...or rather, I hadn't. Until today. Not counting the occasional crunch-time, gotta-get-this-done-to-meet-deadline Monday, today is the first Monday I've worked in...oh...about 6 years.

I'm not impressed.

It sort of puts a damper on one's weekend, doesn't it? ugh. How do you do this week in and week out? I suppose I'll get used to it.

Where have I been for the past 6 years? Well, when I had my first daughter, I worked at home twice a week -- on Mondays & Tuesdays. It worked out very well and, frankly, I often got more work at done at home than I did in the office, but...alas, when I moved into the newsroom, it was a different culture -- one that frowned upon working at home and that ended. I was, however, able to work a "flex" schedule that allowed me to compress the work week into four days, having Mondays off.

That ended last week (well, sort of because we had Labor Day off) when I returned back to a five-day schedule. I chose to return to a five-day work week so I could get my daughter on the bus every morning. Working a four-day, 10-hour schedule meant starting at 7:30 a.m. -- a time that didn't work for getting my daughter on the school bus each morning.

So, now I'm back to a normal work week -- five 8-hour (technically we work 7 3/4 hour days) a week and a real, honest-to-God lunch hour or half-hour, if I want it (when working 10 hours, I skipped the lunch lest I have to be stay even later at night).

The shorter work day is going to make for a more normal life. I can go to lunch with my friends. I can run errands on my lunch. Today, I can skip lunch and scoot out at 4:15 and actually make it to a friend's party at 5 -- something I never could've done before. And, we can have family dinners and evening walks now that I'm home at a reasonable time.

But, man, I will miss my Mondays off. It was always my cushion day... my day to catch up on all the things I let slide while I was out having fun all weekend. Now, there's no cushion, which is why I was rushing the husband and kids out of a friend's football party yesterday, "C'mon, tomorrow's a work & school day, I have things to do, clothes to lay out, lunches to pack....let's go, let's go, let's go!"

Plus, Mondays were my day to do fun things with the kids. Go to the library, go to the zoo, etc. And, sometimes not-so-fun things like going to the dentist or the doctor. But, both girls are in school now -- the younger in Preschool half days and the older at Kindergarten all day -- so I felt it was best arrange the schedule so I could be there each morning to see them off and in the evening to hear about their day.

In the summer, when school lets out, I plan to go back to the four-day-a-week compressed schedule and have Mondays off to spend with them again.

To me, that flexibility, is one of the biggest perks this company -- and my position -- offers.

I only wish more mothers (and fathers) could do the same -- I know that most can't. It really is such a short time that our children are young -- it's a shame that our culture doesn't value our future generation enough to realize that a little flexibility could go a long way to solving the breakdown of the American family.