When I spend my weekends hurrying from place-to-place, using gas, spending money and brainpower on arriving at a destination or completing a task, I rob myself, and my daughter, of two free days of rest and relaxation.

I transform from shiny, happy Katie into one of those impatient people who snap at baristas. This is absolutely no good for anyone, especially employees of Coffee Bean.

Here’s how I *try very hard* to reclaim my weekends:

1. Stay off the phone.
2. Exercise.
3. Limit lessons. OK, easy for me to say as I forgot to sign my daughter up for soccer.
4. Attend Agape once or twice month.
5. Treat myself.
6. Try to only commit to ONE event per day or weekend.

I’ve never been this excited about starting a new job. I’m leaving the agency world and going to the product side. So, now I help streamline production processes that help other companies build and maintain their own sites. It’s rewarding and once again, I’m taking a position that will increase my technical skills.

I working with a group of smart, cool CALM professionals.  I prefer smaller, privately held companies because I feel more challenged and have a greater impact.

I negotiated my start date and have two blissful weeks vacation.  I’ve worked out three times in one week!

Feeling a bit like peanutbutter spread out on a slice of bread. I’ve dedicated this Sunday to many hours devoted to me. I have several scenes mapped out:

• Me lying in bed sleeping or reading.
• Writing up my next freelance pitch.
• There I am on the phone talking to my sister.
• Talking to Melanie about the pitch and her forthcoming birthday. Is she going to have a baby soon?
• Go me. Walk on the beach!
• Attending church?!

Just think, then maybe balanced me can find some things that are lost.

I’m lovin’ today’s NY Times article by Lisa Belkin on house cleaning and couple-dom.

Some interesting stats from her article:

• Married women spend twice as much time on housework than husbands.
• Single women spend twice as much time as single men.
• “Women are attuned to the unseen audience, a man can sit in wacthing TV with newspapers scattered everywhere and food all over and they just don’t care. They can do it later. We women have the sense that someone’s watching us. We need those newspapers picked up because what would people think?”

–Caitlin Flanagan, “To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife”

• Employed mothers sleep an average of 3.6 fewer hours a week than those who are not employed. (That’s 187 hours a year!)

• Many women are guilty of what sociologists call “gate keeping”: building a fence around a territory, be it vacuuming or child care or grocery shopping and defending it as theirs. They set the standards in that realm, and they set them high. Sometimes unrealistically so.
• “From a man’s point of view, men feel like they’re often accused of not caring, but then, if they try to do something they are told that they’re not doing it right….their wives say, ‘Clean this up I want this clean’ but then they’re scolded because they don’t clean it right. There’s no right or wrong. men shouldn’t have to meet your specified standards for housework.”

–Neil Chethik, “VoiceMales: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment”

Women, we all need to chill. We do not live with our mothers any more. Leave the dishes, have a martini, go to bed and have some sex or get some sleep. Let the housekeeper clean the house.