Rushing through life

In my last post I asked the question if this is my life?  I have realised that yes it is my life and for some reason it is going so fast I cannot keep up!  For most of us we have a lot going on in our lives, work, kids, husbands, pets, friends, housework, extra curricular activities and more!  Where do we honestly fit it all in?  I am a working mum because a) I have to help pay the mortgage and b) because I want to.  I was lucky enough to not work for 5 years whilst my kids were young and we cut back our lifestyles to adjust to living off one pay.  When my daughter started school I rushed out and got a job 3 days a week and I loved it.  5 years at home playing with my darling children was enough to send me absolutely batty. I was so happy to be in the workforce and to even work one day of the weekend to give my husband an opportunity to spend the day playing with the kids whilst I spoke with grownups was fabulous.  It was also wonderful to get that extra money in even though we had to pay more for 2 days of childcare. 

When I was a SAHM (stay at home mum) I had the luxury of my mum to help me out and also a great group of friends all in the same situation as me and we spent at least one day of the week together sitting around watching the kids play, drinking coffee and enjoying home baked treats that we all made on a regular basis.  I got to do my housework and washing in my own time and although it is busy with little children you do things when you can and I didn't really have a strict routine that I stuck to so my day panned out how it panned out, directed by the kids and their naps.  I always made sure that I had time to walk my dogs and usually that was when hubby got home from work or if my mum popped over for an hour so I could get that one precious hour to myself.

From the day I went back to work my life started to get busy again.  The 'Rush Hour' started and this rush hour has not stopped for 3 years.  Its just a constant rush to get everything done, be everywhere I need to be and rush to get home so I can rush to sleep so I can get up the next day and start rushing again.   I'm not even working full time and I am constantly rushing.  How do women do it that work 5 days a week? I am at a loss to understand it. 

This is an example of a regular day in my life: get up 6.38 (my body clock is set to that exact time for some reason), eat breakky in peace; start getting lunches then wake up kids.  Rush to leave the house by 8.15 without having a meltdown (me and the kids), rush through hideous school traffic, drop kids off then rush through more hideous school traffic to get to work by 9am.  Then I actually get to relax at work for 6 hours and enjoy some grown up interaction. Leave work at 3pm, rush to pick up kids who walk down the hill and then its rush home to get food into their ravenous bellies before footy training.  Throw the dogs in the car and rush to footy training.  Drop Mr 6, find someone to watch Miss 8 then take the dogs for a walk around the neighbourhood.  Rush back to pick up kids, rush home and that's when all hell breaks loose.  Homework, dinner, showers (why do kids never want to get into the freaking shower but then never want to get out?) feed dogs, clean kitchen, hang washing out that I put in before I left for work at 7.30, get uniforms ready for next day, (did I mention drink a cider for myself somewhere in here?) rush to get kids into bed before 8.30pm which does happen occasionally and then its hopefully Katie time.  Hopefully.  Normally I have one child coming upstairs saying, "I'm scared, hungry, thirsty, have a headache, or something along those lines and then it's back downstairs to get that shit sorted and then by 9pm it just might be Katie time! Of course by 8.30pm hubby has gone to bed too so I am left on the lounge with TV and twitter and its absolute bliss.
This is the time I get to do whatever I want, eat whatever I want, watch whatever I want and I would honestly die without this time.  This time is my lifesaver.

On my days off the rushing doesn't stop because then you have to fit everything in that gets left behind when you work.  I am constantly planning my schedule in my head and I have to admit I normally do make it to where I want to go even if I do have to speed occasionally (just quietly of course).

Today I had the day off and I managed to catch up with one of my dearest friends whom I have known for 30 years.  She is married with 3 children and her husband has a job where he works very long hours, travels constantly through the year and gets paid very well.  She doesn't work as she is busy running her family and pretty much being a single mum from Monday to Friday.  Yes they get to go on wonderful holidays through the year and yes she can buy what she wants when she wants it but she said to me today, 'this is not what I imagined my life would be when I married and had 3 kids.  I never knew I would give up my career, become a full time chaffeur and not really have a life of my own.Plus the rushing around is killing me!' It made me sad as I realised so many of us do that when we get married and have kids, we sacrifice our lives to keep everyone else's lives wonderful and running smoothly.  It's just what we do and we don't complain, well maybe sometimes on our blogs and on twitter!

So this takes me back to the rushing, can anyone please help me with the rushing or is this how my life is now? Oh and if anyone wants to send me baked goods I'm always happy to accept because this busy mum just doesn't have time to bake anymore!