- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 2
-
Sparkle (0)
My son will be 4 years old this July and I still haven’t gotten a grip on this situation. Ever since my very first job at Baker’s Square right up until I was about 5 months pregnant I have chosen to replace free time with work hours. In high school I was driven by a need to be independent from my mother. My home life was somewhat less than stable and in my head money meant not having to live completely at my mother’s mercy. It was also nice that every hour I was at work was an hour not spent in my house. I worked 4 or 5 nights a week as a waitress and even picked up a second job at a bagel shop to fill the time that I wasn’t at the other place. Even at 17 I felt like it was silly to take a night off to hang out when I could hang out at work and make money. I was (and still am) a great waitress- I made ridiculous amounts of money as a high school student. Then as life got crazier and home got worse I started picking up shifts instead of going to school. Work was a place I excelled, I was the best and in control…everywhere else was a mess. After school ended I worked around the clock. From 10:30am until 3:00am everyday but Sunday I was waiting tables. I was always homeless so the less time I had to spend trying to find somewhere to hang out the better and I loved to work. I. Love. It. I love overtime and long days and doubles and open to close shifts; did I mention that I love to work? So when I suddenly had a small person that needed constant supervision I didn’t know what to do with myself. After my knee healed from surgery and I got the baby routine down I took a part time job to help combat my feelings of uselessness and I discovered that in this area of my life (as in so many others) I did not have a middle ground setting. I was okay being a stay-at-home-mom as long as I completely stayed home. I was happy even. I cooked and cleaned and walked and played and immersed myself in what I thought was a quaint 50’s way of life. I felt so on top of it that a little job a few shifts a week at a local coffee house/café seemed like a brilliant idea. Unfortunately I do not know how to just work part time. I felt like there was no reason for me to not be at work if my husband was home. I could work 5 or 6 mornings a week since he was a second shifter, right? My ex was understandably dismayed. He made good money and wanted me home (I suspect because he wanted to sleep in and avoid his child, but whatever) and I had fallen right back into the old “if you’re awake you’re working” mindset.
These days the situation has only gotten more complicated. When I moved to Pittsburgh I got a job at my dad’s company a couple days a week with the intention that I would move into full-time. Spawn would be in daycare and I would work...like normal people, right? No. Shortly after Spawn was initially diagnosed the steel market took a nosedive and all discussions of me becoming a full time employee came to an abrupt halt. I worked part time at a restaurant for awhile but they kept wanting me to come in more and more (which I was desperate to do) and my parents wanted to watch my soon less and less and when the little one came down with pneumonia it just got to be too much. So for about a year I have been working Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That’s it. Argh. The crazy thing is that in the past two months even that schedule has been too much. When you have a child with autism you spend a lot of time on damage control. It is hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t live it that when I am home with Spawn it is almost impossible to do anything but watch him.
