Time In a Bottle... Anyone Got Any?

I remember the weekend.

The weekend is that 2-day span at the end of the work week that you have off, right? Yeah, I remember those. You’d slavishly chug away at your job all week long, ever looking toward the weekend, which shone like a beacon in the distance. Like the bright sun after a long, hard night. It’s ok, the weekend will be here soon. Time for happy hour, to go shopping, get together with friends, to sleep late.

Then I had kids.

Don’t get me wrong. I still look forward to the weekends… because then I get HELP. Help with the kids. A warm body to stay at home, doing work around the house, while I get to slip out for an hour or two to shop in peace without someone crying, pulling on me or asking for another toy.

But… they’re just not the same. The sun of the weekend doesn’t shine nearly as brightly as it used to. I used to think that I worked hard at my job and deserved the weekend off. What I didn’t know was that my hardest job still was yet to come… the day-to-day up to my elbows in diapers from two children, dirty dishes, toys, and laundry. Where the days run into one another… and the weekends are only mildly different from the week DAYS. No days off anymore! Blah, blah, blah… you’ve heard it all before.

I think about that commercial for… moisturizer, I think? Where the woman says, “I’ve found time in a bottle.” Time in a bottle. She’s only talking about her skin, of course. But what would I do with time in a bottle? I wouldn’t worry about my skin, that’s for sure. One of my fantasies is being able to freeze time. How AMAZING would that be! Exhausted at 4 am when the baby wakes up and she doesn’t want to go back to sleep? Freeze time! Take a nice long refreshing nap and then get back to the task at hand. The things I could do while time froze around me… go to the movies, play around on the computer, maybe even do some crafts that have long been abandoned by the wayside for “someday, when I have time.” Hell, I’d even CLEAN. Oh yeah, and maybe exercise too. Maybe. I guess then I couldn’t use “I don’t have the time” as an excuse.

But time in a bottle continues to elude me, unfortunately. Maybe I could take a look on eBay and see if someone out there is pawning it. And while I could sit here and continue to lament the premature passing of The Weekend… I suppose that would just be a waste of time. And God knows I can’t afford that.