Wednesday guilt

I have this knack for feeling guilty for silly things. Case in point: today.

On Wednesdays I have childcare for August, which means I have the bulk of the day to myself. This is a great luxury, and it originated when I realized I could no longer go to school and lab with August in tow. She was getting too rowdy to get anything done.

Since January I've been spending most of Wednesdays at school, trying to figure out some imaging software, looking up and reading journal articles, lunching with school friends, auditing a class, taking care of stuff for next fall. I am not enrolled right now, so all this was just to keep my brain moving, keep current with the peeps, and maintain my primary non-mom outlet (i.e. sanity).

Today, however, I'd like to get some other stuff done. For example, I stopped for a manicure after dropping August off. Then I went to the car wash to thoroughly vacuum out my car, Armor All it, and give it a good scrub on the outside. Now it's 1 pm, I'm still at home and trying to decide if I should continue up to school after dropping off the busted vacuum cleaner, or if I should play "hooky" today officially.

Why feel guilty about this? I don't know. Maybe because one professor believes that I'm spending some Wednesdays working in his lab on software that I now think is too complicated to try to learn by spending a couple hours once a week. Maybe because I'm auditing 1/2 a class (I don't make it to Monday's sessions) being taught by a friend of mine that will be somewhat useful for next year, or at least remind me of all the stuff I've forgotten about from last year.

Never mind that I somehow never have enough time to get much research reading done, which is probably how I should be spending most of these days. I guess I feel like I've committed to spending this day in a certain way, and maybe that's not the best use of my time. Or maybe these are all good uses of my time, spread too thinly over my one daytime of freedom.

Okay, okay...I'm wasting time. Maybe the guilt is at least partially legit.