[Witness my love for the Wii Fit over at the Ladies of Loserville today...]

A funny thing happened yesterday.  I went to work.  Well, sort of.

I still have this lingering side gig that I picked up before the kids came along.  It’s very few hours and done almost exclusively from home on my own time.  I don’t love it, and I may ditch it in the spring when this year’s cycle ends, but it’s a bit of continuity on the résumé and all that.

Yesterday, the trustees for whom I work were having a meeting, and wanted me to stop by for a few things.  Sure, no big deal, right?  Well, the meeting was at 9:30AM in Boston and I don’t have a steady supply of babysitters at my beck and call.  Fortunate for me, the meeting just happened to be half a block from my sister-in-law’s apartment and she wasn’t busy, so she volunteered to watch them. Whew.

So, for the first time in a long time, I actually had to set my alarm and wake up before the kids in order to get in a shower and be ready to go.  Pulled the kids out of bed at 7:30 (they were quietly awake, but on a normal day I would have let them chit-chat for a while longer), immediately fed them breakfast (which also would normally have waited a bit), and then went straight back upstairs to get them dressed (which I normally don’t bother with until about 9:30).  We had shoes and coats on, bag of toys and snacks packed, all of us in the car and on the road at 8:20AM.

While sitting in rush hour traffic, my sister-in-law called to say that she had forgotten about an internship interview, and could I possibly be back by 10:45?  Not a problem, but still… another last-minute wrinkle.  Kids in the back, dropping hats and beloved toys. Trying to keep my eyes on the road.  Run run, hurry hurry, complications in childcare, don’t be late to the meeting, don’t be late to pick up the kids.

It was a small, small taste of what I imagine it must be like to be a working mom, dropping kids off at daycare.  And may I say?  Damn, you guys.  Hats off, I cannot imagine doing that dance with two toddlers every single day.  I’m sure parts of it, like anything, get a lot easier with repetition and routine.  But I’ve gotten so used to the pace of my mornings, and days in general, it’s hard to imagine managing to get to an actual job at a reasonable hour, five days a week.

People sometimes ask me if I plan on going back to work.  The answer is: probably, but not now. I’ve said it before, but I am finding myself really satisfied with this choice of staying home with the kids.  Is it always sunshine and rainbows? Hell, no.  Do I miss being in my own office, chatting with co-workers, and accomplishing non-poop-related tasks?  Yeah, sometimes.  But mostly I really really like it here, and can’t imagine giving it up anytime soon.

Of course, I may change that tune when the kids hit two…

Please feel free to add more to the list of questions.  This is tons of fun!

Today I’m going to go with a “work” theme for a Monday:

From Lisa

I want to know how you decided what you wanted to do in life BEFORE you became pregnant.

It depends on when you would have asked me.  When I was nine, I would have told you I wanted to be a backup singer in a band.   In high school, I was really into music, and was dead-set on becoming a high school orchestra director.  I only looked at colleges that offered music education majors.  I was completely and utterly focused on that goal.  Long story short, I realized I didn’t like playing my instrument for a grade (and really, really sucked at practicing), and dropped the major after one single solitary semester.  Ah, college!

Anyways, I ended up in a psych major, and then more of a counseling major, which was more my style.  Always the touchy-feely type.  I thought I would go to graduate school for marital & family therapy (my dad has been married four times – you don’t have to look far for motivation), but changed my mind when I realized I’d graduate a measly 24 years old and have to tell married couples what to do.  Ha!  Inspiration struck around Christmas of my senior year in college.  I decided that, of all things, I rather liked the whole college application process, and wanted to become a guidance counselor.  So, I did.

Grad school, internship, nail-biting job search.  Spent two years doing it in a suburban high school, and hated it.  I still really enjoyed the college stuff.  It was all of the other crap that made me crazy.  The entitlement, the helicopter parents, the parents who insist it was my fault that their child wasn’t going to class.  The students being hospitalized for suicide attempts after the other kids wouldn’t sit with them at lunch.  The special ed meetings. It was a lot of drama and a shit-ton of bureaucracy.

I found I was much happier working in higher ed.  Academic advising at the college level was still interesting and fun to work with the students, but lower pressure.  The environment was a much better fit.  And, though this is going to sound horribly snobby, the students were not entitled to be there.  If they didn’t want to be there, or if they flunked all of their classes… they left.  That was kind of refreshing.  I know, from bleeding-heart counselor to heart-of-stone.  Don’t get me wrong, I was more than willing to help people and help them find resources and help them succeed.  But they’re adults.  If they wanted to shoot themselves in the foot and not go to class – not my problem, really.

