kids

atthequillsmercy

I return!

Back at dayjob from a nice vacation to a desk piled high with work. YAY!

That’s right, I said "yay." Taking a break from work is all well and good but I am not the type to stay at home all the time. I will go insane. I did very much enjoy spending quality time with my kiddo. She can really tweak the guilt when she puts her mind to it. "I don’t want you to go back to work ever, ever again." She tells me. A quick explanation if how exactly those shiny shoes that are just like Dorothy’s, came to be in our home and subsequently on her feet, and it was acceptable for me to work. Yah know, as long as I’ve got her permission and all. 😉

Other than playing with her I worked out. A LOT. More accurately, my kiddo worked out with me. I am finally noticing a difference in how I look and feel and how my clothes fit. I am very much looking forward to Samhain this year. I can’t wait to actually be able to dress up with my kid and not feel like a bloated hog crammed into some lycra monstrosity. >_< Anywayz, the P90x I’m using to workout works. It works very well. It hurts like you wouldn’t believe, I can barely keep up, and I have to modify the hell out of some of the workouts because I have bad knees, but it works. It warns against people who are not fit doing it but since I seem to enjoy punishment, I jumped right in. Don’t be like me.

Right now I am reading Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. Uhhmmm… I’m gonna withhold my full judgment till I’m completely done with the series (I’m midway through the third one now, they’re fast reads) but I’ll say first off I find the lack of consent completely disturbing. I understand what it means to be a complete slave but these are young men and women given to the royal court by their parents who have no option at all to say "Gee, I don’t think I enjoy being raped in to submission by the kitchen staff. I think I’d like to go home." Just… Wow.

These days, I’m back to working on "Greenhouse." Better get back to it then! 😀

atthequillsmercy

Who does she think she is?

Who indeed!

I plan to watch that documentary tonight and reading the promos and looking at books along the same lines and it’s got me thinking: I don’t see much on women who have kids, work full time, and THEN try to cram their creative outlets in any spare few seconds they can find. Not that I’m the type to go scraping at new frontiers or look down on stay at home moms who try and fit their art in around their kids, but working full time with kids AND striving to keep your creative fire is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Who who the hell do I think I am? Ballz out, I want to say, "Whoever the fuck I want, bitchez!" Ahhh, if only life were that simple. First off, I LOVE my job. I don’t want to quit. In fact, the thought of quitting my job to pursue my dream is shooting myself in the foot. Librarianship is PART of my dream. It helps me be who I am as much as writing and drawing so why the heck would I give it up? And d00d, all the books I can get my grubby little hands on for FREE! I’d be stupid to give this up. Second, I don’t DO stay at home mom. I practically went batshit crazy on maternity leave and that was even with the hope of going back to work. You think the Lenni is crazy NOW, she’d be Yellow Wallpaper crazy under the yoke of housewifery. Other women can do it, I can’t. I like having a career. It makes me feel independent and useful.

I get a LOT of questions from other women in my life asking me how I was able to complete a novel, start another one, write a bevy of short stories, keep a full time job, have a side business, draw, and all the while being around the kid enough for her to still remember what I look like. And I have no idea. To try and figure that out (and as a cheap gimmick to pry more blog posts out of me) I’m starting Mommy Monday. The lovely trials and tribulations of how the bloody hell I manage all this with out being on mood elevators or booze.

There are many times in my life where I really just sit and wonder if there are any other women like me who not only have a Third Shift; but a fourth or quite possibly a fifth. If you find any, point them the way here. I’d certainly love to know who they are.