The MBA program that I had been excited to start was now an inconvenience – if fact if I could have remembered my login to the add/drop system before the drop deadline I probably would have quit it before I even started.

“What is wrong with me?” I wondered.  “Shouldn’t I be happy and free and loving the whole world with my newfound yogic knowledge and one-ness?”

I knew part of what was annoying me was that my yoga studio dreams had been shelved after our Yoga as a Business module…it’s a great lifestyle in theory, but the financial and practical realities are not something that I’m prepared to take on right now – a 75% cut in my take-home pay, and that would be after a few years of successful operation, plus the stress and committment of running your own business – not so much.

Today I happened across a blog post that explained to me exactly what was wrong – my body and mind had been “re-wired” in the weeks of teacher training immersion.  (This link is worth checking out by the way, just for the amazing pictures.)

I found myself stressed and anxious, longing for the comfort of knowing that I had time carved out to practice and learn yoga from great teachers.  My brain and heart was rebelling against having to try to find meaning in DoD instructions on how to secure network systems, especially knowing that most of the time my analysis and advice would be ignored anyway.

I was re-wired in the same way both times on maternity leave, too…used to a certain lifestyle and with a specific ebb and flow to my days.  Getting back to the work that pays the bills was exactly that – getting back to work, and it sucked.

Sometimes I think that I’m really connected to my emotions and very self-aware.  This time though, I really had no idea until I stumbled on that post, or maybe I knew but couldn’t find the words to clarify the emotions.

I wonder what situations and circumstances cause other people to be re-wired.  It seems to quite easily happen to me, anytime I step away from work into something I love.  Is that all it takes?  And what if you have a job that you love?  Is it still so quick to happen, or are you basically content all the time?

It never occurred to me when I graduated from high school that I would do anything other than go to college, get a business-related degree, and get a decent, stable job.  I wonder how life would have been different if I’d acknowledged more of the things I LIKED to do, like fitness and writing and design; rather than what I thought I SHOULD do.

Now I need to figure out how keep the new wiring so that it peacefully co-exists and supports, rather than rebel against, the existing way of life.

Three years of kids has changed and shaped me more than the previous thirty.

I am less eager to please people that don’t mean much in the grand scheme of my life.

I am getting better at sorting out who those people are.

I am more likely to say no when I don’t want or don’t have to do something.

I am less of a perfectionist and can recognize when good enough is all that’s required.

I am better equipped to advocate, question, and push when it comes to me and the kids who depend on me.

I am far more affected by stories of child abuse and as a general principle think that abusers should be taken out back and shot.

I still question every day whether full-time work is what I should be doing.

There are days when I thank the heavens that I can go to work.

My birthday has lost some of the cache that used to lead me to celebrate for a full week and tell everyone I knew why I was celebrating.

I still expect cake.

Don’t pretend you don’t know…when you’re making the guest list for your wedding, there are people you might invite if the ones you really want can’t come…you know, to round out the gifts and all.  Those are the B-listers. 

But who do you turn to when you need to pee and want someone to hold up your eight layers of skirt and twenty feet of train and not make fun of your girdle?  That’s the A-list.

Can we also agree that there are work friends (WF) and then there are friend friends (FF)?  Some of my very best friends started as WFs and became FFs but before Facebook, the crossover happened naturally.

Maybe you became FFs through conscious effort because you like the person.  Maybe it was because you got thrown together on some shit project and the only way you survived was by getting a few drinks after working 12 hour days and then you said a little too much and now you have to keep them close because they know too much. 

Ahem.

On Facebook my WFs and my FFs are all mixed up and I don’t like the WFs getting even a peek into my personal life. 

When I first joined Facebook, it was like a really cool private club that I couldn’t figure out.  It took me 6 months to post a photo album, and I still don’t know how to do pages and plant little green patches or send drinks and join groups. 

Or WHY, but that’s another issue. 

Regardless, I had a few friends and when I remembered (which was not very often) to log on and see what people were doing it was always low-committment fun.  (Nothing as high-committment as a phone call for God’s sake because who has time for actually talking?  With your voice?)

Then all of a sudden lots of people I hadn’t seen or heard from in years were joining - my friend count zoomed along with my ego.  I started to get a little addicted: posting things at 1am, searching vainly for people I knew in my quest to take my friend count over 100,  and making a little more effort to actually figure out how Facebook worked.  (Again, failing miserably.)