My last job was a great fit, and in addition to the advising, also included some admissions work.  Tons of fun, and I do miss it.  But here’s the thing – my job is not my calling.  It’s not really my passion.  I enjoyed it, I was good at it.  But (at the risk of sounding cheesy), in truth, I knew that this was what I always wanted to do.  This, right here.  The full-time, diaper-changing, snot-wiping, tantrum-busting.  It has it’s sucky days, as all jobs do. But I always knew I wanted to do it.

On related notes, from Carrie and Beverly:

Do you intend to go back to work when the kids are a certain age? If you do go back, do you think you will stay on the same career path?

Do you ever think about going back to work when Daniel and Rebecca are in school? If so, what would your dream job be?

I do suspect I’ll go back when the kids are in school (pre-school, at the earliest, but maybe older), and I imagine I’ll stay in roughly the same field.  I like being on an academic calendar, I like working in education.  And, in general, it tends to be pretty family-friendly.

Ideally, I’d love to find a part-time job and not have to deal with too much childcare coordination.  I’d happily go back to higher ed on a part-time basis (I’m not sure I could do 5-days-a-week, 9-5, after getting used to being home full-time!).  Or, if I could find a big high school like the one I went to, big enough that it actually had a college/career advising center… I would love to run one of those.  Bring in admissions reps and speakers from different career paths, help kids find good matches.  And while you can’t get rid of 100% of the drama, at least some of the parts I hated the most would not be my responsibility.

Though I once toyed with the idea, I do not think I would want to be one of those private college counselors.  I mean, it’s good money and all of that… but the inappropriate expectations, overbearing parents, and insane pressure would be entirely too much for me.  Plus, I kind of think the whole profession is a racket and just feeds into the swirling insanity around the whole process right now.

I wrote a post today for How Do You Do It? about my decision to be a stay-at-home-mom, and marked the beginning of my second year living outside of the academic calendar.  Check it out.

Clearly, I’m not a particularly ambitious person as far as career trajectory and such things.  Not that ambition is inherently bad in any way, it’s just not my thing.  I always worked to live, not the other way around.

Which leads me to this whole Sarah Palin thing.

I know, I’m stepping way outside my usual topics.  I’m not a political blogger.  I’m a mommy blogger.  But she’s a mom, and I have a few things to say.  And, well, it’s my blog.

When McCain announced her as a running mate, I was baffled. An insulting appeal to holdout Hillary supporters?  “Look, she’s a woman! You like women, right? I mean, she’s the antithesis of everything Hillary holds dear, but who cares?”  An odd appeal to the right-wingers?  It’s been a trainwreck to watch.  She’s under an ethics investigation, McCain listed Governor, Mayor, and PTA as her executive experience. It completely undercuts his whole “ready to be Commander-in-Chief” argument. It’s just weird, and I’m at a total loss as to why on earth this was his choice.  I keep waiting for something new to jump out that would have it make sense, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening.

But hey, I’m not supposed to like his running mate.  I’m a Democrat, through and through, and wasn’t going to vote for him in the first place.  His choice of a right-wing nutter just gave me another reason.  Fine.  But as a fellow mother, I have to question Sarah Palin on her judgment.  And as everyone wants us to remember, it’s all about good judgment, right?

Let’s ignore the conspiracy theories about her youngest son actually being her grandson. It smells fishy, but I obviously have no basis of proving or disproving it, so fine. And really, I could care less that her daughter is pregnant, even if it gives me a brief laugh at “so, how’s that abstinence-only sex ed working out for you?”  But fine, things happen to teenagers.  And while it sort of adds to the media/political train wreck, fine. I have really no beef with that at all.

My beef is with putting ambition before family. I know that sometimes there are sacrifices in life. But you have a very young child with special needs.  If bits and pieces of the conspiracy theories are to be believed, you were going into preterm labor and yet continued to give a speech and then fly across the continent instead of seeking medical attention. She went back to work after something like three days. And she’s campaigning and running for Vice President with a newborn with Down’s syndrome.

Sure, I suppose being asked to be the Vice Presidential candidate for a major political party is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And it would be hard to turn it down. But with a newborn? When you have almost no high-level political experience? Ambition wins over family.

