Finding Balance.
I think we’re pretty damn close to finding that elusive balance - and it’s all thanks to the midnight hustle. With Olivia in school full days, Violet in programs that allow me to get work done while we’re on the go, while Stella is still young enough to hang out in a carseat, or nurse while I one-handed answer email, we’ve got the work life balance down.
That means though, that we’re usually up until at least midnight, crossing those extra few things off of our to do list.
Tonight was a Costco night. We needed fruit, nuts, chocolate milk and a couple cases of water - we couldn’t put it off any longer. Finally home, and exhausted from that experience and from getting all the kids showered, we spent the post bedtime bliss, catching up on Westworld and Mars; the groceries can wait, we said.
Plus, it was fussy time, and we still haven’t found a baby carrier that Stella likes, so it was ‘bounce me in your arms wrapped up in a blanket, o’clock’. The groceries waited more.
*not our refrigerator, ha!
Like all good binge watching sessions, it was 11:30 before we knew it and there were still groceries on the table. Working together, well - me convincing Jamie to help put away all the things because I can’t go to bed with a table full of clutter, we did it. And by put away the groceries, I mean remove things from the crisper where kale with good intentions goes to die, and yell at me because I have a system where I just haphazardly throw everything into the fridge, and have three separate cartons of eggs, each with a few eggs in them.
The fridge is full of food, that’s all that matters - to me, balance is letting go of the fridge that’s perfectly organized. This drives Jamie CRAZY. Me, not so much - it’s one of a couple of places in the house that I’ve learned to ‘letttttt it gooo’, like Olivia’s closet, and that cupboard in the kitchen no one dares to open.
Putting away the groceries led to Jamie taking the random things out of the fridge that had gotten lost, like a couple of cartons of juice that expired a month ago, marmalade that was awful and no one ever ate, grated ginger that I pre-grated to save time, and of course, the token bunch of kale.
Which led to him spending fifteen minutes searching the internet, to find out why there is water on the top shelf in the back of the fridge. Which led to me having a look at my ongoing-on-the-refrigerator to-do list and noticing that cleaning the pantry was on that list.
During this time, I continued to ‘arrange’ the refrigerator, mostly just getting in his way, laughing when I put away the quiche from the prepared-food section of Costco with the bagged salad, for dinner tomorrow night and stopped for a moment to look through the Jamie Oliver cookbook I picked up while were at Costco (Ironic, right?)
Which led to him cleaning out the freezer - and me questioning what happened to all the food. Turns out, his system leaves a lot more space in the refrigerator and freezer.
Which led to him moving the entire refrigerator. And me finding the vacuum, fingers crossed that I plugged it into the charger after I used it earlier that day to clean up the mess of glitter from a glitter bomb.
Which led to after midnight.
Which led to me introducing him to Midnight Diner, a quirky little half-hour of television that is one of my favourite things I’ve watched lately.
Which led to Stella waking up to be fed, and me spending twenty minutes scheduling and answering emails. (Balance, again!)
He didn’t find the answer, this like half of the things we just stayed up way too late to do, could wait until tomorrow - and I reminded him that if he just used my wonderful organization of food system that he wouldn’t even notice the water.
Then, he pointed the pile of food that we hadn’t made, or eaten, because it had gotten ‘lost’.
I conceded. On that note, we decided to call it a night.
We went upstairs, and I realized it was really, really hot up there since I turned the heat up to 71 degrees. I walked downstairs to turn down the heat.
I walked back upstairs, Violet woke up. Jamie was in her room putting her to sleep and Stella was in the middle of our bed.
I forgot her DockaTot downstairs, and she won’t sleep in her bassinet without it, so I walked back down to get it - grabbing the kids water bottles from their bedrooms, to fill up and put in the now organized refrigerator for the morning.
I grabbed a couple of towels on the way back up, hung them in the bathroom.
Finally, it was time to go to bed, and realized that I hadn’t washed my face. Skin care fail.
I got back up - and just like that it was nearing one o’clock. With a busy day of all the fall break fun tomorrow, I needed to get to sleep to survive, since I discovered the chili mocha lattes and breastfeeding don’t work, I’m not going to be able to rely on that in the morning.
Parenting - the ultimate midnight hustle, right?
