Dillierama

So much for Fat Tuesday

Today may go down in history as one of the most boring days of my life.  Unfortunately, however, I can't blame John for it.  Damn.  I put us in a self-imposed quarantine today due to Alex's skin condition.  I had high hopes that while we were here in Panama, Alex's skin would miraculously clear up and he wouldn't have to suffer the itchies for a whole month.  Everyone told me that the heat and humidity would cause the eczema to "poof" go away.  Well, turns out, not so much.

His eczema may very well have gone away, were it not for the necessity of slathering copious amounts of sunscreen on him several times per day.  It could be a number of things really; the chemicals in the pool, the bug spray, the 97 degree heat, stiff hotel sheets, detergent the laundromat is using to wash our clothes, the diapers that have a funny smell, the sausages he ate for breakfast the other day... 

Point is, he's not clearing up.  In fact, yesterday he had what appeared to be an allergic reaction to some unknown substance or food that caused him to break out in a red itchy rash from his nose to his nipples.  Hence the quarantine.  I wanted to keep him in a controlled environment to try to get his skin to calm down.  Poor Alex.  Kid doesn't even know what life is like to NOT be itchy all over.

The good news is that his skin did indeed calm down and he only has his "normal" patches of eczema and a little residual allergy rash on his chest that appears to be going away.  The bad news is that the three of us were stuck in this tiny hotel room with nothing but the Sudoku and Jumble puzzles in the newspaper and Spanish language television to keep us occupied.  John was in heaven.  Spending the day lounging around in his underwear, ordering room service and reading the paper is his idea of a good time.  For me, it was a very, very boring day. 

Help wanted

I'm starting to think about getting a part time job.  We're getting dangerously close to not being able to maintain our current lifestyle, and when John says "I'm thinking I could probably live without cable TV", I know I've got to do something, because damn if we're going to go without cable!

The problem is, I don't want a real job.  I don't want a job that I have to think about all the time. I don't want something where the work piles up and waits for me if I'm out sick. I don't want a "career path" or "opportunity for advancement".  I just want to go in a couple days a week, work, collect my paycheck and go home.  I used to do temp work.  Administrative stuff like answering phones, filing, data entry, etc.  when I was a teenager.  That may be a good option for me.  No commitments, no stress, just go in, get the job done and leave.  I could even get a job at one of the retail stores in town.  Almost everyone is hiring for the holidays right now, maybe I could get something on the weekends.

Maybe next week I'll start exploring some options.  See what I can do to earn a few extra bucks and still be home the majority of my time with Alex.

A case of the Monday's?

Today is my last Monday.  No words can describe how I feel about that.  Mondays are of the devil.

Finding what's important

It's official, we're going to be poor.  Not living in a cardboard box poor, but living paycheck to paycheck poor. Last night John and I spent a lot of time talking about all the things we won't be able to do anymore. Golfing, sporting events, movies, dining out and traveling are definitely out. Alex's college fund and our retirement savings are both on hold.  Christmas?  Well, it's canceled this year (though we're not Christians anyway, so maybe it's time to stop being hypocritical in celebrating a religious holiday). We've already scaled down our cable package as much as John could stand, though our sports, HD and Internet packages have to stay because John is absolutely certain he would die without them.

I had to tell John to stop talking about all this because it was really making me feel guilty about quitting. After all the agony of making the decision, and the fact that my company is not making it easy for me to leave, thinking about how my decision is going to suck all of the fun out of our lives was becoming way too much.  It's one thing to be broke. It's another to choose to be broke.

By the end of the evening, I found myself crying my eyes out in our office downstairs, thinking of how I'm letting down my family by not making a financial contribution anymore. I thought about the classes that Alex can't go to because we can't afford it. I thought about the big games John's not going to attend. I thought about the preschool we can't afford (in three years), the team sports Alex won't be able to participate in. The collectibles John won't be able to buy, the house we'll have to move out of, the future babies we can't afford to have...  My thoughts spiraled down into a ridiculous puddle of guilt and self pity. 

Then I remembered something John said to me earlier in the evening that apparently I hadn't absorbed at the time because I was worrying about how we can't afford to buy beer at baseball games anymore.  He said, "You're going to be important to Team Dillier" And just like that I remembered why we made this decision in the first place.

I can always get another job. There will always be another house to buy, games to go to and Holidays to celebrate lavishly.

