Elizabeth is keeping a record of how much time they spend on housework for a week. I’m just going to give you my day, from 4:45 on.

4:45 Arrive home to meet bus post band practice.
4:45-5:00 Check in with blogs and email.
5:00-5:30 Round trip to pick up Geeky Girl at after school care
5:30-6:00 Make dinner–ravioli for me; peanut butter and banana sandwiches for the kids.
6:00-6:30 Eat dinner while watching news and helping Geeky Girl do homework.
6:30-7:15 Can’t find homework sheet, so go searching on the homework table; also decide to go through mail; unclog glue; go through magazines looking for symmetrical shapes that occur in nature. This last task proves difficult because we have such “natural” titles as Wired, PC World, MacWorld, and Linux World. There’s a world for everything.
7:15 Put Geeky Girl in bathtub, run a load of laundry downstairs; ask Geeky Boy to load dishwasher
7:30 Begin blogging

Later, like after the kids are in bed, I have IRB forms to fill out, articles to read, etc. before I completely crash. If I wanted to have a neat house, I’d do at least another 2-3 hours of housework. But I can’t have a neat house, a full-time job, decently behaved children, and work towards a Ph.D. So there it is. In the mail, I found a two-week old birthday invitation. We are treading water here.