Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Project management

A friend of mine, ironically a male, once told me that any woman who planned a wedding should automatically get her PMP (project management certification if you are not stuck in my sad little world) at the end. He argued that all the crazy planning, managing expectations, budgeting and details were certainly a project worthy of some sort of degree (ironically also not gay).

When I got married, I thought – you know, he may have a point.

Now I realize, he clearly never had kids.

Saturday was one of those examples of a “nice working on this project with you, hon” type of day. The days we try to avoid. When my husband and I talked through our possible working options, one we thought about was – what if I work the days he doesn’t (excluding weekends in my case), averaging 3 days a week. My boss was surprisingly open to this (in theory), but I realized it would wreak havoc at work if no one ever knew when to expect me. And we also realized – this would just wreak havoc on our lives if all they really consisted of was “baby hand off.” My husband said that we ran the risk of raising a child being a project we were working on together rather than being a family. It’s one of those things that doesn’t jump out to you when you look at a schedule “on paper,” but can easily become a stark and cold reality when you actually do it. So instead I work Mon-Wed and his Mom watches the monkey one day a week and it turns out it gives us balance (what doesn’t jump out on that spreadsheet approach is that we haven’t always built in any time to sleep in our schedule, but that’s another topic for another day) most days. It’s always the “most” part that kills you.

My husband had worked 24 on Thursday with no sleep to speak of. He came home on Friday morning and, as always, it was pretty much time to run. I was actually off, so I tried to convince him to nap late morning when the monkey seemed ready to go down, but he wanted to head over to renters to take care of something they needed before it got too late. On the way back, the little one did, in fact, fall asleep in the car, so we kept driving. Then we had to run her by the doctor (slight low grade fever – what’s that about?). And suddenly it was dinner time and he hadn’t rested yet.

So Saturday when I got up with the baby to give her breakfast at 7 I told him to take a break and rest. After breakfast, I wanted to take her out on a wog/snog (wog = walk/jog. It’s mostly a walk with small parts of “snog” or snail’s paced jog), so I suggested he rest while I did that. He actually got up while we were out to start working on his slides for class the next day. I kept the monkey with me while I cleaned up and he worked and then I took her to the store with me. When he finished the slides, I was feeling the need for a break (though not nearly as long, Thursday had been a damn long day for me too), so I handed her off and he took her to Home Depot with him. She fell asleep in the car on the way back and it was my turn to drive her around so that he could hang baby gates without waking her. We came back in time to get her (and me) cleaned up / presentable to meet friends for dinner. The gates got done and we were 40 minutes late (maybe half of that was traffic…).

He looked at me when I outlined the plans on hand offs and said – um, when exactly do I get to hang out with you? I asked him how next Friday looked. Ugh.

Is it just me? Do you have those days too? How do you deal with them? Besides planning ahead (I forgot to mention the cake baking for the dinner part), as that’s clearly not an option!

2 comments:

  1. Personally, We have those days every week, especially during the school year! Just divide and conquer and don't freak if it all don't get done! The main thing to remember is you have to sleep when the kiddos sleep or you'll loose it all!

    www.frugaltractormom.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Holy Schedule, Batman.

    My sister works nights and her husband works days. I don't know how they do it. They have time to miss eachother. And they're an amazing couple. It's just...wow. How are they able to do that and feel like they still have lives? And a family?

    The Bottomless Pit is working crazy hours this week. Weird hours. I'm going to my nephews chorus concert Saturday night. (*SIGH*). The Bottomless Pit goes to breakfast with his dad on Sundays and that's his only day to work on our project vehicles. That means I'm here, raising Miss Cute, wondering when WE get to see Daddy.

    I'm not nearly as busy but I can commiserate in a way. And I somehow got volunteered to bake cookies for the guys he works with. Because that's all that I want to do when he's around. Bake stuff for some fat guys that I don't know.

    Got anything sharp?

    ReplyDelete

I love comments! Come leave me some blog love!