It’s been kind of a long week here in Rockville. The main thing is that Nat, our au pair, is on vacation all this week and half of next week (lucky girl, she’s in Istanbul) – so we are without childcare for seven working days. I’d like to think that in a “normal” week, we’d be able to handle it all without too much trouble – just squeeze out a lot of down time, but this particular week has been challenging. First, the kids had scheduled days off on Monday and Tuesday, but today school was cancelled because of the snow (so three days in a row without school) and tomorrow the kids have a 2 hour delay. Again, I think it would be OK to be without childcare for a “normal” week (who am I kidding, is there ever a normal week?) but Jeremy’s on some big deadline due next Tuesday so he’s working all the time and I start up my spring semester of nursing school tomorrow. It’s one big time-scheduling mess. Every once in a while, I think that we could do without childcare and save a ton of $, but then I don’t have childcare for a week or a month or two months (oh, that was terrible) and then I remember that childcare is worth every penny and protects my sanity.