Working from home is not all it's cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE having the opportunity to be around if my kids need me or if something just comes up that I couldn't possibly handle being at an office 50 miles away. What I really love about working from home part of the week, though, is being there when my kids walk in the door after school. I actually get excited, giddy really, when the time nears for them to come home. And, after being told in law school that I would most likely work 60+ hours a week if I ever wanted to make it big as an attorney, working from home, even part of the time, never even crossed my mind. So, this opportunity is a serious blessing.
But, after mornings like I had today, sometimes I wonder why I don't go to the office every day.
I had a phone meeting with a client at 8:30 this morning. Phone meetings in my house usually mean that I run around the house with several children running after me, one crying while I try to stifle the sound and the other usually trying to calm the crying baby, which, of course, just makes it worse. Well, this morning, I only had the baby to work with and I thought if I could get him ready and have him sit on the couch while he watched some engaging, musical, pre-school TV show, that might work.
It might have, but ...
As I tried to get him ready, I let him run around naked for 15 seconds at the most, while I picked up his dirty clothes. Next thing you know, I hear a crash in the kitchen, crying and then running feet coming back to me. I pick him up to console him as I wonder what he slipped on, when that certain not-so-good smell wafted up to my nose. Why does it smell like poop, I wonder? Well, the answer was at my feet. In that 15 seconds I had let little Will free, he managed to poop on the floor, step in it and then as he was running through our dining room, he slipped and fell. So, now there was poop on the floor, spread everywhere, poop on my shirt, my pants, his legs. Oh, and it's now 8:23.
After a quick bath for baby and a quick change for me, I get him ready in lightning speed and then call my client, hoping nothing else goes wrong while I'm on the phone. Well, little Will was quiet for the phone call, so quiet that I should've known something was wrong. I got off the phone only to find that he spilled some bright red liquid down his new clean shirt. It soaked through his Onesie, too, and I still don't know where that liquid (Kool-aid, juice?) came from. It's probably on my carpet in a location I just haven't discovered yet. He also got into my very toxic cleaning supplies and threw our unmatched socks all over the kitchen floor. So there's about 50 unmatched white socks strewn all over my kitchen.
Awesome. My house now looks like the Tasmanian Devil just tore through it.
So, while I love, love, love having the flexibility of working from home, working in peace at home is never guaranteed. Actually, it's quite the opposite at my house. Even if I work in our basement office, which I really should do more often, the kids still manage to work their way down there, just to be around me. I should be flattered, but it's hard to think clearly when someone's doing cartwheels, another is bouncing a basketball, a third is banging on some toy and my oldest is talking my ear off about the latest drama. I guess this is multi-tasking at its best?
I'm just glad the house is quiet now. For as much as I love little Will, I was okay with saying good-bye to him when we finally reached day care today. So now my day not only includes bankruptcy work and motions for new trials, but I also have to wash poopy clothes and make sure there's nothing else I didn't miss when my little tornado ripped through here. Ah, the life of a working mother. Ain't it grand?
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