Reverend Mother posted about her typical day and the challenges of having two young children in the house with two "working" parents. She was wondering how other people juggle everything.

Things change every school year and then again every summer. My schedule and life activities always seem to revolve around the schedules of my children and to a lesser extent my husband. Frankly, I am full into resenting that and there is a growing part of me that is very much looking forward to the children being on their own. Ten more years.

In the meantime, this is how it is working.

I only work in my office on M/W/F. It is funny, but when the children were preschool ages I was able to work full time. Once they were both in school, I was just not able to continue. Some of that is because we choose/chose to send them to an Episcopal grammar/middle school that is 35 miles away. At any rate.

The first alarm of the household goes off at 5am at which time I wake up my husband. He makes the coffee, does his ablutions, and gets dressed while I doze another 45 minutes or so. The second alarm goes off at 6 at which time I wake up the kids. Miss Teen only wakes up if you pull the covers off of her, but after that she functions independently until breakfast. Son is harder to get up. Although he is 10, he still sometimes likes me to help him get dressed. I try to encourage independence, but sometimes he and/or I need him to be a little boy.

Husband makes the kids' lunches and this year he drives them to school. They leave at 7. Then I read the paper, do the crossword, and if it is a work day get ready for the office. On office days I work from 9-until done. On Wednesday and Friday when I am finished at the office, I drive 35 miles to pick son up from aftercare (which ends at 5:30, sometimes I have to drive fast to make it). After that, if the weather is nice, he goes to the barn to ride until about 6ish. On Mondays my inlaws pick him up and take him to the barn for his weekly riding lesson.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I run errands, do household chores, take care of children's doctor/dentist/orthodontist appointments until 11:30. At 11:45, I pick Miss Teen and our carpool kid up at their primary high school, let Miss Teen eat lunch in the car and drive 45 minutes into New Orleans to take them to New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. They have creative writing class from 1-3:45. During that time I usually take a nap in my car, go grocery shopping at Whole Foods, work on my laptop at a coffee shop or walk. At 3:45, we drive back to Slidell arriving home between 4:45 and 5.

Our evenings are taken up with homework supervision, piano practice, TV, dinner, etc. Miss Teen is currently in rehearsal for a school musical and is out from 6-8 two or three evenings a week. Monday evenings my husband's Dixieland band practices in the living room from 7-9pm.

Toss into the mix call nights, husband's gigs, son's riding his horse, basketball/football games that son may be playing, cleaning up Katrina crap, etc etc.

I think it sounds like a boring life, but it is what it is. I wish I had more time to do continuing ed and exercise.