Summer 2017

The boys just had their last day of school. They had a little graduation that neither of us went to, and Jack was pretty peeved about that, but too bad. I’ll go when he actually graduates from the school, but there’s no need for graduation every darn year. I love their school but this last week of school had about a million parent events, which always crimp us working parents.

They’re spending the first week of summer at Vacation Bible School, and then the two big boys head to Ireland for a whole month with their father. He is teaching a class over there, and so lodging, food, and intra-Ireland travel is covered. All we have to pay for are the boys’ plane tickets, plus the govt-subsidized Irish daycare they’ll attend while the Prof is in class. Truthfully, those costs combined are probably less than we would have paid for (non-govt-subsidized) child care here for that month. So it was a no-brainer to give them this opportunity. Craig and I will stay home. I have to work – as always – and he would not get much out of the trip and would struggle with the change in routine. So he’ll be my little bestie through the four weeks that the biggest boys will be gone.

Meanwhile, through this same month, I will be transitioning to a new job. It’s still at a law firm. We are basically settled here in New Orleans – I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. We own our house and would lose a lot to sell it, I’m tired of moving, I want the boys to have a hometown and not be forced to move a lot like I did as a kid, and we have a great social circle here which I value highly. However, we also pay a lot for private school here, meaning I’m stuck in a law firm job unless and until that changes. I’ve resigned myself to this. I certainly have lost interest in working for this shit-show federal government, not only because they have hiring freezes, vacancies in leadership positions (no head of FEMA yet, godsake, and here come the hurricanes), and the fact that any budget shutdown stops the paychecks. It’s no longer a stable, good solution right now, besides which the prosecutorial direction does not comport with my worldview (to put it oh-so mildly), so my options for a career move are more limited anyhow.

My new firm is New York based, so my hourly bill rate is much higher. This allows them to pay me much, much more than my current firm, which will give us better cash flow and allow us to hire a maid, and let me buy myself a new dress or go out to dinner once in a while without nervously checking the bank account.  I will no longer have to carefully schedule when we can afford to get my hair cut or drop off the dry cleaning – we can just take it when we need to take it. No more coupon clipping for groceries. I’ll be able to breathe. As one associate at the new firm put it – if I’m going to work every weekend of my life, I want top dollar for it. Hopefully this will relieve some of the financial pressure we’ve been feeling, due to the elevated school and housing costs here.

I haven’t given notice yet – this post is a tiny bit risky but the chance of anyone at the current firm having any connection to this blog is slim. I plan to do so as soon as my conflicts check clears – hopefully by the end of next week, it’s taking forever – and then give a two week notice and take a full week off before starting at the new place. The boys will be in Ireland still during all of this, so I’ll have a glorious week absolutely off, alone during the days while Craig is at daycare. I plan to do a few things around the house, like switch the boys’ clothes over and possibly paint some rocking chairs, and I’m also seeing a bunch of doctors (dermatologist, dentist, ladydoc) for routine appointments that I haven’t had since we moved here, because you can’t bill those hours and I’m just barely keeping up on billing. But for the most part I’m planning on relaxing, working out a ton, perhaps taking myself out to a leisurely lunch, reading a book for pleasure. (I can finish Swing Time!) Just what I need to rest and re-charge before launching into a new job, which will have more travel, more stress, needier clients, and (slightly) longer hours.

Meanwhile, the boys will get back from Ireland and then take a few more trips without me. It’s going to be a largely solo-me summer, which is good in the sense that I can bill a lot of time and hopefully impress the new firm, and also not bad for self-care. Since I no longer care how much I bill at my current firm, I’ve been working more normal days and not billing on weekends, and I’ve picked back up my guitar, been playing new stuff on the piano, and running 4-5 miles a day every day (just bought some new kicks, too!) I feel a little bit like I’m coming out of a fog that I basically entered in 2008 when Jack was born. It used to be complete self immolation in service of the children and the job, but lately I’ve been making time for other pursuits, like I used to do before Jack came along. And it’s pretty rad to find that old stuff again. Also, in the intervening 10ish years, the rise of google and the internet and youtube videos makes teaching myself guitar a lot easier. I’m thinking of re-stringing it myself, because the old strings don’t sound so great, and I can just look up how to do it online!!

So that’s spring so far. It’s been stressful with the job transition – I had to go through about a million interviews while hiding it from the current job and keeping up with billing, and then another coworker quit and they didn’t replace her yet, meaning when I leave they are going to be UP A CREEK and that’s made me feel lots of anxiety. But they treated her badly when she left (after TEN YEARS), which made me feel bad for her but less bad for leaving them. Still, I’ll be happy when August 1 comes along, because I know for sure it will all be settled by then, and we’ll have our extra $$$$ and I am buying a new handbag, possibly this one, which will be my only treat but I am super exciting about treating myself after all this impossibly hard work.

OK, off to make this for dinner.  Hopefully I’ll check in again soon, now that my billables don’t matter!!