Okay, this parenting gig is high-stress and high-energy! I used to think I was busy at work . . . I hardly have time to respond to emails during the day now or sit down. I will say, overall, the past three days have been pretty good. I had a rough patch yesterday but today has been much better.

I’ve been spending my mornings at the Y.  Once I figured out how to use the Child Watch program, I’ve been entertaining myself and all the others in my classes with how out of shape and uncoordinated I am.  I took an aerobics class Monday and actually did okay with that one. The Power Stretch Yoga on Tuesday was just plain ugly.  First of all, I was officially the fattest girl in the class - and second of all - I remember being those girls and looking at the me of the future and giggling, thinking, “Whoa, that woman is totally not flexible!!!” Yep, that’s me now!  Shut up, you skinny flexible wenches!!!  Today was Body Bar Challenge.  Challenge is an understatement.  My entire lower body is throbbing with pain and confusion right now.  My body is saying, “WTF WOMAN - take it easy on me!”  Speaking of the Y, I was in the showers today and a mother wth four (4!!!) children was in there at the same time.  She literally SCREAMED at her kids the entire time.  It made me never want to yell at my own children again.  I know she was frustrated, but man, she was one angry, stressed out person. I reminded myself that I’m sure I’ve been “that woman” others have talked about in their blogs from time to time and to try to have compassion for her.  Then I asked her if she needed help corraling one of the kids, and she yelled at me, “I’ve GOT IT!!!”  O-kay. Step AWAY from the angry mother. 

We did some swimming yesterday afternoon, and the girls loved that.  We also visited the brand new library at Twin Hickory this morning for toddler story time. The girls loved it, and I was blown away by the beauty of the library.  It was seriously gorgeous. I want to live in there. 

I’m proud of myself for getting “out there”. I even attempted to talk to a woman next to me during story hour - but she was distracted when her daughter took a huge dump in her diaper and promptly hurried out of the storytime room.  I will also admit to having a twilight zone moment when I caught myself singing “Hello, storytime bear!” to the tune of London Bridge . . . . and a quick jolt of, “Is this really my new life?”  This was followed by a realization, as I watched Lily and Arden spin posterboard in the shape of circles arond their arms, how much I was enjoying watching their pure joy and excitement at all these things.  They are super geeked about having me home and are acting like nut cases, but in a cute way.  I also ran into someone who knows me through a friend, though I didn’t recognize her. Apparently my social skills are very rusty when it comes to mother-talk, because I asked her how she knew me and she shot back a response in a snotty way and didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the class.  Even after I told her how adorable her child was.  Yikes.  I got panicky inside - what am I doing here?  Why can’t I speak?  Why can’t I be normal and cute like all these other mothers?  Then I stepped away from the edge of insanity and paranoia and focused on my kids again.

I’ve had a bunch of support from my friends, especially Susan, Jennifer, Julie, Christina, Amanda, Jess, Alicia, Cathy, and Jae.  They all checked on me and made sure I wasn’t slitting my wrists.  I’m lucky to have friends.  I also was annoyed with Jennifer Monday night when I went to work - she’s really sick and couldn’t give me any work gossip.  I am sorely missing talking about all things job-related - so I hope she feels better soon and gets a lot more chatty.  I was even secretly hoping she’d ask me for marketing advice so I could use my brain.

Tomorrow is more working out and then an afternoon at the Children’s Museum. The girls are so excited to see it again, they can barely contain themselves.  I’ll post pictures then

You can say a lot of things about me.  Some of them might be true.  But one of the criticisms I’ve heard all my life is that I can be too rigid - too inflexible.  When my carefully-laid plans go awry, it freaks me out. I feel like the rug is being pulled out from under me and I do not like it. Not one bit.

Thankfully, kids are great for making inflexible steel poles bend and sway like bamboo.  My girls have done a number on me, and I am in general a much more flexible, laid back, go with the flow person now.  Keep in mind that everything is relative, so I’m sure I would still be described as slightly uptight, mostly anal-retentive, and spastic about things.  It’s going to be a lifelong battle for me.

Today, though, I am not dealing with my inflexibility very well.  Today is Wednesday - two days away from my final day as a full-time working mother.  In two days, at 5.01 pm, my fairy godmother will wave her magic wand and I will become a stay at home mom who still owns two businesses full of problems and potential, and who works a lot at night and on the weekends.  In my mind, the next three days would be spent tying up loose ends, figuring out how to forward the business line to my cell phone, paying bills, and cleaning up my desk. 

