As a parent, one gets used to the idea that if you’re not working, you’re taking care of your kids.  It is a very rare event to have more than a few minutes to oneself without some sort of activity taking place or task that needs to be accomplished.  Sure, you can get a babysitter now and then or take turns having a mom’s and dad’s night out, but, really, one’s life is, for the most part, put on hold when one has kids.  So when I found myself in the odd position of having a day off with no kids and nothing I desperately needed to do, I began pondering the many options I had to amuse myself for the day.

Naturally, it didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned it.

As an end-of-the-year bonus, my coworkers and I were given today as an extra day off.  My wife and kids, however, are back at work and in school.  We decided to go ahead and let the babysitter take the baby for the day and pick up the others after school so I could have the day all to myself.  So what to do?

I joked about a SPA day — you know, Strippers, Pot, and Alcohol — but since, other than the occasional beer or even rarer glass of wine, I’m not into any of that, I wasn’t really serious about it.  I thought about spending the day on the couch watching an all-day Firefly marathon, but since our television set is small and covered in crayon, that didn’t seem like such a great idea.  I thought about working on various programming projects or getting my book ready to send off to an agent and while those seemed worthy and laudable, they weren’t something I wanted to spend the whole day doing.

In the end, I never did come up with a concrete plan.  Truth be told, I probably would have wasted the day away surfing the internet and watching bad television.  As it turned out, however, I didn’t get my day off.  Sick kids conspired to put me on daddy duty watching the little one, picking the others up from school to do homework, and getting the oldest to dance class.  Still, the fantasy of a day of my own was nice while it lasted.

I think, though, that should this ever come about again, I want to be prepared.  So what would you do with a day to yourself?

Tags: activities, day off, fun, holiday, vacation

This entry was posted on Monday, January 3rd, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under Parenting Issues, Vacations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.