Day 228 – How many hours?

Reality just hit me that next year Lukie will be in elementary school!  This means that I will have approximately 7.5 hours each day, 5 days a week.  That sounds like a lot, but I thought the 9.5 hours a week I had this year sounded like a bunch until I was actually living it.  Now I don’t know where that time goes.  So I decided to just kind of map out next year…that comes to 37.5 hours a week.  First, I will stop   getting up at 5:30 AM exercise and wait until I put the kids on the bus.  Assuming exercise (including commute to gym on some days) takes 1.5 hours a day (generous) that means I still have 30 hours a week.  Of course I will volunteer in each of their classes.  We can estimate 3 hours/week for each boy or 6 hours total.  That is still 24 hours I have.  Now figure in I might do the cleaning I don’t really do a very good job at now at maybe 5 hours a week and the grocery shopping solo at 2 hours a week.  That leaves me with 17.  Now assume I will need some social interaction with someone other than the cat and figure in two lunches per week at 2 hours each (again generous) and we are down to 13 hours per week.  Of course I will have time to volunteer at the local shelter I have been interested in. They wanted 8 hours a month last year when I was still working.   I didn’t think I could pull this off without giving up time with the kids/Doug and now I can give them at least 8 hours every two weeks!  So that leaves me still with 9 hours a week.  Oh I forgot laundry at probably 3 hours a week (wish I was kidding), so now I’m down to 6.  Even if I figure in an hour each day for just “me time”, I will still have two whole hours a week I don’t know what to do with.  Who am I kidding?  I will be constantly busy and have no idea what I do with my time.  Just like I can’t really remember what I did with all my “free time” before kids!