Going back November 15, 2009

I go back to work on Tuesday.

“Conflicted” doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel.

I have to go back.  I don’t have a choice.  The little things like health insurance, retirement plans, and, well, a paycheck, make it necessary for me to go. 

But, if I had a choice, if money and benefits were not an issue, would I want to stay home?

Actually, no.  At least not full time.

I feel guilty even typing that. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love being here with Maggie. I’ve fully enjoyed the time I was able to be off.  I was thankful that by having a C-section, my doctor wouldn’t release me to return to work for 8 weeks, and then I had 2 weeks of vacation time that I was able to use so that I could have a full 10 weeks with my baby.  And I know that when we drop her off at day care, I’ll cry and spend a good portion of the day missing her.  I’m tearing up now just thinking about it.

But I need more of a challenge, I guess you could say.  Not that raising a child isn’t challenging enough, but I sometimes feel the need for “shop talk” that doesn’t revolve around children.  I need more adult interaction, a reason to wear something nicer than jeans, someplace to go where I can take a purse instead of a diaper bag.

And I feel so selfish wanting that.

I know that by the end of next week (if not sooner), I’ll be longing for the days to be like they’ve been for the past two months.  The novelty of returning to work will wear off quickly.  I’m only the third woman at my company to have a child since it was founded over 15 years ago and will be the first one to come back; the other two quit after their children were born.  Most of the people I work with are older than me, and most are men.  With the exception of a few, no one’s really going to want to hear me blather on about Maggie.  There will soon be a such a sharp division between “work” and “home”, and I know that will irritate me to a degree.

I’m a fairly organized person (just don’t look in my basement or garage, because either one would totally blow your mind).  But my organization skills are going to be put to the test once I go back to work.  Being off work, I’ve been able to keep the house somewhat clean.  I’m almost always caught up on laundry (but I love doing laundry, so don’t let that depress you if you have mounds of it to do).  I’ve been able to spend time blogging. I started my Christmas shopping, something I usually don’t do until mid-December.  I even cooked a real dinner every once in awhile (and I freaking HATE to cook).

But once I go back, that will all change.  And quickly.  Just the thought of getting up in the morning, getting Maggie up/dressed/fed, making bottles to go with her to day care, getting showered and dressed, packing my lunch, and getting out the door by 7:15 at the absolute latest makes me want to curl up in a ball.  Figuring out how to get the house clean, the laundry done, errands and grocery shopping accomplished, and meals made is going to be a juggling act.  I’ll have about 2 precious hours each day to spend with Maggie during the week, and I’m already feeling a little bitter about that.  There won’t be enough hours in the day.

I’m whining, I know.  So many people do this.  People with more job responsibilites and longer hours.  People who travel for their job and don’t even have the chance to spend 2 hours a day with their children.  People with more children.  People with children that don’t sleep as much or as soundly as mine does at night.  People who don’t have a spouse that is willing to help.  People that don’t have a spouse at all.

I know it will all work out.  That we’ll get into a routine.  That some things will be sacrificed (such as cleaning the bathrooms, because I hate cleaning bathrooms).  We’ll find our balance.  We’ll find our groove.  We’ll hit the lottery.  OK, maybe I’m stretching it on that last one.

But right now, I’m overwhelmed.  I want to work.  I want to stay home.  I don’t know what the hell I want.

So, I guess the ideal situation would be for me to work part-time, get paid what I do now (or more . . .) for working full-time, retain my health benefits and retirement plan and stock options, and have the flexibility to work when I want.  Then I could still have a lot of the day to spend with Maggie and wouldn’t have to put her in (or pay for) day care. Is that too much to ask, really?

OK, back to reality!

Falling apart at the seams August 26, 2008

So it seems that I have mono.

It started off last week with a sore throat and a double earache.  I went to the doctor and got started on some antibiotics.  No big deal.  We had planned on going to Harrisburg last weekend to visit my friend Amy and her 7 week old baby, so I just wanted to make sure I was healthy before I drove 4 hours to spread my germs to them.

By the end of last week, the earache was gone, but I still had a sore throat.  I called the doctor’s office, hoping to be given a stronger antibiotic (since the one they had prescribed for me wasn’t very effective when they gave it to me back during the never-ending sickness of January and February 2008).  Instead, I was given a needle in the arm and the possibility of having mono.

We canceled our trip to Harrisburg, and I took it easy all weekend.  A lot of sleep, reading, sleep, fooling around on the internet, sleep, playing with the kitten, and more sleep.  Sounds great, but still being exhausted on Monday when I dragged myself to work made it seem like the whole weekend was just a dream.