Yes, it’s a double standard. People wouldn’t be saying the same thing of a man in her position. But it’s no secret that being a mom is different than being a dad, like it or not.  Is it fair?  Maybe not, but I’m not sure that’s the point.

I’m rambling, I know.  This, among other reasons, is why I’m not a political blogger. But this Sarah Palin thing is just getting under my skin.  She wiggs me out. When she speaks, it just feels wrong to me.  Let’s just hope that my candidate actually wins for once, and I can forget Sarah Palin’s name after November 4.

It’s official. I am a stay-at-home mom.

Oh, sure, I haven’t been to work in about three months. But, technically-speaking, I’m on maternity leave. I could theoretically go back. I didn’t really think that I would, but I liked having the option. Plus, keeping my options open meant that I’d get paid for sick time and short-term disability, so why not take the leave?

However, my time is running short. I’m 12 weeks in to my 16 weeks of leave. My boss called about 10 days ago to ask (in the nicest way humanly possible) if I would give some thought to what my plans were and let him know. No longer could I put off the final decision. So, yesterday I called and told him I would not be coming back to work.

Just like me, he was bummed but not surprised. He obviously knows how much money I make, and though he doesn’t have any kids of his own, he knows that childcare is expensive. For me, I’m not inclined to send my infants to a day care if I don’t have to, even though I know plenty of them are high-quality. And around here, there are six-month waiting lists for the good ones. Not that it’s any more affordable. And a nanny/sitter would run me enough money that I’d likely be paying $50 more than I take home per day. Just so I can have a two-hour round-trip commute so someone else can spend time with my kids? I really did love my job, but I think going back to it right now would just cause me to resent it.

I’ll go back to work at some point, and maybe I’ll be lucky enough to pull off doing part-time when they’re in preschool or something. Or maybe I’ll go so stir-crazy at home with them that I’ll need to find a job so I don’t crack. But for the forseeable future, I’ll be here with my kids. We’ll take classes, have outings with friends, run errands. Maybe I’ll start making dinner more often. Homemaker, housewife, “just a mom.” Domestic Goddess in-progress.

Here we go!

As a sidenote, when I called my boss, both babies decided to have a screaming meltdown. I sure hope that wasn’t foreshadowing on what a bad idea this was…

I came to yet another funny realization about my new life the other day. The school year is starting. And I almost missed it.

This is very strange. I have lived my life by the academic calendar for about the last 25 years. I didn’t take time off between high school, college, and graduate school, so I was a perpetual student until I was 22 years old. After finishing my master’s degree, I worked in a high school for two years, and then moved straight on to working at a college. Sure, the jobs changed a bit (no more summers off!), but the general rhythm of my year did not. I always liked this aspect of working in education. Though any given day can be an unknown, there’s a very predictable pattern to the year. You know that November will be like this, March will be like that. Forget January 1, Labor Day is the beginning of my new year.

Not anymore. This Labor Day weekend is coming and going with no change in my (new) daily routine. No orientation for new students, no chaos of the start of the semester, no shock to the system after going from lazy summer to crazy fall. Oh sure, my routine has changed plenty in the last month. Life is both busier and not. But it is independent of the semester. No more life in 14-week blocks.

At least, not until they hit kindergarten.

I surrender. And I’m OK with it.

Not even two weeks ago, I was certain I’d make it to my original goal of working to 35 weeks. Sure, 35 was a somewhat arbitrary deadline, but it was the one I’d made. And it was so very close. It really felt like a done deal.

But after this weekend’s minor scare, and my seemingly exponential daily increase in discomfort, I’ve decided to bump it up. For one thing, I’m sleeping so poorly at night that I’m downright exhausted when it comes to getting up in the morning. I noticed quite an improvement without having to wake up to the alarm this weekend, so it was a bit jarring to have to wake up at 7am yesterday. Between the weekend and Monday morning, I was starting to really wonder if I’d make it to the 27th. My boss walked in and looked into my office and said “every Monday, I see you and I can’t believe you’re still here!” Suddenly, I sort of felt the same way. And then I looked at our office calendar for the month, and realized that both my boss and another of my favorite coworkers will be on vacation next week. I added it all up, and decided staying an extra week would buy me nothing, and would be a pretty anticlimactic way to end. And so, instead of 35 weeks, I’m going to stop working this Friday, at 34 weeks. I feel good about it, too. I don’t feel like I “fell short.” I know that I should be proud of making it this far in the first place, and I am.

