Confessions of a Working Mom - Part II

(I'm linking up with Sweet Shot Tuesday at My3Boybarians.com because I love the picture of my 3 oldest with their snow gear. So cute.)

Lately I've been a teensy bit stressed. So I wrote the list below (all true, by the way), and after I laughed at myself, felt quite a bit better.

You know you're a working mom (outside the home, to be specific) when -

1 – You get to work, have a heated discussion about a project, feel as though you won the discussion, only to walk away and notice the sugared cereal sticking to your pant leg

2 – Only after coming home at the end of the work day is it pointed out to you that you’re wearing a see-through sweater

3 – Your mind is so preoccupied with other things (book reports, kid’s doctor appointments, what you’re going to make for dinner along with figuring out how to design something for $2 that lasts 20 years and sells for $100,000) that you don’t even look in the mirror long enough to notice item #2

4 – You don’t even care about #2. A missed homework assignment is somehow more important to you than being on public display around your co-workers

5 – At a meeting with your supervisor, your cell phone starts to blare out ‘stuck like glue’ - your daughter’s favorite country song (thankfully better than the ‘save a horse, ride a cowboy’ song that your husband had programmed into the phone so he could embarrass you during work hours)

6 – You’re asked for a pen to sign a document for publication, but when you reach in your purse a diaper falls out instead (a clean one, of course)

7 – You find yourself discussing your baby/toddler’s bathroom habits with co-workers

8 – Your cube-mates can’t remember what you look like without a baby belly and they continue to monitor said belly in case it grows suddenly. This would give them an excuse to call you Octomom. Even though you don't have eight kids, you deal with it, because it's better than the alternative greeting 'How many do you have now? I can't keep up'

9 – Your day starts well before dawn, and you spend fifty minutes searching for various kid-sized socks, hats, shirts (it’s Colt’s blue day, and your daughter has nothing to wear), making oatmeal, pouring chocolate milk, supervising the completion of homework that was brought to your attention 10 minutes before you planned to leave the house – leaving approximately 3.5 minutes to get yourself ready (see item #2)

10 – No matter how early you get up in the morning, you’re always late for work. After all, it’s Not Me’s turn to put away the lunchmeat, mop up the spilled milk, shut the outside door after walking through it (in 3 degree weather, mind you), or shut the sliding van door that you mistakenly thought didn’t need to be automatic. After all, when you first bought the van, the kids fought over who got to shut it.

11 – You spend your lunch break making meal lists and clipping coupons, while various gawkers walk by as if you were a traffic accident. Some whisper 'Octomom' under their breath and others stop to chat about it, but after they whittle away 25 of the 30 minutes you have available with meaningless discussion, you sigh and decide to finish making your meal list later. When you have more time (insert evil laughter here).

12 – Walking through the front door after work requires skills that can only be obtained at a military obstacle course. You have to avoid backpacks, shoes, papers scattered all over the floor, and attention-starved dogs, all while simultaneously hugging three children and carrying your purse, lunch bag, car keys, and a very heavy twenty-month old toddler who will be surgically attached to you the rest of the evening.

13 – You end your day at 12:30 or 1:00am the next morning, because you put off doing the chores until after the kids were in bed and you had more time (see #11). Playing Toy Story memory game is more important than sleep anyway. So is playing with the dragon house, or dressing Barbie dolls.

14 – You get up the next day to do it all over again. However, due to lack of time for chores (see #13), you wind up wearing a shirt with a small kool-aid stain or rip in the arm. And instead of throwing away the sweater mentioned in #2, you throw it in the wash. After all, you can always wear a shirt under it next time if by some miracle you get an extra 30 seconds to get ready because Not Me decided to clean up the mess made by the salt shaker during breakfast. Though you could never figure out who would even try to put salt in a yogurt smoothie.

15 – See #2