy and a girl, you have a job, we’ll say you work from home to make the comparison easier, and you are involved with other things such as scouts and sports.

Let’s talk about that husband first. Does he work? Hopefully. Does he work from home? Does he have an office job? Is he on the road a lot?

Working from home can make life easier or more difficult depending on what exactly his work entails. In general, I’m going to make the assumption that the reason he works from home is because he has some kind of an office job that can either be done from home or is self-employment. This being the case, he can most likely take a few minutes to an hour or so to take children to the doctor or drop them off at school or take them to practice or scouts or what-have-you. If his job requires being on the phone and he sometimes is not able to get off, well, that puts a kink in his helping you with taxi service. A kink, however, is not a permanent issue. Unless he’s on the phone all day long which is possible but does not seem likely. At least, not for the same call.

If he technically works from home but his job happens to be construction or something of that nature, he will of necessity have to be away from home for extended periods of time from an hour or more to weeks. If his jobs are near enough to home that he is able to return home every night, he still can most likely help with transportation to scouts and practice at least some of the time. If he is gone for days or weeks, well, that is something else entirely.

Let’s talk about those children. Your son is in Boy (or Cub) Scouts and your daughter is in Girl Scouts (or Brownies). Hopefully you have a division of labor and your husband can be involved with your son and you can be with your daughter, or vice versa, whatever works. Hopefully you aren’t the Cub Master for you son’s pack as well as the den leader for your daughter. But maybe you are. If you are, we may have more in common than otherwise.

Both of your children are involved in sports. Your daughter plays soccer and runs track. Your son plays baseball, basketball, and football. Poor you. This is practice every day of the week, and I get that. It is also most likely more than one practice at least some days of the week, depending on what grades your children are in. I get that. And then there are games and meets and conflicting schedules and I hope your husband is able to help out or you can work out some carpool deals with fellow parents.

In spite of scouts and sports, at least your children attend public school. They get on the bus in the morning and you don’t have to worry about them (even though you do anyway) until they either get home on the bus or you have to pick them up from school to transport to scouts or practice or you pick them up after practice.

Your job. You work from home. Because you work from home, people assume that you have all this time on your hands. “Oh, you’re home, you can do this, right?” Please excuse the eye roll here. Your schedule is fairly flexible but because you have to be available for clients from different parts of the world, you have to be available at some really odd times. And while you can generally schedule your work load around the schedules of other family members, there are times when you are just absolutely inundated with work.

I get all that. I really do. But you really have no clue what my life looks like.

For one thing, I have three full time jobs.

I am a homeschool mom to two boys. They are not twins which means we cover two grade levels. I am grateful it is only two at the moment, because it has been up to five in the past, and I would absolutely love it if the two in public school would chose homeschool even though it would increase the work load. Each grade level is like a job. It means individual lesson plans. It means that even though we may cover the same topics for science or history, they are working at different levels. It’s a lot of fun and I love watching them learn and grow but it’s a lot of work and a huge responsibility.

I am a student. I have a full work load of my own studies which includes a heck of a lot of reading and studying and assignments. I usually do not get everything done in a day, or even a week, that I would like and often I wish I could add a few hours to the day in order to finish. Hasn’t happened yet.

Part of being a student is being an apprentice or student midwife. I get to go to prenatal appointments and am to the point where I will be going to the births as well. I did spend most of two nights at a labor a few weeks ago and had she not transported, I would have been present for the birth and another birth is looming ever present that I will be present for (unless she has her baby before I arrive which is always possible) but these are not currently the norm. The norm is about to become me being present for every birth. Currently that will be in a mostly observational position but that will change over time as I learn more.

Let me paint you a picture of what this looks like.

Yesterday, I went to a Massachusetts Midwives Alliance meeting. I am not a member right now but by the next meeting, I expect to be. This doesn’t mean much because I will be a student and as such will have no vote, but I will still be present and will be learning. This meeting was four hours long and was held in Jamaica Plain. This is what it really looked like:

Left the house at 7:45 to meet my ride in Gardner. She was running late so we didn’t leave Gardner until about 8:20. Traffic was terrible (I thought it would be better since it wasn’t what I would consider to be rush hour) and a trip that could take an hour and 19 minutes actually took almost two hours which got us there late.

