When Did I Become One of Those Moms?

How do people do this working stuff? How did I ever do it before? So maybe I didn�t work ten-hour days, but still. Was it just because I was younger that I could work and come home with enough energy to be a real person instead of a slug that can�t even stay awake through the first quarter of my beloved Bears football game? I don�t remember having headaches every single day after work. I don�t think I missed Hammy so much that all I wanted to do was go home. This working? It sucks.

This would all be much easier without the headaches. And the headcold. And the losing my voice over the weekend and hardly being able to talk yesterday. And the horrible pangs I get from missing my kids once I know they�re home.

The working part isn�t all that bad. I�m getting the hang of things. At least I�m getting the hang of things with the substitute PT who has been filling my boss� shoes the last two days. I know it will be much busier once my boss gets back, but I actually look forward to that, because there was far too much sitting around going on yesterday and Friday. I actually like working at work. I can sit around at home, and when I sit around at home, I can have the TV on or read a book or write in my journal or something other than stare at the other people in the office who have things to do and make them think I�m some kind of loon.

There are other good aspects to working too. I�m not sitting around all the time like I found myself doing far too often at home. There�s something about the structure of work that is very appealing to me. It keeps me in line. I am one of those people that really needs a boss. That be-your-own-boss crap wasn�t working for me very well. I can be a great boss to others, but I can�t even be a good boss to myself. I�m a horrible self-bosser. It�s not like you can fire yourself, you know? There�s a much more motivating accountability involved in working for someone else.

Work is helping my health too. I�m moving around quite a bit throughout the day, and I�m not nibbling all day long. I sit down for lunch and eat something I�ve already prepared rather than milling through the kitchen until I spot something that sounds good at the time. I also drink a big bottle of water by the end of the day, which is something I could have managed at home but never did. I�ve already shed a couple pounds, not counting the couple I lost from having some kind of stomach bug over the weekend that I expect to gain back by this weekend. I don�t hear of many people who think of work as a weight loss plan, and I don�t think the job itself is making me lose weight. It�s the structure of it that helps me. I also feel worth more than slave labor that I often felt before.

Dressing nicely and doing my hair every day helps boost the self-esteem too. It doesn�t hurt that several patients have gushed over how young I look, and one even told me I look like Ann Margaret. I�ve heard that comparison a million times before (I still don�t see it), but it�s always nice to hear. Feeling good about myself keeps me from running to the cookies to soothe my unhappiness. I actually want to take better care of myself.

But then there�s this issue of three o�clock. What happens at three o�clock? That�s when Hammy gets home from school, and soon after, at 3:30, Booie gets home. I�ve worked two long days so far, and both of those days, at three o�clock, I started feeling it--the guilt and yearning. I thought it would be easier to go back to work now that they�re older, that it wouldn�t be the same as leaving a baby. It wasn�t easier. In fact, it�s been worse. I�ve had eight years of bonding and greeting one or both kids at the door after school. Eight years of three o�clocks. It�s not like I sit there and stare at the clock all day either. Somehow, I just start feeling this need to be home, and I�ll look at the clock, and there it is. Three o�clock. The next three to four hours are filled with longing.

That short time in the matter of a ten-hour day is enough to make working very difficult. That is what fills my head with ideas of quitting or finding another job where I can be home with my kids from three o�clock on. But I�m not going to quit or find another job. Everyone tells me it just takes time to adjust and that other people manage. Right now, the responses to those consolations that scream in my head are I don�t want to adjust! I don�t care what other people do! while I nod and smile and say, �Yeah, I know.� I never would have thought I would feel this way.

If I look at the positive, I can say I discovered a part of me I didn�t know was there. I am the nurturing mother I never thought I was. But in my current mood, all I can think is how that now that I finally realize it, I don�t have the opportunity to appreciate it anymore. I�m working.