Monday was here,
and we were all of to our appropriate locations, hoping to kick off a better
week for all. I had been fighting one of those nuisance headaches for a couple
of days, and REALLY wanted to pack it in early today, but I pushed through and
finished out the work day. I stopped at Walmart on my way home to grab some
groceries, picked the big girls up from daycare and we made our way home. But,
not before receiving some unsettling news. Olivia had been poked in the eye
with a pencil this afternoon, and it was really red and bloodshot at the point
of impact. Of course, FREAK OUT moment ensued, and I had no idea what to do
about it. We decided to just keep an eye on it…it wasn’t swollen or bruising,
she wasn’t seeing blurry or double-vision, she wasn’t really complaining about
it (she didn’t even tell the teacher until they noticed it about 15 minutes
later). Kids, they’re terrifying! Eliza had a good day, and a pretty quiet
evening, so that always makes things easier for everybody. We all settled in at
home, had some dinner, the girls showered and were off to bed. And, of course,
Christian and I settled in for our Walking Dead night before bed. We went to
bed praying everything would be OK with Olivia’s eye, and we wouldn’t wake up
to anything worse.
Ouch!
Tuesday was a bit
of a longer day. We had a decent night of sleep, but we were up pretty early
again. Oh Eliza, one day, I’ll be dragging you out of bed in the morning, just
like your sisters. That day seems VERY far away right now though. Olivia’s eye
looked basically the same…I guess that’s better than looking worse. I’ve
continued to be SO busy at work. I swear, for every contract I write, 2 new
requests show up in my box. I just feel like I’m drowning and cannot catch up
at all. So, needless to say, the day flew by. I picked the girls up, and we
made our way home. Eliza had a “sensitive” day today at daycare. She has 2,
possibly 4, teeth coming in, and it’s definitely got her feeling CRABBY. She
was clingy and upset most of the evening, so dinner had to wait for Christian
to get home. The girls and I watched a movie while we waited for him to get
home and start dinner, and we got Eliza laughing pretty hard a few times, so we
did our best to cheer her up. Poor thing, teething is seriously the pits. Before
we knew it, everybody was off to bed.
Love that smile.
Wednesday was my
usual work from home day, YES! And, icing on the cake, we slept all the way
through the night last night, straight up to the alarm. Hallelujah, I just LOVE
when that happens. When I dropped the girls off at daycare this morning, Olivia
just warmed my heart, and I have to share. As I was heading to the door, she
yelled to me, clear across the Center “Mommy, you are SO cute! I love you!” I
mean, I was far from cute. No shower, no make-up, barely out of pajamas, hair
haphazardly thrown up. But, in her eyes, none of that mattered. Come On! Kids
are amazing…they are hard, and difficult, and trying, but AMAZING. After that
little pick me up, I made my way home to work the day away. After I finished up
my work, I did some cleaning and started dinner before heading out the pick the
girls up. We had dinner, and settled in for the premiers of Survivor and The
Amazing Race. A nice, quiet night. I received our van registration tonight, and
OUCH, that was painful. Way more painful that I had budgeted. That was not a
fun discovery, at all.
Thursday was a
rough day. I was pretty much emotional and angry throughout the day. I should
start off with a little background. I’ve been at my job for going on 14 years.