I got the call today that it’s definitely mono and the only thing I can do is rest.  You don’t have to tell me twice–nothing like being prescribed to sleep!  I feel like all I’ve done for the last week is drag myself to work, struggle through the day, drag myself through whatever errands have to be run, and then go home and crash.  I am in a complete fog.  I’ve never felt anything like this.  It’s like I can’t get caught up–the more I sleep, the more tired I get.  Very strange.  And no amount of Rock Star or Monster or coffee has helped.

So, even though I just slept for 1 1/2 hours after work, I’m going back to bed and hoping that I’ll be able to put a coherent post together within the next few days or so.  In the meantime, I leave you with this little bundle of energy and cuteness:

maybe I can't sleep very well because this one's favorite hobby is chewing on my hair.

Catching up August 17, 2008

This past week included a trip to Vegas, a red-eye back to Pittsburgh, 13-15 hour workdays, a big event that I’ve been planning for months, dealing with the antics of an active (and still ringworm-ridden) kitten, and no more than 3-4 hours of sleep each night.

I survived on protein bars and energy drinks.  On Friday night I crashed.  I’m still alive, just comatose and groggy and now coping with an ear infection.  After I recover by catching up on sleep, I’ll catch up on everything else . . .

what appears to be a picture of a one-eyed cat and a prime shot of my nostrils

Vegas, baby! July 2, 2008

We’ll be boarding our flight in 24 1/2 hours and I have a ton of stuff to do between now and then, so I just wanted to write a quick post to say goodbye!  Of course, everything at work exploded this week and I’m back to 10 and 11 hour non-stop days and feeling stressed out.  Just the thought of this trip is getting me through this week.  I’m looking forward to it now even more that I was before!

Hope you all have a nice weekend and a Happy Fourth!

Taking a little vacation March 21, 2008

I kind of lost my enthusiam for the NaBloPoMo lists.  It was fun.  Sometimes it was challenging.  Sometimes I fudged things by posting my grocery list, for goodness snakes (all credit for that phrase goes directly to Mike).

But it’s time for a short break.  I have trials and tribulations at work that are causing me to hyperventiliate and making me want to just curl up in a little ball in the corner and rock myself to sleep.  So I’m taking a hiatus from the list-making since all of my brain power(precious little that there is) is already spoken for. 

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to post every day, and since I’m the one who was enforcing that rule, I’m going to end it.  It’s about time I put my foot down.

I do have one more list that I’m working on, but I think I’ll save that one for closer to the end of the month. Oh goody goody.

Take this job and shove it! March 12, 2008

The list o’the day is all of the paid positions I’ve held over the years, starting at age 14.   I tried to do this chronologically, but some overlap time-wise.

• concession stand cashier at a private swim club–I rode my bike to work and back 7 miles each way on most days.  Up and down all kinds of hills. Wherever did all of that energy go?
• taking rings off of pistons in my father’s garage–at $2/hr.  Slave labor, I tell you.
• painting my father’s garage and staining our barn–once again, slave labor.  I think I got paid $40 for each.  Both took weeks to do, from sun-up to sun-down.  But I guess it kept me out of trouble.
• cashier at a Roy Rogers, then moving up to Shop Trainer.  I was so excited at the time to have such responsibility. 
• cashier at a fast food restaurant in Pittsburgh my freshman year of college.  Although I really wanted to cook instead of be a cashier, the manager told me that he was going to make me a cashier because I had blond hair and blue eyes.  That should have been the trigger to make me run far away, but for some reason I stayed.  Maybe because I had no money.  I quit 6 weeks later, after getting jumped late at night walking the 1 measly block back to the dorm.
• working the stacks at Hillman Library at Pitt.  I did this for years and I loved it.
• line worker at a vegetable processing plant–32 degree temperatures, 12+ hour days, 6 days a week during summer break during college.  Those paychecks funded almost a full year’s tuiton. I was one of the few English-speaking workers, so I learned to cuss a blue streak in Spanish.  Oh, and I hesitate to eat that brand again after seeing some of the things that happened in that plant.
• security at the campus bookstore during peak times.  The job entailed standing by the door in case anyone set off the alarm.  Boy, did those hours drag . . .
• working for the editor of a medical journal.  It was me and him in a suite of rooms.  He was more interested in the effort he was putting into the house he was buying than he was in the job and was rarely even there.  I should have replaced his name with mine on the title page.
• marketing promotion–I stood on the streets of Pittsburgh giving out Snapple.  It was a blast and the pay was pretty good.
• telemarketer.  I tried telling myself that it was a great job because we raised money for non-profit organizations, but I wasn’t able to fool myself for long.  It’s a real downer to be told “no” for 8 straight hours.
• data entry at a bank–I worked from 10PM – 4AM inputting check amounts into the computer.  Easy job, but I spent many an early morning standing by myself in the dark at a bus stop downtown.  Scary.
• rental car agent–I only lasted 3 months.  If someone would have clued me in on the tiny detail that I’d be using my college degree to wash cars and extract used condoms out of the crevices between car seats while wearing suits I could barely afford, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job to begin with.  Oh, and I almost got car-jacked, too.   I quit the following day.
• another marketing promotion–this time for Pace salsa.  Also a blast, but not as fun as the Snapple one.
• sales in the metals industry–I landed here kind of by accident almost 12 years ago.  I never thought I would be here this long, but here I am . . .

