The project at work, it confuses me.

Originally, the due-date for the proposal was the 13th. Which meant I'd be done on the 10th, giving the clean-up crew the weekend to put the presentation together. (Man, I would not want to work for the presentation crew.)

Then they moved the due-date up to the 15th. My boss wanted to keep our participation the same, giving the higher-ups and the presentation crew a little longer. His boss nixxed that and said we'd use every bit of time we were given. I snarled and grumbled and swore that I wasn't going to work over the weekend.

At Monday's conference call (they're daily, this week) I was told that our involvement would end on the 10th, so the higher-ups could have the weekend to do final clean-up in time to give everything to the presentation crew on Monday. Um.... But you said... Sure. Whatever. I'll take any answer that does not end with me working over a weekend.

At yesterday's conference call, they said nothing of particular interest to me at all, wasting a good half-hour of my time. But then after the meeting, the guy who's actually in charge of the section of the proposal that I'm writing came into my office and asked if I could have it done by noon today, so he could do a once-over before turning it in by the end of the day for Thursday's review.

...Does that mean I'll be free until Thursday afternoon?

Or even completely done, after noon today? No, that's too much to hope for.

I am confused.

Once a week (ish), Matt gets together with some guys from work and plays basketball. This is not a problem for me. By the time Penny watches an Elmo video, eats her dinner, and plays for half an hour, it's time to get her ready for bed. So it's not a hardship tour or anything, to watch her alone for a couple of hours while Matt gets some exercise and blows off steam. Especially since it's pretty much the only time he gets all to himself each week. I'm happy to oblige.

So last night started out like all the others, and after she'd eaten, Penny wanted to go upstairs to play. We played silly games on the guest bed for a while, and then she wanted to go back downstairs. A glance at the clock told me we were only about ten minutes from needing to be back upstairs for her bath, though, so I distracted her.

I distracted her by putting a chair in front of the bathroom sink, and turning the water on in a slow trickle, and letting her play.

The ten minutes went by, so I started the water in the tub. I took Penny's clothes and diaper off, and moved her from the chair to the tub.

"No, no!" she said. She pointed pleadingly at the sink. "Wa-wa!"

"There's water here," I told her.

"NO!" She stood up and tried to hoist her leg over the side of the tub.

I picked her up and sat her down again. "Plenty of water. Stay right there." I grabbed the chair and her clothes and the diaper and took them all back into her room. Chair went back in its spot, the clothes into the laundry basket, and the diaper into the diaper genie. It took me maybe fifteen seconds.

When I got back to the bathroom, she was... out of the tub. Standing cool as you please on the bathmat, dripping wet and naked. She turned and spotted me, startled - "Mom! I didn't realize you'd be back so soon!"

So I guess I won't be trusting to the tub to keep her confined anymore.

She reconciled herself to the bath after I gave her a handful of soap bubbles, which I'd refused to let her play with in the sink. It's all about the give and take.

Of course, Matt still came home to a screaming tantrum. It came about like this: "Penny, sit down, or we're getting out of the tub. Sit down. Do you want to get out? Then sit down. One. Two. All done? Three. Okay, bath's done." And then? I had the nerve to take her out of the tub! And dry her off! And? I put a diaper on her!

My inhumanity knows no bounds. I'm sure Child Protection Services will be coming to take me away any time now.

--Liz