Mother Bored.

I feel like I never talk about anything here but being a mom.

However, I spend 8-12 hours a day many days a week being an "Advocacy and Protection Specialist". I love my job. I really, really do. A large portion of my job is spent ensuring the best quality of care of the people that we work for, reviewing how we are doing internally, checking that we are fulfilling our roles of support and protection from harm.

The best part is proactive. I teach classes to new staff on understanding people's rights...(Good news! ALL OF US have the same rights regardless of our cognitive or physical level of functioning) and spending time in the homes, apartments, townhomes, etc. where people live/play/work... I get to spend time with the men and women that we work for, as well as talking with and hopefully supporting and educating the teachers; who play the most vital role in our agency.

Having worked in that capacity for a long time as well, this is the best part of my job. I hate paperwork. I hate making copies. I hate sitting at a desk. I hate my office hamster. (long story.) I hate typing and filing and reports and deadlines. I just wanna hang out, man.

At the end of the day I just hope I didn't get sucked into the machine. I hope that I do something every day that might make one little bit of difference in the quality of the life someone is living.

It's hard to remember that some days.

Especially Mondays.

Today I had a meeting in which I was expected to present data to the Leader Ship team. Except I'm an idiot on the computer. I could have more easily created a Myspace page for each of the people that we provide services to, than pick apart numbers and sites and this and that and count and type and formulate graphs and pie charts. At 3 in the morning. On the SUNDAY before the meeting.

I wanted to sit down last night with Crayola magic markers and poster board and draw my own damn graphs instead of trying to get Excel to sync with Powerpoint to combine my data with the data of the person who had the job before me and (sigh.) whip up pretty graphs with bars and squiggles and colors and numbers and shit.

All of this must be done in the next two weeks (Stardate 2.4.08) so the Leader Ship team can "analyze trends" and "setgoalsandobjectives" and identify areasinneedofimprovement. La la la la I can't hear you.

And don't tell me to just "click this" and "F7 that" and "Ctrl Alt Destroy" or whatever mojo you computer savvy bastards think you know. I WILL wallow in this mudpit of ineptitude for the next two weeks, waving my cigarette angrily, drinking coffee, occasionally bidding on something on Ebay, checking my email every 6.3 minutes, bitching and moaning and rolling my eyes until 11:59 pm on February 3, thankyouverymuch.

Instead, I could just hunker down and git-r-dun and sum it all up on all levels with my crayola markers and poster board:

Rule #1: Follow instructions.
Rule #2: Be nice to each other.

There.

Well, I never.

Things I swore I'd never do as a mom...

Put ridiculous bows in my daughter's hair.
Whip out pictures of her at every opportunity.
Get excited because she made a poop.
Spend each evening puttering around the house in jammies or sweats.
Watch Real Housewives of Orange County (really, this has nothing to do with motherhood)
Plaster her with big, loud, annoying kisses all the time.
Bore everyone to tears with stories about her latest accomplishments (although this is limited because I never talk to anyone that I don't work with)
Lose touch with friends... I'm just tired and boring! I swear!
Sleep with my baby. (They tell me she's going to suffocate. She sleeps beautifully, but I have crooked back from curling around her carefully to ensure that she is safe, warm, and has a nice pocket of fresh air at all times.)
Obsess over milestones and immunizations and autism and such.

Things I always thought I would do as a mom...
Let her cry it out.
Pump all of her milk myself. I envisioned a huge milk bank in my freezer at all times. Not happening. She gets it fresh from the source from 5 pm til 9 am (7 am if anyone from work is reading this)
Nurse modestly at all times, with a cover-up. Yeah. WhatEVER.
Keep up with all my girlfriends, go out, and have grown-up fun every week.
Only watch PBS if she's in the room.
Stop smoking these damn cigarettes.

Things I'm actually proud of...
Keeping up with house chores much better. (With help from the nanny)
Reading to her every day.
Telling her I love her many times a day.
Stopping whatever I'm doing to play or cuddle 'cause it's way more important right now than anything else.
and last, but certainly not least:
She's five months old today, and I haven't dropped her yet.

Mama's Quittin' Smokin'.