To-Do List March 9, 2008

I’m a big to-do lister.  I have a very official-looking planner that you would think I use for work, but it’s really used just to manage my day-to-day life.  I need reminders for even the smallest things, so my planner is an easy way to keep all of my reminders in one place. 

My list for today is my to-do list.  The day is half over, and I haven’t started on much of anything, so this one’s going to be tough to complete . . .

• laundry–3 loads.  The last one just went in the washer.
• fold the laundry I did last week that’s still strewn around our bedroom floor
• pay bills and balance bank accounts.  Done!
• finish reading The Brethren by John Grisham.  As un-motivated as I feel right now, this may be the only attainable one on the list.
• get garbage and recyclables together so that Mike can take it out to the curb tomorrow morning.
• change cat litter.  Blech.
• clean out freezer.  Omaha steaks shipment comes on Wednesday.
• move treadmill.  We bought an elliptical last week, and it gets delivered on Wednesday.  The treadmill has to be moved a few feet over to make room for it.  I am so excited that we finally bought this–I’ve been lusting after it for years.

The list isn’t too long and should be manageable.  IF I can get off of the couch.  I need some warmer weather to get here so that I’m inspired to do things!

Caution: bitch session alert February 18, 2008

If you don’t want to hearread me whining and wallowing in self-pity, continue right on to the next post in your feedreader or on your blogroll.  This one’s been a-coming for awhile now, and it’s finally time to let loose before I explode or implode or whatever.

The bottom line is that I’m tired of being everything to everybody, or at least attempting to be.  Because I can’t do it.  I can’t keep up.  And I’m getting sick of trying to and fighting off the feelings of drowning in “to-do” lists.

Before you call a crisis hot-line on my behalf–I’m not depressed.  My idea of the whole world crashing down around me isn’t comparable to depression.  Trust me.  My mother was a guinea pig for so many depression medications that I got to see the super-highs , the super-lows, the drug-induced disaffection, and the whole spectrum of symptoms and side effects.  I’d write a book, if I could just find the time or the energy.  Which brings me right back to my point.

I’m just exhausted and can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.  And we don’t even have kids yet!  The thought of adding to our family, adding to the dishes and the laundry and the DEPENDENCE.  It scares the crap out of me sometimes every time I think about it.

Between working full time at a demanding job that has beat me up and beat me down over the past 11 years, trying to stay involved in a few social activities so that I don’t become a complete hermit, staying in touch with my family (of which certain members think that phones only work in one direction), cooking (when I can find the time), cleaning, laundry, cleaning, more laundry and more cleaning, and then trying to get enough sleep so that I can do it all over again–I feel like I’m treading water.  I can’t get anywhere.

My first natural line of defense for everything has always been to sleep it off.  I knew I reached my limit this weekend when I slept for 8 hours Friday night, took a 2 hour nap on Saturday, slept 8 hours Saturday night, took a 2 1/2 hour nap on Sunday, and then slept 7 hours last night.  Each time I woke up more exhausted than the last.  I realized this morning after hitting snooze for 45 minutes and then dragging myself out of bed that I need to vent.  I need to clear the air and start all over.  I need to throw a big pity-party for myself and clear the slate.

My second natural line of defense has always been to bury myself in a book.  I’ve read 7 books so far in the month of February and I’m currently in the middle of 3 more.  And we’re not talking 150-page trashy romance novels that you can skim through–we’re talking 400-900 page novels with complex plots and seemingly minor details that you need to pay attention to in order to understand the plot-line.  I’ve spent hours on goodreads–creating a virtual library of the books we own and the ones I want to read in the future.  HOURS.

I know you’re thinking, “that crazy bitch isn’t getting anything done because she spends all of her time sleeping and reading and yet she’s bitching that she can’t keep up with stuff”, and it’s true.  I’ve shut down.  I spent over an hour cleaning the kitchen on Saturday, only to have it trashed within 30 minutes of Mike getting home.  I stopped cleaning.  I walked away, buried myself in a book or under the covers (and sometimes under the covers with a book) , and ignored the mess accumulating around me.

