Young Housewife, Oil on canvas. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, this past week I was employed full time (WITH PAY — that is the important part for a long time stay at home mom) for the first time since — drum roll please — 2004!  Actually, it was rather anticlimactic and not nearly as exhausting as I imagined it might be.  This is probably because for the last two years I have been working with children — other peoples’ children, that is — and have developed a high threshold for noise, weirdness, grossness, and just plain kidness.  After discovering that I can truly work a full week of real adult type work without dying, I want to keep doing it.  It is immensely more fun that folding laundry, scrubbing floors, vacuuming the hall repeatedly to get the scruffy over-traveled strands to stand back up, and loading/unloading the dishwasher.  Also, I get paid real money that is money I earned for doing real work that I did!  I know, that last sentence didn’t make sense to anyone, except perhaps other stay at homes.  The important thing is that I am contributing to the household, and to society, in a way that I haven’t been able to in years, and it feels great!

Anyway, after becoming a ‘Contributing Member’ again, I did discover one tiny flaw in my brilliant plan to be a breadwinner.  When I come home after a semi-grueling day of work (at the school it’s always a crap shoot how much the kids will torture me) I look around the messy house and say “Eww, I don’t wanna do any domestic work! It’s almost dinner time, and I’m starving!  Oh crap, no one made dinner!”   Yeah, reality check.  Luckily I have a very supportive hubby who has been helping me with a lot more around the house, even before the transition to my new job.  And with summer right around the corner, I just have to hang in there for a handful of weeks, to see whether or not I’m cut out to be a full time employee at the school.  It’s almost like a test drive for a job.  Of course, since I get so attached to ‘my kids’ at the school, I have a feeling that I won’t want to quit working full time, not even on bad days, not even when I am tired, discouraged, frustrated, and downright flustered.  Hmm.  maybe I am on to something here.

— G