Crap.
Crap crap.
I only have 12 days left here, and they just asked me to stay three more weeks. The lady whose maternity leave I’m covering has decided to take her vacation days to stay home longer. Not that I blame her a bit, I certainly wouldn’t want to come back to a crappy cubicle job when there is a baby at home, but now I have to decide whether I should be responsible and work the extra three weeks, or just get out of here as soon as possible.
When I started working here, I remember thinking, “I will never discount my work in the home again.” I’ve felt guilty for staying home ever since I got healthy, feeling that I was being a kept woman and that I was contributing nothing to the world. I felt that staying home when we didn’t have kids was a ridiculous waste. Then I started working full time and watched our lives fall down around us.
I recognize that most people work. Most people find a balance. I do not appear to be capable of this. Consider it another symptom of my poor health, or one of my many failings in general, but when I work all day, I cannot do anything else. I come home at six and I crash. Our house is disgusting, what little food is left in the fridge needed to be thrown out weeks ago, I haven’t cooked anything in months and the garbage from fast food is mounding like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout won’t take it out. I can occasionally manage to wash the clothes but then forget to dry them, or if I’m really on the ball I’ll dry them but never ever fold them so that all of our clothes are in huge snow drifts about the house until one of the cats pees on them and I have to start all over.
Bear’s job has been a nightmare. I wish I could talk about it because HOLY CRAP has it been nuts, but we all know the first rule of blogging is don’t talk about your job. If I get fired from mine it would totally simplify things, but we’d actually like him to keep his. My point is, when he finally gets home at seven, he has nothing left to tend to what I have nothing left to tend to. We are a wreck.
I have friends that I have not spoken to in months. (Bless your heart, shutterbug. Hold on, I’m coming.) (Good Twin, Are you still out there?)
Then we have this big beautiful house that needs a ridiculous amount of work. We’re moving in tomorrow because I just can’t stand this chaos anymore. At this point we have every weekend for the next three years scheduled out with home improvement projects. I wish I was joking. If I told you how many weeping breakdowns I have had over the past month you would think so very much less of me. I just do not have it in me to live this way. I crave order so profoundly that more than a few (cough*dozen*cough) people have called me Monk. I joke about being OCD, but I truly am. And most days I consider it a blessing because I am clean and orderly and efficient. This is the first time in my life where it has actually brought me to my knees.
On the other hand, we have this big beautiful house that needs a ridiculous amount of work. And that takes a whole lot of money. Money that could be provided by three more weeks of work. On the other, other hand, all the money I’ve made so far that I earmarked for furniture has already been spent on stuff we couldn’t budget for: higher than anticipated closing costs, escrow fees, home inspection charges, an entire years worth of homeowners insurance upfront, etc. I have no guarantee that three more weeks of work will actually get me the dining room table I’m pining over and not go to taxes or whatever other miscellaneous charges come up. I may be able to bring myself to work for a dining room table, but paying off taxes is not going to get me out of bed in the morning. I’d rather do without.
And yet even with all this to support me leaving, I’m feeling guilty. Shouldn’t I be productive? Shouldn’t I do something with my life? Does sitting in a cubicle count as something? Should I keep a crappy job just to have a job? Does that make me more worthwhile?
The question in all this pretty much boils down to: Order, or Money? With a sub question of Am I being irresponsible? Cold hard cash is great, but at this particular moment, I don’t know that it’s worth it. This has turned out to be such a beyond crappy year, I think my sanity might just be worth more than a dining room table.