On Juggling

Responsibilities, that is, no juggling balls here!

I've started back at work (very) part time in the past two weeks, with Baby E in tow. I started back with good intentions of not committing to working days unless the night previous Baby E had let me sleep sufficiently to make me feel rested and able to withstand not only the drain of the work hours, but the evening hours as sole parent at home (the mister is on night shift - eww!). However by the end of the first day I'd realized that coming back meant taking on certain responsibilities at work, which unfortunately had rather set deadlines associated.

I really enjoy my job and the responsibilities that come along with it, but I hadn't really given much thought that after this pregnancy, unlike after my pregnancy with Little M, when I was still very new to the office, that my tasks upon coming back to work would be so much more important to the organization. Luckily in most of what we do, time isn't really that important, so I've been able to push the deadline off for a week. But it is still a bit more pressure to come in on a regular basis to get work done than I had anticipated this first month back having! However, since I'm only going in 2 days a week, and even on those days only for 3-4 hours, I really can't complain!

Along with adding back in working outside the home, I'm having to balance that with decreasing things done around the house, especially on days when the baby and Little M are fussy or needy. I'm having to decide what around the house and property I can let go of, or do more efficiently, so that the important things still get done, I get some hours in at work, and most importantly, I stay rested and happy so I'm a good mama! Being a grown up sure comes with a lot of responsibilities I never imagined when I was a kid :)

I'll share a garden update this coming week, just have to find the time to take some pictures of how everything is growing. The raspberries have been a hit the past week or more, we've been bringing in a large bowlful every other day from the lower garden to freeze, and enough for fresh eating from the side garden daily. I'm thinking we won't need any more space for raspberry plants in the side garden once we expand it, because right now we've got more in the freezer than I think we can turn into jams, smoothies, and frozen snacks!

Well hello there!

When I wrote my last post (ahem) 2 weeks ago or thereabouts, and included 'slowing down for winter' in the title, I really didn't anticipate slowing down quite this much on the blogging front... But, life happens, and here it is 2 weeks later! Nothing really to report on the home front, it's been cold, and wet, and wet, and cold. And we haven't really been doing all that much at all!

Luckily the forecast is finally looking a bit more promising on the white stuff front, and hopefully soon we will be sitting cozy under our winter blanket of snow. This in between time is hard for me, all the outside chores that could be done now but could wait until spring, the damp cold, the dreary days. Snow makes everything just so much cheerier in my books.

In the meantime, I'll try and get in as many hours of work as I can manage (the office has really gotten slow in the past month, I've been lucky to get 3 billable hours a day lately, which hurts the budget (aka mortgage payoff) just a wee bit). We've been managing to stay pretty much on top of the housework, Little M and I, although the length of the house is spread with the lego's, toys, and blankets that almost 3 year old productivity entails!

Well, that's likely it for updates, hopefully it won't be quite so long until my next post here, and even more hopefully the next one will include glorious snow pictures! (we'll see - fingers crossed!)

Office organizing

Where I work, I share a rectangular office space with another lady. I have my corner by the door, and she has the other end by the window. We ended up with our spaces in the little rectangle by default - her large L-shaped desk would only fit against the far corner, otherwise it would block the door. So my little rolltop hand-me-down from my in-laws got the corner space by the door. Less private, less space, but I get to keep my eye on the front door, who comes in, who goes out, etc. So I really like it :)

What I haven't liked (for the past 2 years we have been in this office space), is how my chair back has ended up being my dumping ground for the numerous coats I seem to accumulate in the office. Some are necessary, some are at the office because I don't need them at home and so instead of giving them away I keep them at the office, you know, just in case I need an extra one day...

 It was getting so that they were always falling off and getting on the floor. So one day last week I decided that instead of getting rid of some so there weren't so many on my chair, the solution was to get some of those stick on the wall hooks that could be removed easily later without leaving a mark. Yup, I went ahead and ordered me some 3M hooks and this week they came! I arranged them on the wall, waited the one hour the instructions say to wait before hanging things on them, and tada!

I love how the wall looks so much nicer now, and my chair back is totally bare! Yay! Now I can grab whichever coat I need without doing a juggling act to get it out of the pile. All for about five bucks!

American Fisheries Society Conference

This week Little M and I are over in Seattle at the American Fisheries Society conference. It is funny where we end up in our jobs. Going through undergrad and grad school I had no interest in fish whatsoever, to the extent of not taking a single course that was remotely fish related (apart from a second year aquatic ecology class that was the only other distance ed class that I was remotely interested in to fill out my schedule of online classes during the one summer semester I took). So it is strange to me now that not only am I at the AFS meeting, but I am technically employed as a fish biologist.

Realistically I rarely do anything biology-related, and when I do, it is either overall ecology or habitat work, or specific herpetology work (although usually frogs not snakes!). More often than not I am working on contracts, or surveying topography, or assisting with ditch management... But I do often have to field questions that require more than a basic knowledge of fish, and having a better understanding of the endangered species we work to protect through habitat restoration can only serve to help me to fill my various hats better.

That being said, I have been sitting through these talks and although I am learning so much new and exciting information, and putting faces to names in this field, I do sometimes wish I was instead at a herpetology conference, learning cool new things about snakes. The nice thing about not working in the field that I have a huge passion for is that I can go home and on the weekends go out snaking - when I was actually working on snakes I would get too burnt out to enjoy herping in my off time. And I do really enjoy the work that the group I work with is completing. I love that we are doing really important work (enhancing habitat for endangered species, I mean, how cool is that?), I get to be in the field occasionally, I sometimes get to survey for herps and morph little tadpoles into frogs, and I work with an amazing group of people.

Sometimes I just miss my old herping days is all :)