Rushing

 If I shower, pack my lunch and all my bags the night before, I only have to get up one hour before I have to leave.  Between the time my fingers find the off button on my alarm to when they turn the ignition of my car, it’s a battle: me vs. willful toddler vs. unpredictable baby vs. time.  Nurse, pump, pack, dress, console, urge, force.  Rush, rush, rush.  Everyone in the car, driving too fast, kids to daycare, then me to work.  Work work work, lunch, work work work.  I will the clock to move faster.  “I want to see my kids!  I want to pick them up!” So I race out of the office and scoop up the boys.  Race them home.  Rush, rush, rush.  Dinner as soon as we walk in the door, and then straight into bath and then bedtime for the kids.  Gotta get them to bed so I can get some things done.  Gotta get ready for the next day!  Rush, rush, rush.

This is my formula.  Gotta get through it so I can get to the Next! Better! Thing!  If we can just get to ______, everything will be better.  Once Mike graduates and gets a new job, we’ll have more time and I’ll have more help and everything will be better.  Once Will starts sleeping through the night, I will be able to think clearly and stay up later and everything will be better.  Once I learn my new job, I won’t be so stressed out and everything will be better.

When am I going to learn to enjoy what’s here?  Life can’t always be a rushing towards something better.  At some point, I have to stop and just be where I am.  Who cut my brake lines?

Secrets

I recently “came out”.  I started using my real name on my blog.  I even started going back and replacing all my fake names in my earlier posts, just to avoid confusion.  Of course, it ended up being a much bigger job then I thought, so it’s only sporadically done, thus causing more confusion than it would have originally.  Ah well, welcome to my life of half-assed good intentions.

I decided to do this for a couple of reasons.  First, as I said in this post, I just didn’t want to come up for a made up name for my new little boy.  I’m not sure why it didn’t bother me to create a pseudonym for Finn.  Maybe because I was just getting to know Will?  Who knows.   The second reason was because I wrote a guest post on Stefanie Wilder Taylor’s site, Baby on Bored about what it was like growing up as a child of a alcoholic.  My family has been fiercely concerned about keeping the secrets of our past regarding the alcohol and drug abuse.  Although my mom is sober today, it is clear that we are not allowed to talk about it.  I was concerned that maybe if I posted on Stef’s site with my real name that somehow, someway she would find it.  Then, she would find my blog.  And then, my family would be furious at me for sharing our dark secrets. 

Then, I saw this, and it all just clicked into place for me.  This is my life and the repercussions of keeping secrets can be devastating.  She can keep her secrets.  But I’m telling mine.

Oh hey, that grass over there is WAY greener

My first week and a half of work can be accurately summed up into one word:  Exhausting.  I’m not one for summing up, so it was more like “oh my god, what was I thinking, hanging out in my pjs and watching cartoons was actually awesome, I feel like I’m going to fall asleep at any moment, please don’t fire me on my second day.” 

The number one most painful thing is waking up to an alarm.  I have the insane luck that Finn likes a solid 12 hours of sleep, so while I was unemployed, he was waking up at 8am.  In order to get myself dressed, nurse Will, pump, get the boys dressed, eat breakfast, pack my lunch and pack the daycare bag for both kids, I have to wake up at 6.  With the exception of one blissful night, Will has been waking up 4 times per night.  FOUR TIMES.  So, my brain is all “yeaaaaaah, I’m gonna need to stare at the wall for at least 2 hours today” and I’m like “No, actually, you are going to need to meet new people, remember their names, learn new skills, write coherent emails all while NOT falling asleep on your desk.”  Needless to say, my brain and I are not getting along.

And the whining is in full force.  This is hard.  I’m tired.  I miss my boys.  I miss my husband. 

I can honestly say that this is one of the hardest times of my life.  Having 2 kids (and did I mention that one of them wakes up FOUR TIMES a night?), a husband who is working full time at a job where he works evenings and weekend WHILE going to school full time and then starting a new job where I have to like…think and stuff.  From 6am until 8pm I am go go going nonstop…and then at 8pm I look around the dirty house and the piles of laundry and the bills to pay and the emails to return….and I choose sleep instead.  And I ask myself….why was I so anxious to find a job?

Oh yeah, I like my house, eating food and having heat.  Right.  That.  Okay, so there’s no going back.

Magic tricks

My husband thinks that our house is magical.  Well, I'm guessing this is what he thinks.  I can't think of any other reason he would leave things around the house that he wants to disappear.  

Example A:  Finn still wears a diaper to bed and when he wakes up, he comes up to our room with his undies and my husband switches them out.  Then, he puts it on the chest.  Every morning. 

Example B: This one is slightly more annoying.  When he changes Will's diaper, he puts it on these shelves.  You see the space on the right?  On the floor is where the diaper genie is.  Yeah. 

Example C: Also, in Will's room, he throws his PJs on the foot rest.  You see the closet door behind it?  That's where the hamper is. 

Example D:  My husband thinks that Good Will does a pick up inside our closet, because every time he wants to donate his clothes, he folds them and put them on the floor.  How convenient. 

Example E: When I complained that he got hair all over the counter when he trimmed his facial hair, he started to trim over the sink.  Thank goodness we got that worked out. 

Example F:  I am an obsessive recycler.  So I guess I should be thankful he puts it on the counter rather than in the trashcan.  He's always thinking about me. 

Example G: He's always leaving these all over the house for me.  What an ass. 

Awesome, sorta

Holy crap, I got the job! 

Have you ever seen that movie "Defending Your Life"?  After people die, they go on trial to see how brave they were on earth and decide if they need to go back or go...to the next place (whatever that is).  Their attorneys show clips from their life.  In one clip, they show the main character role-playing with his wife about how he's going to negotiate salary for the job he's going to be offered the next day.  He practices being a total hard ass, not taking a dime less than the money he wants.  Then, the next clip shows him taking the first offer given to him.  This was me.  I told my husband that I was going to insist on a specific number - that I was worth it and I would fight for it...then they called me, offered me the job for less and I said yes in .02 seconds.  Sigh.  At least I have a job now.

I decided to do a trial run with daycare today, drop the kids off and spend the day with my husband.  I was a wreck.  I cried on the way, while we dropped them off, and several times over the next few hours.  And here I thought I was ready to be away from them.  Having kids is such a mind fuck.  I don't think there could be a situation that MORE personifies "grass is always greener". 

Anyways.  I start on Monday!  Yay! (mostly).