Um, Can I Get Some Family Time Please?

So I'm sitting in bed, letting Peter Pan babysit the kids (hey, it's better than Alien, which I let Fin watch last week) and having a little pity party for myself over being a single parent for a few days. Woob is again in Seattle, working hard, and majorly pissing me off for not being here when 1)Dash ate it outside and scraped up his face and hand 2)Dash peed before getting in the tub. All over the bathmat. and 3)Dash threw UP in the tub. While still in it. With Fin. And did I mention that Dash woke up at 2:30 and didn't go back to sleep. Like, yet. And then Fin was up at 6:30.

(EAT ME DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!)

Needless to say, things just don't run smoothly around here with Woob out of town.

I was thinking about how my father never went on business trips and was always home for dinner - even if that meant that during tax season he had to go back to work afterwards. And it made me wonder, WTF has happened to family time?

I can't think of one guy I know who doesn't work late most nights - that 'late' may vary from not being home for dinner to not being home to kiss his lady goodnight. But I don't know anyone who makes it home for a 'family dinner'. And most of the working folks I know do have some travel.

Speaking of travel, WTF is up with business travel. Airfares are through the roof and buying them at last minute makes it that much worse. Why isn't everyone doing teleconferencing? I mean seriously that is SUCH a waste of money! But I digress...

I HATE business travel. But Woob, like most I'm sure, has to compete with co-workers who don't have significant others, or families, or kids. So he doesn't have the luxury of saying, no, I'm not going on that business trip. There's always another worker who will be happy to go and take the job. I totally get that. But man do I HATE business travel.

So when are we supposed to get in any family time? You have to just mark off one weekend day for chores and around-the-house stuff. So one weekend day is all that's left? And that's presuming that your children don't have any activities that eat that day too.

That's just not enough.

(Now imagine me jumping up and down and stomping my feet)

So how do you do it? How do you get in your family time? And how can we fix our culture to value that more and come up with a way for people to work condusive hours?

Off to put the kiddies to bed by myself (and again wonder why Woob can do it in minutes and I get sucked in to hours of snuggles, drinks, potty breaks and more snuggles...)