Digging in My Heels

Next week I will be attending orientation for school. The following week, I will start classes AND simultaneously start working substantially more hours at work. I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed; the increased income will be very welcome, but things will be enormously more hectic. I used to handle busy-ness pretty well, but I haven't really been busy since Dutch has been around, and I'm having a hard time imagining how busy my life is going to be. The biggest effect parenting has had on my day-to-day life, as I've mentioned before (frequently!), is that I get a lot less Selfish Time. Days when I feel really worn out, I can't be surly and lazy and fall on the couch with a trashy book and a dinner of crackers-and-cheese. I still have to be reasonably reasonable, and make sure that Dutch eats a reasonably decent meal, gets a reasonable amount of family attention, gets reasonably clean and goes to bed at a reasonable hour.

Soon we will begin the first week of what I anticipate will be several years of coming home feeling really worn out, and every evening I will still have to be reasonable. For the moment, I'm chalking it all up as character-building.