First week in, 2010

If I'd had any sense at all I would have taken a day off this week. Two weeks off work and then a full week back is well night on exhausting. Especially when my rapidly stretching self is just not used to sitting for long periods of time in an office chair. This evening, I have the uncomfortable sensation that the skin underneath my ribs is stretching which -- duh! -- it is, but the knowledge of the stretching is almost as uncomfortable as the stretching itself.

I remember this from last time, just as I remember the discomfort of same, the constant congestion, the stiffness / waddliness of sitting long periods, and the need to heave my larger self up from the floor or whatever other surface of things I happen to be on -- car seats, sofas, beds, toilets, etc. Not to mention the pokiness of a child flailing around in my lower abdomen, startling me with unexpected jabs to my bladder and causing me to suddenly realize with an urgency that I need to visit the bathroom, and then just as suddenly realize it's not true, it was just a foot poking at me. It's the sort of thing you kind of forget in a way, but which rushes back with alarming familiarity.

I spent part of work today planning out my vacation days for this year and for the following year's return to work; I have 32 days to spend this year, and although the fantasy of my using every single last one starting around the beginning of March, I am alas aware of the fact that I need to save at least some for the very likely possibility that my child won't get daycare for when I need to return to work. However, I did plan out two weeks at the end of April to sit about in my full term discomfort, and for mat leave to start May 1, for a due date five days later. And I'd just like to let you know that I now have 71 days of work left.

You'll know it's getting bad when I start counting down the hours.