Everybody's Working On The Weekend...  

What? Everybody else isn't working on the weekends? Just me? Oops. My bad.
So, here it is, a lazy Saturday in the summer, and instead of playing in the pool with DH & G, or shopping with some friends, or even simply taking a nap in our sunroom, I am getting ready to go to work. This is the life of a mid-sized market TV news producer.

I don't always work the weekends. In fact, I probably have the best hours of any producer at my station. I have co-workers who come in at 11:30pm and don't leave until 7am. Others come in the door at 2pm and are here until midnight. My hours are 9am-6pm, Monday thru Friday. It's almost a normal schedule. Almost.

I never get snow days. In fact, when it snows around here (I live in the South, so here, snow = "a little bit of spit from above"), people panic. The grocery store shelves empty, people hunker down in their homes, and those who are brave enough to hit the road will travel-- at the very most-- at 25 miles an hour, even on the highway. My job actually becomes more important the more snow we have. It's my duty to tell people to stock up at the grocery store, hunker down in their homes, and drive no more than 25 miles an hour on the highway. I am the guardian of snow safety, if you will. Calling in sick during severe weather of any kind is akin to career suicide in this industry.

Any time breaking news happens, I may be compelled to stay at work hours longer than originally planned. This can cause chaos for my family, particularly on days that DH works. It either means he has to be late to work, or, our nanny will have to stay late. There have been times when I've had to leave the newsroom in chaos because my support staff at home is unable to adjust their schedules to my needs (what? I am not the center of the universe?). No matter what, I always feel riddled with either mommy-guilt or employee-guilt.

And election season... Don't get me started on election season. There is a very good reason why I had a baby two months before the 2008 Presidential election and was out on maternity for the most stressful part of the campaign. That wasn't an accident, people. It. Was. Diabolically. Methodical. Just like everything I do.

But for the most part, my work schedule is ideal. I get to leave at 6pm every day and literally start over the next morning with a clean slate. There are no repeats in news, which is usually a good (ok, great) thing. I rarely have homework (although-- gosh, I am such a dork-- I actually liked homework when I was in school). Each day is a new beginning, which means most nights are relatively stress free.

So that brings me back to today-- and why I'm heading to work on a perfect Saturday afternoon. I am helping out a friend (two friends, actually). We are very short-staffed at our station right now (it's a given in TV news these days, for those of you inside the industry), and we don't have a lot of extra people to fill the holes. So when somebody wants off for a vacation, somebody else has to step in to fill the void. Today, I am the void-filler.

Today, I am hating the "working" part of being a working mom.