At that point it was like being at a club and you’re pleasantly buzzed and no matter who comes through the door, you are super EXCITED to see them.  So much that you jump all over them like an ill mannered dog and hug and kiss like you haven’t seen them in 15 years (which you haven’t).  You message each other and write on walls and yippee!!

Then you look up and things are lame.  First your club was private, then it was hoppin’…well now, it’s time to GO. 

The hangover sets in.  You have no idea what the people you are actually interested in are doing because your status updates are cluttered with people you could care less about. 

You accepted the friend requests because you didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and find yourself with some “updaters”.  You know, the person who updates twenty times a day with things like, “Becky is eating lunch” “Becky is taking a nap” “Becky is making dinner” and you just want to scream at someone who is able to take a nap on a Tuesday morning for pete’s sake.

Or maybe you accepted because you wanted to be a bigger person than you were in high school, and not NOT be friends just because someone was weird or they smelled funny or you didn’t think they were really very nice. 

Then you find out they are still weird, probably still smell funny, and have a relationship status that says, “It’s complicated” which makes me insane.

If you’re going to put that as your relationship status, Facebook should not let you proceed unless you write down a synopsis of WHY it’s complicated.  Did he cheat on you, but you have no self-esteem so you just keep taking him back?  Are you secretly sleeping with his sister?  Details I tell you! 

I had a point.

Which was…

The Facebook A-List and B-List Sorter Application!  Let’s call it Compartmented Friends.

How great would it be if you could take the people that you don’t want to know about your blog (because then you couldn’t make fun of them) and stick them in isolation?  Then maybe I could link my blog on Facebook and get some more readers and the sponsors would start rolling in. 

And how about if you could take your inner circle of friends and put them in another group?  Kind of like your feed reader, where there are blogs that you want to know instantly when they update and you almost always comment, but there are others that you only read when you’re bored at work.

Next you could take the work friends – the ones who should stay work friends and not crossover -and put them in another group where your updates make you sound all smart and professional, like “Heather is reading Organizational Strategy in the Workplace…and loving it!” 

In the meantime your real friend updates are all, “Heather is watching the Rock Of Love marathon and doing tequila shots, dudes.”

How has no one thought of this before?  After I finish writing my diet book, I’ll get started right away.

I started to get annoyed.  I wanted to tell her to get over herself and her stupid drama and quit whining about her prAAHHHblems already.  Now I watch for the express purpose of getting annoyed at her and yelling at the TV, “Just SHUT UP already!”

This has been somewhat of a drama filled week.  After Monday’s entry where I started plowing through 2009 GOING AFTER WHAT I WANT, I’ve lost a little steam.  My boss was surprisingly great about the part time thing, and very supportive.  Boss #2 was a little less so, with talk about ‘what we do for one person we have to do for everyone’ which kind of makes me want to scream. 

Because it wasn’t this theoretical “EVERYONE” that did the research, worked out a plan to make it happen, and most importantly ASKED to go part time – IT WAS ME.  ME! 

Are we not adults, instead of kids in a candy store who don’t know what we want until we see what someone else has?  And then pointing at the other kids ice cream and complaining that he has a bigger scoop so then everyone has to give back their ice cream so the whiner in the corner doesn’t get upset? 

(And yes, I know the answer but it makes for a good rant.)

The fear I had about losing my professional edge by appearing to not be able to hack it as a both mom and full-time employee was immediately realized.  Whether intentional or accidental, for reasons unknown I was left off the invite to an after hours dinner with a bunch of partners that is happening next week.  I was on the conference call where they talked about it, and I am always invited to these to-dos.  I usually go, but I don’t particularly want to go to this one, so there is really no reason to ask other than a perverse curiousity about whether I was purposely not invited.

Bottom line is, I got my way.  Sort of.  They haven’t said I CAN’T do it, so I’m doing it until someone tells me not to.

Tuesday’s entry was going to be about my plan to get back in shape.  Then my grandma died Tuesday morning and I found myself unable to write a word.  I couldn’t even post a status update on Facebook because everything I thought of seemed insignificant and stupid. 

And I had road-terror, which is like road rage but in reverse, where every stupid driver is out to get me and by the time I arrive at my destination I’m jumping out of my skin.

Today I found out a friend of mine lost her baby, at 5 months pregnant.  After I talked to her, I found myself wandering around the house, staring at my sleeping kids who I am so lucky to have healthy and happy (and with easy pregnancies and deliveries to boot); and thinking, “Why not me?” 

