The First Step

Today we got our letter from Kindy that Little Bear will start going full time from the week after easter.

That makes me one step closer to having to work full time.

The next step is to agree to a starting date & full time hours with my work.

The final step will be on 1 May (subject to change but that is unlikely) when I work my first Friday in almost 2 years.

(Of course any mother reading this will realise I am referring to paid work because the hardest work of all is the work we do for free at home).

Interestingly, my first full time week will also be my first time I am away from Little Bear overnight, as I will be travelling to Brisbane for 2 nights with work. I know her Father is very capable of looking after her & Cheetah alone, however I will miss them all very very much. I cannot deny though that I am also looking forward to not having to prepare dinner, or do dishes, or nag children to do their homework & get ready for bed on time. Whatever will I do with myself ?

A mother's work is never done

Today I had a very very busy day.

To start with, I got to sleep in until 7:18am so that wasn't too bad, but it was not indicative of how my day progressed.

I took Cheetah to school at 8:00 & then came home, did some dishes & tidied the house a bit.

Dragon & Mummy McT came around mid morning sometime. We then went shopping - which seems to have become the thing to do on Friday's now. Sometimes we shop just for coffee & a look around. Sometimes we actually have to do it. Today it was a have to!!

We did have an early lunch at the shops which was nice & the kids were actually really well behaved during lunch.

I got home just after midday, gave Little Bear her bottle & put her to bed & then did more dishes, lots of organising & then I did the folding. A few weekends ago, I had a busy weekend (that's most weekends lately, but that one was particularly hectic). Since that weekend, I have managed to get the clothes washed & dried, but haven't managed to get them all folded before I have to go to work. Once I start my working week, my nights are taken up with getting everyone organised for dinner, bed & work/school the next day (this takes most of the evening). Therefore I am doing the folding the weekend after it was washed.

Hopefully now that I have caught up on last weekends washing, I will be able to get all of this weeks clothes washed, dried & folded by Monday. Here's hoping.

Now that all the essential stuff has been done, I am trying to organise the rest of my house ready for when I go back to work full time. At this point, I am expecting to be full time in April & there is only so many Friday's between now & then.

• I have about a years worth of filing that needs to be done - I haven't touched that yet.
• Today I took the first step in organising all my digital photo's on the computer. I made sure they were all saved in the correct folders on the correct computer (we now have 4 computers in our house). I also got rid of the unnecessary copies.
• I still have to go through the photo's, delete the cruddy ones & put the good ones onto CD so that we have a backup copy of them all.
• I have to go through a mountain load of stationery that has come from my cleanup of the rest of the house. I am not sure where I will put it all, but at the moment it is sitting on the floor of the study until I find a home for each bit.
• I want to get something going with our garden beds. At the moment they are just a mass of weeds. I don't think I will get them all planted out by the time I return to work, but I want to have a plan of what plants will go where so that I can get them a few at a time & plant them on my weekends.
• I also want to go through all my old files on the computer, getting rid of all the stuff I don't need or want anymore. I have stuff in dozens of folders split between 3 of our 4 computers (all of which have more than one hard drive in them) which means a lot of unnecessary garbage floating around.

There are also a stack of other odd jobs I want to get done before I return to work.

I have done some of the things I wanted to, like the major cleanup of Little Bear's wardrobe, cleaning out our junk spare room, a stack of sewing (some things that had been sitting there for a year), and other things that will help keep the household running smoothly for a while once I no longer have that day off.

I am not really looking forward to returning full time. In a perfect world, I would probably choose to work 3 days per week, but unfortunately that is not an option. I am finding 4 days a little bit of a struggle sometimes (most times) but if I can get my home organised to a point where I don't have a seemingly insurmountable to-do list, this will make life somewhat easier.

Am I asking too much?