My Old Life

When Jay and I married, I worked full time (plus) for an insurance company. I'd been an adjuster for eight years and was really good at it, if I may say so myself. But it's a stressful job where people threaten to "come down there and shoot you", sue you personally, shout obscenities to you all day and cry hysterically (and occasionally you had to deal with real tragedy that tore your heart out). When we were having trouble getting pregnant, my doctor suggested it could be partially related to my job stress. So we took a huge leap of faith and I quit my job and started an in home daycare. It was about a $30,000 to $35,000 drop in income. But, sure enough, we got pregnant a few months later. For some time, I became a stay at home mom. I LOVED it. It was wonderful to see everything new my daughter did. Having done daycare, I knew what it was like to have your baby roll over, crawl, walk, etc for the first time for someone else, though I always lied to the mom of the baby boy I watched and said he hadn't done it here yet, but looked like he might at any time. I only gave her the heads up because the first two things he did for me, she didn't even notice at home for over a week and I knew he must be doing them because it was constant here. Sure enough, if I told her to keep an eye out, she'd tell me Monday morning that he'd done it all weekend long. Anyway, I loved knowing I was the one seeing my baby for the first time. When she entered 2nd grade, I had to help financially and worked at home as a medical transcriptionist. I hated it. It was stressful and I was lucky to get three hours of sleep a night on weekdays. I did that for about a year until I got laid off as the last one hired (other than the owner's daughter) when she lost a huge account because of another employee's fraud. Then I worked part-time at Rachel's school - first as a Parent Liaison for the Title I program for two years. The second year, I picked up being a crossing guard and a sub for any teacher's aides that were out sick. The third year, I gave up the Title I job, did the crossing guard job for a few months and was a full time TA. It was a killer on my messed up feet, so I dropped the crossing guard job. Alas, it was still a killer on my feet. The school year ended and life here at home was crazy because I had a school year's worth of mess to catch up on. So, what's the point of this post? I'm back at home. I'm just writing, the one thing in this world I absolutely and totally love to do. I can keep my house up. I have my old life back. I don't know for how long, hopefully for good, but I'm enjoying every second of it.