Sometimes I think that things are too perfect, and I don’t really appreciate how perfect and easy I have it.  Every aspect of my life could be much worse in a million different ways.  So why isn’t it?  Why do I find myself acting like Merideth-freaking-Grey making everything more difficult than it needs to be?  She annoys me, and I wonder just how annoying I am.

It’s January and I always have to make a special anti-funk effort this month anyway, just because it’s nasty and rainy outside and my skin is dry and…and…and see there it is.  Annoying, no?

Someone tell me a joke.  Or smack me upside the head.  Because I don’t want to become that whiny bitch.

“The people that know probably aren’t talking and the people that are talking probably don’t know.”

(Not my brain power, BTW, I read it somewhere and it just stuck.)

(Shut up…This is my Nablopomo freebie day.)

I’m living my life in 15 minute increments -  like if I can go to bed just a little earlier I can get up 15 minutes earlier then I can get there 15 minutes earlier and leave 15 minutes earlier and get the kids at 4pm instead of 4:15 and life will somehow be better and less heavy with guilt.  It’s exhausting.

Last Friday, I had just finished hot yoga and was on my way to work going highway speed into a two lane tunnel.  Light traffic, sunny day – I was calm, alert, and for once not talking on the phone when I was almost in an accident that would have certainly totaled my car and probably seriously injured me.  The only reason the crash was avoided was because the guy in front of me was able to swing into the next lane giving me a bigger cushion.  (We’ll save the rant about morons who F&#*ING RUN OUT OF GAS in the tunnel for another day.)

I drove out of the tunnel and involuntarily started shaking.  I cried a little too, freaking out at what could have been and overwhelmed with gratitude at what wasn’t.

Everything happens for a reason.  Because I got to work and in a moment of clarity looked around me and thought “Right now, none of these people matter to me and nothing at work is worth getting upset over.”

I’ve had to remind myself of that at least once a day.  Some days that’s what gets me through the day. 

But other days (like today), that’s what lets me greet assholes with steely resolve and just enough disdain to confuse them, it lets me not react when provoked.  And that is how I will take over the world.

Everything happens for a reason.

You do realize that NEXT WEEK is Thanksgiving?  Like 10 days from now?  Because you were going to buy and wrap all the gifts for our in-laws and nephews so we could schlep them up at Thanksgiving, rather than pay a gazillion dollars to ship them.  But that was when Thanksgiving was like, months away…and now it’s not.

I thought you had TIME to do all that since you don’t have to cook a turkey and plan a meal!  What happened to your time management skillz?  You had a whole day on Saturday – the kids had a Daddy Day and you were at the OUTLETS for pete’s sake!

So then what exactly did you think you were doing when you went shopping and bought sweaters for you?  And jeans for you?  And baby clothes for YOUR kids?

Now you barely have time to frantically hunt down gifts online – you are cutting the delivery deadline WAAAAY close because you are leaving on WEDNESDAY.  And no way you’re getting anything engraved or personalized this late in the game.

Not only that, but when your MIL heard that you were planning to bring all the gifts up at Thanksgiving, you sent her into a panicked shopping tizzy that involved pulling out all the stops to get er done. 

Your sisters-in-law argued over how much to spend on gifts then did whatever they wanted anyway, but bottom line – they are also DONE and you are NOT.

Way to go Santa wanna-be.

Now we look bad.

What in the name of WalMart were you thinking? 

-Heather

P.S.  Those jeans are totally cute on you.

P.P.S.  This is why it’s not safe to let us out shopping without supervision.

Since I’m still exhibiting a tendency to be horrifyingly late to work EVERY DAY no matter what time I get up or who takes the kids to daycare my new plan is this:

Daylight Savings Time – you are dead to me.  You do not exist.  I shall not turn back my clock but instead continue to live life on my terms and we will call it SST – Sanity Saving Time.  So when the kids wake up at 7:30am SST, and the rest of the world has followed the rules and turned back the clock making it 6:30am DST I will then have a chance in hell of making it to work by 8am.

Did you get that?  Are you confused by what time it is?  Me too and that’s ok - the takeaway is that we are RULE BREAKERS over here.  When it suits us.

At the end of last week, I was wound so tight that I thought my head might fly off.  I made it to the gym on Saturday morning to try and burn off some anxiety and succeeded by the end of a cycle class in which I found myself simultaneously having a panic attack and crying to what I think was a Gwar song.

