Whiplash

Today I went to work....Going back to work after being home with the girls from 3 days (Friday, Monday and Tuesday) is kind of shocking (hence the title). I enjoyed my time with them all day for 3 days so much. I really love hanging with them when I'm not totally stressed out and thinking about the 30 million things I need to do at work. If I didn't work, I'd make a great stay-at-home-mom... But if I didn't work, I think I might be a little depressed, so I might not actually make a great one. I think, just working a little less is what I need.

At work: I was unstressed when I arrived, but since I only got 2.5 hours there, I left with a lot of work still to be done and lots of thoughts that needed me to think about them. I was very stressed.

I have so much work to do before our trip. I'll be checking in every day from our trip, but I do have to get some things done before I go (I have to do one writing thing tomorrow).

For the next year, my goal is to take one day a week off and just hang with the girls. I will still work ~20 hours a week. I'll plan to be in the office for long-ish days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we'll see if it works or not. I really hope I can do it. It's going to be hard though. Sigh. Deep, deep sigh. (It's the class that is complicating things, but I want to do the class!!!! Argh!)

While I was at work, I was in a meeting about my favorite project almost the whole time... For 1.5 hours, we spent time discussing an idea, converging on the next steps, and starting to budget. In the last 15 minutes of the meeting, we changed directions completely and left with an entirely different plan than we had when we started the meeting.... The plan we ended with is one we had started with back in February.

Back in February, we didn't think we could find a funding agency for our idea.... We think we have now. We liked the plan then and we still like it now. We know a lot more about what this plan will mean for us. The plan that we had when we started the meeting involves a lot of things we don't know much about. It is a lot more ambitious. It was very interesting to a funding agency so we pursued it.

It feels good to be back thinking about the first plan, but we don't know if it's a slam-dunk or not. We need a slam-dunk. We need more funding. We'll know more in the next week or so.