My five-year-long weekend

In the tradition of the great procrastinator that is me, I feel I need a break from the riveting national curriculum standards assessment tests I am currently writing to blab on here about how great it is to be a weekend. Even if it is raining.

Except for a while now I've realised that there is little distinction between my weekends and my weekdays. It will all be different next year I expect when BOTH kidlets are at school. As it stands now though, Hammerhead is only at Kindy two days a week and Barnstormer has pretty much decided to defer her course at her pre-kindy institution. Her self-imposed gap year, if you will.

Once upon a time I had a 9-5 publishing job. Friday was just the best day in the universe and always ended with Friday drinks at some cool bar like this one which ended up with dinner somewhere cool like here and then we'd head somewhere groovy like this to finish off. The weekend started slowly with breakfast somewhere like here followed by a drive to the gym if I was super good. If I was extra good I might have even gone inside! Then possibly a visit to see a relative or friend and then lunch somewhere like here which may have also turned into dinner there as well. After all, it was only a hop, skip and a jump from my apartment.

Then Sunday would be home-cooked hot brekky followed by reading the papers with good coffee, followed [unlikely] by the gym and then maybe a movie here. The afternoon would inevitably involve a drive to Freo to meet up with the gang somewhere like here or  here. Then it was back to work on Monday, heads down till Friday. There was a BIG distinction between the weekdays and the weekends.

In my life now, any day of the weekend could pan out exactly the same as a weekday. And "after work" drinks happen EVERY NIGHT. During the week HM is often hanging around pruning working from home instead of training it into the office, and the kids are home at least three of those days, except The Surfer. There will be the obligatory family outing to a cafe like this, followed by lunchtime shambles and then [usually] I will settle down to do some housework paid work in the afternoon before the dinner time madness sets in while everyone else absconds to here to play on the beach and watch this:

This is indeed The Surfer.

Sounds like fun and most days it is. And then it all happens again on the weekend. Which means I also spend a lot of time doing work and cleaning on the weekends and I never really get that fantastic feeling that one gets at the end of the working week, because it never really ends.

I never feel on the weekends that I deserve to kick up my heels and be glad I got through the week, because it is STILL GOING and then it rolls into the next week and the next week and suddenly five years have gone by for me, where I can't recall the weekends. We rarely go out. It's not like our weekends are full of social gatherings and nights on the tiles. We're too tired for that at the moment. If I meet up with friends it could happen on any day at all. If HM and I go out it happens on whatever day someone can babysit and random drop-ins happen 365 days of the year. And yes, did I mention already that every night has "after work" drinks???

So in fact, my life is now one giant, long [working] weekend. And when I think about it like that, I realise it's an excellent way to be and there is a mix of everything. But it is going to change soon.

Next year, EVERYONE is at school, even possibly HM if he's not at the office, and I will then have ample, peaceful time to do my full-time hours without having to do them at night when all the peeps have gone to bed.

And it will be precisely then, my friends, when I am alone with just ME, my laptop and crap D-grade Foxtel movies playing in the background, that I know I will grieve so badly for these times—when everyone was hanging around at home, demanding my attention, trying to comb my hair while I am emailing, pruning while I am hanging out the washing, eating the muffins while they are meant to be cooling on the rack, accidentally purchasing kittens on Gumtree while playing games on my iPhone, messing up the kitchen after my cleaning, commentating surfing movies in an OTT Californian accent while I am editing background papers for the State Planning Strategy, and leaving Lego EVERYWHERE that it is possible to leave Lego.

I WILL MISS THESE DAYS SO MUCH.