Balancing my “writing life” with my “mom life” can be…interesting. This is especially true during the summer. Usually, I wake up early, go for a run, work until breakfast time then spend the day as mom. Then at night I put my youngest to bed and while my husband puts the others down I get back to work, usually working until I start sleep typing.
But in the past few weeks I’ve had to let my writing time spill into kid time as I’ve worked through some particularly rigorous revisions and edits on my latest manuscript. On those days of trying to balance EVERYTHING it is easy to feel overwhelmed. This balance is especially difficult when you have little people in your life who seem to find the absolute worst times to ask for stuff. So, to cut back on the stress at home, I made the following list to help my four little ones learn the least effective times to ask me to do something for them. This list is about requests for a snack, but I believe it has countless applications.
***DISCLAIMER***
Acceptable reasons to break these guidelines: there is blood, something’s burning, police involvement, or a zombie is trying to gnaw its way through our screen door. Anything else can wait.
Top Ten WORST Times To Ask for a Snack (or anything, really)….
10- Ten letters into my word goal for the day.
9- Nine seconds after we pull out of the driveway.
8- Eight words into a conversation with someone on the phone. Exception to this rule: Telemarketers.
7- Seventy-five miles away from home while I’m fighting rush hour traffic.
6- Six steps into my workout.
5- The five whole minutes I get in the shower (this rule applies to pretty much anytime I’m naked).
4- Every four minutes after bedtime.
3- The three blissful minutes I’m alone in the restroom
2-Two minutes after I already told your brother “no”
1- One second after I started in on fulfilling your last request.
Feel free to post this list in your own home. *Experts say exposing your children to this list will cut down on horribly timed requests by 45%. With this fool-proof system I’m hoping, in time, to eliminate these untimely requests all together. I promise if you give it a shot it will make your life….oh wait…kids are calling. Zombie alarm. Gotta go.
*Okay, fine, there are no experts. It just sounded better.