To put it mildly, I am having somewhat of a “transition period”.

Each day I try to get out of the house balancing a baby, a breast pump, a purse the size of the mothership, shoes that fit (for later when I can no longer handle the pointy stilettos for one more second), snacks, workout clothes (why? I have no idea because the odds of working out are low, low, low), a two-year old, and a coffee.

Each day I get up a little earlier in hopes of making it in by 8:30. 

Each day I fail.

Funny enough, I am not that concerned.  Part of me feels like I’m floating, like this is a temporary detour until I can get back to doing whatever I’ve been doing for the last three months.  There is a detached me observing my very stressed self making choices – like choosing to play with the kids in the morning versus rushing to get to work or choosing to skip the workout and rush home instead.

It’s as if once I’m successful at getting to work on time, then my leave is REALLY over (like really REALLY for real over) and only then will it be time to get serious.

Hmm.

It is my stressed self that breaks down to the strains of death metal.

It is my detached self that forgets to put gas in the car.

Stressed self heaves sighs of annoyance at the quality of tasks completed that have been done by someone else.

Detached self is thankful when she can lay on the sofa while someone else does things.

Stressed self freaks when she isn’t in bed by 9:30.

Detached self sits there blogging without a second thought for how tired stressed self will be the next morning when the alarm goes off at 5:45 5:30 5:15.

I think we can be pretty certain that if I were to stay home full time I would not have the immaculate house and nutritious meals I was always conviced I could pull off.  In fact, the house is cleaner now that we’re not there to mess it up all day which makes stressed self very happy.

So where does that leave things?  Perhaps, as I’ve been preaching and preached to for years now, we are just taking it day by day.

Approaching a point break maybe, but doing it day by day.  It’s really not so bad.

I didn’t know him, and I certainly didn’t know what to do with him.

Our time together was crunched into the hours between 5 and 7 along with cooking, eating, playtime, bathtime, pajamas, gotosleep.  It was the playtime that I feared.  How do you play with someone who won’t settle down and is instead grabbing cords and remote controls and cell phones and slamming cabinets?  Why won’t you sit and read a story with me?  With so little time, it had to be perfect and special and everyone needed to be happy.  Except I wasn’t.  I’d used up all my patience on work and it seemed a little peace and quiet shouldn’t be too much to ask. 

And he wasn’t happy either, clinging to my leg while I tried to check off boxes on the to-do list to make it to bedtime having done everything I was supposed to didn’t satisfy him and instead touched off an insatiable need that I couldn’t meet.

Our time was so limited that I wanted every minute we were together to be give and take and perfect but instead it worked in reverse – the harder I tried the more tantrums and fits he threw.

I realized that we are all calmer and happier since I’ve been here to get to know him.  When he says “ownafooor mama!” I know he means “On the floor, mama!”  It took almost the whole three months but we’ve settled into a routine that both of us find comforting.

I truly believe another pregnancy, even if I couldn’t fathom another baby when I realized I was pregnant last year -was bestowed upon me to force me to work things out and redefine the order of importance i assign to things.  It happened to give me confidence as a mother that I lacked and didn’t even realize I didn’t have until I found it. 

With Emily Kate, I rediscovered all those things that you forget about babies – the coos and laughs and the determined expressions as she holds up her head or digs her feet into your belly.  The crossed eyes as she stares at her fingers while trying to suck them at the same time.

I loved our relaxed schedule – the people at Dunkin Donuts don’t judge me if I come at 10 instead of 9 to get my coffee.

I’ve always thought that I couldn’t stay home, that I needed a fast pace and adult conversation and praise for my efforts.  I needed the security that comes with making my own money. 

Believe it or not, I still think so.

I like having solid blocks of time that are relatively uninterruped to accomplish things.  I’m not sure it’s enough to feel needed by two babies but not professionally.  Sometimes I think that my career can wait but there is a small part of me that doesn’t want to have to start over or explain where I’ve been for the last few years.

I don’t like having to clock 40 hours when I get my work done in 30.

Or having to explain and feel guilty for taking off for a doctors appointment.

I will be the first to insist that I have choices, the opportunity to decide for myself.  But I am the first to find myself paralyzed by having to make choices.

The obvious solution is part time work, except none exists doing what I do.

The doing it all image is seductive isn’t it?  Except when it’s not anymore.