Almost didn't have the time to write this blog entry...

It occurs to me that one of the phrases I seem to utter the most these days is "I wish I had time to...".  With a one hour commute each way to work, a full 9 hour day, and evenings spent keeping my ADHD-addled 8 year old focused on completing her homework, the laundry often lies in piles around the house, the dishes pile up in the sink, the house looks vaguely like something one sees on a TLC TV show, and free time eludes me.  My respite is our agreed upon "one night off" each week, an hour or so of TV time at night after the kiddo finally falls asleep, and our every other weekend "date night" when the kid sleeps over at her grandmother's house.  Weekends should provide a little down time, but they are often spent catching up on the housework that has piled up all week.  I had some vague notion that adult life would be far more structured and scheduled than my college life, but I had no clue each day would be as taxing as it is,  nor that I would find myself completely unable to stay on top of the very basics.

We have many friends who have a 2 working parent household.  I am sure they are equally exhausted, but their homes do not resemble the chaos of ours, and they seem to have things together.  I want to find a way to ratchet down the disorganization and confusion, but we would probably have to take a week off with the kiddo in a day camp in order to make a dent in the deep cleaning and to create an organizational system that would help us manage the disorientation.  Sometimes, it takes half an hour to locate a pencil to do math homework, or I'm 20 minutes late for work because I cannot locate a single pair of socks.

Given that our friends seem to have at least the appearance of a "system", I am not quite sure what we're doing wrong.  Week to week, we struggle to keep up with the minimum of the laundry and dishes, and the deep, long term projects are shifted to the back burner, where they pile up to an undaunting level.  When we have last-minute company, we shove our debris in garbage bags, where it builds up in the garage.  I purchase items like nail clippers, tweezers, and socks multiple times per year because we cannot seem to find them. I desperately want to win the battle over chaos, but I look around and am so overwhelmed and intimidated that I don't even know where to begin.  When one is only home up until 7:00 am in the morning and after 6:00 pm, dinner needs to be cooked, dishes need to be loaded, and homework needs to be completed, there is no time leftover to tackle the "lower priority" projects, such as filing paperwork, cleaning baseboards, washing windows, and organization of school materials. Yet, others manage.  I can tackle many things that intimidate others, such as flying alone to England to do research in a subject area in which I have no expertise, or collecting degrees, but I cannot seem to get organized. Both my husband and I are cut from the same cloth, as is our daughter, so we all kind of flail about and try to keep our heads above water.

One area of my life that has really suffered lately is my recreational life. My one hobby, geocaching, has taken a backseat over the past 6 months, as I seem to have no time to pursue it. About once a month, I head out on a weekend day to cache with friends, but other than that, I can't squeeze it in, and frankly, my family needs me more. I have friends with kids who manage to get out and cache every weekend, and who seem to be able to take off out of town without their kids frequently.  How they manage this,  I do not know, and I am not willing to treat my marriage as if we are two separated people who trade off the kids constantly so that they can go off and do their own thing.  I think my husband and I lived that way for a couple of years, and it took its toll on the kiddo.  One day she asked me why we didn't do more as a family, and I took her question to heart.  As much as I miss getting together with folks to hunt for Tupperware in the woods, I have seen improvement in my child's behavior since we've started spending our weekends together as a family. Every child is different.  Those folks I know who spend a good deal of time away from their kids may have children who are pretty independent.  My child is not one of those kids. I suspect that, in some cases, the regular absence of a parent takes its toll on the family, but hobbies can become addictive. I assume that, in a few years, she'll hit her adolescent years and will want to be off with her own friends more often.  And, I assume that I'll miss the days when she wanted to spend all her time with me.

For now, I regret that my friendships are somewhat on hold, that I don't have much autonomous time, but I accept that I signed up for family life and a full time job, and things are as they need to be.  What I need to find, though, is a way to control some of the household chaos that causes us all to stress, as we struggle to get out the door in the morning.  I probably spend as much time hunting for lost objects as I would spend to get organized, but I don't even know where to begin.