Please don't hate me for saying this...

It's Working Mom Wednesday!
Four day weekends are nice but the transition back to work can be challenging! How are you doing with the transition?


Challenge? What challenge? I'm doing just peachy. In fact, one might even say that I am adjusting quite well and am rather glad to be back at work.

Before you start hurling insults and rotten vegetables please let me finish....

I love Thanksgiving, really I do. I love cooking the meal and hosting family and, of course, eating lots of guilt-free goodies (calories don't count if you're consuming them on a holiday). I love spending time with Jake and Rachel, and putting up our Christmas decorations on Friday, and watching cheesy movies on ABC Family together. I even love the cool late-November weather and the early smell of winter.

But, I also love schedules and a regular, less filling, food intake. And, I'm sure this will make me sound like a monster but, I also love that I can sit here in peace (with my Christmas jazz music) and not have to chase down a child, or scold a child, or feed/clean up after a child, or figure out why a child who was perfectly happy a second ago is now SCREAMING.

Staff who are covered by a Union at the institution where I work start earning more vacation than professional staff after they have more than a million years of service (which roughly rounds to 25). I know some of my co-workers don't think this is right; we should earn more vacation time than secretarial and clerical staff. But, honestly, I'm okay with it. I'm not sure what I would do with 216 hours of vacation time every year. Put your calculators down folks, I'll do the math for you. 216 hours is just over five weeks.

First of all, I don't have time to take five weeks off. Secondly, I can't afford to go anywhere so even if I did use that much vacation time I would probably end up being stuck at home for the majority of it...doing manual labor. What kind of vacation is that?

If I chose not to work my rear off at home for five weeks I could instead spend the time with Rachel. Yes, that sounds wonderful and yes I wish I could spend more time with her. I'm just not sure that it would be good for us to spend five whole weeks together. It would start out fine but eventually I would get tired of having to say "Stop!" so often and she would get bored with me (Have I mentioned that I'm not a hip hop happenin' totally awesome and way energetic fun bubbly mom who can chase around a two-year old all day?). If I took a few days off each month I’m sure that by August she would be begging me to stop. (Disclaimer) Okay so this probably isn’t true. I’m sure I could find lots of fun things for us to do together and honestly it does sound fabulous. So before you scold me for being a horrible mother (this is the part where you promise not to hate me) just remember that I'm a working mom for several reasons and they're not all related to finances.

Anyway, long story short (I'm not sure if that's true or not, is this short?) I loved having five fun-filled days off for Thanksgiving; I loved spending time with my family; I loved not setting my alarm every morning; I loved being able to enjoy life at home.

And now...

I'm thankful to be back at work. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the status quo.