anger and sadness

Lately I have found myself angry and I'm not entirely sure why.

I'm sad about moving, but I understand it's the best thing for my family. and I am also excited about it.

I am very sad about leaving my job. I love my awesome, awesome job. It is such a perfect job for me at this point in my life -- the work itself, the hours, the pay. I am lucky on all 3 counts.

These days I look around my classroom and I wonder if I will ever have a classroom again. I look at my students, my kids, and I care about each and every one of them. I look at them and I think that I have probably learned as much this year from them as they have from me.

As we approach the end of the year I finally feel like I'm part of the team and now I get to tell them all that I am leaving.

It was a dream come true...but I will be moving on.

And there's the rub. Moving on to what? I have to remind myself sometimes that it's to a better life for my family--for my husband, for my son and yes, also for me.

So it is with a small voice here that I say the selfish thought that sometimes echoes shamefully in my head: What about *my* career?

My husband has offered me his full support in whatever I want to do. He is absolutely flawless in his support for me, and I do not mean to ever imply otherwise. We made the decision to leave California together, and I believe we made the right choice.

But I have been teaching w/o a credential here in California where a constant shortage of teachers makes it possible to do so. Unfortunately my research has shown that there is fat chance of finding such an opportunity in Oregon, where there seems to be not a shortage but a surplus of teachers. So I have good reason to believe there is little chance that I'll find something like what I have here.

On top of that, hubby has approached me about the possibility of staying home with the baby and not working at all for awhile...specifically until our little guy can speak more. Hubby's theory being that he doesn't want our son in daycare until he is capable of telling us if something is amiss.

There was a time when I would have loved to hear this. When the baby was 6 weeks old I wept bitterly about returning to work and putting the baby in daycare. Back then hubby had no real concerns about it himself. Things eventually fell into place -- my mother in law retired and offered to watch the baby. I found a wonderful part time job opportunity that paid almost as much as what I could expect for full time work. Everything turned peachy on my job front.

But no more. And now that I have been back to work for a year I don't think I can handle not working at all. It would be one thing if our baby was very new, and life was still consumed with feeding and trying to sleep. But our son is 18 months old now, and more of a handful every day. And I cherish having a few hours a day to be me like I used to be, before there was a baby. I'm a pretty crappy housewife (witness mountain of laundry, dishes, unfiled mail and a basically constant state of household disorder) so it feels especially good to go somewhere else and do something well.

But like my husband, I don't relish the idea of putting our son in the care of strangers. Others do and I know it works fine and there are great day cares out there. But we've never trusted anyone except a Grandma to watch our little guy and it's hard to think about having to.

So there you go -- damned if I don't work, damned if I do.

Well I guess all this clears up why I'm angry.