This April, I will have been at my office 5 years, making it my longest running job to date. I’ve worn a lot of hats in the past…I’ve been a grocery store bagger, an animal care taker, a line dancing waitress, a surgery assistant, and a hair stylist. I’ve worked with botox and pimples, burgers and beer, poop and fleas, and a disgustingly perverted old man with bloody gums and a scabby bald head (seriously, I could write an entire book about that a-hole). I’ve worked in a yogurt shop, a gas station, a kid’s clothes store, a post office, a pizza restaurant, a seafood restaurant, a dermatologist office, the mall, and a Hallmark store for 1/2 an hour before I quit, and I’m sure I’m missing a few or 10. And if someone would have told me back in high school, or college, or probably even just 5 years ago that I’d be working in a commercial real estate office training agents on computer software, doing admin work, answering phones and actually enjoying it, I probably would have thought you were nuts. Up until 5 years ago, I didn’t know what commercial real estate was, let alone the fact that there are lots and lots of people out there buying and selling CarMaxs and Walmarts and banks and and churches for millions and millions of dollars.

I happened here on a whim. I was living in my own apartment in the city, Albany Park to be exact, an apartment that by most people’s standards was pretty nice – 2 bedrooms, 2nd story with balcony, hardwood floors, courtyard – if only it weren’t for the bed bugs that infested my couch through the floorboards, or the burn holes that suddenly appeared on my patio chairs complete with little baggies that looked like they had been licked clean, or the person that was shot to death on the corner, or the prostitute I watched get arrested in broad daylight in front of my building, or being dropped off in a friend’s car in the alley behind the building where some really sweet man decided it would be good fun to run up and bash the back window in with a baseball bat and then take off running while I was left chewing on little pieces of glass in between my teeth…I’ve learned a shitty neighborhood does not a nice apartment make. But I was broke and I could afford it and I didn’t have to answer to anyone and it was all mine! Plus I had 3 locks on my door and 2 terrifying watch dogs that would hurt, maim, and kill if necessary, so you know, I was all good.

When I was living in that apartment I couldn’t afford internet and cable…ah but I could afford bunny ears for my tv, although much like the neighborhood, free endless marathons of Bonanza do not a good bargain make. But I survived it. Hey, if I was ok living between a Crafty Beaver, a shady carpeted bar with boarded broken windows, an Advance Auto, and a liquor store with flashing neon lights, what’s a little life without cable? I enjoyed hours of playing human-tv-antennae standing in the middle of my living room and ignoring the strange looks coming from the doggies while I put both arms and maybe a foot up in the air and bent body parts at different angles to get the tv picture a little less fuzzy. Of course it would only be good for a few minutes on particularly windy days before a light breeze outside would blow in through the window (no air conditioning of course) and cool me off while simultaneously altering the picture so bad that the 2 seconds of static noise were deafening. I’m happy to have grown up in the pre-digital age, otherwise I wouldn’t know what I was missing…

So there I was living on my own, doing hair at the Lincoln Park Ulta Salon, where full-time was 30 hours and seemed awesome while un-awesomely altering the number of zeros at the end of each paycheck, and I was barely getting by, sometimes not getting by at all without a guilt-filled phone call to my dad which was the last thing I wanted to be doing by the time I turned 30. So at 29 and 3/4ths-years-old, I decided to take a shot in the dark and start applying to more secure, less commissiony jobs on careerbuilder. I think I sent my resume out to every job that mentioned health insurance, salary, and paid vacation time and I got a few calls back, one of which ended up being from a recruiter who had posted one of the ads, something I didn’t even know was a possibility. And after finding out that the recruiter was there to not only quiz me, prep me, and practically dress me, but they would also be getting paid 1 year’s worth of my salary by whatever company hired me, I knew it was in their best interest to get me the highest possible salary they could negotiate for me. Um, yes please. So I interviewed, someone took a chance on me and here I sit still really enjoying my job 5 years later.

