The Jury is Out (um...wrong title last time. LOL)

Well, I'm just not so sure how I feel about working. I'm just not sure this is working out for us.

When I was a little girl, I imagined being rich. I really believed I would be. I was raised to be independent. I would be rich all on my own. As I got older, I decided I would become a psyhiatrist. I majored in psychology and completed the pre-med program as well. Having Spencer at 22 was a blessing that made me look at life differently. Obviously, I was not going to apply to med school. Obviously there was no reason to prepare for the MCAT. Obviously I would finish my senior thesis project and rely on my BS in psychology for a job. {laughing}

I kid you not that they paid me around $9/hr. As a child and youth case manager at Peninsula outpatient, a degree was required, and they paid me $9/hr. If that. I don't remember. The first day on the job, I rode around with a lady named Angie, and sooooo very much enjoyed her company. They were real people, not here to impress anyone, tell-it-like-it-is type of people. So Angie and I were talking, and she made the comment of how someone had told her, and she had agreed, that "this is the type of job that you don't do it for the money. You do it from your heart." Heart, shmart. I like nice clothes and now I needed nice clothes for myself and my beautiful little boy. LOL I knew this profession and myself were not going to match up too well. I worked there about a year, and since I worked fairly (?) closely with psychiatrists, I knew that yeah...no there's no way at all I'd want to be one of them. They hardly spoke to the patients. They were pretty much there to prescribe meds only. I had already worked for years as a transcriptionist/office worker for a psychologist in Cookeville, and knew I didn't want to do his job either. But on the job I also worked with teachers, and remembered my first love. {teaching} Which my mother told me I could not choose, as they did not get paid enough.

Well, I love teaching. I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching. I LOVE kids. LOVE them. I am naturally a child advocate. I love getting to know them. I love teaching them. I love turning Social Studies into one big story that unravels as the year passes by. I love how lazy they are. Well I don't love that, but it is part of what make them them, and I do love it in a strange way. I love their little quarrels over who cut in line and who was or wasn't talking. I love the freedom that being a teacher gives me. I choose what we will learn today. (Well, in sync with the standards, of course) I choose how we will learn it. I choose if we will do centers, and what those centers are. I choose how we will spend our day. I LOVE that. I decide our pace. I plan, and then I readjust my plan. I choose if we do a Christmas craft, and what we will do and how we will do it. I love it. I am able to be as creative as I want to be. I get such a high off of a good day at school. I really do. I never, ever, ever, and I mean never...have dreaded seeing my students. I love them. It's like coming home each day. Twice. Because they are also mine. Now, I hate waking early, don't get me wrong. But I love having my own room and having my students that are always excited to see me in the morning, and I love getting the day started. And if I have had a chance to get a cappuccino that morning, I really love getting the day started. I can't even begin to tell you how much my boys love me being a teacher. That would be a whole 'nother post.

But here's the thing.

Teaching doesn't love my family as much as I had remembered it had. Teaching wears me out at the end of the day, and leaves me with little energy or motivation to do anything around the house. Teaching leaves me very little time with my very little girl. I will admit that I am whining. I am sure that other jobs are also hard. But I just don't know what to do about it. I can't function in a messy house. It does not have to be superclean, but it needs to be decent. I feel like all week long all I can do is get us ready for bed and then get stuff ready for school the next day. Who has time to clean or cook? Not I it seems!

So anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Being a working mommy is tough. And even with the most family friendly job in the world, I'm just not sure it's working out. Let me clarify. It's working out real well at school. It's not working out real well at home. My leftover energy just isn't cutting it. So I'm hoping things get easier, or there may be another change next year.

So, anyway, back to the beginning....now I have new priorities. I have grown up a bit, and know that "independence" isn't necessarily an asset in a wife. In fact, too much "independence" can start arguments. I might have figured that out in the beginning. LOL I personally think that good wives let the husbands take the lead, and be the head of household that he should be. But I do have trouble with that sometimes.

Although I do love some things that only money can buy, like vacations and nice clothes, I learned while staying at home that cutting corners here and there to save money is pretty smart. I am also very glad that we haven't accumulated a lot of debt. We don't charge anything...I learned that lesson years ago. We have managed to pay things off, and are sitting pretty debt-wise (except for student loans). I have decided that as long as we get a bigger house, it doesn't have to be my dream house. I have decided that having the finer things in life are great, but I'd rather be home with my babies (as long as we still go on vacation though). I have even toyed around the idea of homeschooling, just because they are growing up so darn fast. Just for a year. I know, it would be hilarious. I want to be the best mom I can be to these children of mine, and I'm just not being it right now. I'm hoping that over the course of this year, it will either become easier or more clear to me what I need to do. I have 6 more years until Spencer starts driving. Time is flying by. I want to savor each moment with my kids and enjoy it to the fullest. But I don't want to resign and then hope to get a position later. I would need to stay up to date on things in one way or another, and I am telling you I will never ever take an education class again. Those are the most ridiculous classes I have ever had the pain of sitting through. I'll take science and math anytime. Sock puppets and project after project? Um no thank you. But perhaps that was just my experience. I thought those education classes were kind of out there. LOL So who knows what the future holds. In the meantime, I am enjoying having the opportunity to put my energy wholeheartedly this week {fall break} into my family, the house, and a little photography :) All my other loves get to come first this week, and I'm liking it. :)