I started there, in a temp position, about a month after I graduated from high
school. I ended up earning my keep and impressing the supervisors, and they
ended up taking me on full time. I LOVED my job…it was interesting, I got to
dip my hands into different pots. My main job is writing contracts for
construction work. Sounds boring, but it’s actually kind of interesting. Every
contract is a little different, you deal with a TON of different people, both
internal and external, and there are always new challenges coming up. Over the
years, I’ve taken on many different “side tasks”….from assisting the accounting
section, to managing our website, to developing and delivering training
programs, just to name a few. As I’ve had kids, and expended my family life, my
work has definitely taken a backseat. I mean, I still do the very best I can at
my job, I still wear a few different hats, and I still really care about what I
do…but I don’t have that passion I used to have. On top of that, I’ve had a
really hard time being back at work since having Eliza, which I’ve written
about here and there. I miss her like crazy…I think because she’s our last, and
I really know what I’m missing out on being away from her. And just how fast it
all goes. I just want to be home, I want to have one full time job, instead of
two. I want a break. I want to put my focus on one thing instead of being
stretched out so thinly. But, I push through. I keep hoping it will get easier,
and I’ll adjust back into reality. As with most offices, there are people in
ours that just drive me insane. People who, without going into too much detail,
just really do not pull their weight in the office and make me wonder how they
even have a job on a daily basis. And, finally, our supervisor has really
changed a lot over the years. She has a very rude approach at dealing with us,
she’s very cut off, she works the most ridiculous hours I’ve ever heard of in
my live (making her very inaccessible to her staff). Add on the overwhelming
amount of work I have been dealing with, and I’m just on the verge of losing my
mind daily. The main reasons I’ve continued to push through, and stick it out
are that you really cannot beat the benefits of working for the state, and
without a college degree, I’d NEVER find a job to match it (or the pay), and
the flexibility with hours and working options are really great. I work flex
hours…9 hours Monday-Thursday, 8 hours every other Friday, and off the other
Friday. And, a few months ago, I started telecommuting one day a week, working
from home on Wednesdays. It doesn’t seem like much, but that 1 day off a check
saves me a TON of sanity and leave time. I schedule appointments for that day
(usually), I run errands and do extra chores that day, leaving me a little
extra time on the weekends to actually enjoy family time, and it’s just a nice
relief from the chaos. My telecommute day has really been a saving grace…saving
the travel time to and from work, not having to get myself ready for the day,
having some extra time at home when I finish working to get some stuff done, before
picking the girls up, and most importantly, uninterrupted time to just focus on
my work – no phone calls, no drop-ins, no non-work related chit chat with
co-workers. I just crank out the work. Well, today, my supervisor pulled me
into her office to let me know that I can no longer do both…I have to choose
telecommuting, or my flex schedule. Since I don’t have daycare on Friday’s,
obviously I really don’t have a choice. But I was so angry. WHY all of a sudden
is it an issue? What’s changed in such a short amount of time? What does me
being in-person in the office accomplish, that I can’t handle from home?
Nothing, that’s what. So, on top of everything else that’s been making it hard
for me to be at work, this just pushed me over the edge. I was so furious, and
so frustrated the rest of the day. We are officially looking into options, to
see if there is a way I could quit and stay home. I’m not sure if it’s possible
right now, but we’ll see. So, yeah, that was my day in a LONG nutshell.
Olivia's latest drawing. Our little artist.
On Friday, I was
off. And it was definitely perfect timing. I had a hard time keeping my mouth
shut and not quitting on the spot yesterday, so I’m pretty happy to have a long
weekend to cool off. My mom was supposed to watch Eliza today, but yesterday was
her birthday, and she received a free room at the casino, so she wanted to take
advantage of that. So, we switched weeks (that means I’ll have to work the next
two Friday’s in a row, GROSS!). Christian was off to work, the big girls were
off to school and I hung out with little Eliza for the day. She actually slept
in for quite a while, but then was up for a loooooong time. Once I finally got
her down for a mid-day nap, she took a nice long one though. She’s officially
pulling herself up now, and she actually cruised around the coffee table pretty
well today, so that’s pretty exciting! And, unless you are living under a rock
the blue/black vs. gold/white dress debate hit the internet by storm today.
#teamgoldwhite all the way over there! I picked the big girls up, Christian
picked up some dinner, and we all met up at home for a lazy evening.
The great dress debate. Crazy. Seriously crazy.
She's up. She's cruising!
Christian talked to
his human resources about their insurance today, and our insurance through his
work would be almost triple what I pay for us right now. SO frustrating! I’ve
spent time the last few months, and especially yesterday, combing over our
budget, seeing if there’s any way we could “survive” on Christian’s income
alone. And, it’s just becoming painfully obvious, that it’s not possible. We
basically live paycheck to paycheck right now – I do have a portion of my
checks put directly into savings, which I’m not counting in this calculation.
