April Already

Frick.
April already. I try not to think about that. The days rolling forward. I have to go back to work in about three months time. All the things I thought I would get done. Write a book. Frick. Paint the upstairs bedrooms. Frick. Join a writing class. Frick.
Although I did paint Gage's bedroom and birth three kittens. Well, I didn't actually give birth to the kittens myself- but I was there. The kittens are now living under my stairs (temporarily relocated after a dog related kitten eating incident) and doing well. It amazes me that cats are innately born with such strong mothering skills. I mean...except for the fact th she let the dog eat one of her babies...that was a slight lapse in judgement on her part... but other than that that cat will leave her babies only for short periods to go eat and take a drink of water, and then she goes right back to them. Sometimes, she'll take a little break for them, but she'll go and stand at the bottom of the stairs, listen to see if they are meowing or not.
It's amazing. If only human mothering were so simple...
It takes a thousand things to run a household. It's not just cooking and cleaning, although there's that, too... but all these little things- like how right now I know that we're running low on laundry soap and cat litter, that Gage doesn't have any matching socks, that Payton needs a dental appointment and Gage is do for his eye exam, that they have a hot lunch next Thursday and I still have to send the permission slip in, that Alex is due for his nine month check in the next few weeks...
These are the things that my husband is blissfully unaware of. This behind the scenes micro management, all of the minutiae that makes this life work.
Anyways, despite all this, the thought of returning to work work does not excite me. Dragging my sleepy babies out of bed in the morning, out in the cold, to go to daycare where surely they won 't get their noses wiped as often as I would prefer, where I wont' be able to sing and dance with them to the Wiggles, where cuddles and kisses and outings to Petland will be a lot more scarce.
In the summer, we sat out in the sun, picnicked in the park, splashed in the splash parks. In the fall, we raked the leaves into a big pile and jumped into it, and the did etchings of leaves at the kitchen table and stuck them all over the walls. In the winter, we made snow angels and went tobogganing and drank hot chocolate. We decorated the tree and a ginger bread house and sang Christmas carols and make snow flakes out of paper and sparkles. In the spring, we splashed through the puddles, paying no attention to how dirty our clothes were getting. We walked the dog along the river bank, laughing as she dragged Payton along.
It's been a good year. I will miss doing this... but I do still have to work. Sometimes I try to think about ways that we could make Geoffs salary work, that if I played with the numbers enough... but still, there's a part of me that does want to go back to work. I think, we could scrimp and save but I that's not what I want. I want to travel with the kids. To move to a bigger house. To someday have a vehicle that wasn't owned by at least three other people, one of which who was (apparently) a really big supporter of CJWW...
Anyways, that's not what I was planning on writing about. But I guess, that's what's been on my mind. All that being said, I know that once I'm back at work for even a day, I'll be fine. Even when I go there to visit or whatever, I always feel so at home there. The smell of coffee lingering in the air. The smell of bleach that hangs in my office. And when I'm there I have something that I don't have here, which is something- maybe like authority?? When I'm here I could argue for half an hour about whether you should or should not wear a jacket outside, and if so- a heavy jacket versus a light jacket- but at work it's all different.
I should be going now.