Quack. Quack.

Well, here it is, the first post of my new blog. I am officially eight days away from being a SAHM (Stay-At-Home-Mom to the uninitiated). Here I sit at my desk at work trying to wrap up the loose ends and projects that I'll be passing on to other members of my team. In reality, there isn't much left for me to do anymore -- I've been handing off assignments for a couple of weeks now and not taking on new ones. So, while I have a few hours of work to do each day, I definitely don't have enough to fill up a full work day. I am officially on "lame duck" status. Quack. Quack.

Yesterday I skipped out early to go shopping at Anthropologie. As luck would have it, they were having a sale. So, of course I proceeded to buy $600 worth of sale (and some non-sale) items. Yikes. Not sure how I managed that. Now that I am going to be among the unemployed, I am going to have to pare down the intensity and frequency of my little shopping trips.

It's a little weird to think of myself without a regular paycheck. I've been getting paychecks since I was 16 years old. Hell, over summer vacations in college I often juggled two, sometimes three jobs. I worked all through graduate school, too. And here I am at 34 years old with a kid and two mortgages about to divest myself of a paycheck. I've never really felt guilty about how much money I spend since I have always earned my own money. But, now I'll be spending the money my husband earns. Weird. I wonder if I'll get an allowance?!? Hah!

Honestly, though, I have been pretty lucky. I work for a well-known dotcom company that has afforded me the opportunity to do this. My husband and I have been fortunate enough that we can realize the plans that we created when we first got engaged -- to be able to afford to live on one income while one of us stayed home to raise our kid(s). Okay, a lot of it was luck, but at the risk of ringing my own bell, I have to say that I've also worked my ass off to get to this point. I don't want to mention the company's name while I am still working here, but it at times has sucked the very life out of me. It's an amazing place that folks read about in the press all the time -- the perks are not to be rivaled. But, the place takes its pound of flesh in return. Before my daughter was born, I worked long hours, worked at home during the evenings, worked on weekends -- basically the typical dotcom Silicon Valley lifestyle. Once I came back to work after maternity leave, the schedule was even worse as I tried to divide my days among two jobs: motherhood and corporate.

But, I don't have to cover all the ground now. I guess I'll have some time to expound on my experiences as a working mom. In the meantime, I'll go back to my email and try to kill time before I can reasonably leave for the day. Quack. Quack.