I’ve now been back at work for a month, and just about everyone I know has asked me how it’s going. The truth: It’s going pretty well. I’m enjoying using my brain in a different way again (and am pretty happy about having a Starbucks in the building too).
The other truth: Life is kind of overwhelming. No one told me being a working mom of two is infinitely harder than being a working mom of one, and I think I underestimated the logistical crunch having two kids would bring to my working life.
I think I’ve found a groove for the busy mornings, though of course now that winter has decided to come to Calgary I have to build frost- and snow-removal time into my routine. It’s the evenings that are tough.
My commute is 45 minutes each way, and I work until 5 p.m. Ethan is usually approaching meltdown stage by 6 p.m., which gives me a very small window to get home and have dinner before transitioning into baby-sleep-whisperer mode. (As we all know, tired babies do not necessarily easily transition into sleeping babies.) Then I still have to do dishes (Rich cooks) and tidy and walk the dog and ignore the unfolded laundry and so on before attempting to get to bed at a reasonable hour so I can do it all again the next day.
I won’t lie. I’m tired and most nights my brain is ready to explode.
So…I’ll happily take any efficiency tips you care to share and in trade I’ll offer you one of mine: I’ve recently been introduced to Just-Eat.ca and I think it’s absolutely brilliant.
On weeknights Rich has been fantastic at getting dinner ready in time to feed Ethan before he totally loses it and so I can eat before my second shift (as it were), but there are some nights we just don’t have our dinner ducks in a row. And when it makes life easier we don’t hesitate to order in.
We get a little sick of pizza though, so Just-Eat.ca has been a great solution. Enter your postal code on the site and it will show you the places that will deliver food to your area at that time (and if they’re not open then but will be for dinner, you can preorder). All the menu items are listed so you can add them to your order with one click, and you can add a tip for the driver as well.
The first time I looked at the site I got lost in all the possibilities. With Thai food, Mexican, Italian, Indian, and more, it was easy to break out of our pizza rut. In the end we ordered Chinese food on a busy Wednesday, which is the night I’m on the hook for all the evening stuff because Rich goes to an art house event.
Embracing the easy way to take care of a weeknight dinner saved a little bit of my sanity (and bonus – no dishes!), so we tried ordering in on a Sunday as well. Rich was working (he’s getting into freelance illustration work, which is very cool and which I will share more about another time) so I’ve been doing kid and dog and laundry and grocery and dinner duty (on top of trying to get a run in now and then and still blog and do other freelance writing) and some Sundays the last thing I feel like doing is getting dinner ready while I’m trying to prepare for the week ahead. On this particular Sunday we ordered Italian (and discovered a place we hadn’t tried that serves zucchini sticks, which are a sentimental favourite for me). It was delivered exactly when we had asked for it and for a reasonable price fed the four of us with a good amount of leftovers for lunches (another bonus).
Telling you all this – with my good job and a husband who stays at home and family in town who support us – feels a little first-world-problemish. But you know what? Life is busy and it’s never going to get simpler if we don’t embrace the things that can make it easier. So I say lean in to ordering in. Your sanity is worth it.
This post was generously sponsored by Just-Eat.ca, but the opinions and images are my own. For more information, including ordering information for Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Waterloo, Kitchener, Guelph, Ottawa, London, Montreal, visit www.just-eat.ca. (There’s also an app.)