Most of my friends have a cleaning person.  Even though I am way too cheap to even consider that as an option (and I know that I would feel that I had to clean before the cleaning person got there–you know what I mean), even that wouldn’t work.  I don’t need a cleaning service, I would need a live-in maid.  I spend so much of my time cleaning up after myself, Mike, and the cats (who are spoiled rotten and track litter everywhere and grind their food into the laundry room floor), that I never reach a stopping point.  I finish one room, move on to the next, and by the time I’m done with that one, the first one is a mess. I can’t curl up on the couch to watch a movie because I feel like I just sit there glancing around the room at stuff that needs to be done.  Not just stuff that I would like to do, stuff that NEEDS to be done.

It’s not like we live in squalor or anything (well, sometimes–don’t ever ask to see a picture of my bathroom), but I wasn’t brought up in a messy house and I have trouble dealing with messiness.  Even if I had hours of free time each day, I wouldn’t vacuum for the sake of just doing it–it would have to NEED to get done in order for me to even think about it. 

And don’t think I’m busting on Mike, because I’m not.  I saw his bedroom when he lived with his parents.  It still makes me shiver just thinking about it.  I knew what I was getting into and have no complaints about housework being my responsibility.  It’s just the housework in addition to everything else that’s weighing me down.  I could easily write this same post and center it around my job, but I’d probably end up getting fired over some of the things I would write.  And it’s not like I would get fired from housework, so I’m safe there.

One of my (many) problems is that I go to extremes.  On just about everything.  I can’t just open the pantry or the fridge and figure out what we’re having for dinner.  I need to plan it out in advance, mark pages in a cookbook with post-its, make a grocery list, and go to the store.  Seriously.  And I’m that way with most things.  If I can’t go all-out, I can’t start it up.  In my crazy mind there’s a logical progression to everything, and that progression needs to be followed.  Sometimes it’s simple and truly logical: take everything out of the laundry room before I mop the floor.  Sometimes it’s so whacked-out that only I understand: in order for me to do our taxes, I need to take the big pile of receipts and bills and other miscellaneous correspondence and file it, even though I’ve already segregated all of the tax-related stuff from that big pile.  And no, I haven’t done our taxes yet, because I have that monstrous pile of stuff to file first!

OK, I think I’m done.  I guess my third line of defense is to spend time on the internet, because I’m totally using this as yet another avoidance technique.

Starting today, I have to make some changes.  I’m not sure what they are yet, but I guess that’s one of the things I need to figure out.  And first I have to make a list and consider all of my options and the different scenarios.  Because I’m crazy like that.

Half-assed February 10, 2008

This is truly going to be a half-assed post.

So much has been going on lately, and not all of it has been good.  Actually, very little of it has been good.  As a result, I have so many random thoughts swimming around in my head, and I can’t function well enough right now to say what I want to say in the way that I want to say it.

And so, instead of working through everything, I’m going to proceed to get on the treadmill, struggle through a 2-mile run, and then tear my whole closet apart looking for something to wear tonight.  What do you wear to renew your wedding vows?  The original plan was to wear my wedding gown, but somehow the extra 50-plus pounds that I’ve tacked on in the past 8 years haven’t managed to successfully melt away.  The details for the event say that you can wear your wedding gown/tux, or else “attire appropriate for a guest at a wedding.”  Every dress that I have in my closet that I’ve worn to a wedding is black.  Can I really wear a black dress to a wedding vow renewal ceremony?

At least there will be 999 other couples there.  Odds are, someone else will also have a black dress on.

Another day . . . January 31, 2008

 . . .another trip to the doctor.  Another (different!) kind of antibiotic.  And BONUS!  Cough syrup with codeine!  Someone’s gonna be sleeping REAL good tonight.

I woke up this morning severely congested and with a very attractive hacking cough.  Since my company does not believe in the concept of sick time (THAT’S a topic for a whole other post!), I dragged my sorry ass into work and sat here and coughed and hacked.  After much deliberation and arguing with myself over whether I am a hypochondriac or not, I went back to the doctor’s office.

She gave me a breathing treatment, which seems to have helped a lot. A few nips of the cough syrup and I’ll probably be out like a light.

The one thing that concerns her is that I still have a fever.  Last Monday my temp was 103 and today it’s 101.  I have no idea what it was in between then and now, but I feel the same, so I’m guessing it’s been around the same.  I haven’t  had the chills, but I have gone through veryhot/very cold stages.  Running around like a maniac all over the country will do that to you, though.  But this weekend?  I may not get out of my pajamas.