Making it Work

As you know, I work at a community college, and while I do teach part-time in addition to my full-time responsibilities, I do not have summers or breaks off.  I'm a 12-month employee.  This week is spring break which means all students and full-time faculty are off.  It also means that the childcare center that Ben goes to is closed. Since it's a college childcare center, they are only open during the semesters when classes are in session.  So, those of us who work year round are forced to find alternate care for the breaks.  I spent three weeks arranging childcare for Ben for this week.  I had each day carefully planned out and an arsenal of babysitters lined up to hang out with my funny 2.5 year old.  But, as is the case with these kind of plans, they fell apart the first day.  So far, my childcare has fallen through three out of four days this week.  This means that I have had to leave work early and/or take time off so that I could be home with Ben.  You know, because it's frowned upon to leave a 2.5 year old home alone.  Don't get me wrong, I always love an opportunity to take a day off to spend time with my kids.  It's my favorite thing.  However, it's tough when it happens over and over again.  Luckily, I have a really understanding, family-friendly boss.

Having to leave early and take time off also means that I haven't been able to run since Sunday.  I'm down to the last few weeks of half marathon training and I really need to get in four solid runs each week.  That's just not going to happen this week.  I am going to run on my lunch hour today and tomorrow and then do my long run on Sunday, but that's all I'm going to have time for.  Saturday is my swimming day.

I love my job and my family and I feel really blessed to be able to do something I love that offers a bit of flexibility.  However, it's weeks like this that make me feel completely overwhelmed as a working mother.  It can be so tough to find the balance between career, mothering, marriage and self.  Honestly, earlier this week I had a mini-breakdown because I was so stressed about childcare issues and work obligations and lack of running and I found myself telling Paul that we need to figure something out because this schedule just isn't working.  But, you know what, today is a new day and I feel better about the whole thing.  I know that I can do this, even when there are weeks that feel like too much.  I just have to be committed to making it work.