This stuff is hard

subtitled: stating the obvious. Again.

It's a very contemporary question, but I am always intrigued by discussions of how women "do it all." How they raise kids/work/have a loving relationship with their partner/act as good friends/serve their religious community/etc. And there's plenty of decent advice out, and an equally large pile of people who sweetly explain that they don't quite do it all ("Oh my! I missed sending an anniversary card last year!"). And it has come to my attention that lots of women struggle, and probably those who have it the worst are the ones who drop off of e-mail/blogging/relationships for months or years at a time, but it's just hard.

The solutions that seem so popular are
1. Increase your daycare. We can't and don't really want to.
2. Delegate to your partner/parents. No go when I haven't even seen my husband before midnight on a weekday evening in weeks (I read a blog of a woman who writes lovingly of her children and all the things they do together. But she also happens to work the same job as my husband, albeit with significantly less hours. And it wasn't until she posted her everyday routine that it became apparent that she spends no more than 45 minutes every day with her children when they are awake. That's combined morning and evening and she is committed enough to leave work for dinner and go back, an option my husband is not yet comfortable with. This is not a critique of her - her husband seems to do a lovely job parenting, but not exactly a model I can adopt given JD's schedule ...)
3. Skip the "extras." I wish we could do this more but now that the dumpling is mobile I really do need to clean every couple of days because he will find any smudgeon of dirt on the floor and eat it, and while I'd love to order take-out every night it's both expensive and unhealthy and I have to at least save pizza or mac and cheese for the nights I have work commitments and we have a babysitter. I don't really feel that there are that many more extras to cut.
4. Phone it in to work. I'd love to but I'm not really in a career where that is possible, especially right now. I am in an overworked, underpaid, way-too-competitive career where everyone is on e-mail at midnight (and 2 am as I learned this morning when I got 3 responses to an e-mail before 3 am). And obviously the most likely thing to give is my career, but right now JD has given me his full support to stick with it for another year or two and see what happens.

So I guess what I want to write is that I am doing it all and I haven't found any shortcuts. Here's an ordinary day:
7:30 am fusspot wakes up - push my husband out of bed to offer her breakfast while I nurse the dumpling
7:50 am in the shower, out the door by 8:20/8:30 with pump parts/lunch/supplies for the kids/my laptop/work stuff. The stroller weighs about 75-80 lbs when loaded and takes 3-4 trips to load and unload when we get home. Oh, and our building has 6 steps and our daycare has 2
8:30-8:45 jog/power walk the mile to work
8:45-9/9:15 drop the kids at daycare
9:30 at my desk. Pump
12 Pump
4 pm Pump
4:45/5 collect kids. This usually takes a half hour. I need to nurse the baby and I like to hang around so that I can spend some time with our daycare provider. However, it also makes dinner perpetually late
5-6 Walk leisurely home (1 mile) pushing 80 lb stroller. Along the way we either stop at the playground for a few minutes or pick up groceries or drop by the laundromat/drug store/coffee place (JD likes to have freshly ground coffee in the apartment. It is one of the few little sweet things that I squeeze into my week for him)
6 pm Panic about dinner, 6:30 serve some pitiful mixture of baked pasta or frozen meat or yogurt
7 pm nurse baby, start getting fusspot ready for bed
7:30/7:45 fusspot in bed, play with dumpling
8:30 put dumpling down to bed. I would put him down a bit earlier but he is woken almost every night by the fusspot as she loudly asks for water or to use the bathroom or for her light on/off or a new CD or whatever her 2-year-old mind can find to stall. I would rank this as the #1 downside of living in 600 square feet
9:15 pm BABIES ASLEEP! Do dishes, cook dinner for next night if I'm feeling responsible, wash pump parts, clean up apartment, sort and put away laundry
10 pm Pump. Relax. Send e-mails
10:30 Time to start work
12 am/1 am JD walks in the door (he often stops at the grocery store on the way home, but sometimes I run out when he gets home to do the shopping. NYC is incredible for real 24 hour stores). Talk to my husband.
1:30 Bedtime
4 am nurse baby and get ready to do it all over again

And on Thursdays and the weekends I do all of the above minus the trip in to daycare/work. Meaning that I spend all day with the kids and then try to sit down by 10 pm to put in a few hours of work. And what is most disappointing is that I am so tired that my work is floundering pitifully at the moment. But I guess it does make me feel a bit better to just put it out there: what I am doing is hard, and there are no short-cuts. My husband who is intellectually committed to co-parenting equally just isn't around right now to help. And when he does have time off on the weekends he wants to spend his evenings either out alone or with friends. And I always say yes because honestly it is worth it to have a happy husband rather than a gloomy one angrily mopping my floors on a Saturday night. Believe me, I've tried it both ways and I would take happy absentee husband over dutiful depressed co-parent any day.

My family is a total no go for help, and my in-laws have been surprisingly absent in recent months (although visiting them is always a real break for me in that they very deliberately take care of early mornings/cooking/laundry/baths). We do squeeze in 3 social activities for the fusspot beyond daycare every week - 3 different local classes - and they are all a good break for me, but the hassle of getting there can sometimes defeat the purpose (more on that in another post, but the fusspot has developed a complex about strangers touching her and it is making public transport a rather never-wracking endeavor in our neighborhood. I feel bad for her but I also feel bad for the nice old ladies who are trying to help out).

So ... when I found out very a rather obtuse e-mail this morning that I had been fired from my part-time job which is currently paying for my health insurance and childcare, well, I probably was not as tactful as I should have been in my response. It's partially the sleep deprivation, largely the headache (sexy librarian glasses coming soon!), and mostly just the frustration at this whole mess and being the unlucky one yet again, but there's a tiny part of me which says, I really don't care. I'm doing the best I can and I will fight as hard as possible to keep that job (I mean, I did sign a contract ...) but if I can't, I can't.