A Day in the Life
About this time last week, just after my column posted, I was on the phone with my good friend (and accounting industry consultant) Allan Koltin. At some point in the conversation, Allan mentioned how much he enjoys reading my weekly Thoughts and went on to say how much he (and, he thought, others) particularly enjoy when I write about what’s going on in my life. Little did Allan know what was actually going on that particular day.
It started as most days, at 6:30am, which is when my body normally wakes me up, no alarm necessary. I read a couple of newspapers on my iPad before getting Lily, Kate and Max up at 7am for school. During the next 45 minutes, on most days, Tracy and I go through the daily challenge of getting three children under seven dressed, fed, washed, brushed and in the car for the trip downtown to school. Most of those days it’s 45 minutes of sheer madness and psychological warfare, usually with the kids winning.
Last Friday was a little different. Max needed to have his tonsils and adenoids shaved, which, it seems, they do now more often than completely removing them. So Tracy was taking Max to the ambulatory surgical center while I took Lily and Kate to school. So far, so good. After the school run, I met Tracy and Max, just in time to accompany Max into the OR, and 40 minutes later, he was in recovery. Everything went as expected. By noon we were on our way into the car and back home. Just then, the phone rang. It was the school nurse calling to let us know that Lily was running a 102 fever. So it became: drop Tracy and Max at home and then back downtown to pick Lily up, then go straight to the doctor’s office, where she was quickly diagnosed with a case of strep throat. Off to the pharmacy and then home to get her into bed. The tricky part was trying to keep the child with strep separated from the child who just had surgery for the next 48 hours, not as easy as it sounds on paper.
By this time it was 2pm. I was able to grab a quick soup to go at our local Hale & Hearty (love their soup) and head downtown again for my third trip of the day to pick Kate up at school in Friday afternoon NYC traffic (not as glamorous as it sounds). By the time we got home and everyone was settled in, it was after 4pm, and I couldn’t figure out where the day had gone. Thanks to my trusty iPhone, I was able to keep up with all of the emails, texts and phone calls, and no one was the wiser to what I had actually been juggling all day.
That day certainly gave me a new appreciation for a couple of things. First of all, for those of you who are full-time caregivers, my highest regards and compliments. A day at the office is certainly less stressful than a day managing all the kid stuff. For those of you who work outside the home, full-time or not, and also have the primary childcare responsibility, I don’t know how you do it. It’s got to be the absolute best example of multitasking imaginable. I’m in awe of those of you who manage it.
And the best thing of all, by Monday morning everyone was well, and we were back to normal (at least the Weiner version of normal).
So Allan, there’s one example of a day in the life. Welcome to my world.