There will never be another 10 month old Alex to raise.  There will never be another first step or first word.  There will never be another opportunity to be with my baby boy, who is rapidly growing out of his babyness as I speak.  Alex doesn't care about Tball and soccer right now. He doesn't care about Baby Gym classes or getting on the waiting list for the exclusive private pre-school I'd been scoping out since he was just an embryo. Alex wants someone to play peekaboo with. He wants to be pushed on a swing at the park. He wants to bang on a drum with a plastic hammer and feed cheerios to our dog.  He wants to go on walks and laugh at the horses and he wants to roll around on the freshly mowed lawn.  And I realized that when I'm older, those are the memories that I'm going to cherish. I'm going to remember Alex's gap-toothed smile and full body giggles not how I helped to roll out that new software back in 2006.

Quitter

So, I did it.  I quit my job.

Holy.  Shit.

This is something John and I have been talking about since before Alex was born.  It got serious about two months ago and only now I've decided to take the plunge and leave my lucrative employment to become a housewife and stay at home mom.

To sum up how monumental this decision is for me, I will quote a conversation I had with my mom this afternoon:

Me (Screaming into the phone): "Mom!  I've made a HUGE life changing decision! I can't believe it! I'm so excited and scared and OH MY GOD!"

Her:  "Are you pregnant?"

Me: "NO!  It's bigger than that!  I QUIT MY JOB!"

Her:  "Quitting your job is bigger than having a baby?"

Me: "Well, yeah.  I've had a baby. I've never been unemployed"

There are many unknowns and worries about loosing half our household income, but instead of fretting about it, I'm just going to look forward to my new life as Alex's full time diaper changer, toy picker-upper, booger picker, Eskimo kisser, tummy raspberry blower and toe nibbler.

The rat race

I've always been so careful not to write about work. It's really not that interesting to anyone who may read this blog.  But work invariably bleeds into my "real" life, of which I write about a lot.  Recently, I've  hit a wall at work. I've had enough. I find myself driving to work with a sinking feeling in my gut and thinking "What the hell am I doing?".

It's not the job, really.  I actually enjoy what I do, and I like to think I'm pretty good at it.  It's the fact that my job has become almost all consuming lately.  The more pressure, the more stress I feel at work, the more resentful I become about having to go there in the first place. 

This morning, I had to rush getting Alex and me out the door because I had a conference call at 8:00. Feeling rushed I was irritable and didn't give Alex or Midnight the cuddles they both really needed in the morning. I basically threw clothes on Alex, threw a pain pill at Midnight, and put Alex in the car with a bottle and raced out the door to drop him off at my mother's.  I then found myself stuck in a traffic jam getting on the freeway and ended up calling into my conference call from my car on my cell phone.  I waited on the conference bridge line for 10 minutes and no one else called in.  I rechecked my calendar on my phone, yep. 8:00.  It was now 8:15.  "F*** it!" I yelled and threw my phone on the passenger seat.  I rushed my morning, didn't cuddle with my dying dog or baby boy so I could call in on time to a conference call that apparently had been canceled without my knowledge!

It's days like this that I can't help but laugh at my original ideas about what my life would look like after I became a mother. When I found myself pregnant, I had all these great ideas of how I'd be wildly successful in my career and still be an attentive mother, a loving wife and have a sparkling clean house.  My child would never sit wide eyed in front of cartoons on TV, I'd breastfeed for at least one year, I'd make homemade baby food, my child would never ingest preservatives or excess sugar. I even contemplated using cloth diapers.  Really. I was so idealistic.  My head was full of butterflies and swinging the baby at the park and playgroups with no vomit stains on my shirts or cheerios stuck in my hair.

In reality, my life looks more like a tornado.  My house is always a mess, I eat out WAY more than I should because I rarely get a spare second to sit down with a bowl of cereal at home.  Every piece of clothing I own has some kind of baby related stain on it.  Alex eats Gerber and is now on formula full time. Last night, he ate part of a churro. Talk about excess sugar!  I'm a Baby Gym drop out, and Alex has been known to watch multiple episodes of Caillou in one day.  Cloth diapers?  HA!  I have a stack of never used cloth diapers in the bottom drawer of Alex's changing table. 

I'm somehow expected to be a great mom, a great wife and a great employee.  In reality, I'm sucking at all three jobs.  Something's got to give, and I am NOT WILLING to let my family be it. 

I've already spoken with my boss about cutting my hours at work significantly. I haven't gotten official word, but rumor has it they'll be able to work something out for me. But I'm officially at the point where I am ready to say "Screw you guys, I'm going home" if I can't get a part time schedule. My job description is full time, and I would absolutely understand if they can't cut me to part time, but I need to put much more focus on my home life. I need to be with Alex more than I'm with my coworkers. I need to put more of my energy into something that actually matters, because despite what our Project Manager says, despite what the steering committee says, despite how the company's mucky mucks feel, Alex Dillier is infinitely more important that any stupid software rewrite.