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.

It's never too early for Sondheim

My nearly-3-month-old, Kayla, is pretty laid-back. Most of the time, she's pretty happy — especially if she's being held. Still, it's always risky taking a baby to a movie theater.

Now, I know what you're thinking: I'm one of those people. The people who think it's perfectly ok to take a baby to the movies. I felt that way, too, once — and I still do, when it comes to parents who don't care who their child annoys in inappropriate venues.

But this was Steven Sondheim, so I wasn't about to miss it.

The theater is offering a limited showing of Sondheim's "Company," a musical I've come to dearly love since being introduced to it years ago by my friend, Megan. Tonight was my only opportunity to go, and my sister was happy to keep both my girls for me so Megan and I could go see it, since my husband, Brian, had to work.

But I faced an unusual problem: Although I had a sitter, I didn't have enough milk stored to leave Kayla with her. It's tough, sometimes, finding time in the day to slip away and pump, so there are days I don't get to it at all. And lately, there've been a lot of those days, it seems.

So it was take Kayla with me or stay home. For $18 a ticket, I wasn't sure it was worth a try — suppose she started fussing and I had to high-tail it out of the theater? I decided to take my chances, and I'm glad I did. She sat, quiet and attentive, through the whole 2-1/2 hour show. I'm not sure how well she could really see it from the back of the theater, where we sat so I could discreetly feed her, but it seemed like she enjoyed the music. I certainly did.