This post is inspired by my good friend Brett from 6 weeks and Dave Navarro from Rock Your Day.

The noise of the alarm bell interrupts my dreaming. I’m rudely awakened and can’t believe that John manages to sleep on like a baby (considering the bell is on his bedside table). Yawning I fold back the bed covers and step out into the cold morning air. It is 5.30am and the world is still asleep.

While I perform my morning ritual in the bathroom, my mind wanders to the tasks ahead for the day. As usual my plate is full and I start stressing about balancing the lot.

I can’t believe how freezing it is and don’t look forward to winter coming. I hate the cold. John is still tucked away in our warm bed, only his head sticking out and he looks so cuddly and peaceful. Right now I’m jealous of him. I so want to jump back into bed and cuddle before the babies wake up and start their morning ritual of “screaming their lungs out until we get them out of the cage”.

The temptation is great, but I stay strong and shuffle into the freezing kitchen to put the kettle on. Without my double dose of morning herbal tea, nothing noteworthy will come out of my brain.

While the tea is cooling down to a drinkable state I fire up my computer. A quick detour sees me going past the bedroom again to bring John his wake up beverage. He is still fast asleep. I gently stroke his head and quietly leave the room to give him some extra sleeping time. I also make sure to switch off that annoying alarm clock. Boy do I hate this thing!

Ten minutes later, email checked, my first cuppa warming my tummy and ready to start blogging, I settle in for a morning of heavy writing, interrupted by waking John at around 6.30AM and getting the babies up at around 7.30.

Actually by this time they are already in full swing and the melodious sing song with plenty of screaming mixed into the mix surprisingly doesn’t wake the whole neighborhood. At least they don’t come bashing at my door.

Mid morning we always have coffee, sometimes accompanied by sweets. One coffee a day is a must for me.

Back to work and more writing….

…. fast forward to early afternoon and by now my stress levels are up by another notch. John has gone to work and I already miss his presence and company. One good thing we had while I was working as a chef was that we were together 24/7. I still struggle with the lack of his companionship seven months after I stopped working in the kitchen for good.

My babies are restless and want my full attention. Like every other day I realize that it is near impossible to type while the youngest (8 weeks) sits on my hand and just doesn’t want to move anywhere else, while the other three fly around the veranda, shit on my head, my laptop and everywhere else for that matter.

So I neglect my work and spend the afternoon relaxing with my babies to keep them happy. If they are happy, I am happy. It’s as simple and complicated as that.

Simple, since their well being and happiness matters to me and complicated because I have to spend every night all night working to keep up with my work load, which makes for really long days and a very exhausted and tired me.

And so it goes…. until two blog posts reaffirm to me while I’m really happy to do what I do. Yes, I do get stressed, yes I sometimes wish I could work in the presence of my four cockatiels and one budgie without constantly having to wipe poo, get up to rescue one, because he/she got spooked and do it all over again until nightfall.

While I spent the last week or so feeling sorry for myself (pass the Kleenex please), because it all got to me (duh) and constantly fought the urge to just sleep all day, I wouldn’t want to change this for anything else.

Ok, that is a lie. I’d love to have John home with us everyday, all day and that is why I’m working my butt off to make it happen. Everyday I neglect to do the best I can, I fall behind in the plan, but after reading Brett’s moving post, followed by Dave’s, I wiped my eyes dry and re-focused on what really matters.

Thank you to Brett (time) and Dave (wake up damn it, you won’t get a second chance) for giving me a kick on the bum and making me realize that there are things that are way more important than work.

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