Eight Days A Week

Doing the work of two leaves me frustrated by Thursday night. Weekends are okay, because I can do things throughout the day while the girls play with each other or if we’re all out getting groceries, banking, etc. Friday’s fine, because I know that we can sleep in the next morning, and I have that extra 45 minutes in the morning routine to add in a set up for supper that night. Monday to Thursday though, really gets tough.

Every second Monday is recycle day, so I have to make sure all that’s out at the end of the driveway that morning. The first Tuesday of each month is Greta’s speech therapy appointment (in the house, thankfully), and the second Tuesday is the Grief Support Group meeting. The next night is my monthly Mary Kay meeting (yes, it’s not like I have ENOUGH to do, I also have two home-based businesses – Mary Kay and Mona Vie). I have a deal with my sitter to exchange time for product, so that’s all good.

The first Thursday of the month is water bottle exchange day – easy to put out, harder to bring in. Every Friday is garbage day, with the last Friday of the month being house cleaner day, so everything gets put up off the floors for the cleaners in the living room, kitchen, hallway, and our bedrooms and things get taken off counters in bathrooms and kitchen. It almost feels like I’m cleaning up for the cleaners.

I love having those two nights a month out of the house, but that leaves me REALLY playing catch-up on housework for the rest of the week. I’m running a load of wash every night – Ray’s, diapers, Greta’s, mine (1^st load), diapers, mine (2^nd load), sheets and towels, diapers, Ray’s… round and round. I try to set it off on a delay so it’s washed while we’re out then in the dryer during supper.

The dishwasher is run every night around midnight – we go through a lot of plastic containers for lunches and left-overs – and the door is open during the day to air-dry. The dishes are put away while I’m making supper so that it’s empty after we eat.

I try to make lunches up as I’m tidying up from supper, but sometimes I run out of containers, so I have to tack on the cut fruit, yogurt and cottage cheese the next morning. If I run out of drink containers, I have to add one more in the morning too.

Since garbage day is Friday, I run around Thursday night putting the smaller bags into the big one, usually while supper is cooking if I’m lucky. Not to mention the compost bucket needs emptying twice a week or so, and since there’s still snow on the ground, I prefer to do that during daylight hours.

The first chance I get to sit down and not be ‘on’, is while Ray is up, but Greta’s in bed. Ray can usually hang by herself and read or colour while I do some work and surfing on the computer. On weekends, the girls like to watch the Youtube video of their late grandpa driving the steam train in Port Alberni back in ’93 and Feist on Sesame Street, so I don’t always get computer time on weekends.

By the time Ray’s in bed and has allowed me to escape, it’s close to 8:30. I’m up at 5 the next morning, so I try not to stay up past 9:30, but that’s hard to do if I’m paying bills, balancing the budget, making up our grocery list for the weekend, replying to emails and finding some Facebook time too. Not to mention, Sailor likes his emails from me, and I like to tell him how our days went.

I’m also a tv show lover. I tape my shows and manage to catch up Friday and Saturday night, because the rest of the time I’m too bagged.

How single parents do this every day amazes me. I have more respect than ever for my mum who was a single parent, and for all my friends who were/are.

I need an extra day where I can play catch up between Wednesday and Thursday. We could call it Noday.