At 10.30 AM, I got a call from Arden’s preschool. Arden is sick - she’s running a high fever.  By the time I had picked her up (Christine, her teacher, was sitting in the sick area with her, loving on her until I got there) and got her to her pediatrician, her fever had shot up to 103.7.  The doctor tested for strept throat and the flu.  Negatory on both accounts.  Great - that means it’s a virus.  The doc said, “I wouldn’t plan on her going back to school this week.”  As a mommy, my heart was going out to Arden.  She actually fell asleep on me waiting for the doctor to examine her.  As a normal inflexible person who is NOT going with the flow, all I could think was, “My last three days of freedom - shot!”  I also got all emo and cranky about Arden not being able to have her last day with her classmates and a chance to say goodbye. 

Mike’s insanely busy at work. He has a hearing tomorrow and he can’t take time off, especially since he’s going to have to leave early to attend Hayden’s birthday party - which is scheduled at 4 PM on Friday afternoon.  And I’m sitting here cranky because I cannot just accept that my week isn’t going to go like I wanted it to.  My stay at home mom days have started early - they started today.  Reality has hit me full in the face, except I’ve actually gotten plenty of work done since Arden is so tired and just wants to curl up on my lap and watch inane shows.  For today, I am letting the television entertain her. 

In the meantime, some of my MM friends are experiencing some drama and it’s bumming me out.  It will eventually blow over - it always does - but I should expect that with all these bright, strong-willed, opinionated women, things will get ugly from time to time.  I’ve been escaping there to avoid thinking about what I’m doing too much, and it’s not much of an escape right now.  One of my friends is also having a difficult time right now. She’s struggling with depression, and she wrote that whenever she is feeling crappy she physically writes down 5 things she’s grateful for.  I really need to do that right now, so here’s my top 5 right at the moment, in no particular order.

1.  I’m grateful for Mike - he works his butt off so I will be able to stay home with the kids, and he has sacrificed a lot in order for me to get the businesses off the ground.  He also still loves me despite my oddly-shaped body. 
2.  I’m so glad that Arden and Lily love to laugh and spend their days thinking of ways to make each other spazz and giggle. 
3.  I’m grateful I have family close by now. Anja and Mike, Mom and Dad - it’s been nice. 
4.  I’m glad I’ve had 14 years with Delilah, minus the 1-2 years she was horribly behaved and ate my wallpaper and my parent’s linoleum floor. 
5.  I’m grateful to Phil for hooking me up with Expression Engine. Blogging has been so much better for me since he did that, and took the time to teach me how to use it.  Thanks, Phil. 

It’s 6 PM and Arden will soon be turning into a pumpkin, so I’m off to get dinner together. 

It’s the final week of my business life with Jennifer, at least for the foreseeable future.  We’ll still get together a few times a week for shipping and packaging and gossip, in the evenings.  But I am fully aware that this is the last Monday we’ll be working full-time together.  It’s weird for both of us - it’s like the end of an era. Wait, it’s not “like” the end of an era.  It IS the end of an era. 

I can remember her first day, and we plotted our takeover of the marketing consulting field in Richmond.  We both networked like fiends and realized we could both sell.  We also had a lot of fun.  Maybe we had too much fun.  Even though there were a few days throughout the years sprinkled with tears of frustration (and occasionally rage) over the ways things could go, mostly we laughed our way through it.  From the attorney who screamed at Jennifer to “cut the crap” (and believe me, he hadn’t even BEGUN to see the kind of crap Jennifer could dish out) to the psycho who heckled me during a new media presentation (she called me an “ageist”), we managed to find the humor in just about anything. 

So we have taken turns being jealous of each other. Listening to her talk about the kick butt shoes at DSW makes me a a little green with envy.  Listening to me talk about play dates does the same for her.  We both want the same thing, however - a little bit of work mixed in with a little bit of family.  Neither of us is getting exactly what we want, but we’re doing what we’ve always done - making the best of it and laughing a lot about it. 

Thursday we will drink adult beverages in the middle of the day and make Sara drive our tipsy butts back to the office to sober up.  It’s our last hurrah - then it gets hard.  We have a schedule of how we will run the online businesses when I’m a full-time mom and she’s a full-time employee.  I’m going to try not to covet the extra money she will earn; I’m sure she’ll try not to covet my mornings at the library. 

