Part time mother – we are strangers by day and mothers by night, knowing it’s so wrong and feeling it’s so right!

Yeah, so clearly there is no such thing as a part time mother. It doesn’t matter what else you do, you are a Mom full time (with your heart if not with your body – but mostly with your body too!). But as I’ve started my part time work schedule I thought it worked better in a Lionel Ritchie context than part time finance manager worked.

Anyway, working part time has been… AWESOME! I joked that I should have done this years ago! Of course that’s because I’ve only been doing it a few weeks and our checks our paid in arrears, so I haven’t gotten a part time paycheck yet… But thus far the balance is really really great. Work isn’t so bad when it’s only a few days a week – and, as I’m part time, I don’t really feel guilty if I don’t stay extraordinarily late. I’ve started coming in early (usually 30-45 minutes before the rest of my group) and just don’t worry about not pulling late hours. So basically they’re still definitely getting more than the 24 bargained for out of me, but I can be more balanced in it. I stay late if I need to – but not just for a ‘face time’ need. I do still have to check messages on my days off and often wind up taking one call that just can’t be put off, but that’s not too bad. Mostly I can really enjoy the time with the baby and do other things. Well, mostly I can do other things these days… We’ve been running around like nuts on the home buying front. Last Thursday was the first day off where I really felt like I was “off.” My husband was working and I wasn’t seeing a single house. I managed to do the baby’s laundry (and some of ours!), to pick up the dry cleaning that has been out for 6 weeks, to clean the bathrooms and vacuum! I know those are hardly exciting. And the point was not to totally fall into the role of housewife, but instead to really focus on the Mom part of my life. But that stuff just hadn’t been done (or done well) in forever and it felt really great to actually have the time to do it. I know it sounds crazy to relish the time to clean and do laundry – but when I’d been trying to shove those things into the vacant corners and finding that there weren’t any, it was great to actually get it done! Friday was, of course, spent in a rush of house searching and realtor stuff – so we never quite hit the life of leisure! – but it was good. Maybe one day we’ll even find a house and then we can really have some time off… Although then we’ll have to clean up that house to move in and do renovations and actually move and … well, I’m sure one day… ;)