What Did You Do Today?

My husband has learned not to ask, “What did you do today?”

First, it implies that I might have done nothing.

And of course, you can’t build a great story around five loads of laundry, the spilled milk, finding the matching mate for two pairs of shoes, packing another peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chasing the snake from the patio, a search and rescue for the mysterious stench coming from the pantry, pick-up lines, another glorious trip to the grocery store, scooping the litter box, calling sitters for Saturday and all the rest of it!

He knows not to ask, because heck I cannot even answer that question. I have often wondered where my time and day actually goes. So I started thinking…where is my time spent?

So, I decided to look at just a few categories for this oh-so scientific study of mine. Let’s see, the way I figured it…Yearly, I spend an average of 182.5 hours on laundry, 121.6 hours on search and recovery, 608.3 hours cooking and preparing meals, 365 hours on sparkling toilets, 182.5 reliving my schooling via homework and educational activities, 152 hours on children’s crafts and 456.25 hours driving the family cab.

Let’s not forget the 121.66 hours herding and yelling “Hurry up!”, 255.5 hours on my cell phone planning, coordinating and venting, 48.6 hours for appointments, 158.6 hours observing children’s sports activities, 85.1 hours on “Please wear something else…” and the 139 hours of torture buying expensive groceries, praying for a sale at Target for birthday presents, searching for cards for less than the cost of a meal and miscellaneous items.

It continues at 24.3 hours twiddling my thumb at children’s birthday parties, 12.1 hours in attending classroom celebrations, 30.4 hours wiping a tear or mending a broken heart and 73 hours refereeing another fight between the girls. (And I calculated when the girls were in diapers, I spent another 486.6 hours a year just on one!)

So, according to my paltry math, my basic work day averaged about 8.26 hours! If you have children in diapers or are in the midst of potty-training feel free to add in 80minutes per day per child for your own statistical analysis!

My husband is a smart man. He instead asks, “How was your day?” It makes my life seem so much more entertaining and worthwhile to humorously describe the funny adventures related to these often mundane tasks.

But, if he ever dares to ask, “What DID you do today?” I finally have the list, the answer and my reply. Then, I will sadly reassure him that my fantasy of consuming an entire bag of Dove chocolates while lounging in bed the entire day watching Lifetime television uninterrupted- simply cannot and will not happen any time soon!