Don’t Hate What You Can’t Imitate

Picture this: It takes me an hour to drive 7 miles home in bumper-to-bumper traffic. When I rush in the door, I manage to fix one girls hair while wrestling the other, WWE style, to put some clothes on. It’s 6:15 and we’re hoping to make it to the Spring concert at Lira’s school, which starts in 15 minutes.

In a moment of clarity, I stop cursing under my breath and notice how stinking adorable Zana is, sitting in her stroller with her tutu, sunglasses and cheesy grin; so I snapped this pic and put it on Instagram so the rest of the world could tell me how much they “like” it:

The Spring Concert was very cute, pretty much what you’d expect from these things. When it was over we all went out to the playground so the kids could run wear themselves out before bed.

Then it was bath time, story time, laundry time and then… work time. The fact that it’s 10 o’clock, doesn’t mean my work day is over. Thanks to a flexible schedule, I get to leave early 3 days a week and spend afternoons with the girls; but because of that, I work late in to the evenings, often times long after bedtime.

As I waited for my laptop to turn on, I checked Instagram, I noticed that among the “likes,” there was also a comment:

“Your work hours are bar none the best of anyone I will ever meet.”

It was from a former co-worker. A guy I was never particularly close with.

Because I am hot-headed, I showed this to Dave to make sure I’m not reading it wrong. “Sounds like a backhanded compliment to me. Why would he say that?”

That’s what I want to know! I went to reply to his comment but couldn’t think of anything appropriate. But here are a few of my ideas:

• Some people are in the office half a day, others are in the office 15 hours a day and still can’t hack it.
• I didn’t think you noticed when I worked, based on the fact that you were on Facebook 10 hours a day.
• Why don’t you stop worrying about what I’m doing and go find a job

But I’m far too polite (ha). Dave thought I should remind him that I work from home at night, but I was annoyed at the thought of justifying myself to him. I decided to do nothing (well nothing but block him from my Instagram feed and unfriend him on Facebook). But I still felt bothered.

I work when the kids go to bed; I work on weekends; I’ve respond to texts from my boss Friday nat midnight and I’ve had Skype meetings well after dark. Even when I was on maternity leave, I checked my work email religiously so that I could stay up to speed. It’s on my mind constantly because my coworkers have put their trust in me, and I never want to disappoint them.

So yes, a lot of times my life looks like this…

Or this…

But I don’t take that for granted. So there! Get a job. Stop worrying about me… you lazy bum.