{{Cash}} DH and I have always worked together so we often through the years had to switch off parenting and office tasks. We both know exactly how exhausting children can be, and how stressful customers can be. Bottom line, children are tougher because you can't use the same handling techniques with them.

Do you have scheduled down time? Dude's lucky you don't meet him in the driveway every day when he gets home. "Have fun dear, see ya in an hour or so."

Do you have scheduled down time? Dude's lucky you don't meet him in the driveway every day when he gets home. "Have fun dear, see ya in an hour or so."

It's never been scheduled, per se. Some days, I'm totally fine. Some days, NSM. I'm tempted to do the driveway thing!

Tonight he hedged when I said I wanted to go upstairs and hide in the bedroom, saying he was "tired, too." But then he reconsidered because the "kids behave better when I'm not around." (Which is sort of true.) So I'm taking an hour to do some odds and ends.

{{{Cash}}}

I like the idea of scheduled downtime. It's different for us because we both work, but it's an ongoing process of negotiation.

Cash, my mom says there were days my dad walked in, and she handed him my bother (he was a baby, I was three) and locked herself in the bathroom without a word.

I've done both -- home with kids and working full-time (with kids), and hands down, home with kids is harder. At least at work you can tune out for a few minutes, or let voice mail pick up, and even while commuting you can turn your brain off for a bit, knowing a two-year-old is not going to be demanding a juice box or, you know, peeing on the floor.

I think scheduling is a grand idea -- that way even if it wasn't scheduled exactly when you needed it - you'd know when your next break was going to be. Kids do not come with 15 minute breaks or with a lunch break

ION, my workplace is threatening to implode. I'm mostly a spectator, but there's some major conflict going on between the new director and most of the staff with a few subsidiary conflicts here and there. Tomorrow we're having a two-hour meeting of all the permanent staff, headed by the divisional administrator under whose umbrella the department falls, to try to iron things out. And I'm expecting it to be explosive.

It's not a good atmosphere there, and I'm wondering if it's time for me to update my resume and start actively looking. I don't think my position is threatened--it's been explicitly stated that I'm doing a great job, especially given how little orientation and support I received when I came on board. But it's just not a good place to be, and I wouldn't be surprised if we have MASSIVE turnover in the next few months, enough to threaten the stability of our program.

Sigh. I was really hoping when I took this job that it would be It, if not the last job I took before getting published and (hopefully) getting in a position to switch to a part-time day job, at least a place where I could stay for 4-5 years and have some stability and contentment in my work life for a change. But lately it's been all instability and discontent, and I don't see it improving in the short term. A two-hour meeting just isn't going to fix things, you know?

Oh, Cash. I wish you were closer. I'd totally come over and give you a break.

So, are these sugar? [link]

Never hurts to update your resume - esp when you have the choice of being picky

and those flats - very sugar. I want them

We've been getting a lot of snow, so it's piled up all over, hanging on trees, piled on cars and houses, really pretty. Now, it's starting to get windy, and we get wind here unlike anywhere else I've been, huge gales coming down off the ice field. There was just an amazing gust full of snow, swirling around, all sparkly and powerful. It was gorgeous, since I saw it from inside. I'd sure hate to be out in it, though.

Joe and I sometimes end up playing "who's more tired." I hate it because it's a different kind of tired, but we are both tired in our own way.