Selfish

This past few months, I've gotten into a certain rhythm with my schedule. I teach on two days of the week, and I have two and a half days of research, and I have an afternoon that is either for running errands or as what I like to call 'mommy time,' which usually means a trip for ice cream and a pedicure.

That 'mommy day' is usually Friday.

This morning at 6am, I got a text from our daycare provider. One of the risks of using an in-home daycare is this: my childcare is really reliable and somewhat flexible except when there is an illness in the sitter's family. Apparently, she was up all night with food poisoning and so the Bug had to stay home today.

On the surface, this doesn't look like that big a deal. After all, I didn't have a single appointment or formal obligation today. I had two planned tasks: retrive Teddy the Very Important and Irreplaceable Lovey from Mother's Day Out and pick up a postal money order to try to get out of a traffic ticket. Beyond that, my plan was to write my weekday quotient of 500 words and then get a pedicure. So my disappointment at discovering that I could not have the day I had intended would seem a bit selfish.

But. My research is a job, even if I'm the only person I know who really thinks so. It is job number two.

The pedicure? Honestly I need it to remind myself that I'm more than a sociology-reading, gibberish-writing, paper-grading machine.