Some moms can totally organize the house and kids and work full-time. I'm not one of them.
For the middle two-ish weeks of January (
yes this is a post I wrote in Jan. Why is it just going up now? More on that tomorrow) I was pretty much working full-time as a temp in an optometrist's office. I didn't mind the work at all. It's a great office and place to work, the other ladies were welcoming, understanding and fun to work with. Plus I'm certified as an optometric assistant and so I fell into a groove pretty fast. However, my house and kids didn't fair well. My two little ones did okay considering, (a 3 year old boy and at the time 11 month old girl) but when they're used to having me home all day and I was gone for 8+ hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week, it wasn't that easy on any of us.
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my mount doom of clean laundry:
as tall as my 3-year-old |
The biggest thing that overtook my house was the laundry. I'd wash and dry load after load, (we all had to have clean clothes, especially me for work) but it would just not get folded. This happened with a couple loads, and then three, and four. And yeah this huge pile that overtook my bedroom was about 6 loads worth, (minus whatever clean clothes we took out because we had to wear them.)
Why am I telling you all this? So other working moms out there who feel like they're the only ones who can't do it all, NOT TRUE! A lot of us have trouble staying organized and we need to lift and support each other.
Understand your own personality, and set realistic expectations. Right now my organizational skills are not at the point where I can make a full-time job work. Will I eventually be that organized? Maybe. Should I keep trying to improve and change and work on my organizational skills? Yes. But something else I learned about myself was that I didn't want to be away from my kids that much. Sometimes we don't have a choice financially and have to work full-time. Thankfully I'm in a position where I can stay home with my kids. Some women choose to work full time because they want to. But I think we all need to be aware of our own weaknesses and strengths. Because when it comes right down to it if you're so stressed out you put your pants on backwards and two different coloured socks on in the morning, yeah something's gotta give.
So what do you want? What can you handle?
Me? I'll keep working part-time and try to rein in the chaos that is my house.
Cheers!
WAM Moment of the Week:
10 min before we were supposed to leave for my son's speech therapy appointment he lost his glasses. (Like brand spanking new two-day-old glasses) and after tearing apart his bed room for almost 15 mins, I still couldn't find them. We went to rush out the door and the babysitter found the glasses tucked in beside his mattress. So we managed to get the glasses, but when we got to the appointment I realized my son's communication aid iPad had been forgotten on the hook by the door. Yeah, it had been one of those types of mornings. :I Facepalm.
Btw if you noticed there's no Recipe Recap in the post today, stay tuned for Friday :)
The sum of not posting for two months? MY NOVEL IS FINISHED AND POLISHED! I've got to send out the final stuff to my beta readers, but I'm sending out queries and ecstatic to have things actually happening. And knowing that this is going to be my year. Whether I get a good publishing deal or not, I now know enough and I'm confident enough that if I don't get any interest from publishers or agents I'll go ahead and publish this novel myself.