I’m relieved, excited, sad, and nervous, all at once. I’m quite looking forward to not having to wake up at a particular time, and being able to have my poor, fat feet elevated for much of the day. And I’m excited yet in disbelief that I’m in such a final phase of the countdown. I’m also nervous, both for the next couple of weeks as well as what comes afterwards. I’m worried about the potential boredom of being at home by myself, with very limited ability to go out and do things on my own. That doesn’t tend to go well with me. And certainly I’m concerned about the delivery, wanting the babies to be alright, and then everything that comes after.

It’s also very bittersweet to be leaving my job. When I saw the description posted on the college website more than two and a half years ago, I nearly fell out of my chair. It was as though someone had taken my resume and used it to write the position description. Combination academic advising and admissions (without the travel), master’s degree in counseling desired, string players preferred. I was working at another college literally two doors down at the time. I walked my resume over to HR the next afternoon, had an interview a few days later, and within a week of seeing it posted, I was hired. Like any job, it has had its quirks and pitfalls, but I have really loved it. I love the people I work with, I love the environment, I love my mish-mosh of the two jobs I really wanted, all wrapped up in one.

And on Friday, I’ll walk out the door. My sixteen weeks of maternity leave (thank you, Massachusetts) take me almost to Thanksgiving, but I doubt I’ll be returning at that point. Financially, it just doesn’t make any sense. I’d pay more for childcare than I’d actually take home from working. And much as I love my job, I’m not sure I love it enough to not be there with my kids, at least for the first year or so. I’m nervous about being a stay-at-home mom, but I’ve got a few things in place to try to make it manageable. I’ll really miss my coworkers, and I’ll even miss just coming to work sometimes. But off I go, on my new adventure.

I just hope I don’t go into labor before Friday. I think I can make it another three days…

I always feared having a summer due date. Especially the end of summer. When we talked about getting pregnant, I thought I’d want to avoid having my 3rd trimester in height of the summer, no matter what.

As we know, we make plans and God laughs. So, here I am. July. 32 weeks pregnant with twins. My “due date” (such that it is) is August 31st. Riiight.

It’s not that I dislike summer. I mean really, who could hate summer? It’s sunny, warm, cheery, relaxed, and filled with grilled meat and popsicles. These are all good things. But in all honesty, I just don’t deal well with the heat. Never have. For one thing, I sweat. Can’t help it. Deodorant can only go so far. And a characteristic inherited from my mom’s whole family is the sweaty upper lip. As soon as it gets warm, we’re all a little damp under the nose. What can you do? In short, as nice as the warmth is, I get pretty uncomfortable in heat over the mid-80s. My dad loves the 110-degree days in Palm Springs, but not me. So, naturally, I thought the prospect of having all of this extra weight and discomfort during the hottest time of year sounded like a death sentence.

And frankly, the three 90+ degree days we’ve had here in Massachusetts have been particularly rough. I leave the air-conditioned splendor of my office, and within 45 minutes of arriving home, I have completely wilted. Any remaining drop of energy has been sucked right out of me. I climb up to our room (where our a/c unit resides, thankfully) and call it an early bedtime. We’ve got two more of those days coming tomorrow and Monday, and I’m not looking forward to it.

That said, I have discovered that there are, indeed, several positive things about being super-pregnant in the middle of the summer. As I’m trying to look on the bright side, here they are:

