yet another one titled - "I'm Alive!"

For a girl who used to obsessively keep hand-written journals, who then diary'd (is that a verb?? just made it one!) at least every couple of days for the past 5+ years on the anonymous interwebz - it has been a LONG TIME.

Part of the reason is because work (where I used to take breaks to read-comment-and-blog) has been insane. The previous owner (yup PREVIOUS) handed the company over to new management on May 1st and I have been working my ass off since then....

In the weeks preceding the hand-off, all of us managers had a bit of a panic and assumed the new company would be centralizing a number of jobs we all currently did, so I applied - to, at the end of the of the day, really only one job.  

A few weeks later, they got back to me and I interviewed - two full rounds, the first with local managers and the second via video conference with the corporate office.  Each round was more successful than the last, and it felt like stars had aligned for the timing of this move.

Except by then I had worked for the new management team for a number of weeks - and liked them, a lot.  Queue the can't-focus-stare-vacantly-at-the-floor distractions and contemplation of what I wanted - part-time so I could be around when Button gets dismissed from kindergarten each day? (because yea - that happened, he starts K this fall!!!!)

Or do I continue in the path of a 'career' mom, working 40+ hours a week with goals of climbing the ladder?

I accepted the job offer from the new company, with great trepidation... only to try and tell new management/give them my notice the very next day, and I say try because then the two big managers took me out to a very exorbitant lunch to discuss things.  The things were - why did I truly want to leave? what did the new company have that they didn't?

I mean - I had been with the old owner for over NINE YEARS. 

So long story mostly just a little less long, negotiations were made with my current company's new management and I decided to stay.  I literally just sent the e-mail to the recruiter announcing that I had to rescind my acceptance of their offer. 

Regardless of if I stayed or went, I think I had decided I was happy working full-time... Button started attending our daycare at 10 months, Ms. Mack at 12-13 weeks... they love it, love the teachers who love them back, love their friends, love the social interactions - and I truly feel like a better mother because I'm able to keep autonomy and have an identity as a working woman.  (All that to copy a quote from a blog I was just catching up on - the author was mentioning a German book she read that compared European versus American ways of raising children, and how Americans are almost apologetic that they sent their children to daycares: Zaske concludes, "If you can find a quality childcare center with a caring, educated staff, your child will have more advantages than a child raised solely at ome does, including new experiences and relationships. You will have partners in raising her, and more time and space to become a better parent yourself. Your child will also be taking a big step toward developing more independence."


Yet I had always felt torn/undecided when, for instance, a co-worker teared up and claimed that "being there to meet her kids as they disembarked from the school bus was the best decision of [her] life" and she basically recommended working PART-TIME so one could be home with their children.

But then my inner pre-children self would pipe up and argue, But what about time to do what you LOVE? to read, to play piano, to write! and I'd doubt that freeing up half of my week by working part-time would truly be because I was picking my kids up at 2pm instead of 5pm and still not doing the things I loved to do...



So the negotiations I made with new management at current company were this: the biggest thing I wanted that I had previously agreed upon with old owner in lieu of a raise (because really, this was worth more than money for me) - by this fall, I will be working twice a week only until 2pm.  Most likely, only on ONE of those days I will go pick up Button from kindergarten and we'll spend time - grocery shopping, doing laundry, cleaning, whatever.  The second day I will most likely leave him with the after-care program (being run by his current daycare, I'm so thrilled!) and I will be able to decide what I'd like to do: write, play piano, or fold laundry while watching TV.

I know - after such a dry spell and now this novella.  Well, it's after midnight on a day that included dentist appointments for both children and hours spent at the local science center (which included snafu after snafu with transportation). We were gone from 9:45am until after 7:30pm, the silver lining to that being both kids crashed hard at bedtime.

Then I had to run to Kmart for the last part of a Father's Day gift (hubby will have to go to Walgreens for a giftcard for his dad tomorrow - most likely as we drive over for a BBQ....) and then finally finished up editing and publishing photos I took on a side job over a month ago.... and so, it's Saturday night, I'm slightly drunk and I still have to wrap gifts - so instead I'm breaking the blog dry spell.

You should hear from me at least once a week now on my self-sanity-preservation day! =)