Children

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

Backstory: I support a database application to outside customers all over the world, though mostly in the US and Canada. We're a tiny company, and I'm the only support agent, though I do lots of other things as well.

After a long, dissatisfying day, I came home to the chaos of two children and three dogs. Having slept poorly the night before, I had very little patience or tolerance for all the noise, so I hid away in the library and played CivIII to try to calm down. This left my wife (a stay-at-home-mom), who was also exhausted, to deal with the tornados. When she'd had enough I helped her put the children to bed and the dogs outside, and we finally had a moment of peace.

Then this exchange made my day:

Me: "I'm sorry, honey."
Her: "For what?"
Me: "Leaving you with the children."
Her: "It's okay, honey."
Me: "But you have to deal with that all day!"
Her: "Yeah, but I'm used to it. Besides, you have to deal with children on the phone all day, too..."

(xposted to my journal)