Fantasy and reality on a weeknight
Much to the dismay of my family, every now and then, I get an idea in my head that some aspect of our home life must be lived out just as it’s portrayed in my imagination.
My latest fixation is the school night.
In my head, the kids will come home from school, grab a quick snack, do their homework and go outside to play while dinner is cooking. I will get home from work, and, then we’ll eat dinner and have time for family fun, play or reading before the kids are tucked in and we go downstairs to enjoy a TV show or each other’s company before we retire for the night after the 10 o’clock news.
In reality, we rarely get home right after school, we have to chase the kids around the house to get them to do their homework, and, our own work and activities of daily living are rarely completed before midnight, and, we mentally put off family time until the weekend or an upcoming holiday.
Perhaps most people’s evenings are closer to my reality than to my fantasy, I’m not sure, but, I want to figure out some way to alter our weekday evening routine so that we have time to do something as a family on occasion.
I want the weeknights to stop being a “throw-away” in regard to family time and to start treating them as an actual day in our lives rather than simply a staging time for work and school next day.
You are not alone. I have that fantasy too. Once you have figured out how to do it, could you e-mail me the instructions? Thanks (cause I’m blowed if I can work it out!)
Not only are my weeknights identical to your reality, but the same holds true for weekends.
We spend so much of them running errands we didn’t run during the week, any ideal weekend together goes out the window!
Your reality sounds very much like ours. I say blame the kids! If they’d just do the homework, I’m sure everything else would fall into place. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!