Friends. I’ve wanted to tell you this, but the time just wasn’t right. Err, the time just wasn’t there. Like, I had none. Anyway now it’s upon us.
Ahem.
Tomorrow, after five years of nearly continuous stay-at-home mothering, I start full time work. Away from the home. Shlepping tacos out of a bus for $13/hour, plus tips.
My Man will be home with the kiddos. Full time.
This will go on for two months, wherein I will get to retire from taco-shlepping to do pottery in my home studio.
(What? I never told you I was a potter?
I see there are quite a few topics left uncovered.)
Many forces have converged to create this upcoming change. One is my constant bitching about how hard it is to be a full time parent and how desperately I need a break to do anything at all that involves grown-ups, as well as the overdosed state of My Man’s brain after three years of such intensive study and his great desire to stay home and “just play with the kids” for awhile; the most obvious and logical reason however is the excruciating three month gap between taking the Bar and finding out if you have passed the Bar and are therefore allowed to begin attempting to work as a lawyer and even dream of paying off your loans.
We need dough, and taco shlepping is a quick and straightforward way to get it.
After the summer season winds down, and the bus closes, I’ll switch to the slower income of my pottery business. I actually make more per hour at that, but it’s all investment at first, followed two months later by a big pay off. I make functional kitchen and tableware, by the way. In case you couldn’t have guessed. And I have a real, grown-up studio, not big or fancy but serviceable for a small scale home business.
At any rate. Working mum. That’s me as of tomorrow. Will you still respect me? Will I find any time at all to write the many posts that have been swirling in my brain? Most importantly, do you have any advice? I’ve never done this before.
Don’t tell me to cook ahead. And don’t tell me to make a little time for myself every day. C’mon. Give me a little credit. Any other less obvious ideas though?
Today, after I was bemoaning all the house projects, and when we will find the time to do them, My Man said something about how he would be able to rebuild the broken woodshed roof while he was home with the kids. I snapped back,
“Yeah, If you are a better person than me, you might be able to manage it.”
As my shithead comment sat with me I realized that, given the fact that I do many things while I am mothering that My Man won’t do (like grow a garden, cook everything under the sun homemade, etc) it is only logical that he will manage to do things that I didn’t get done.
I had already accepted that the kids would not eat as healthily under his watch, that our food bill would be higher, that the house probably would not be as clean, our home generally not as efficient by my standards. But I had (predictably) failed to turn the equation around and realize that he would excel at other things, surpass me. And that’s okay. Or at least it had better be.
We are approaching the big blank hole on the map. Yonder lie dragons.
calamity jane 
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