The first half of the meeting was business. Honestly, I thought it was going to be much longer than two hours the way the conversation kept going back and forth. It sounds like I missed a really interesting meeting in June.

At noon, the business portion was over, it was time for lunch, and it was agreed that people would talk and eat.

The second half of the meeting was peer review. What that means is that a midwife or two gives the details about a particular client (details such as what happened and when, not name and address information); typically a birth that was difficult in some way. The case is discussed and comments and suggestions are made and discussed. The idea is to bounce ideas around and help everyone improve quality of care.

Everything was done by 2:00 and we left. Traffic was bad again but we arrived back in Gardner around 3:30 or so and I was home by 4:00ish.

That was that part of the day. Amena also had work and needed a ride there and home. Seth had scouts and needed a ride there and home. I can’t really be in Gardner at 8:15 to pick Amena up and then Pinecrest Lodge at 8:30 to pick Seth up so I asked a fellow parent if Seth could get a ride home; he could.

Today, I kept Amena home hoping I could get her in to see the doctor this morning because her asthma has been really bad due to the high humidity and the fact that she also caught a cold. No luck. They had an opening at 12:30 but Amena didn’t want to miss the whole day of school. So I made her an appointment for Monday at 3:30 (because that’s the next available opening) and took her to school. That worked out well because I could also drop Cedric’s shoes off for cross country today even though it added 45 minutes of driving. Which isn’t bad considering we may have been sitting at the doctor’s office for two hours had we gone.

Then I came home, formally started the school day for Seth and Joseph, took a shower, continued school stuff for the boys, and continued working on this.

At 11:15 I need to leave to go to a prenatal appointment in Gardner at 11:30. Then there is an appointment in Winchendon at 1:30. Rather than come home beween, I’ll take letterboxing stuff with me and see if I can catch a couple if I don’t have something else to do (which I already know I do have but might decide not to do it). After that appointment, I will come home. Seth and Joseph need to go to the library and then I will need to pick Cedric up. Then Amena needs a ride to work and I’ll have to go to Winchester to meet and carpool to the next appointment at 6:30. Amena has to get a ride home from someone else because I won’t be back in time to pick her up. Well, probably not. I might be.

By the time I get home, I’ll have to make sure stragglers are getting to bed and then it won’t be long to bedtime for me.

Somewhere in there I need to find time to read, study, and work on assignments for my own school work. And make sure my children have food for lunch and dinner. And everything else that needs to be done.

Other than my three full time jobs, I am the Committee Chair for Hubbardston Pack 12 Cub Scouts, seminary teacher for Amena, a married single mother (which is another conversation altogether), a soapmaker, mother of a cross-country running, mother of a Cub Scout, mother of a Boy Scout (I’m hoping Cedric will change his mind and decide to do scouts this year), etc., etc., etc.

You may think it is harsh that I say you have no idea what my life looks like if you have only two children. If I had only two children, they would be Alisha and Laura. Laura will be 25 next month. If I had only two children, I would have only three grandchildren, I would have no children still at home, I would not have as much on my plate as I currently do. I would certainly not be a Committee Chair, I would probably not be teaching seminary, I would certainly not have to worry about homeschooling two boys aged 10 and 12, I would not have to worry about taxi service for the 14- and 16-year-olds.

In short, you may have a small idea of what my life looks like, and now you may have a better idea, but you still don’t know what it’s like to live it.

In spite of that, life is basically good. I’m basically happy with where I am (other than physically) and I’m happy with where I’m going. I just don’t have any extra time to do anything so don’t be disappointed if I don’t drop everything else and do whatever it is you don’t have time to do. I’ll do what I can but other than that, please don’t hold your breath.

PS I did not write this in response to any one particular request. There are many things I would do if I had more time and there are many things I wish I had the time to do. I expect that in about ten years I may have more free time. Until then, we’ll just see.

In the meantime, have a fabulous day on this beautiful one!