But this past Monday (President’s Day) and Tuesday (no babysitter) I got to enjoy being home with my little one despite the fact that she is currently battling her second cold right now, complete with a sheer volume of snot I didn’t know was possible and a frustratingly inconsolable fussiness, and it helped me realize that I’d give it up for a second if I could stay home and be with her everyday. I do so desperately want to be home with my baby and I can’t and it really sucks big balls. I miss her so much when I’m not with her, yet on the flip side maternity leave taught me that I’d probably go crazy if I didn’t work outside of the home at all. Plus when you factor in the three of us on my health insurance, the mortgage, my car payment and just enough credit card debt to pop a little bead of sweat out of my forehead when I look at the total every month, stay at home momma just isn’t an option for me.

Just look at that face, she’s saying, “mama, daddy’s so got this but I’m so excited for you to come through the front door…”

So for now when I pull into work I’ll put on my office hat and smile at the 10 pictures of my baby and my hubby that I have surrounding me at my desk and I’ll drink coffee out of my baby’s face on a mug and I’ll miss her so desperately my heart will ache but I’ll keep on chugging along and kicking butt. And when I get home I’ll pull up to my safe comfy house and I’ll throw my office hat into the trunk of my car and lock it up tight to be forgotten about until the next morning and I’ll put on my momma hat with gusto and keep on kicking more butt because out of all the jobs I’ve had, momma is by far my most favorite.

And until I win the lottery, I’m gonna keep on trying to make sure life doesn’t pass me by so fast.

to this…

Knowing now that Scott and I can install a ceiling light complete with shiny new dimmer switch without electrocuting ourselves or burning the house down, I’ve been on the hunt for an ugly used chandelier that I could makeover for our bedroom because right now we have a flying saucer…

So we need something not too big for fear of a concussion hazard when sitting up in bed in the dark. We need something less of a spotlight, more of a soft romantic glow. I found a few on Craigslist but none of them were really worth the drive out to wherever they were, especially the one from the weird guy that emailed me back 5 times in 3 hours asking if I was still interested. I planned on scouring thrift stores in the hopes of finding something truly hideous that I could make pretty but haven’t made it out yet. I swear, it’s like this itch in the back of my head just craving the turning of someone’s junk into my pretty little treasure that no one else can say they have. For some reason it’s so much more fun than just going to a store and picking out a light that hundreds of other people have, too. So with a plan but no rush, I figured I’d eventually stumble upon the light that was meant to be mine. And lo and freaking behold, I was at dinner at my parents house last night and they decided it was time to redo their dining room and the first thing they did was replace the chandelier.

Fate, I tells ya.

So now I’m on the hunt for some inspiration. I want to go black. I want lots and lots of sparkly beads. The old chandelier is pretty basic, just 5 arms with the bulbs pointing up, so I may have to somehow add some structure to it. These inspirational pics have my brain all dizzy with what could be….

I’m heading back to my parents’ to pick up the fixture today and a run to Michael’s for some beads, and I’m hopeful it isn’t too tall for the room. We shall see! So excited.

Or click here to watch my crappily edited video.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again… I hate unsolicited advice. Hate it. Loathe it. Despise it. I don’t want it, I don’t give it, and if someone gives me advice that I didn’t ask for, I assume it’s because they think my way is the wrong way and their way is the right way and I will completely tune them out and start humming 80′s sitcom theme songs under my breath because la la la I can’t hear you and it’s much more fun than listening to someone else tell me I’m wrong.

Mature, I know.

I do believe that I’ve become such an advocate against advice not asked for for good reason. #1) I really don’t like to be told I’m wrong. #2) if I need help I’ll ask for it and if I’m not asking, I’m not needing.

I also think in a lot of situations, there are different ways of doing things that will all eventually lead to the same outcome, making your way and my way both right even if they’re different. Take, for example, my mom and I driving to the same destination. My mom won’t make a left turn unless there’s a stoplight there. I will, however, turn left without a stoplight. So while she’s turning right then right then right again to get around the block to go past her destination so she can double back to it, I’ll sit twiddling my thumbs for 10 minutes at an intersection waiting for my window of opportunity to turn, waiting for somebody, anybody? to let me cut across lanes of oncoming traffic. And in the end, my mom and I will end up at the same spot getting there 2 different ways. It doesn’t make my way right because it was a more straight approach or her way wrong because she took the scenic route ’cause you know what? Her way is the right way for her and my way is the right way for me.

