What do I do all day?

My husband asked me the other day, "So, after I leave for work, what do you do all day?" I had to think really hard about it. I came up with nothing. After 6 months of motherhood, I'm STILL in my bathrobe at the end of the day, still not showered, still trying to empty the dishwasher in less than an hour, and the obvious: STILL tired.

I feel like a failure. How, please in god's name, tell me how does an entire day go by and I've hardly found time to go to the bathroom? I have tried several times to at least have some sort of dinner ready by the time my husband comes home so that we can have some semblance of normality. And my husband isn't picky. If I threw on the table a frozen pizza still in the box and an old carrot in a bowl for "salad" he would not complain. He loves me that much. AND... he would even say with complete sincerity, "Thanks for making me dinner." I don't even have to come close to June Cleaver-ville for acceptance.

It takes me five times as long to complete a task. I've been trying very hard to do some research on new car seats for the boy. This has been going on for about two weeks. Now the pressure is on because he's ounces away from being over the weight limit for the car seat we have now. However, two weeks ago I had "plenty of time" and yet I am no closer to making a decision. Every time I sit down at the computer, things just happen. I've also tried four times this week to add to my blog. And it's not like I can't think of what to write about. Trust me, my list is LONG... It's just that my ability to get sidetracked has greatly improved.

I know, I know. I will get all kinds of advice on how to manage my time better. But let's take yesterday as an example. I put the boy down to sleep at 2:35 pm for a nap. I figured I would have at least two hours because his morning nap was cut horribly short by a doorbell, barking dogs, and the electrician working on the house. So, he was definitely tired. I raced around the house so fast trying to do stuff that I even carried my peanut butter and jelly sandwich around with me so that I wouldn't waste time sitting down. My plan: do a few little things that needed to be addressed, then attempt to download pictures from our Vegas trip so that I could send them to the grandparents (the downloading part was considered a "big" task because it would take longer than 6.5 seconds). Not a lot on the agenda. In fact, not overly ambitious yet I would still feel productive. Then my phone rings and it's a friend that I haven't talked to in about nine months. That's a long time, there's obviously quite a bit of catching up to do.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Screen my calls. Don't answer and just call her back. Stick to my plan, for the sake of sanity!!! DO NOT DEVIATE! But, I tried that whole "screening my calls" business and I have found that after six months of screening calls the only thing I ever got out of it was just that: a bunch of screened calls. A whole lotta voicemails saved on my phone. I didn't talk to anybody. Ever. Because I never had time to call anybody back. This is how you lose yourself. I've decided trying to maintain friendships was more important than having time to do things like brush my hair. And anyways, "stick to my plan" is absurd! PLAN???

My new way is much more fulfilling. Now, I answer the phone and say, "HI!!! It's so great to hear from you. I have five minutes. Go."

So I did answer this phone call, excited to have a real adult conversation, and after five minutes, I cut her off and said, "Look, the boy is asleep now and I've got a trillion things to do." I hope I haven't lost her as a friend. She sounded understanding. But in my head I imagined her hanging up the phone and grumbling, sounding like the "adults" do in the Peanuts cartoons, about how lame it is that I couldn't even take ten minutes to talk to her. Okay, maybe that was my own grumbling in my own head.

Anyway, I abruptly end my only opportunity at a two-way conversation, and I continue racing around. And soon, way sooner than two hours, through that darn working baby monitor, I hear movement. It's 3:40pm. Do you know what I accomplished?!?!?! It's pathetic. It's so small it didn't even make it on my to-do list, so I can't even cross anything off! A product registration card that has been sitting on my desk for five days. It's for some toy that we just bought for the boy and in case it is discovered that it has lead paint or that it can spontaneously combust I must send in my registration card for safety notices. After I finish filling it out (which only took two minutes) I decide that I don't trust this flimsy little card to make it to it's destination. Or what if Joe Schmoe who works at the registration office punches in my contact information wrong? Or what if he hates his job and doesn't care if my card falls on the floor and gets lost? So, the neurotic mother decides to go online and register my purchase there. It's simple enough. I find the website easily and the online form is short and sweet. I hit "submit" and get back some stupid message about my product number being wrong. How can this be? I'm getting the number directly from the card itself. Why is the universe making this difficult for me? I still have a million and a half things to do!!!! What god did I piss off?!?!? I type it in again. Submit. ERROR! And again, thinking third time is a charm. Stupid thought. So then I go to the Fisher-Price website and look up the damn product online to get the correct number. Of course they have 500 products that all look the same. I find it and make my comparison. It's the SAME number: PO291. Why are they telling me I'm wrong? I go back to the registration and decide fourth time is a charm. Again, stupid. And it isn't until fifteen minutes after starting this silly little task that I begin to realize perhaps, just maybe perhaps, that "O" is really a "0". Get it? Yeah, somebody smarter than me would have tried that 14 minutes ago. But in my sleep deprived state, I think there's no way it could be that simple. (You really have to see their font to believe me that it really does look like an "O". Undoubtedly. Really.)

Needless to say, that was the issue. I register successfully and that's when he woke up. The remainder of my afternoon mission has been aborted. What's new.

Oddly enough, I started this blog around 6am just to say that I was sorry that I haven't written in a while and that I would have to write later. I needed to go back to sleep. But then, I sort of vomited a whole rant about how I never have time to do anything. I didn't mean for this to be the topic. Were we talking about getting sidetracked? Why was I awake in the first place? Tell me again why I came into the kitchen? Oh yeah, who left the jelly out?

It's now 8am. I'm not getting back to sleep. In the past two hours, I nursed the boy, changed his diaper, rocked him back to sleep, let the dogs out, chased the dogs back into the house because of some squirrel that they insisted on barking at, and attempted to apologize for not writing in a while. Oh yeah, I've also been meaning to add more pictures. Thanks for your patience. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I do all day.