I am NOT freaking out!!!!!

OK, maybe just a little bit.

I have now been home with the kids for two years. It has been wonderful. It has been fabulous to enjoy this time with my children. I will treasure this time in my heart for ever and ever.

And, I am so excited to be going back to work that I can hardly sleep at night.

At the same time, I’m spoilt for choice. I have one job offer on the table. I have keen interest from another source. I have agencies already courting me, and I haven’t even officially thrown my resume into the ring…they just heard through mutual friends that I was thinking about it. I have an opportunity to start my own consulting business and be plenty busy right out the gate.

So many options! And, bonus, none of them suck. But still…which one is best? Consulting solo, no benefits, no security at all, but the potential for making the best balance between bucks and being able to give myself the afternoon off to go to a school assembly? Or working for Da Man as an FTE, for less pay but with paid vacation, 401k matching and health benefits (which I don’t need at the moment, but who knows what tomorrow may bring?)? Or maybe going back to consulting, with the higher paycheck, lower security, few or no benefits and the glorious frenzy of the week or two between projects?

Choices, choices, choices.

Meanwhile, a little voice inside my head is screaming that I am nowhere near ready to be starting this.

My work clothes are a disgrace. My house is so utterly disorganized that I am ashamed to have people over. If they ask me for a paperclip, I’m sunk. I know I have at least two gross of them, but where…um…that’s another matter altogether. I can’t find anything. Tupperware? An entire bank of cupboards dedicated to it, but whether or not a fitting lid or the ‘right’ shape/size can be found is another matter.

How in the world, says the little voice, do you expect us to go to work with such utter chaos reigning in our Tupperware cupboards?! Not to mention the unmentionable state of the built-ins, the closets, the lack of clean underwear and the fact that I have had laundry stacked four feet high on my dresser for approximately the last six months and there is no end in sight and besides all that I have a few dozen other little items of chaos to discuss and…!

I tell the voice to Shut. Up.

I tell it that I have at least one full week of childcare before I’m likely to be galloping out for even an official interview. I tell it that in one week of childcare, I will be more than able to clean up my house, get myself some decent clothing to wear to work and figure out what to do about my hair. Yes, little voice, we do rather resemble a drowned rat. We are also a bit fluffy around the midsection. However, we do not currently frighten children – even those that aren’t our own. So suck it up, and walk it off.

But it doesn’t shut up, or walk off.

It just moves on to fretting about other things. It chatters worse than my four year old, who is currently in the middle of a big time Chatterbox phase.

So hey, if we’re going to start up our own business, well, you remember last time? The way it got to be so damned 24/7 that we were working while on vacation in Mendocino? And the way that clients were over all days of the week because you don’t know how to set limits, especially when you’re being paid handsomely not to do so?

Then again, if we go contract, we’ve got the whole problem of the clients wanting to own us for the duration of the project. They get all pissy if you want to take a Friday off so you can go to a school assembly and so forth. Not to mention that then they do That Thing, where they refuse to either confirm or deny a contract extension and blah blah blah. And then there’s that period between, when you worry like crazy because you haven’t gotten anything yet…and you never dare spend any of the money you make, because You Never Know…

Of course (the voice continues, in spite of my pointed staring at the clock, which is usually saying something like 2:13 a.m. during this conversation), if we take the FTE thing, well! We’re talking a minimum of $25,000 less per year in our pocket! Which considering the high cost of daycare really, really sucks! So maybe we’d want to go contract after all…

Shut.Up.Shut.Up.Shut.Up.

It is as though my brain has turned into a frantic rodent, panting along on a wheel trying to get away from inner demons – keenly aware that it isn’t getting anywhere, but determined to keep trying.

All that clawing is actually causing me to walk into walls due to sleep deprivation worse than anything I ever suffered after the birth of a child. We will not go into the effect this has on my love life, as it crosses well over into the TMI zone. Suffice to say that I think my husband may actually turn to 900 numbers (and worse, I’m not sure I’d blame him!) if I don’t quit trying to debate the relative merits of one form of income generation over another with him in those precious moments between when all the kids are in bed and when we have to get out of bed to deal with one or all of them again. He’d really rather be talking about something…uh…else, right about then.

Also, I am breaking out like a teenager about to go to the prom. If this keeps up, I will feel impelled to spend one of those precious ‘childcare before working’ days at a spa begging the esthetician to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!

Not that this would be a bad thing, necessarily. I could get my eyebrows mowed while I’m at it. I think a mowing would be required before a waxing could be attempted. Like I said. I’ve been home with the kids for two years.

BUT I’M NOT FREAKING OUT!!!!!!

I’m just…pondering the imponderables.

Repeatedly.

All night.

**sigh**

Thank $DEITY for Knitting and Chardonnay. I just finished a lovely pair of lace socks today (I’ll put up pictures once I’ve found the sync cable for the digital camera – see note regarding state of the house and inability to find crap therein above, but here’s someone else’s ) work in a more sensible color), in hot (whooooo-eeeee, are they ever PINK!) pink because that’s what our babysitter said she wanted, and am about to cast on a pair for my Eldest in the same color because she says she wants a pair.

Also, I have decided after many, many sips thereof, that I rather like the Black Swan chardonnay. It is very tasty, and gets more so the more one sips.

So. I’m going to casht ohn a few shtiches onto these, uh, sharp-pointy-thingees here and do a few rounds of shtockinette-shtish.

That oughta settle me down, yessiree, that oughta about do it…

(Tune in tomorrow, for the hung over rant about why one should never try to knit socks while high on imported chardonnay…)