1. Work schedule – This has worked out more perfectly than I could have predicted. Since I work in higher education, you’d think it would be ideal to have a due date around graduation and just be gone the whole summer (which is what would have happened if my last pregnancy had worked out). There are a few problems with that logic, though. For one, since I’m not really planning on going back to work, this would have put my coworkers in the very difficult position of suddenly scrambling to hire someone at the busiest time of year. The fact that I’m guaranteed to be out for the majority of the fall semester just makes planning that much easier. PLUS, since work is extremely quiet in the summer, it’s a good time of year to have limited productivity. As I’m finding myself easily distracted and frequently tired, it’s good that I don’t have too many important things going on (like, say, graduation).
2. Maternity Clothes – This ties into my job, to an extent, since I work in a very casual environment. But it’s pretty nice to be able to spend most days in shorts or a skirt and some variety of t-shirt. I can also get away with frequent wearings, since summer is inherently more casual. I don’t need a bunch of dress pants, button down shirts, or sweaters. Not to mention an actual warm jacket. No, by the time I started to outgrow my fleece jacket, the temperatures were cooperating as well. I love that the maternity clothes I need are light, easy, and pretty darn inexpensive. Oh, and I wear flip-flops every day. Which is good, since they’re the only shoes that fit.
3. Food – Normally, I love too cook almost every night. As you might imagine, however, that has fallen off dramatically as the pregnancy progresses. I just don’t have the energy, after I get home, to do all of that chopping and prepping and maintenance. And while that’s really too bad in some ways, it’s at least easier to get away with in the summer. We do get takeout a bit too frequently, but because it’s nice out, we manage to just throw things on the grill more nights than not. This is good on all fronts. Certainly, food prep is pretty easy. Maybe make some hamburger patties or a quick marinade, but mostly you take the piece of meat and put it over the fire. This also helps by creating minimal cleanup after the fact, which is always a plus, as well as keeps the kitchen relatively cool since we aren’t turning on the oven as often. Yep, most nights at our house involve hamburgers, chicken thighs, or bratwurst. And maybe some nice, fresh corn. Not too shabby. Also nice that there are plenty of tasty fruits in season.
4. Ice cream – Yes, it gets it’s own listing, separate from just plain food. I’m a big ice cream fan, all year round. But when summer nears, I bust out my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker at least once a week. Why? One word: strawberries. There is nothing quite so divine as homemade fresh strawberry ice cream. Strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, milk, and cream. That’s it. YUM. I’ve also branched out and made peach, chocolate (which was tricky, but I’ve got it down), and my new favorite: chocolate banana. Fresh ice cream is the best. Easy to make, ridiculously tasty… and calcium! I swear, I’m supposed to have more calcium!

So yes, the heat drains what little energy I have remaining, and helps my feet reach new and terrifying dimensions. But I’m learning it’s not all bad. There are definite perks to being pregnant in the summer.

Today is a good day. Oh sure, I slept badly last night, my hips are killing me, my ankles are swelling back up, and two of my fingers have gone numb. But that’s OK. Because today, I am 32 weeks pregnant.

I am officially out of the biggest danger zone of preterm labor and birth. My doctor said 28-32 is when they worry the most, because the risk of going into preterm labor is relatively high, while the babies’ outcomes are more in question. Yes, I still have several more weeks that would be considered preterm, but babies born at this point and later tend to do quite well in the long term even if they have to stay in the NICU for a while.

Because of this ever-lowering risk level, if I were to go into labor at any point from now on (which seems unlikely, given my cervix of steel), I would be free to go to my nearby community hospital, instead of needing to go to one of the larger teaching hospitals downtown. Not that I have any problem with those hospitals, and my sister-in-law is even a medical student on her OB rotation at said hospital right now. But it’s nice to know that “my” hospital can handle much of what I could throw at them at this point. And if the babies needed to stay in the hospital for a while longer than me, I wouldn’t have to get myself all the way downtown to see them.

I’ve also been struck by how very close to the end I now am. At the most, I have three weeks left of work. I used to think that working to 35 weeks was a pipe dream. Now it seems like a fait accompli. Heck, it’s worth it to keep coming for the air conditioning, alone.

At the most, I have six weeks remaining of this pregnancy. Yes, each day has crept by, same as the day before. Yet somehow… six weeks? Wow. And it could be even sooner, who knows. Suddenly things are seeming a bit more urgent. Time to wash the onesies, pack the hospital bag. Time to make arrangements for the dog while we’re in the hospital. Heck, time to stop putting off trading my car in for the minivan we’ve been talking about. After that, we can even install the carseats. Holy crap.

But here I am, 32 weeks. I had so hoped that I would make it to this point, that no emergencies would arise and cause something to happen before now. Not to jinx anything, but I feel like a particular chunk of worry has fallen off of my shoulders. Sure, there’s still plenty to worry about, and I won’t be neglecting any of it. But this is just one less thing.

Now if I can make it to 35 or 36… August, here I come.

I am lucky enough to really like my job a lot. It’s my third full-time job post-grad-school. The first was being a guidance counselor in a high school, which was precisely what I had gotten my master’s degree for in the first place. Turns out, I hated it. Two years later I moved up to higher education, and was an academic advisor for undegraduate business majors at a large university. A dramatic improvement, but I can’t tell you how little I know or care about finance courses. There were also some annoying personnel/management issues, so one day (after a particularly annoying meeting) I stormed down to my office and started looking at job postings. Much to my surprise, the little music school next door was hiring a combination academic advisor and admissions counselor. The job description looked like it was written with my resume in hand. I was hired a week later, and I’ve never looked back.

