For example I spent weeks - weeks, I tell you - agonizing over how to afford to fly this French couple to teach at my event, since they were attending another event in the US a week before and didn't think they could easily re-enter the US a few days after returning to France. It was a sea of emails back and forth and lots of worry on my part that I would have to sheepishly tell them I couldn't afford them after all (for some reason flights were twice the cost when buying just one way or multiple cities) before a very simple and obvious solution appeared to me - just fly them to the other event and then back from LA and they pick up the very cheap internal US flight (originally before I hired them they would have had to buy their own flight to and from the US-France, so this made them very happy). Why this didn't occur to me when they first told me about their plans for this other event I have no idea. It's the baby. I blame the baby. :)
So along those lines, as I was lying in bed last night fuming over my neighbor's totally irritating Halloween party, the idea suddenly hit me - I have the Baby Kennel for nights and weekends already; why not just make my "free day" a weekend day? No new paperwork, no getting used to a whole new place and their policies, no being locked down to set days or times. I was thinking the other day about what exactly I'd do with a five hour stretch of time during the week; with all my friends working, I could see myself just wandering around aimlessly. But on weekends, I can see friends for lunch, movies, shopping, hiking, skiing, or just stay home and sleep or hang out in the hot tub. And I can switch back and forth between Saturday and Sunday as kid-friendly activities (kid's birthday parties, Babywearing groups, etc) arise, and when they don't (hair cuts, strenuous hikes).
I think it just didn't occur to me because I still think of weekends as family time, but for me all the time is family time, and if anything as a band singer I spend more time technically working on weekends than not. I like the flexibility of it, how I can plan week to week. I think the hard part is going to be setting up a day even when I don't have plans - making it a set thing that I MUST use one day every weekend whether I need it to go do an activity or not. That it's ok to spend $50 to have someone watch my child for five hours so I can just hang out and read or nap or sit around and play on the Internet. That this is my "free period", that I earned it, and it's ok. It's going to be hard to convince myself of this, but I think I can do it!
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