“We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.” - Marcus Fabius Quintilian

I'm realizing with some horror that its not just been "a few days" but rather more than a week since my last post here. I might try to excuse it by saying "I've been busy" but, while true, that shouldn't be an excuse.

Its more that I'm self-censoring too much. I never intended this site to be a long litany of the ways that I'm dissatisfied with my own life as a working mother, but that is, of course, what its turned out to be. So I end up saying nothing when I can't say something good.

(Also, if you search Google news for the word "Mother" you bring up a bunch of wretched stories like this one, which just sort of ruins the rest of my day.)

This has been a tough couple of weeks at my house. I'm working even more than usual (my day job has me working at special events both this Saturday and next), and these days whenever E sees me the first thing he says is always "bye bye mamma," which breaks my heart. I'm coming to realize that there really isn't any way out of this for our family - that our lives are going to continue to be like this for years yet - and its amazingly depressing. I'm not sure how we're going to heat our house this winter, and money continues to be a driving concern.

This is not to say that we haven't had some great moments - on Tuesday, for example, thanks to the generosity of a great friend we were able to go see the Portland Seadogs at Hadlock Stadium (long details over here, with photos), which was a really wonderful evening, but its like a shooting star - only there for a moment, and I'm not sure when it will reappear.

Driving home from Hadlock on Tuesday night I realized that part of the problem is that I see him so little that I'm starting to feel like a divorced non-custodial parent. We have "special treat" days, but no real time to just hang out and do normal things. When I have a day off, there is such a strong pull to make it "special" that there is no normal routine of doing regular household things.

I don't how to combat this. But I'm open to suggestions.