The Spendthrift's Progress

A busy few weeks...

Ever have one of those days/weeks/months where you spend a lot of time composing blog entries in your head while showering/driving/diaper changing? And then, for whatever reason, you never have time to type it out, so the world is forever denied your deepest thoughts on whatever it was you felt was so very important while you were blindly groping for the shampoo bottle and/or baby wipes?

Yeah, me too.

Guess who starts working outside the home next week? Guess who starts at, yes, the local Kindercare, the one I'd previously mentioned back at the beginning of this daycare hunt?

That would be a: me; and b: the girl.

It's contract work again, in a job I've done before with people I know I work with well. The budget will loosen somewhat, but not all that much, as contract work is an unstable thing, and we'll need to save up for when I'm out of the workforce again.

My mood's been zipping back and forth so much that I've got mental whiplash.

I'm really looking forward to time with adults, enough money that one unexpected expense won't break us completely, and to the girl having some interaction with humans who are not me. (Let us face it: I'm pretty boring during the day. All I really do for party tricks is read her silly books about hippos, make random animal sounds, and play airplane. I seldom stray from the house proper, am far less entertaining a peek-a-boo player than the boy, and I've got this pesky habit of wanting to wander off and use the bathroom. Plus, I won't let her eat the cats or my library books or whatever she's managed to find on the floor. I'm a total killjoy.)

On the other hand, I'm going to be handing my baby over to strangers for most of her waking hours. In a place with no kitties. Where she'll have to compete with OTHER BABIES for attention. Instead of napping curled up against a nice, warm breast after a long liquid lunch fresh from the tap, it'll be boob from a bottle and going solo in a crib. We'll have to put her in disposabutts during the day, unless we jump through a million hoops and claim medical necessity for the cloth.

So there is guilt. Hell, I had my first anxiety dream about it last night.

There are other things I'm not looking forward to: riding the plague bus the 15 or so miles to the office, having to wear clothing other than a bathrobe all day long, missing my regular afternoon nap, and the *@%$ breastpump. (It's a perfectly nice pump, as pumps go, but I really cannot state strongly enough how much I dislike pumping.)

The tricky part's going to be avoiding breaking the feast/famine spending habits. We've been a little lax with the budget this week, and we'll be needing to resolve the budget, revamp it, and make ourselves stick to it, and won't that be fun?

It's alarming how easy it is to justify things once you can afford to think about buying them. Just this evening, I was eyeing the fridge and earmarking funds for its replacement before I caught myself and issued a stern reminder that the blasted thing still works. Don't even get me started on the subject of our mattress (too small) and washing machine (too old and cranky).

That said, I am allowing myself ONE completely frivolous purchase under $50. I don't know yet what it will be, but it has to be something I couldn't justify if you paid me. And it has to be for me and me alone. No fancy wool-in-one diapers or dry clean only baby dresses.

In reading news, Don't Kill Your Baby turned out to be more educational and entertaining than depressing, a result of its focus on 19th and early 20th century trends in medicine and social policy. It really deserves its own entry. (See my opening paragraph.)

(Other things I keep meaning to talk about: parenting choices and judgment, why Hirshman's arguments made me spit nails, and general irritation with the lack of respect for the job of motherhood. So maybe it's for the best that I've been lacking in time lately.)

posted by mohmlet @ 2:29 AM