OK, I'm Back...

I think the hardest thing about being a parent is finding time for myself. As I write this, my daughter is down for the night and my wife is at the airport picking up her mom for a weekend visit. So I'll actually have the house to myself until she returns in about 30 minutes or so.

I don't get a lot of time to myself, unless you count my commute time and my lunch-hour workouts at a gym next to my office. I get up every weekday morning at 6:00, drive about 75-80 minutes one-way to work (it's actually only 25 miles away but that's L.A. traffic for ya), put in a full day as a production artist in the in-house creative dept. of a medium-size company that shall remain nameless, then drive that commute home again.

Once I'm home, I eat dinner with my wife and daughter, then get my daughter's room ready for night-night while my wife bathes her. After putting my daughter in her pjs, reading her stories and singing a lullaby, I put her down in her crib for the night. Then my wife and I watch TV for an hour or two (usually in the form of something we've rented from Netflix...currently it's the final season of THE SOPRANOS. After that, I turn in around 10:30 and pass out until it's time to do it again the next morning.

But what about weekends, you ask? Well, weekends mean activities with the wife and kid. And church on Sunday. So, once again, I don't get any time for myself.

I sometimes fantasize about running off to Reno or Vegas for 2-3 days during the work week. I'd buy a PS3 and hole up in a room and do nothing but play videogames and watch movies. And sleep. When I got hungry, I'd schlep on down to the buffet and stuff myself, then schlep on back up to my room.

I am envious of other dads that seem to have time to rehearse with their bands, go fishing, work on their cars, build shit, or whatever. I want to spend time with my child, but sometimes it'd be nice to have an afternoon or even 2 frickin' hours to do something I want to do.