There was a day last week which, on paper, looked to be almost leisurely. Rehearsal didn’t start until 11pm, so I had the morning to catch up on things, and I had scheduled the kids’ passport appointments to get them out of the way before I headed in to work.
But… it didn’t turn out that way.
For one, I had been up late the night before filling out the passport forms – my own fault for procrastinating. But it did mean that I didn’t get much sleep.
Then the jar of bean soup that I had pulled from the freezer to thaw in the fridge cracked as I was getting it out to pack for lunch. The bottom of the mason jar just fell clean off and there was a flood of bean soup everywhere, even in the little crevices of the refrigerator door. Curses and clean up followed. I was a little sad because the bean soup had been in the freezer for over two years and I was excited to finally eat it in a show of frugality. Oh well. But this was an added level of mess I didn’t need in the midst of packing everyone else’s lunches and breakfasts.
It was also the morning that our County summer camp registration opened and at 8:25a, I was glued to my computer waiting for the system to open at 8:30a. The camp slots go quickly, so this is the kind of thing that goes in my calendar and I set the alarm for. Luckily I was able to get the ten year old into the same camp as her friend from last summer, but the whole registration experience made me realize that there are some inherent equity issues with this system. I mean, 8:30am is an absolutely terrible time for camp registration to open. I was lucky that my mom walked the kids to school that morning, but if a working parent has to do school drop off or what not, they might not be able to log on right at 8:30am. It’s like you need childcare to sign up for childcare. Also – internet.
Anyhow, after that was done, I had an hour to get dressed, eat some breakfast, pay a couple bills, and make dinner in the InstantPot for the family to have when they got home since I had to work late. I actually felt pretty good about that hour. But of course, pride goeth….
9:30am, I had the two little kids in the car on the way to our passport appointment. I pull up twenty minutes early, get out to pay the meter and realize I had left my wallet at home, having taken it out to pay for summer camp. So I get the kids back in the car, drive back home, hit terrible traffic on the way home due to a malfunctioning traffic light, try not to panic, get home, find my wallet after some searching – I had left it in the bathroom of all places – arrive back at the post office only five minutes late for the passport appointment. I get to the passport window, pull out my wallet … and can’t find my ID. I realized that I had taken it out of my wallet the night before to make a scan of it to submit with out papers. I can’t freakin’ believe it.
Well, as long as I was there, I asked the postal worker taking passport applications to look at the baby’s passport photo just to make sure it would pass muster. And it doesn’t. Apparently, the baby giving her skeptical side-eye, was not looking straight into the camera enough. I felt like yelling, “Do you know how hard it is to get a two year old to stand still for a picture, let alone stand and look straight into a camera?!?!” Or maybe it’s just my two year old.
So I guess the appointment wasn’t all wasted, because now I know that her picture would have been rejected and I would have had to come back again anyway.
By the time we left the post office, it was only 10:30am. I was pretty much drained for the day.
This is life though, right? I don’t have a job that I can just take a personal day to do these things. And things do still have to get done. I mean there is plenty that doesn’t need doing, but even still, sometimes the scheduled list just seems packed. (A friend and I joked that next year we should get together on camp registration day and have breakfast and mimosas.) On the other hand, I do have lots of time between gigs that I can probably be better about planning when some things (ahem passport appointments) get done so that it causes the least amount of friction and stress.
And truth to tell, even though I felt depleted at 10:30am on that day, by the time I got to work there was something refreshing about putting on a different hat and solving different problems and shelving the disaster of a morning. Not that my job doesn’t have it’s challenges… But I go to work and listen to people with gorgeous voices sing Mozart. It’s not terrible. And no one whines at me or cries because I won’t let them put their egg in their cup of milk. It’s certainly easier to get fifty choristers onstage with the right prop than it is to put three kids to bed.
I had a text exchange before I started this gig with a friend. She wrote:
How are things with you? Is the job still on or do you have a break now.
And I wrote back:
Oh, man – going to work *is* the break!