Time Off

I had six hours off today.  Six hours by myself.  No husband, no kids.  The house to myself.  Quiet and solitude are rare in my life right now.  Actually, this might be the longest I've had to myself since Soren was born over nine months ago.

As soon as my in-laws volunteered to take the kids for an afternoon while Chris was away at the cabin for the weekend, my mind raced as it tried to organize and prioritize all the things I could do with my time off.  That's the problem when you're a parent. You have so little time to yourself that whatever you get, you either feel like you have to best utilize every last minute or you're so overwhelmed by the notion that you can do whatever you want to do that you can't even decide what to do with yourself. 

My mental list of how I wanted to spend my free time included cleaning, folding, ironing AND put away the laundry, gardening, getting a start on cooking for the August meal exchange, baking, going for a walk, grocery shopping, hanging out with friends and checking out books for the kids from the library.  Then when Soren woke up screaming at 3:30 a.m. last night and I did what I haven't done in a long time, fed him, I thought about scrapping my whole list and just taking a nap and loaf around the house. 

By the end of my time off, I hadn't taken a nap, had loafed a little and had only accomplished a fraction of my list.  Despite an order from a friend not to clean, I did clean a little.  And I ran errands.  I just had to get something concrete accomplished or I would have driven myself nuts.  I took my day at a slow pace though, because a few years into this parenting, I'm trying to learn to enjoy downtime for what it is - downtime - and forget about having something to show for it. 

Six hours went by way too quickly.  I should really do this more often.