(Sung to the tune of “The Love Boat”.)

Hiatus. It’s the MOST wonderful time of the year! Even better than Christmas. It’s when my husband is home.

See, many stay-at-home moms I know have a spouse whose job is structured in such a way as to allow him to do co-parenting duties in the morning before going to work, like getting the kids dressed, fed and off to school. And then in the evenings, those lucky women have husbands who come home in time to eat dinner with the family, help with homework, bath & bedtime routines, or even find time to take a class or coach a Little League team, just for instance.

My husband, however, works on a TV series.

Oh, the glamour, you say, the klieg lights, the starlets, the dreams fulfilled. HA! I say. Sure, it is part of the Dream Factory – Hollywood. But the day-to-day reality of living a dream like this is very much less then dreamy.

(And I know of which I speak, since I, too, once worked — dunh, dunh, dunh – on a TV series!)

My husband usually leaves for work at 5:30am, and not because he has to drive 3 hours to get there. Work on set starts at 6:30am, that means leaving the house at 5:30am. (And, just to be fair, some of the actors, especially those in character makeup, or some of the big glamour-pusses, have to be at work even earlier to get all the makeup and hair work done – which means the hair and makeup people have to be there that early, too…)

Anyway, then, if you’re lucky and get on a good show, the hours will be reasonable, like 12. Per Day.

Which means, subtracting out the hour lunch break that’s union-regulated, thank god, the crew will finish work at 7:30pm, having started at 6:30am, don’t forget. So add in drive time and evening traffic, and my husband gets home at about 8:30pm, after having left the house at 5:30am.

On a good day. There are days, in fact Tuesday was one of them, when the crew works 15 hours, and there are shows that are notorious for doing so. Can you tell what time he gets home after one of those days? (10:30pm.)

So that’s something that makes the movie and television industry different from the rest of the world’s (or at least middle America’s) jobs.

Here’s another: we have extra seasons. Everyone gets the standard Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, but in our business we also get Pilot season and Hiatus.

Hiatus is when the TV series takes basically a school summer vacation, except that it’s usually in May and June. It shuts down between seasons, to give everyone a break from the hours they do on a regular basis. And everyone on the crew is free to vacation (VA-CAY-SHUN! Also sung to the tune of “The Love Boat”) or to take other jobs, if they so choose. Lots of TV actors do movies during hiatus time.

But I get a husband back during hiatus, even if it’s only for a short time.

Can you feel the AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH……. Emanating from Mar Vista right now? That’s hiatus for ya, baby.

An original post by Sarah Auerswald.