Tag: work-at-home mom

Mommy Dangerfield Moment

franciscanmom1 Comment

IMG_0423You’d think I’d have figured this out by now.

But maybe I really DO have “DOORMAT” stamped on my forehead.

The issue here is respect for my time, respect I don’t feel I’m getting from my family.

I work from home. That doesn’t have to mean that I’m 100% available 100% of the time just because someone couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed in time to catch the school bus.

Because Hubs enjoys spending a few minutes in the morning driving The Kid to school, he’s been enabled in his slugabed ways. Hubs is away on business this week, though, and that leaves me to do the driving, whether or not it happens to fit into my plans for the day. Those plans begin at 7:40 AM–when the bus rolls away.

When I complain, they both act as if I’m being unreasonable in expecting The Kid to get moving in the morning and make it onto the bus.

I don’t think it should be on me to rearrange my schedule because someone wanted to catch a few more Zs.

I’m willing to dump my plans at the drop of a hat when medical necessity is involved. It’s a big part of the reason I work from home. But why is my schedule always subject to change when someone else decides to be lazy?

The way I see it, I have limited choices here. I don’t want to call a halt to Hubs’ time with The Kid in the morning, because it’s something they both enjoy.

These are things I can do and need to do:

  1. Work with The Kid to establish a better morning routine that will get him out the door in time for the school bus.
  2. Give The Kid the responsibility of finding out whether Hubs is available to drive him to school–the night before.
  3. Determine a reasonable plan of action for those days when Hubs can’t drive The Kid, who then misses the bus anyway.

Number 3 is going to be the hardest one, because everyone thinks that because my job allows for a flexible schedule, they can be the ones to decide to flex it.

photoMeanwhile, I’m going to read the chapter on “Organizing Your Time” in Katharine Grubb’s new book, Write a Novel in 10 Minutes a Day. (No, I’m not writing a novel, but there are plenty of ideas in here that will apply.)

Because I’m not willing to start my workday at 8:30. And I shouldn’t have to. Early morning is my most productive time, and I want to make the most of that.

I need to start setting the example here and respect my own time.

Small Success: Sleep Deprived

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Small-Success-Thursday-400pxThursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

The older I get, the less well I handle the lack of a good night’s sleep. Since Hubs has always been one of those people who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and wake up refreshed no matter what, he’s always done the Night Shift when the kids were little.

That didn’t change when The Kid developed diabetes. The thing with diabetes is that you can have a low blood sugar during the night–and never know about it. This can kill you.

dexcom g4We are blessed that there’s technology in the form of a continuous glucose monitor that sets off an alarm on Hubs’ cell phone when The Kid’s blood sugar goes too low.

Tuesday night, it was alarm after alarm after alarm. And I woke up at midnight and couldn’t go back to sleep, so from midnight to 3 I took the Night Shift. He had 12 oz. of juice during that time but his blood sugar just wouldn’t stay within the safe level.

I’m really glad that I have the sort of job where I can pick and choose what task to do at what time. Normally my best time of day to do work that requires concentration is in the morning. But not yesterday. So here’s how I succeeded:

1. I didn’t try to schedule things I couldn’t handle until there had been sufficient caffeine intake.

2. I got some overdue housework done. The bathrooms are clean and the floors have been mopped. While I cleaned, I listened to the Good Things Radio podcast. Girlfriend chat, while scrubbing the tub.

3. I made a short grocery list and went to Shop Rite, where they had doo-wop music on the radio and I might or might not have had a little extra spring in my step because of that. I wasn’t the only person dancing in Shop Rite.

4. By the time I got home, I was feeling good and awake and I was able to get a good chunk of work done!

5. And in case you’re keeping track, it’s been 2 weeks and my desk is still clean!

This morning, I’m grateful for the good night’s sleep I got. Hubs was not so lucky. He made a lot of juice runs again, overnight.

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© 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz

Down the Rabbit Hole

franciscanmom9 Comments

The fact that I am writing this right now proves that the internet has robbed me of the ability to concentrate.

Too! Many! Shiny! Things!

Right now, I am supposed to be working, as in writing two blog posts for The New Parents Guide, at least one for DealLocker and maybe even one for Tjoos. Then I need to make out my end-of-month invoice and submit it to the people who pay me.

But here’s how it went down:

Tomorrow’s August, so I went hunting for the fun and strange “holidays” that come up every month. Those help me come up with topics for NPG’s blog.  I pasted the August list into OneNote, where I keep topic ideas for the blogs.

I saw that August 1-7 is “Simplify Your Life Week” and I remembered that I’d seen a tweet about an article Jen Fulwiler wrote about organization. So I went over there to read it. (Don’t miss it, by the way! It’s great!) I completely related to the parts about lack of focus, because there I was in the same boat, except without the babies and toddlers in the house.

The oven bell went “ding!” so I headed into the kitchen to pull the meatballs out of the oven. 

ImageI opened up a new post at NPG, intending to sing the praises of sling bookcases (see Jen’s post for details or stop by NPG on Thursday to see more on this subject).

The UPS truck pulled up and delivered a box of coffee packs for my Keurig. Even though I had ordered this coffee and therefore knew exactly what was in the box, I stopped what I was doing so I could open the box and admire all that coffee.

I opened one of the boxes right away and put the K-cups into the little storage drawer so they’d be ready for the morning.

Then I stirred the spaghetti sauce.

I remembered that I want to talk up a tip for making even-more-awesome spaghetti sauce on my cooking Facebook page, so I wrote a note in my planner to remind myself to do that.

I saw a note in my planner reminding me of tonight’s folk-group practice, so I went back to my email to print out the list of music I’ll need.

I refilled my water glass. I ignored the fact that there’s laundry I need to move to the dryer and fresh sheets to put on my bed. But I won’t be able to ignore that for long.

Between the household chores and the Internet’s lures, I’m never going to get my work done today. I’m considering switching to a two-browser system:  one for work and one for Everything Else. Because I’ve got 16 browser tabs open right now, and that’s way too many things screaming for my attention.

Now that that’s out of my system, I’m off to work. I think I’ll just set a timer to help me focus on the job at hand. When the little bell rings, THEN I can get up and do something else.