Ain't No Cure For The (Workin' Mom) Summertime Blues ...Till Next Week, Anyway

Here's the deal: Thing 1 and Thing 2 are free all week. Camp is over. School doesn't start for two and a half weeks. And they wanna play.

I don't wanna work. I just wanna ... no, not bang on the drum all day. But play with my kids, for sure.

Mama don't have that much vacation time, though. So here's what I did. I paid the nanny to play with my kids all day.

Somehow this is not what I had in mind ... not when I planned on a career in the movie business. Not when I had kids. But I want both -- and, in fact, need both -- can't afford not to have the career, and sure do love having kiddies. So this is my lot, and I gotta make it work.


And let's face it, the kids are having a great time with the nanny. It's not that they wouldn't with me. But they're better behaved around her -- as is, I'm convinced, every kid around the sitter vs. when they're with mommy or daddy.

What I really want is PART of the day with them -- the part she gets this week. Not the getting them up and dressed and fed and ready. Not the getting them fed and bathed (usually daddy's gig, but you get the idea) and pajama-ed. But the fun stuff that comes in-between. I never get enough of that.

As it is, I will get some of it -- though along with all the other stuff -- next week. I AM taking a full week off in a week or so. We're all headed to NYC, to see family and friends. And then I guess the universe will feel a little more in balance. But sometimes I feel as if, deep down, once I got used to the school year/camp schedule as a kid, it became ingrained in me, like some seasonal internal clock. And many years into adulthood, I've never shaken it.

Perhaps that's why I see my kids headed out the door to the park with the nanny, for fun and frolic, and must desperately fight the urge to play work hooky.

For now, I am pushing through the work and allowing the occasional daydream of what I'll be doing with the kids next week to wander in and out of my thoughts. I've got to snatch that last piece of summer vacation before it drifts away, and maybe for a little while, I'll feel like I'm back on that childhood clock, enjoying the last few days of doing whatever ... a little of this, a little of that ... nothin' much ... before that back to school feeling kicks in. Happy summer, all. Here's to what's left of it.