Attention, Please!

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Sometimes I get so bogged down in what I have to do for work that it becomes hard to take time off, even when I’m at home. While I've gotten good at avoiding work (last night there were two things in my school bag that I had every intention of doing…didn't happen), I haven’t gotten better at managing my school time. I put things off all week because by the time I usually get home, make dinner, and sit down to work, I can’t focus beyond an hour or so.

That is taking its toll on the baby of the house. Two-year-old Maggie, the grey tabby, is demanding in a way the other two are not. Her acting-out behaviors are escalating, to the point that last week, she decided to get the laptop off my lap by pulling herself up to the top of my flat screen until I would get up to remove her. (Like most of my seventh graders, she is impervious to my voice commands.)

This weekend, I gave myself some down time on Saturday and read for fun, and Maggie spent most of the day on my lap as I read. And she left the TV alone the rest of the weekend, even when my lap was occupied by the computer. Conclusion: she just needed some quality attention, and she was going to find a way to get it.

Tuesday night, when I got home after being gone 15 hours because of work and a basketball game, I spent 15 minutes on the computer catching up on emails, during which time she scaled the TV three times. Conclusion: someone was not amused that I was gone all day.

Lesson learned: I need to take time to focus on the “little things” so they don’t get out of control.