Not Enough Hours! (From Bucks Free Press)

Not Enough Hours!

6:02pm Sunday 21st March 2010

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In this day and age, I think there are very few people whose lives are not ruled by the clock. I only work mornings Monday to Friday, but I still spend the rest of the day after I’ve arrived home, watching for the time when I must go and pick my daughter up from school, or get my son to army cadets, or start cooking dinner, and so on. Consequently, I always feel as if I’m trying to fit my own life into the gaps in between all these commitments, and there have been quite a few occasions in the past few months when I’ve wondered if studying for a degree is the most sensible thing for me to do at the moment.

A few weeks back, my son was in a musical. In my role as proud and supportive Mum, I offered to help out at all four shows, thinking that the production company wouldn’t actually need me for all of them. Anyway, they did. I really enjoyed being involved, but the knock on effect was that last week, I found myself struggling to catch up with my Open University work. I did it, but to the detriment of all my usual duties, (I say this as if I’m usually in total control of all things domestic). It meant that my poor husband had to spend his entire weekend doing all the cooking and cleaning while I studied.

Now, he doesn’t actually have a problem with this, but I do, and I find myself becoming burdened with guilt, guilt, guilt...well, a little bit anyway. So last week I decided to pace myself better, and complete all my studying within the working week. My plan went very well – by Friday I had not only met my target, but actually got well ahead of it! Great, I thought, I’ll now have time to do all my chores at the weekend, and allow my other half to relax a little.

So Sunday morning, I decided to start in our bedroom - I was sure that this wouldn’t take long. Now, I won’t say it was disgusting in there, but if biofuel could be made from dust, then we’d be quids in! I started to clean and tidy the Heath Robinson construction that I call my wardrobe, and began pulling out the photographs albums that are stored on the top shelf. By lunch time, I had just about finished browsing through my life up to 1994, and the room looked much the same as when I had entered it three hours before!

Ok, there may not be anything wrong with taking a while out to travel down memory lane, but I think I should go a little easier with my two teengers next time they get distracted from their responsibilities!

Bye for now.

Tania Greenwood