It’s about 5:30 am on Sunday morning and I’m up because I’m on the way to the airport in 2 hours and I haven’t packed yet. I’m heading to Columbia, South Carolina for the South Carolina Dialogue for Action, a one-day conference around colorectal cancer screening. The meeting has panel discussions tomorrow morning, followed by “conversations” (breakout sessions) in the afternoon. Joe (our Policy & Grassroots manager) and I are faculty on the breakouts focused around advocacy.

I’ll be home on Tuesday morning. Then it gets nuts. Laini is at sleepaway camp until August 16. My mom is taking Emily on Wednesday-Saturday for some quality Grandma time. The plan was that Eric and I would be here, work during the day and then have our evenings together as a little mini-vacation from parenting. Bzzzzz. Not happening. Eric has to go on a business trip that was just finalized last Friday. I was not happy. I don’t mind that he has to go, that’s the nature of his job. I did mind that he got like no notice about it. Eric made it clear to his powers-that-be that he wasn’t happy about this, but he doesn’t have a choice. He leaves Tuesday afternoon and he’s done on Friday. So instead of sitting in the house alone for 3 days, I’m going to drive Emily to my Mom’s on Wednesday afternoon, then I’ll head down to the C3 office in Alexandria, VA on Thursday afternoon, work in the office all day Friday and head straight back up to New York to get Emily from my Mom (they’re staying in Manhattan) on Saturday. Since Eric is done with his client in North Carolina on Friday morning, he’s going to fly in to Reagan National (DC) and stay with me in Alexandria Friday night. Then we’ll both head up to Manhattan on Amtrak to get Emily together on Saturday. That way we manage to have some time together.

Then he’s off to Boston on Monday, August 13. Returns the 17th. Home for the weekend and then he’s off to California the 19th, returns on the red-eye the morning of Friday the 24th. Then we’re all flying up to Vermont that weekend (24th-26th) for my sister-in-law’s commitment ceremony. The worst part is that the girls are both home and done with camp the week of the 20th. So I have to figure out how to keep them entertained without rotting in front of the television or video games while I manage two jobs. Emily starts school on September 6th and Laini starts on September 10th. How am I going to do it? I have absolutely no idea. One minute at a time, I guess.

It sucks. But we’ve tried unemployment. Didn’t like that very much, so here we are.