Guilt. Yes, you are right. My mother had a birthday this weekend and my husband made the five-hour trip to spend it with her while I stayed home. The totally absolutely utterly honest truth is that I am still struggling to find a balance between embarking on a new career as a 50-something moom (and it is a wonderful career) and spending as much time with my family as I want to.

I was hired a couple years ago by a large corporation that merged with another large corporation in the fall of 2009. After months of not exactly knowing what was going to happen to our jobs, those of us who work on the product that I happen to work on here in this backwater office were told that we were not going to lose our jobs in the foreseeable future. That was very good news but with the merger, our time-off policies have changed a bit. I cannot complain. The first company that hired me had such generous policies that I almost fell on the floor when I heard how much vacation time I had. Our new company is a bit less generous but it is well in line with what corporate America offers cube-workers like me and I certainly cannot complain. If I were a 22-year-old starting out, it would all be great. I would have my whole life ahead of me and could easily build up to having more time off, like I actually did back in my old job.

At my age, I own a house, three vee-hickles, and a couple of pieces of property *besides* the Landfill. I have a child in California and an octogenarian moom five hours away. And many other relatives that I wish I had more time to spend with. I also have a work ethic. Like, I probably could have legitimately taken some sick time off between Christmas and New Year’s. Indeed, my boss kept saying “GO HOME!” every time I coughed. But. It was just a cold. I was coughing. I was fully and robustly ambulatory. I didn’t have a fever. I felt fine except for the damn cough. I had work to do. So I went to work.

Don’t get the dern violins out. I will figure out how to balance this stuff somehow, even if I have to take time off without pay. I’ve done that before and we can (knock on wood) afford that. Again. I have a job. It is a wonderful job. I love the work I do and I am treated well. So many people do not have jobs or have jobs that do not give them sick time or vacation time. I could go on and on but I will stop and count my blessings instead.

Today? Well. I bought that fabric in the pic at Joann Fabrics a couple weeks ago. Mouse and I were in there. I saw that stuff (it’s Alexander Henry) and I was *not* gonna buy fabric that day but I kept going back to it. We got in line at the cutting table and the woman behind us asked, “Where’d’ya get that fabric?” I said something like, “It was in the quilting section but it’s here now!” I bought a yard of it and as it was being cut, the woman behind the woman behind me was asking, “Where’d’ya get that fabric?” As we were walking out, I said to Mouse, “I don’t think that fabric is going to make it back to the shelf.” I kind of wish I had bought more. Anyway, I think I have a new unfinished prodject (intentionally misspelled) in the works.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.