That menu looks like our house, and maybe I need to re-look why I feel I need to do better. This weekend I caught up on a lot of my reading blogs and such, and I didn’t cook at all. Kids survived (husbands out of town). We just threw things together when we were hungry and didn’t worry about “breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” I started doing a search for something to the effect of “nutrition by grazing” and came up empty handed initially. I’ll have to keep looking because it may be the solution to my “problem.”

@Starlett- maybe I write so much because I stink at planning meals 🙂 We don’t really menu plan so much as have a short list of very simple meals we like. Sundays is hamburgers & hot dogs. There’s often a frozen pizza in there somewhere. Pasta with tomato sauce and Italian sausage. Sometimes we’ll do salmon or some other fish with beans or asparagus and rice. Fajitas happen relatively frequently. The kids have a pretty short list of foods they’ll eat. As for writing so much, I think it’s just a matter of getting comfortable with volume. If someone is running 50 miles a week, that’s what they get used to. Maybe I’ll write a blog post on that topic soon.

Noise cancelling headphones with some music or even “off” with nothing playing s helpful when the kids are home. Mine are older but still it sends a signal when they step in or pass by my office: headphones on and back to them/ the door.

Laura looks like you have a beautiful office. I need to get mine in better order.

@OilandGarlic: jobs without flexibility definitely throw a wrench into things. I’ve come across some research that people can work many more hours without work-family conflicts if they have control over their schedules and the ability to work from home sometimes. If you don’t have that, then even basic full time work (40 hours) starts to cause conflicts.

Thanks, Laura. Like you, I attempt to stay put when I hear the screams, etc. Navigating the days when my oldest wants to come in the office or demand access to me is tricky, but I try to hold the space and remember nothing is permanent! One day he’ll be in school and I’ll be looking back and remembering…

@Cara- I guess it’s the whole personal/political issue again. We have to be simultaneously practical and expansive. I tend to think it’s hard to argue for changing the world when you don’t have data. People understand stories and relate to them more than to abstract arguments. That’s part of the way the human brain works (per Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast & Slow — a great book)

@Well Heeled Blog – don’t get tired! I’m sorry if I made it sound bad. It’s really quite doable. One of the reasons I wrote 168 Hours is because before I had kids I kept hearing people complain about how tired they were, how they had no free time, their careers were shot… Doesn’t have to be. There’s time to work, time to sleep, time to play. I’m going to someone’s house for dinner tonight, going into NYC for a concert tomorrow, went for four runs this week. Life continues!