Normal Day - What's That?!

Here's the post that jump started this post: http://wifebehindthefire.com/do-people-have-regular-days/


I decided a while ago that I'll never be normal, and that's really okay by me. There is no "typical" day. The days vary wildly, thanks to the custody schedule, L's full-time schedule, L's part-time schedule, my job, school (mine and A's), and football (for A).

It seems like the times my days go according to plan are when I've got 50 things I need to do, and I decide I'll do "some" of them. If I leave myself a ton of flexibility, and if I'm the only one working on these "things", I've got a decent shot at stuff going at least somewhat as planned.

My job is 70 minutes away, and in the afternoons that 70 minutes can easily jump to 90-120 minutes. Having things tightly planned after work nearly assures me that traffic will be awful. Over the years (I've been there 10, and living here 5), I've learned to check the traffic before I leave, and I've learned that the Friday before a holiday I need to leave right after lunch, or just give up on getting home before bedtime. Luckily, I have flexible scheduling that mostly allows for those mornings where the interstate is shut down because a guy jumped in front of a semi-truck (yep, this has happened) and other variations of oh-crap-I'm-going-to-be-WAY-later-than-planned.

A's school is right at 80-85 minutes from work, without traffic. His daycare is right at 90 minutes. I've not only learned all sorts of alternate routes to get there when traffic is terrible, I've also made it so that I usually can have someone on back up to scoop him up if need be.

L has a crazy schedule, and i tend not to factor him into the equation with school/daycare couriering. Timing for shift change between the two jobs, and locations, etc, just makes it difficult to let him be a factor. It never fails, if I am waiting for him to come home so I can go to work, he'll run a late call, the BC will stop by to chat, he'll get sent to another station for the last part of the shift (which is ALWAYS on the other side of the county it seems!) or some other minor-to him major-to-me holdup will occur. When that happens, I'm crazy stressed and pacing, and nobody likes a stressed out pacing Missy!

Football owns our world for 4 or so months a year. We practice four nights a week, with games on Saturdays. Even when A is with his father, I still show up to pretty much every single practice. I'll never miss a game, either. Fridays and Sundays become my only "free" evenings, and then I'm really doing catchup around the house it seems. It never fails though, that something will go all to crap in the middle of the week, and I'll need to race from work to practice to something else.

I'm a full time student, but thank goodness it's an online (accredited) school! I swear every time I'm planning to do homework there's a sick pet or kid needing attention. Or the router and modem aren't working. Or I suddenly need new tires (this happens more than I care to admit).

My ex and I share custody of A, and that just adds another layer of not-normal to our 7 layer dip.

One thing is for sure, on the days where I have the most planned and the least amount of wiggle room, Murphy is sure to show up, laugh at me, and flip things upside down. Why? Well, Murphy's a jerk...this post addresses him a bit more: http://missy-of-all-trades.blogspot.com/2014/12/murphys-law.html

Murphy's Law...

This is in response to this blog post:http://wifebehindthefire.com/murphy-bastard/

Murphy enjoys breaking cars and me while L is on shift! Two summers ago, my brakes locked up, and I hit stopped traffic. I totaled my car, in the county he works in (the county we live in is bordered by it).

He was coming off shift, but I couldn't reach him. He'd already left, and was on his motorcycle. I called the station, just in case he was still there. His Lt answered, and promptly sent half the county county it seemed like! I refused to let anyone look at me (no serious injuries, lots of airbag and upholstery burns) until L got there.

Fast forward about 18 months, and I'm sitting on the interstate, in stopped traffic, and some fool is gawking off too the side of the road, and hits a car, which hits me, and I tap into the person in front of me who was also stopped. That was the beginning of November, and he was coming off shift, over an hour away. It took until the end if February to get my car in to be fixed, and then 2 (!) months to get it back.

During those two months, I got hit in the rental car! My sedan got hit by a giant Yukon driven by a little old lady, who said she couldn't see me. L was headed on shift at the PT job, but I was in the county bordering that county, so he got the guy coming off shift to cover so he could check on me.

All of my ER visits since meeting him over 5 years ago have been while he's on shift - 'nuff said!