Today is the sixteenth day of my children’s school year. Sixteen days of getting to know their teachers, running from the bees that invaded to school playground over the summer, re-establishing homework and study routines, and deciding that maybe summer isn’t as long and boring as they thought it was sixteen days ago.

I’ve been pretty busy, too. I’ve packed a variety of creative lunches (not just the slapped together peanut butter sandwiches my children can expect every day by late March), signed and returned every form that’s come home wadded up in the bottom of a backpack, and filed away roughly a billion flyers, making note of PTA fundraiser dates and soccer practice schedules.

And since I work from home, which means that when my children are home, I don’t really get to work (or at least I do a very different kind of work), I’ve had a remarkably productive sixteen days without the constant interruption of, “MOM!”

I have submitted two new short stories, added another 12,000 words to my current novel project, posted to my blog two Thursdays (and now three) in a row, attended my weekly critique group meeting three times (where I both gave and received both brilliant and terrible advice), and disappeared down several research rabbit holes. I’m even getting a start on my reading list.

You could say I’m on something of a sixteen day roll. Sixteen glorious days! That makes two entire weeks, and it would be three tomorrow.

If they had school tomorrow.

They don’t because it’s Labor Day weekend. Monday is a national holiday and all that and our school district, like many, decided to put a teacher planning and in-service training day on Friday, giving students a four day weekend. It’s probably a good idea. Families can travel or whatever. And I certainly don’t begrudge teachers their planning and in-service days. I realize those are important.

But I feel like we were just starting to hit our stride.  I want my day back!

I imagine this is kind of how the people of Great Britain felt when they woke up on the morning of September 3, 1752 and realized the day didn’t actually exist. That year, British citizens (including those in the American colonies) went to bed on September 2 and woke up on September 14, skipping over eleven days in the process.

It was probably a good idea. Great Britain had been following the Julian calendar, introduced in 46 BC. That would have been all well and good except that the calendar was based on a solar year that had been miscalculated by 11 minutes. What wasn’t such a big miscalculation in 46 BC, had after a while become a very big deal, sending the calendar completely out of sync with the seasons and wreaking havoc on the Catholic feast schedule.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decided he’d had enough and proposed the Gregorian calendar which is much more accurate as long as you add a day every few years and a second or so once in a while. While Catholic nations were quick to adopt the new system, Protestant nations were less enthusiastic.

But in 1750, Parliament decided that doing business with the rest of Europe was somewhat difficult when no one could figure out what day it was, and the plan was set in motion. Two years later September got the shaft.

Rumors have swirled across the pages of history books that the people rioted in the streets because their government had the audacity to steal 11 days of their lives. The source of that rumor, as it turns out, is probably a satirical work by William Hogarth. During the next election season in which the Tories drummed up distaste for the Whigs by publicly blaming them for cancelling the first half of September and ruining everyone’s year, Hogarth produced a painting depicting the rioting horde with placards that read: “Give us our 11 days.”

And history was invented.

I imagine the change did make some people grumble for a while (especially those with birthdays in early September) but others didn’t seem to mind so much. In America (where people were evidently less prone to riot for no real purpose than they are today), Benjamin Franklin wrote of the calendar change, “It is pleasant for an old man to go to bed on September 2, and not have to get up until September 14.”

So as the school district steals what should have been my seventeenth productive day, I will try to channel my inner Ben Franklin and tell myself that it is pleasant for a mom to pack creative school lunches on September 3 and not have to do it again until September 8.