In Over My Head

I know that change can be hard.  Even if it’s a change that you really had been looking forward to. Like my youngest starting kindergarten.  I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time for that.  And it’s good.  It really is.  He’s making friends and learning all sorts of new things.  He’s getting a little wild in the process playing with all the big boys but I’m hoping it will straighten all out in the end. 

What came along with this change is the fact that I am now working semi-fulltime with my husband.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working with my husband and if we have a little snipe at each other once in a while it doesn’t take long for us to clear the air and get over it.  After all, we’re both trying to make this work.  The upside to working with hubs is:

• I get to work with my best friend.
• He takes the kids to school and heads to work.  I eat my breakfast and then do a short work out on the treadmill and he gives me the liberty to be a little late getting in to work.
• I get to leave every day at 2:30 so I can pick my children up from school where I get to talk to other moms and have a chance to socialize for a bit.

The downside, there is no one at my house cooking, cleaning or doing laundry.  Not to mention my much beloved blogging and blog reading. 

My house looks like a train wreck since I started working fulltime.  I may be home by 3:30 three times a week (the other two days  my oldest has after school tutoring) but it takes time to listen to how each child’s day went, sort through planners, lunch kits and homework sheets.  Then it’s oh yeah, what am I going to make for supper because no matter how many times I tell myself to take something out for dinner the night before I forget.

It used to be that when dinner was over, so was my day.  Like any regular job I’d knock off for the night.  As far as the cleaning goes anyways.  What I didn’t get done today would get done tomorrow.  Not so when you’re working outside the home.  Suddenly my evenings are filled with washing, sorting and folding laundry.  There is no rest or down time because if my kid doesn’t have a clean uniform shirt to wear in the morning, you can bet that I will be getting a call about it from the school. 

Weekends; we should be able to get the big stuff done like bathrooms, sheets etc.  But when you’re volunteering in a bottle drive one weekend and it’s Thanksgiving weekend the next and then it’s we gotta put all the summer stuff away before it gets rained on.. the days are pretty much a write-off. 

As I look around my cluttered counters and floors littered with cereal and scraps of paper everywhere, I wonder how people can stand to live like this.  I sweep everyday, I clean the best I can and yet my house is still a mess.  I’m tired and grumpy and most days I don’t even feel like cooking dinner anymore.  Is it just me?

How on earth do full-time working mothers get it all done?

Zeemaid