Yes, we pay an arm and a leg to put 3 kids in daycare, but I still come out
making a little more than what we pay. So, while we’d save on daycare, we’d lose
in that savings. We’d also pay almost triple for insurance to switch to
Christian’s, and we’d lose my retirement, health care and 401K savings that I’ve
been collecting for almost 14 years. While I know many people would still throw
“caution” to the wind and follow their hearts, I just don’t think I can bring
myself to put our family in that kind of position. Sure, we go out to eat here
and there, we go on little vacations or buy a little something special we
probably don’t need, but for the most part, we’re very conscious about our
spending, and we live pretty frugaly – so when I say we live paycheck to
paycheck, I know we could make cuts and we could MAKE it work, but at the end
of the day, I don’t think I want to force our family to “make it work”. I want
our family, our kids, to strive. I want our kids to have a full life…to play
sports, to participate in activities, to go on fieldtrips, to have fun birthday
parties. I want to eat good food, provide healthy meals for my family, provide
a comfortable home for us all. I want to travel with my family, experience new
things. I want to have money set aside to help our kids with their futures…with
college, with cars when they start driving, with future weddings. Mind you, I
say HELP, we will not straight out provide these things for our kids, but I don’t
want them to struggle for these things. Christian and I each grew up with
little to nothing (he definitely more than I) and I just don’t want that for
our kids. That’s why we work, and work so hard. That’s why even though my heart
aches to one day be pregnant again, to feel the snuggle of a newborn baby
again, we can’t. So, long story short, the ability to quit my job it looking
unlikely. And that realization did not help my mood.
Saturday was a
fairly busy day, and I was joined by a nagging headache for most of it. No Bueno.
Christian was off to work bright and early, and the girls and I kicked off our
day. We ate some breakfast, showered and got ready. First up, we were off to
swim class. I’ve been setting Eliza up at the top of the balcony on the towels
with some toys and snacks, and that’s been working well. Once she starts
crawling, I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do though. One of the other
schools they swim at has an elevator to get up to the balcony – I sure wish our
main school did so I could keep her in her stoller! After getting the girls
dried off and dressed, we were off to meet my mom for lunch, for her birthday.
The girls gave her some homemade cards and we laughed and ate and snapped a
couple pictures. Eliza slept through most of the lunch, so that worked out
alright. After a quick bottle, she was back in her carseat, and we were on our
way home. All three of them fell asleep on the way home, and went down for quick,
short naps once home. Christian arrived home from work shortly after us, and I
went on a little shopping trip to Target. My escape…nothing like a solo trip to
Target to take a breather! But, alas, it didn’t last long, and I was back home
to the chaos. We had dinner, played a little, and the girls were off to bed,
one by one. Christian and I watched a couple of stand-up comedy shows on
Netflix before passing out for the night. Getting me excited to surprise him
with our Kevin Hart tickets!!
Birthday lunch with my mom.
Sunday was a pretty
typical chore day. I hopped out of bed and straight downstairs to get started on
laundry right away. I got a TON of dishes watched and cleaned up the kitchen. I
hate tackling the mess, but it feels good when it’s done! The girls were acting
up, and had their tablets taken away. So, they were playing together, running around,
acting crazy. While Eliza napped, we tried keeping them a little more under
control, so we played a few board games. We definitely need to do that more
often, it was so much fun…lots of laughs going on. Once Eliza was up, the big
girls were off for their naps, and we played with her, did a little more
cleaning up and hung out together. Had a pretty quiet afternoon/evening. Once
the girls were in bed, Christian and I settled in to watch “Gravity” while I
finished folding laundry. I had forgotten all about that movie, I can’t believe
we hadn’t watched it until now. Pretty good…I hadn’t really heard anything
about the movie before, so it was fun to actually see what it was all about –
much different than I was expecting. Then, it was time to call it a night, and get ready to head back to work tomorrow. Ugh - that's all I can say about that. Ugh.
Family game time.
Until Next Weel! XOXO
