Late night. Must work. Legos!

 

I can't fucking flip a picture in blogger? For crap's sake. Fine. You get the idea. I ran out of time, Randy had to go to work, and here i am, trying to get at least one of my two posts done. arrrrhhghghgsflksjalfkfjla. 

Where'd I put that?

Where? Where did I put the image files for this story? I had them all collected. See. This is why people use Evernote and Scrivener. I would use those if I had the 30 minutes to sit and focus and do their tutorials. Maybe I put them in Pinterest! they're not there. oh for crap's sake. okay. I AM REALLY TIRED BY THE WAY. Like "the taste of coffee keeps me from closing my eyes" tired. agajagajagajaga. ok back to work. nice to see you all, by the way, you're looking well.

Job Interview

GAAAAH I JUST INTERVIEWED FOR THE WORLD'S MOST PERFECT JOB!!!! argh. I hate when this happens. Mustn't get hopes up. Though even if it doesn't work out, I've GOT to get some great freelance work out of it.

I'm reminded of the sketch on Saturday Night Live where a bunch of girls adjust the song "Tell Him" to actual dating. On the first date, you tell him that you don't want kids, that you never want to get married, etc. But with jobs, you DO tell 'em that you're always gonna love them, tell 'em that you're never gonna leave them, and the rest. Argy blargy.

All right. As with dating, there's no point worrying right now -- better get back to work (for the next 20 minutes) because the more I work, the better I look. This entire metaphor has now crumbled to the ground like the tower of Babel. Thank you and good day.

Workin' on a Sunday

a Sunday a Sunday cuz that's how this week weeeeeent. Okay, also planning birthday party, but hoping to catch up and get ahead anyway. Thing is, I need to talk to my editors and change my schedule and, instead, I'm just starting each day with the vain hope that this is the day I'll suddenly work 5 times faster than ever before. This is not just a problem in my work life; I am late 75% of the time to either pick up or drop off Penny, even when I'm working a shift at the co-op, and Randy says I have no concept of what time is or how long things take. He's right. And with that, off I go to write about OH SHIT the jack o'lantern post!!! i have to take one more photo. okay. bye.

Here's how yesterday went

So you know how they say that being a working mom means you're always letting someone down? Yesterday I put that into action.

When I ran out of office time at 10:30, I had only gotten one post done. But I was really really close to having the second one done, too, and I knew if I could just grab a half hour of quiet time, I'd reach that day's minimum baseline goal. I know, wow, really reaching for the stars here.

Now, Penny was at preschool, and my afternoon shift at her co-op didn't start for a while, so I tried working with Abby at my feet, playing with blocks. She needed to snuggle, so I moved her onto my lap. Snuggling turned into napping, and I thought, "Bingo! I'm gonna get this sucker done."

This is where things get muddy. The alarm went off on my phone, playing the opening of "Camp Granada" and telling me to get going for my work shift. My mind then did a switcheroo: "I set that early, so I'd have time to get dressed after it went off, right? So I have a half hour?"

I looked at the clock. I was supposed to be at school at 12:20. But for the morning shift, I arrive at 8:50. So somehow my brain turned that into "I don't have to be there till 12:50, I can get this done!" I typed and posted feverishly, and got the damn thing in.

I was just pushing the "publish" button when my phone rang. It was Teacher Tom. "You're supposed to be here!" he said. And my brain suddenly sproinged back into the real world, and I realized what I had done. Amazing: I completely self-sabotaged in the interest of making a deadline.

I was so mortified, so absolutely embarrassed (this is only the most recent in a string of late-pickups, tardy-arrivals, and school-screwups), that I briefly considered not showing up at all, hiring someone to pick up Penny, and moving to another state, but I faced the music and worked the rest of my shift with appropriate humility.

I'd like to say I'm ditching the guilt to celebrate the deadline I made, and that I'll do the same in reverse (refuse to feel guilty about deadlines when I get to school on time), but come on. I think we all know that's as likely as my making today's deadlines.

Off I go, then. At least I get to make jack o' lanterns out of unconventional materials today! Colon close-parens!

Between a rock and a hard place

The hard truth is, I don't even get my full 2 hours in the morning to work, and whatever I do have, it's not enough to get my work done right now. The only way around this is to hire childcare. But the only way to make enough $$ to hire childcare is to pack more work into the time I have.

I always think of how Stephen King would get up at 5am and jam himself into the boiler room of his family's trailer to write Carrie for 2 hours each morning before he went to work as a teacher, and I feel horribly lazy.

I'm sure there's a conclusion to be reached here, but I'm now down to an hour and a half and I gotta write about signing at daycare and I dunno what the heck else. And I haven't had coffee. So grumble grumble grumble.

Yep, I'm a bitch.

One side-effect of this new schedule is that I get hyper-focused when I'm here at my desk, and plan my work down to the last minute -- sometimes it feels like to the last second. So when I think I have 10 more minutes, and then my husband comes in with the baby to have a last-minute chat about things before he leaves for work, I am liable to bite his head off.

This is to explain things if you happen to see a headless man walking to the BART this morning. He used to be 6'4", but I'm estimating he's about 5'11" without his noggin.

I feel like this is a common problem, and I'm sure it could be cleared up easily. For instance, maybe we can chat while he's at the BART station? Or maybe he needed something from me before he left. Well, I guess we'll find out.

Yesterday I was even more of a lunatic and I have determined that I have to stop trying to pack everything into each day. But when it comes to getting my work done, I still feel like there's hot wolf breath on the back of my neck until I've made my two deadlines per day, which I did manage today (though I missed one yesterday that I hoped to make up).

Anyway, I'm now exiting the workplace and will let you know if he was trying to tell me the kitchen was on fire.

Seriously people we need to get started earlier.

I have 45 minutes to work today because we got to sleep so late last night / slept in today again. This is nuts in the butts. And with both girls I won't be able to use the Ergo to gain an extra little work time. arrrgh.

I did find a cache of pitched/approved ideas, so at least I can get rolling right away. The first one is, of course, a child-safety story, and those I really have to steel myself emotionally to deal with, but that's not time-consuming, it's just hard.

My friend emailed me the other day, my freelance role-model who got me started in this whole game, and asked "How can you stand to only work two hours a day?" I've been too embarrassed to admit it's nooooo problem. I wish I had more time to blog, but the issue isn't "oh! i want to work," it's "oh! we need the ducats." That'll change, I'm sure, as the weeks wear on and I realize this isn't just a temporary state of affairs.

ok then, safety story, 20 minutes to have it up and out.

This is me working today.

She's watching Teletubbies on my browser in an unidentifiable language. Late wakeup + no nap = at least I made my 2 deadlines today.

Let's try that again

So I would have to define my first week of being a mom-working, as opposed to working-mom, as an epic fail. As a mom, I ran the kids absolutely ragged and now they're both spending the weekend dazed and exhausted with runny noses. As a worker, I think I did 2 days' worth of posts? Or maybe 1 days' worth of work, spread out over 2 days?

On the other hand, it was Rosh Hashonah, and it was also my first week, so I'm not firing myself just yet. I'm grabbing 3 hours of work today, and was supposed to do the same yesterday but had to help out a friend instead. So let's see if I can do.... Rocker Lawsuits, Flame Retardants (maybe not that one, I'll look at the emails), and I'll Pray Later.

I'm bummed that I can't seem to make the startup blog happen. I just don't have the bandwidth to work for free for them, and they aren't answering my emails. I also want to post to my craft blog. So don't forget that.

Sheesh. Okay. One thing at a time! Bird by bird! Let's start again. Rocker lawsuits to start.