More like late spring/early summer break. School ended BEFORE Memorial Day and will restart in the second week of August. When I was a kid, school ended late June (beginning of summer) and started again around Labor Day (the spiritual conclusion of summer). Hence, summer break.
It’s a fine rant, but what am I really complaining about here? Since the wife and I work from home, our house is now a multifunctional office complex, daycare, cafeteria, and dwelling. So, I’m ranting about the inescapable stress cave I live, work, and play in.
Let’s get the qualifier out of the way: it’s a first-world problem with a cherry on top. The kids are monitored and kept active, get to see their parents all the time, and our schedules are hugely flexible to meet the demands of each day. Want to take everyone out for ice cream at 11 AM? I mean, it won’t happen, but it could happen. Mid-day visits to the pool. Home-cooked meals. Lots of video games and time playing with friends. This should be the apex of dual-income parenting.
The issue is time. Since there’s no compartmentalization of job, home job, rest, and whatever else, it all blends together and is SUPER easy to overbook. Each day is billed out as an 8-hour work day. It takes all day to get through those 8 hours and the time is often discontinuous because every day is also 16 hours of childcare. Then there’s 3-5 hours of domestic stuff that needs to be taken care of. A lot of it overlaps the child care and fits between the 8 hours of work, though. So you just juggle. It slows response times because you gotta put one thing down and pick up the other, but it works. You get used to it, pure optimization. There’s even a honey-do list (for both partners) that gets fit in when the system is just flowing so smoothly you don’t even feel like you’re working 3 jobs at once. You are, but you’re the lobster in the pot that’s been lulled to a boil. Leisure time gets the lowest priority because it’s all leisure time, right? You’re at home! You feel tired from all the stuff you do, but you don’t feel productive because as you stuff more obligations into the day, you subconsciously prioritize only the dumpster fires. So you’re constantly putting out fires and ignoring the high-tier, rewarding parts of your job. You skim the document and add critical edits rather than popping in a cool reference you found or fact-checking that one-liner about spandex as a sugar substitute. You stop fights and sling meals rather than sitting down with your kids for a game of Candyland. You stand at your desk instead of sitting because sitting feels like couch time and couch time is guilt when you have this much to do. But all that’s fine, the real kicker is when a friend reaches out and wants to meet up.
That’s when the bomb goes off, the last straw. The house is a mess, you’re in your PJs, there are no babysitters, you’re behind on work, and everything was going to get done RIGHT when that friend wants to meet up. You melt down, smash your phone, and the friend probably never talks to you again.
Damn.
But it goes on like that and one day you realize something. Your little boy looks up at you with those eyes and says, “Daddy, I wiped my ass on the wall.” And you realize you’re glad you don’t have any friends.
Stay thirsty.
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