This tangent of mine is leading somewhere, I promise.

I have a bunch of parenting books, none of which I bought – they were all given to me by well-meaning mommy friends but I haven’t read any of them, haven’t even cracked the spines. And if parenting books are your thing and you’ve found them to be great resources and totally helpful, then I’m happy because parenting books are quite clearly the right way for you. For me though, these books that have been staring me down from the corner of my bookshelf have kinda felt like one person’s advice that I never asked for, all written down for me in a pretty little bound package by some author who thinks he/she can raise my child better than I can and I don’t like that. I don’t care how many MDs and PhDs and whatnots they have after their names. In general, when it has come to baby behavior and breastfeeding and how to cut baby nails and what lotion to use and when to stop swaddling and when to start solids and how much should she be eating and specific baby milestones at specific baby ages, I’ve either relied on my instincts or her signals, asked our pediatrician, or watched her grow and roll over and sit up at her own pace without worrying about keeping up with the baby Joneses.

But this past week, our little angel sleeper who has been sleeping through the night since about 2 months (don’t hurt me), started waking up – first once, then twice, then 3 times a night. First night it was fussiness. The next night it was crying. And the next night turned into 3 full-on scream sessions of bloody murder. And it’s teething, I know this – my instincts and her signals are telling me so – I can tell her mouth is hurting, she’s hitting herself in the chin and spitting out her pacifier that she’d normally find a way to keep sucking on while eating if I’d let her, and drooling like a faucet like when her first 2 teeth came in 2 months ago.

But then something happened. My interrupted sleep brain had me second guessing myself and wondering if dear God, maybe my baby is suddenly just a horrible sleeper and it will never get better. So I did it, I cracked my first parenting book, Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, a book that 7 months ago a mommy friend gave me and said I had to read because it will blow my mind to smithereens and seriously change my mother-effing life.

And holy crap, this book is so not for me, it royally pissed me off. It told story after story of awful mommas doing unthinkable things like holding their babies and hugging them and feeding them when they wake up hungry and rocking them to sleep and soothing them when they cried! Oh dear Lord, the humanity. It said I am doing it wrong wrong wrong by doing those things. But here’s the thing – I don’t think I’m wrong.well the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum… Without going into detail, this book went against everything my gut has told me to do since pushing this baby out of my body. what might be right for you might not be right for sooooooooome… And according to the author, I’m in big big trouble because I am a horrible enabler and my child will grow up to be a terrible train wreck if I stay on the course that I’ve been on:

“WARNING: If your child does not learn to sleep well, he may become an incurable adult insomniac, chronically disabled from sleepiness and dependent on sleeping pills.”

Well crap, she’s doomed. And that was only in the introduction. I think what pissed me off the most about this was that for such a bold statement, there was absolutely no proof, no credibility, no studies referenced, no sites or scientific data sourced. So after losing 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back, I decided to put the book down, accept the fact that I am not a cry-it-out momma (which again, if it works for you, fantastic! It’s just not for me), hug my child, and let her know I’m here to nurture and soothe and hold and rock back to sleep when she’s crying in the middle of the night, teething or not, despite the fact that she’s going to end up a pill-popping disabled insomniac.

So while I know I just painted this book into such a pretty picture, as I was about to throw it in the donate to Goodwill pile last night, I realized something – someone else may be able to get something out of this thing that I couldn’t because you know what? Parenting books are not the right way for me, but they may be for someone else considering this book is mentioned in almost every online forum thread that has anything to do with a baby waking in the middle of the night. Millions of mommas have found this book helpful, I’m just not one of them. So while I absolutely do not endorse this book, does anyone want it? If so, leave me a comment and I’ll pick someone by next Wed., otherwise it’s going to the thrift store.

I know, I know, I should have been a salesman.