Crash!
OK, it wasn't quite that bad. I had a lovely daytime meeting with my colleagues. Complete with a baby blessing-way and a "white elephant" exchange with a "yankee swap". But no one stole anything...except the cookies someone WANTED stolen, totally doesn' t count. I came home with a lovely Scandaniavian themed box that someone didn't want but I love. And my colleagues hugged me. And they told me what I was being crazy about and what I wasn't being crazy about. Don't you wish we had panels we could go to for all parts of our lives where we could say "OK, am I out of line here or is this for real?" and people you love and respect would TELL you? Oh yeah. I'd love that. "Thumbs up? Or thumbs down." I wish. But for today, this was good.
But I let down my child. Big time. He's been asking me for a couple of weeks if we could make some Norwegian themed thing for his International Club meeting. It gets him extra credit and class room "cred" as being a good cook. I love this! He's usually all about his Korean heritage.I was so excited that he wanted to do something from my side! It was originally on the calendar for last Friday. We knew that date wasn't right, but I had the new date wrong. I thought that tomorrow, THURSDAY was the baking day. That we'd make homemade lasagne (a request from the youngest) and mess around with the krumkake all night while we listened to Christmas carols and drank hot chocolate with marshmallows.
Nope. International Club is tomorrow. Thursday. We had to bake today. But, today I had the fudge to prepare at 6AM for the musical theater bake sale at the little homeschool school. And there was the White Elephant gift to wrap at 7AM, and three lunches to make before 7:30AM, and an hour and a half drive because of the traffic to get to my meeting. And then there was the Advanced Drama mandatory parent meeting right after my meeting. And a meeting with the minister who is my boss of course, and a board meeting for the church I work for. When was there time to make this cookie of our great grandmothers and have this wonderful, cultural bonding time?
Yep. In the two seven minute windows of time we had. During the first seven minutes we found the frame for the krumkake iron. But...no iron. No insert. Nope. Where the heck did the iron go? Oh well, doesn't matter. Wasn't happening.
Spritz? How about that. We could find almost enough parts to assemble that cookie contraption. We made half a pan during the second seven minute stretch and flew out the door to bring boys to Tae Kwon Do practice and then I had to drive like a mad woman up I-5, trying to make my meeting on time. This, in particular, would not have been a good time to bail on these meetings for a variety or reasons. Not now. No way.
I texted home at 7:30 "how r spritz going?" and heard nothing back. "OK, must be going all right".
On the way home at 9:15, not 9:00--I left before my meeting was over, really I did, I called home. Not going all right. All homework was delayed, cookies were a mess. No one was happy. Things were falling apart fast.
Damn.
This is when I hate that my job is weird hours and "must make" evenings. I hate that sometimes I have to put work before family. Hate it. I hate that my weekends and holidays are dominated by work. And they hate it, my family, they hate it. I came home to ugliness.
I love my work, but I really wish that there were two of me. In hindsight? Yeah, I should have skipped my daytime meeting. I should have stayed up late after feeding homeless teens last night and done the prep for today. I should not have gotten a sinus infection that makes me not sleep for days and days. I should have taken a job at IKEA where they are closed on Christmas Eve. But I didn't. I chose this. And I love what I do. But there are days. Man, there are days when I wish it didn't take such commitment to do this good work.
I wish.
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