Daily Grind.

This was the first post ever written on this blog.  I wanted to keep track of my life, the details of it, and so that's what I first wrote about it: the daily grind.

This post was originally written and posted on April 10, 2008.

Divorced... with kids.

Someone should make a TV series out of it.

Seriously.

I'll admit switching gears from stay at home mom to working mom hasn't been easy. I'm still trying to get the hang of it. The routines are different and there is so little time to spare.

I'm up at 5:00 a.m., the girls are up at 6:30, and we're out of the house by 7:30.

Off to daycare where thankfully they eat breakfast because if I had to add just one more thing in the morning we'd never make it out of the house on time.

I say I wake up at 5:00, but realistically I'm rolling out of bed an hour later at 6:00.

Mornings are not my friend.

Some how, miraculously, all five of us are ready to go in an hour and half.

(Maybe I won't mention that sometimes this means compromise to avoid arguments, like Cali (3 years old) wearing her dance out fit and snow boots to daycare).

I can usually drop the girls off at 7:45 and make it in to work aby 7:55-ish, where I get to answer the phone (Thank you for calling Burt Brothers, this is Stephanie...) and scan my life away... one paper at a time.

I only have seven overflowing inboxes...

Lunch time is errands. If it weren't for that one sacred hour of the day I would get nothing done. I squeeze as many little errands into that one hour as I possibly can. This includes grocery shopping.

I start the count down for 5:00 at about 2:30, when finally I can hit the gym (more daycare for the kids, but they like all the friends they're making). The gym is the one thing in my life that I do for completely selfish reasons.

I do it for me.

Of course, this means dinner at 7:00, and somehow we squeeze in homework, baths, and story time to make it to bed by 8:00.

Not me, the girls.

After the girls are in bed, I get to do laundry and dishes and any other miscellaneous cleaning jobs like mopping and picking up stray toys.

Maybe I'll make it to bed by 11:00...