When is a Job Not Just a Job?

Let's pretend I didn't just take an unearned three-day weekend there. I don't know why I am risking losing the few loyal readers I have by slacking off. Sigh. 

Anyway. I have had a study-in-contrasts kind of a day, which many of my days seem to be these days: days in which I try largely unsuccessfully and with unintended comic effects to balance the many unflattering, ill-fitting hats I am trying to wear simultaneously, much like the man in Caps for Sale, a book without one-tenth of the clunky adverbs and adjectives in this sentence alone.  And cute monkeys to boot. Wearing caps.

In an amusing twist of fate, I am currently editing a book called Raising Your Toddler. This is amusing to me, anyway, because due to a very scattered childcare schedule, I am often attempting to edit Raising Your Toddler while, well, raising my toddler. Or at least while keeping her semi-occupied and with a mouth full of applesauce while I conduct business calls and check word counts. 

Today, for example, although I had a babysitter, Annika was not particularly interested in the Battleship game said babysitter was playing with Lily when the author of the book I am editing called. As I answered the phone in my professional (i.e. polite) voice, Annika fell into my office on top of the child's camera she was wearing around her neck, a camera I keep meaning to throw out, as it has never worked, but somehow can't bear to, as I liked the idea of it so much before purchasing it.

Annika wailed, the author asked, "Are you still there," the babysitter rushed in, Lily called, "It's my turn," and I froze with the phone to my ear. I find these moments are so concrete, so obvious, so in your face, so much more of the time than one would expect, at least for me. I suspect this is not the case for those parents with proper office jobs, those who do not work at home, those who have actual doors on their home offices, which I, at present, do not. 

I feel like I have set up this anecdote with an element of suspense. What did she do? Did she drop the phone, scoop up the toddler, cradle her to her chest? Soother her, throw away the useless children's camera, join in the Battleship game? Reprimand the sitter, run out of the office with the phone leaving all the chaos behind, explain away the crying in the background by telling the eminent child psychologist/author of toddler book that sometimes kids "just need to cry?" 

I think I will leave you hanging. Just know this: The author of the toddler book, a very wise woman I feel privileged to be working with, is a very big advocate of the good-enough school of parenting. I am trying to squeeze the last drop out of this editing project, in more ways than one.