Off to Work I Go

It is going to be another working weekend. And that is okay.

I had three entire days off last weekend. That energized me enough to get through a wild and crazy Daycare Week and push me through to the weekend.

In fact, the wildness and craziness of my Daycare Days makes me appreciate my bookkeeping job. I have only one thing to do at a time. The entire day is quiet time. I don't have to feed anyone, change anyone, clean up after anyone, train anyone ... I get to play with numbers. Quietly!

No matter what I try or how I do things in this Daycare World of mine, I have yet to find a strategy that works. Every time. What works once may work a second time (for half as long). But the third time isn't the charm. By then, the gig is up and the kids are onto me and we are back at step one.

Introduce food into the day and things just go crazy. Everyone wants the same thing at the same time. I simply could not be more organized as I set the kid's meals down in front of them. Simultaneously. Yet it is not enough.

Food energizes these guys. It creates a whole domino effect of 'bathrooming' issues. Washing up before they eat. Cleaning up after they eat.

Whatever state we leave the kitchen in after a meal, is the state it stays in until the next hiatus within the day. Which is usually preparing the next meal or snack. One day, I made the crazy mistake of thinking I could finish cleaning up the residual lunch mess during nap time. I had exactly ten minutes of simultaneous sleeping that particular day (up from the two minutes that I had a few days prior). And I wasted five of those precious minutes cleaning the kitchen!

We have had some wonderful winter weather and I have rediscovered the magical force of the great outdoors. A half hour of fresh air is a mood changer. For all of us. Playing outside almost always guarantees me content,  happy and busy kids. I breathe in the fresh air, take pictures, send off a text or an email from my phone and forge a connection with the adult world outside of our yard. It takes us twelve minutes (down, from a previous twenty minutes) to get everyone dressed and ready to go outside. It takes five minutes to undress, hang up and place wet winter wear in a place where it can dry.

The days are a blur. I live in a world of perpetual motion. I think I have a minute to sit still but then someone needs something or is getting into something they shouldn't or I 'smell a smell' that needs to be investigated or one of a thousand other things.

But today? I get to go and sit in an adult world, think adult thoughts, talk to another adult being and work uninterrupted for eight solid hours. Uninterrupted!! Oh yes, and I happen to get paid to do this job as well (this is a side benefit that I fail to remember until I receive my pay cheque at the end of the month).

Who knew that I needed a bigger workload during the week to help me appreciate the difference in the workload I carry on the weekends?

The downside of this outside-of-my-home employment and adult conversation within the day ahead of me ... is that I just wasted at least twenty minutes of my morning trying to rectify a bad hair morning and applying eye make-up and color to my cheeks so that my face does not looked like the washed out blur of the week that I have just lived. I could have dressed and undressed five kids to go outside and still have had time left over to play with the time I just spent in the bathroom trying alter the reflection in the mirror.

There is color on my face and a skip to my step as I head out into the world-without-kids and sing a little ditty like "Hi ho! Hi ho! It's off to work I go ..."