For now, though, I have two feet in two places.  The weekend was full of birthday activities for the kids, and whether it is self-imposed or not, I feel out of sorts suddenly with the women I’ve gotten to know over the years.  I feel that “otherness” creeping in, no matter how much I push it back.  I literally feel like I’m having a panic attack when I think about not working.  I say this without meaning that I don’t WANT to stay home. I do. In fact, I’m a little fired up about the challenge of it.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel terrified about it.  I am rarely at a loss for words - this is one of those times.  The only analogy I can give is my feelings mirror what I think jumping out of a plane with a parachute feels like.  I’ve never done it, but my heart is in my throat, and although I know I’m going to be fine - full confidence in the chute opening - stepping off the ledge is scaring the crap out of me. 

I promise that eventually I will stop writing obsessively about this at some point in the very near future. For now, though, I need to cope with it by turning it around, back and forth, in my blog, so I can look at it.  When I’m done examining it, I’ll get back to the blogs about my parenting mistakes and my customer service nightmares.  Until then, please standby.

Well, I did it.  I sent written notice to Lily and Arden’s preschool that their last day would be March 21. 

After nearly passing out from the sheer magnitude of that decision, I sat shaking at my desk.  It’s a done deal. 

After I gave notice, I remembered my Vegas trip.  And the fact that I was counting on preschool to fill in some of the slots when Mike would not be around.  Oh crap.  Hopefully mom and dad will take pity on me, because do I ever need that Vegas trip. Especially now.

I got TONS of support from my online and real life friends.  The few that weren’t supportive of the decision Mike and I made for me to stay home with the girls also need to understand that I don’t really want to hear all your reasons as to why I am going to suck as a stay at home mom.  I need you to tell me that I am going to rock.  Then you can talk behind my back about how I am SO not cut out for this lifestyle.  Just please don’t say it to my face right now. I’m in a fragile state.  Although this is definitely the best solution based on the economy and our financial situation, it isn’t a magic bullet.  While we’ll be better off financially, things are going to be very tight for a while.  Probably a long while.  All those great ideas we have for the house will have to wait. 

My online friends gave me a long laundry list of things to do during the day with the kiddies, lots of ideas on how to go about meeting more moms with kids that don’t work. Unfortunately, the only moms I know with children work - which is how I know them.  Hopefully they will still speak to me when I go to the “other” side. And hopefully the stay at home moms will accept me even though technically I will still be a working mom, just not during the day.  Jennifer reminded me today when I talked about my career identity that I am still working - we still have two very busy internet sites and there won’t be a big break in my resume or worse yet, I won’t lose my computer skills.  I hope.

It’s just weird. Since I was 21, I’ve been working, supporting myself (sometimes better than others), and using my brain for work-related endeavors. I can’t express in words how terrifying it is to me that I will not be bringing money into the marriage - that Mike will be supporting all of us, and finding a way for me not to feel guilty. Yes, I know I will be doing my part - but for someone who has defined herself so completely by her career path it’s a huge step to just one day pull the plug on all that.  I worry that I will be all nerdy and geeky with the other moms (this is from someone who enjoyed reading “Google Analytics” over “The Happiest Toddler on The Block”), and they’ll gather in a circle and whisper loudly, “That chick should NOT be home with her kids.  She’s way out there.”  I’m just afraid, as usual, I won’t fit in. 

I’m approaching this as another career.  One in which I have little experience, and I am expecting a learning curve.  There’s lots of stuff to do in Richmond with the monkeys and I will try to get over my fear of meeting new people because the moms I know are all so attractive.  So TALL.  So very well kept.  For some reason, in my professional life, it doesn’t bother me.  I have no doubts about my ability to do good work.  I obviously have plenty of doubts about who I am as mother. 

I’m also looking for freelance writing opportunities and am in the process of putting together a portfolio of my writing.  I’d like to write for Richmond Parents, or West End Life, or Richmond.com.  I have lots to say about working, mothering, parenting, and surviving.  Sometimes I even manage to say it well.

It will be an interesting journey from career woman and entrepreneur to mom of two. Now, if I could just find someone to pay me to write about that journey, I’d be all set.

I’ll take her love scraps any day.  Tonight, Mike was reading her a book, and I came into her room.  She looked at me.  I braced, waiting for her to say something like, “Mommy, go away!” or “I don’t WANT YOU in here Mommy”.  But she didn’t.  She got very quiet, looked at me, then patted the space on the bed next to her very softly and slowly.  At first I didn’t realize she was doing the international sign for “come sit with me, ma”.  Then she moved over a few millimeters, and I curled up around her.  She flattened herself out and put her legs on me.  That was her subtle way of showing me love, and I ate it up with a spoon, then licked the crumbs off my fingers.