A day in the life

Today has felt really long, but in a good way. I worked at home and my partner had a day off, so it was all a lot more varied than office-bound days are wont to be. Here's how it rolled.

6:30am   Wake up, contemplate ceiling for a bit.

6:45am    Get up, dress, have breakfast in silent house. Astonishingly, all three kids are still asleep.

7:20am    Wake husband, leave house for appointment. His turn for school drop off!

7:45am    Arrive (early) for appointment so kill time walking briskly around the shops to wake up.

8:00am    Appointment with lovely psychologist. Leave feeling in better control of my jerkbrain.

9:15am    Arrive home. Have cup of tea with husband.

9:30am    Begin day's work. A difficult and complex document is on today's agenda. Fortunately, the
house is quiet and I am in the right head space to do it.

11:30am   Husband leaves to go help in school kitchen with cooking class. I take a pause from work
to hang washing out and refresh my teacup.

1:40pm   Husband gets home from cooking, and I look up in a daze. Have been completely absorbed
in the work and forgotten to eat / move / stretch for over 2 hours. Now I am very stiff.

2:00pm   Husband and I drive to the beach park 10 minutes away and go for a walk to ease the kinks
and have that rare thing, a conversation sans kids.

3:00pm   Back into work for me, while husband goes to collect Kids 1 and 3 from school. Kid 2 has a
homework help program followed by guitar group.

4:30pm   Husband goes to collect Kid 2, while I keep working despite Kid 3 playing with her Furby
Boom toy right. behind. my. head.

5:00pm   Husband out to run errands; I am still working; kids are doing homework or playing. I pause
a few times to check the potatoes slow-baking on the BBQ, to help Kid 1 with her antonym / synonym homework, to talk about her day with Kid 2 and to admire Kid 3's artwork.

6:15pm    I finish my document, woooo hooooo! Email it off in triumph and go outside to start
cooking the meat, onions and mushrooms for dinner.

6:40pm   We all sit down at our outside table to eat a BBQ dinner in the faintly cool, beautiful summer evening. It's extremely nice.

7:20pm   Husband and Kid 2 go off to do grocery shopping, while Kids 1 and 3 play on trampoline and I do dinner dishes, put on more washing, and reply to accumulated personal email.

8:00pm   Kids 1 and 3 begin night-time ablutions, in which I play the role of cheerleader, towel fetcher, pj-layer-outer, and hair-washer.

8:15pm   Kids are washed; youngest and I sit down to do her reader and her spelling words. We then
swing into bedtime stories.

8:45pm   Husband and Kid 2 are home, and Kid 3 is off to bed. This causes some ructions, but we
sort it out. By 9pm, everyone is (more or less) settled down.

9:00pm   I read a chapter of our current read-aloud, Madeleine L'Engle's An Acceptable Time, aloud
to the big two. We snuggle on the couch. This may be my favourite part of parenting.

9:30pm   Kids 1 and 2 off to bed; I get on to computer and put in a solid 45 minutes writing on my
novel, adding 600 words to the total. I also mess about a bit on Facebook and Twitter, as you do, and write this post!

10:35pm Once I hit post, I'll be off to bed to read a little before flaking out - hopefully quickly, but sleep is always a roulette with me now so we'll just have to see.

That's actually the sort of day that, when I'm well (as I am ... ish ... at the moment), I like the best. I'm figuring it out by inches, but I really am coming to the conclusion that home-based work - or work that is at least mostly doable at home - is the best fit for me, in terms of my work habits, my aptitudes, my family balance, and my sense of life fit. (Not to mention that I get much more detail work done, away from offices).

These are interesting thinks, at the end of an interesting day!