Backyard, Cat, chickens, Coop, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, IKEA, mother, working

Time Flies….

Happy Sunday!

I know it has been a long time since I last posted. I have been very busy with life as a working mother the last couple of months. I have finished the “training stage” of work and actually started working as an intake therapist at a local inpatient psych facility. I really enjoy work. I know that I am making a difference in peoples lives. I am sometimes the first step in someones road to recovery from mental illness. I enjoy the people I work with and even though at times I feel like I don’t know what I am doing I know I have people supporting me that do.

My office at work.

It is hard to leave my children in the care of others each morning though. If I wasn’t finishing my candidacy hours then I would probably not be working full time. But I only get so long to finish my hours and I already took 18 months off to have Alexander. So I pay 2032 dollars a month so that someone else can watch my children. Mamma guilt gets to me when I am picking up my children at 5:30 or later because I couldn’t leave work fast enough. I try not to think about how many hours they spend in other peoples care. I hate that I spend the days that I do have them cleaning, grocery shopping and doing all the things that need to be done to keep this family of five running. Just yesterday I went grocery shopping and then to get my hair fixed for the first time in 4 months. Today I am about to spend the rest of the day putting clean sheets on all the beds, doing all the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and mowing the backyard.

Speaking of the back yard. I got a new coop. The great coop that my husband made me was not big enough for all the birds I have. It is better suited for 2-3 standard birds or 3-4 bantams. So that coop will be sold. The new one I put together myself!!! With power tools and all!! I am so proud of myself and the birds like it. They actually go in the coop instead of trying to roost on my back porch which was becoming really GROSS! Lady Gaga is the only chicken that keeps trying to roost on the back porch still. But she is not the brightest of the bunch. I got this coop at mypetchicken.com.  While it looks nice it was very beat up when I got it and broken in several places that I ended up having to fix. Unless you are handy I would not order from them.

My chickens have been molting and they also got an upper respiratory infection from the Americauna that I traded the rooster Cowboy for. Being a new chicken keeper I didn’t know that hearing a chicken sneeze is a bad thing. Well it is. Very bad. Stopped all of my chickens from laying for over a month. I got my first egg yesterday and that in the nesting box. It was one of Buff’s eggs. I was so happy to see it. I was so scared that they had gotten a line of strep that keeps chickens from laying for ever. Can’t wait for them all to be laying and the beautiful colors that will come with it.

We have had a visitor in our back yard this week. This poor cat looks like its hind quarters have been saved. Also it is hard to see in this pic but it’s tail is either dislocated or broken. I’ve been letting it eat our cat food. It has been getting cold at night and I can’t think of not helping him grow his fur in by feeding him some good food. 

 Alex and his baby. We got that baby in IKEA in Iceland this summer when my mother died. He didn’t show much interest in it then but now he walks around and hugs on it and kisses. It also sleeps with him at night. Poor Alex has had pneumonia and a double ear infection. He has been a trouper about it too. He almost had to go to the hospital last weekend but we got pediatric home health to come to the house instead. He was still drinking and eating fine so I didn’t see a point in stressing him by putting him in the hospital. 

child, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, introvert, Job, Parenting, therapist, working

Heigh ho heigh ho it’s off to work I go!

I’ve been a little quite around here and I’m sure you all understand with my mother passing away and all. But there are other reasons as well. Since even before I had children I have wrestled with the idea of how to be a good, working mother. Because in my mind for some reason you couldn’t be both. But I have a calling. Really two callings. I desperately wanted children and I am a good therapist. Puzzling the two together for everyone’s benefit has proven to be hard. Especially with the strict criteria to become a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC). To become an LPC in Oklahoma I have to finish 3000 hours of candidacy under the supervision of another licensed counselor.  To earn your hour you have to finish at least 20 hours of work a week and they have strict restrictions on what they call work. This fall, I planed on working for a friend of mine that is starting her own agency and build up my client base slowly so that my kids wouldn’t have to go to daycare full time until maybe after Christmas. But things were not adding up so I had a decision to make. Find another job or stay home for another year with my boys.

When I had to go home to Iceland for my mother’s funeral in July it threw our finances for a loop. We would have had to tighten our belts even further for a while to make up for the financial hardship that trip put on us if I were to keep staying at home. Also since I had already started working towards my 3000 hours I have to finish for my candidacy as an LPC in 2012 I only have 5 years to finish them or I would have to reapply and start over again.

Last time I worked I made the mistake of working under contract and under circumstances that were causing me to become very ill which in return lead me to have to quit working. I decided I would not be bullied into taking clients I didn’t think I was equipped to work with again and that I would never again have to put forth so much effort for so little pay unless I wanted to. I was a therapist scorned after I quit my last job because of medical issues. Even started thinking about giving up on the profession since everyone I talked to told me that the only jobs out there for people still finishing their candidacy hours were those types of jobs. The ones you feel used an abused after when you dragged your emotionally worn out soul back to your family.

I believe that the most important thing for a therapist is self care. To be kind to one’s self and take care of body and soul. I believe that employers of therapists need to impose self care on their staff. That there should be at least a week and a half of vacation days each year that the person has to plan in advance to actually take a vacation and not to take care of their sick kids or go to a Dr’s appointment. That gentle relaxation in the morning before the work day starts is mandatory. As a European I think most companies in the USA treat their employees poorly and don’t understand how important it is for the employee to take a vacation from work. OK enough about that….. back to what I really came here to talk about.

I GOT A FULL TIME JOB!!!! I had this urge to check out a local agencies website and there was one job that I applied for. I decided that it was my Russian roulette and if I got it I would go back to work but if I didn’t get it I would just try hard to save our family money and stay home for another year. When I got the job I was in shock. I go back and forth about how great and crazy it is. I go from telling myself that I am a horrible mother for going to work from my only 11 month old child to telling myself that it will be good for him to be around other children during the day. If you only knew how much I beat myself up for looking forward to being around adults for 9 hours a day. How much mommy guilt I have about how happy I am when I drop them off at daycare and I hear silence in the car for more than a min. They have been going for 2 days now for a half a day each time and I enjoy the first 3 hours and then I start getting anxious to know how they are doing and if everything is OK. I’m an introvert so I get my energy from quite and being alone. I have gotten little to NONE of that for the past 16 months since my oldest two quit napping and now I look forward to having patches of it here and there.

This new job is a 8-5 job. I will have to drop the kids off at daycare at 7:45 and then be at work at 8. This being 40 hours a week will help me knock out my hours SUPER fast. I don’t have to go to people’s homes to do therapy, which is why I got so sick at the other job, and it is just doing intake and testing. So I decide if the person needs the services that are offered at the location I am at or if that person needs different accommodations. I only work with adults and 16-35 year old’s are where I do my best work. I get to work in an office environment and I am just super excited all around. But then the mommy guilt comes to haunt me.

Working mammas, how do you do it? How do you leave your kids with strangers and just go to work?