She Never Blogs, What is She Even DOING?

This morning it is 24 degrees outside and windy. The wind is gusting up to 40 miles per hour, in fact. This, being Wednesday, would be a biking morning, but neither Stephanie, my morning workout partner, nor I are that hardcore. In fact, we sometimes walk when it's too cold to bike, and today we gave that a miss, too. So I had some time to think about why I don't blog as often as I'd like these days. Here's why, I suspect:

4:50AM - stretch a bit, get up, let the pooch out, suit up, grab some water, throw a load of laundry in the machine, grab a fistful of grapes or the like, head out into the darkness

5:15AM - meet Stephanie for bikeride. Bike 12 miles, yammer yammer yammer for a full hour. (This is one of my favorite hours of the day, because it actually belongs to me.)

6:20 - get home and think about how late I already am, clean cat litter, drink water, put load in dryer, greet husband, shower

7:00 - try desperately to get out the door while complaining that I meant to leave 10 minutes ago, do a few odds and ends for the kids, hug and kiss kids, hug and kiss husband, hug and kiss puppy, leave, realize I forgot something, go back in, do it all over, leave.

7:45 - Arrive at work, annoyed at having not left earlier so I could use 15 extra minutes of quiet in the office. Review to-do list for the day, reply to email, adhere to "no more than 10 emails remaining in the inbox" rule, drink coffee, eat the breakfast I didn't have time to eat at home, quickly scan the day's headlines.

8:10 - 1:00 - attend a parade of meetings, scribble down notes, plan next meetings, issue emails with updates and nonsense created by meetings. Glance at sad to-do list, as yet untouched due to new work created by meetings, eat lunch, run at least 2 errands.

1:00 - 4:00 - more of the same, plus some impromptu tete a tetes on this, that or the other, a few kid-related things like addressing the teacher's note that arrived home in Kate's folder yesterday addressing the quality of her homework (note contained misspelling by teacher, she wrote "writeing" and it made my head hurt.)

4ish - Tell sad to-do list I will complete it tomorrow, pack it up for the day, rush out the door to get the kids before daycare and After School close and they start charging us $5 per minute I'm late and/or call social services. Sit in traffic. Listen to All Things Considered. Mondays are good because I'm getting my commute started right when All Tech Considered comes on and the theme music for that bit makes me feel happy.

5:ish, if I've left before 4:30, otherwise dangerously close to 6:00 - Pick up Sarah, chat with her teacher, receive handouts on various things I can do to be more involved with daycare that involve taking time off work. Pick up Kate, experience some example of how disorganized Drew Charter School is, but enjoy the nice staff.

5:30ish - 10:00 - Arrive home, play with puppy, begin cooking dinner, get Kate started on homework, hound Kate to complete each silly, busywork page of her enormous work packet, keep Sarah company in the potty per her insistent request, fold laundry, participate in a kitchen dance party, break up a sibling dispute, respond to more work emails via Blackberry because it's better to just get that out of the way, right? Pour a glass of wine and spend the remainder of the evening trying to recall where last I set it down, feed the children, maybe feed us simultaneously but often not, bathe the children (sometimes), read to children, put the children to bed, finally finish adult dinner, clean the kitchen, watch a bit of some show on DVD that the rest of the world saw 2 years ago, make Kate's lunch for the next day, spend quality time with husband, read a couple paragraphs of my book, pass out.

4:50 AM - start over, but with the Tuesday/Thursday routine.

Upon review, that seems pretty packed, but it's really nothing compared to what our weekends have been like. I'm about to add a bunch of travel for work that will throw the routines completely off balance and most likely result in there being no food in the house. For the first time in my life I find myself wishing for more time more than I wish for more money.

I am sorry you've missed a few days of kid news. They've been pretty cute. They say the darndest things, you know. I will try to be better at committing them to virtual paper, I promise. As soon as we're all done with Monkey's 8-week puppy kindergarten class...