Monday Morning…

I think, until I sat down to write this, I didn’t quite realise the enormity of what’s happening next week. As of Monday, our lives change completely.

Monday is the day that I start my new job.

I know I worked up until April of last year, but that was three days a week, 9.30 til 2.30. It fitted around Sausage’s nursery and I had four full days a week to spend with my girl. My new job is 34 hours a week, 9.30 til 5.30 (except Fridays when I finish at 4.30), which means I get to drop Sausage at school and by the time I get home I won’t have seen her for nearly 9 hours. That’s a LONG time for me to spend away from her. I’m not even going to start talking about the guilt or I’ll never stop.

The thing is, I realise I’m very lucky. A lot of people simply can’t afford to go back to work as even with an extra income they still won’t have enough to cover childcare. Because Husband works from home, he’s able to collect Sausage from school which means we won’t need any childcare. And quite frankly, in the current financial climate*, I’m lucky to have found a job at all, let alone one that pays decent wages and is flexible enough to let me come in after I drop my kid off at school.

I’m excited about my new job, I’m ‘Payroll Manager’ now, as opposed to ‘clerk’ or ‘assistant’ and once the lady who’s training me has retired in April, I’ll be running the whole department. It’s a great opportunity for me and my ten-odd years of experience in the same field are finally paying off, in title and pay rise.

But I still have a sinking feeling. A bit like what it must be like for those ‘celebs’ (I use that term with the full quotient of irony that it deserves) on that diving show ‘Splash’. Standing on the edge of the high-diving board, toes dangling over the edge, waiting to jump and not knowing what it’s going to feel like when they hit the water. 

We’ve been lucky (there’s that word again…) since Sausage was born, I’ve been able to stay at home, do some social media work to keep me in extravagant Barry M nail varnish purchases (it’s like a sickness, honestly) and generally take things easy. I feel like my life is about to kick up a notch and involve a whole lot more rushing round than I’ve been used to since, well, since before I buggered off to Asia and got married. But that’s a story for a different day.

I’m sure I’ll be updating you all on how things are going, but for now, I’m going to climb down off the diving board and try to relax before Monday morning, when I become a fully-fledged Working Mum.

Wish me luck!

*Is anyone else sick to the back teeth of sentences which contain the phrase ‘in the current financial climate’? YAWN.