Working

I'm a working woman. Not that I wasn't before, but this is my first "real" job in over 9 years. The transition into the working world hasn't been as bad as I had anticipated. It's a little ridiculous, but the thing I was dreading the most was waking up early. I'm a night owl, and frankly, waking up before 830 is considered early in my book. Up until now, the kids didn't have to be at school until 9, so typically the kids and I would wake up about 8. That time has now shifted to 6am for myself and 630 for the kids. It helps a lot to have Jake around to feed them and keep them in line while I get myself ready and fix the girls' hair, so it has gone a lot smoother than I thought.

As far as work, its definitely a piece of cake. Granted, I'm the low man on the totem pole with an easy going boss in a relatively low work volume office, but hey, its still work. I work in the office of Disability Services, which facilitates the funding and grants that get distributed to non-profit agencies that assist those with disabilities (blindness, deafness, wheelchair assistance, etc). My main job requirement is to assist the program managers with council meetings. Oh yeah, and we also have "volunteers" (e.g. people that have community service alternative sentencing arrangements) that my boss decided I would manage as well. So really, its a pretty easy job - for the time being. We are being integrated into the division of Aging Services in July, so my duties may change. In the meantime, I'm surrounded by people that are much more educated that me (that's uncommon when working for the state government) and that are genuinely concerned about the people that have much more difficult lives than the rest of us.

The family has adapted well. Jake and I hit the gym every day at lunch, so we see each other a lot during the day. The kids no longer spend most of their time fighting and bickering with each other; they are much too tired for that after spending in scheduled activities in the afterschool program. I cherish the time with them moreso now than I ever did before. Tonight I even played a couple rounds of Uno with them, which is something I would not have had the patience nor desire for when I was at home.

The money is surely not the motivation. Our lovely governor wants to cut 6% (oh wait, he upped it to 15% on Friday) of my already low salary (which covers daycare costs with a little left over to pad our 401k and a few hundred dollars of extra spending money). But I have to start somewhere and as far as I can tell, this "somewhere" is about the best place I could have chosen to begin my working life.