Not only do I enjoy the day-to-day tasks of my job, but I really love my bosses (I have two, and they even have the same first name). One in particular is really great. I always feel 100% supported and appreciated. We have a very laid-back work environment, no ridiculous clock-watching, and we all love to hang out and laugh when we aren’t doing other things. He’s a big fan of long lunches and “secret time off” in the summers when things are quiet. He said he was considering noting in my upcoming review how happy it made everyone when I brought my dog to work all last summer.

When it comes to this pregnancy and my upcoming leave, he has remained just as awesome. From the day I told him, not only was he excited for me, but he said “let me know if you want to try to figure out something part-time or whatever.” Because I’ll most definitely be gone for the vast majority of the fall semester (busiest time of year), he has already put in the budget money for a temporary replacement person.

Last week, we were chatting, and he said he wanted to talk to me about that. I knew we needed to figure out more details, but I had sort of been avoiding the conversation, mostly because I didn’t know how to diplomatically say “you might want to prepare for the idea of me not coming back.” He told me he had a lead on a temporary person, and wondered when would be a good start date. We chatted and decided July 1 would be good. I’m hoping to be able to stay at work until the end of July, but the twins could decide otherwise. I had done the math, and my 16 weeks of leave (thank you, Massachusetts!) would take me to Thanksgiving if I managed to stick around through late July. Not only was he unfazed by the ambiguity of my “last day” and my full 16 weeks of leave, but he then continued with “and I figure sometime in there you’ll decide what you want to do. I mean, I can’t imagine you’d be able to even know before you see what it’s like.”

A wave of relief washed over me. My suspicion is that I will not be returning to work this year. I’d long thought about being a stay-at-home-mom. Combined with the financial realities of my salary vs. double child care, I think that’s what I’ll try to do, at least for a while. However, it makes a huge difference financially between taking my maternity leave and just plain quitting. I also would like to have the option to go back, in case I find I’m just not cut out for the SAHM thing, or if I miss my job too much. That said, I don’t want to just leave my boss(es) hanging, thinking I’m going to come back when I likely won’t. Well, at least one of them has now absolved me from that worry. Whew!

Oh, and in the meantime, I’m trying to convince HR to let me start our “summer parking” two weeks earlier than normal. I get a summer parking pass, which usually wouldn’t start until the second week of June, but most of the faculty will be long gone after commencement this weekend. Public transit is getting a little rough on me, so I wanted to start driving. While this is all getting worked out? My boss gave me his parking permit. He usually takes the train, anyways.

I love my boss.

Today was unofficial “bring my dog to work day.” We have those from time to time. When I got her as a two-month-old puppy last year, we picked her up Memorial Day, and I was lucky enough to take her with me to work all summer (thank you, higher education!). She’s small and cute and well-loved in the office. Now, when it’s time for a special treat, she makes a guest appearance, and today was just the right day for such a drop-in. The students are all away on Spring Break, not much going on in the office, and it’s a beautiful day.

So, in we drove, puppy in her seatbelt. She loved being downtown and seeing everyone in the office. All of her old buddies. By 11:15, it was clear she was ready to go out for a walk, so I decided to make it an early lunch. Maybe half a mile from my office, down a nice little pedestrian area, is a small fenced-in dog park. Just what she needed. We walked over there and she got to play with four other dogs for a good half hour or so. As I was walking, though, I had the thought that maybe this was a longer walk than is really advisable. I made it just fine, there and back, and then it was time to find lunch, so that was a few more blocks. Got back to the office, the pooch was pooped. And so was the mama.

I was so tired that I had to lie down on the (very hard) floor of my office for 30 minutes. That was a little helpful, but even now (2 1/2 hours later), I could easily take a substantial nap. All this from being out and about on a lovely (but not hot) day for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Holy cow.

I had thought I’d try to bring her with me to work this summer as well, but I quickly had the realization that I would not be able to make that walk with her to the dog park every day (which she really needs to play out her energy). As fun as it is to have her at work, it’s also a fair amount of extra effort for me. And the reality is, I don’t have a lot of extra energy these days. My mom seems to think this wave will pass and I’ll start feeling more energetic, but I’m skeptical.

So, today, a reality check. The pooch will not join me at work all summer (though certainly we could have some drop-ins). And my idea for bringing an old loveseat into my office for naps is sounding downright essential. I think I’m going to go home and nap, now… it’s going to be one of those wild and crazy Friday nights at our house, clearly.