A stranger in my own house?

Ugh. This is already a rough week and it's only Tuesday!

It's sort of a perfect storm of things at work: Deadlines are looming for all my typical weekly publications, plus it's the week to produce Healthy U magazine, so there's a ton of editing to do. It's just the week every month when everything happens, and the hours are long. Colleagues are always happy to help, but of course, they are overburdened, too, so I'm reluctant to do much delegating. In fact, I really pretty much suck at delegating. (Note to self: Must get someone to work on that for me.)

It's not helped by the fact that I am very easily distracted, and there's not much opportunity here to tune out the rest of the newsroom. That will be changing soon, when we get some "modular furniture" (Read: cubicles) for our wide open office. We're all looking forward to it — we've been working on ratty old banquet tables that have to be covered with a tablecloth to avoid splinters. It feels a bit like our office is a never-ending wedding reception, without the food. The setup was supposed to be temporary after a fire made our building unusable, but as plans for a permanent solution have taken longer than first expected, it's become a rather long-term kind of temporary. Never thought I'd be so happy to have my very own cubicle!

The result of all this was that I was at work Sunday and yesterday for way too long, trying to catch up and/or get ahead later in the day, when fewer people are here to distract me. By the time I got home last night, it was way past Maya's bedtime, so I got to give her a little snuggle time, read her "One Fish, Two Fish," and put her to bed. She was not impressed by my effort to spend some time with her, and wanted Daddy instead. I guess I can't really blame her. I haven't been around much at all the past couple of days, and I hate it.

Once this week is over, the next several weeks will be much better, and I'll have more time to spend with my family. I just hope they still recognize me by then.