Well, we are just hours away from the official end of mid-winter vacation (I don’t count weekends), and I just have to say that this week had to be a monumental disappointment for my kids. All they wanted to do was make some homemade bread and play some games, but with my crazy work-from-home schedule this week, they were pretty much on their own. I never painted Olivia’s toe nails. We never finished her scrapbook. I never played Scrabble with Noah. I never even played Candy Land with Chiara. We did make it to the library a couple of times and to the Perfect Blend, their favorite shop for smoothies and treats, but that’s a far cry from Disney World — or the bowling alley for that matter.
Most of the time I am incredibly grateful to have the kind of job that allows me to work with my kids at home, but weeks like this — when lots of my friends who work in office jobs full-time take a week’s vacation to do things with their kids — I am painfully aware of the fact that my work is always pushing its way into our home life. I don’t dictate my deadlines, so when stories and other jobs come up, I take them and figure out how to make things work later. Unfortunately, a lot of times, it’s my kids who bear the brunt of my work-at-home lifestyle. I owe them big time, but even in the midst of this less-than-exciting school break, when I turned to Noah and said, “I’m sorry this week has been so lousy,” he made me proud and said, “That’s OK. We understand.” So now I feel even worse.
I just told them to wash their hands and get ready to make bread. It may not be ready in time for dinner, but at least they’ll have something to write in their “What I Did on My Mid-Winter Vacation” essays come Monday.
