Okay, the truth is that I'm gainfully employed only until June when school is out. A sixth grade Humanities teacher is about to give birth to twins so I'm going to swoop in and take over for her and, lucky me, just in time to begin the unit on the Arab/Israeli conflict.....you know, the easy substitute stuff. I'm not afraid to admit that the whole full time job thing is really kicking my butt. Apparently I'm also not afraid to admit it's kicking my butt after just one week. I think I had found a good groove and now I'm grooveless. When I first became a mom and then a 'stay-at-home' mom, I was equally out of my element. All day long with just an infant to talk to left me with oatmeal for brains. I was the prototypical zombie. I was a Mombie: a woman who gets no sleep due to the thoroughly misnamed infancy sleep patterns and who loses IQ points upon repeated viewings of Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer until she is nothing but the hollow shell of her former self which is really only fit for circus sideshows and as a warning about the dangers of procreation.....and children's television.
Eventually I made it through the uneasy malaise of being a full time mother and even found I was able to do more than one thing a day. First it was showering. Then it was showering and going to the store. And eventually I could get showered, go to the store and still have enough oomph to take out the vacuum and contemplate housecleaning. Slow and steady wins the race. But that was years ago. Now my kids are both in school so I get a million things done a day. Then I went and got a job.
Now I'm back into full time employment which means I'm shifting gears completely. For those of you who have ever driven in a car with standard transmission know, it's not a smooth ride. Last week was my first week and I think it was pretty telling that my Friday night was not complete until I had a bit of a nervous breakdown that was only soothed by my sweet husband's calming words and a stunning defeat of Duke by out of the blue Lehigh. At least the basketball gods were smiling on me. I was not ready for a week of work that left me without time to go to the gym or do the laundry or stay up past 8pm. I felt like I did when I was first pregnant. I ate a lot and I needed a nap everyday. I'm sure it didn't help that the time changed just before I began. So my usual schedule of up just before 5am to get to the gym meant getting up just before the crack of 4am for a good sweat before heading in to spend a day with middle schoolers. Not conducive by a long shot. I just couldn't manage it. I could barely manage full and complete sentences. Nothing ages you more than having to utter the phrase, "I'm just going to rest my eyes for a bit." One week of work and I had become my mother-in-law.
The plan I formulated this weekend was to dig down deep to access any and all organizational skills. I was already on the road to success with my menu for the week. Now I just had to figure out how to wrap my brain around weekend laundry duties. Mondays had always been my laundry day. And I had to figure out how to get myself up and out to the gym before school. And since there is no time like the present, I did it this morning. I got up just before 5am and was out the door at about 5:08am. Here's where my morning began its descent into epic failure. On my way to the gym, I realized I needed gas. Usually this isn't an issue (or a surprise since I'm one of those people who doesn't realize the need for gas until it's a NEED for gas) because I can go get gas any old time I want. Now I have to commute to work and be there on time like a grown up. So I did the mature thing, I decided to get gas and then go to the gym. Although the basketball gods had been with me, the gas gods weren't having it. The first station was closed. The second station was open but no one came out to pump my gas and I had no desire to be the opening scene of a horror movie by walking into an empty, seemingly harmless gas station by myself in the wee hours of the morning. I like my guts and brains on the inside of my body and not splattered across the AM/PM freezer doors. (For those of you who don't know, in Oregon you do not pump your own gas. Someone has to do it for you. So I may have been a big chicken but I was not being lazy or snobbish.) With a gas tank getting emptier and emptier, I drove straight to the next closest gas station which was both open and staffed. And that would be the gas station closer to my house than the gym. Just in time to head home to get ready for work.My grand workout today was just getting out of bed.
