My last week on mat leave!

Wow, did that sneak up on me. Although to be honest, I do feel like I've been off forever and ever. In the legal word, six months may as well be forever anyway. Waaah! Hold me! 

Seriously, though...I actually am looking forward to most aspects of being back at work, but also apprehensive. Most significantly, the landscape of the world has changed immeasurably. Our biggest clients are investment banks, which I'm told no longer exist. Whoops. And on a more micro level, I really wonder how long it's going to take to dust off my atrophied legal skills. What if they never come back at all? What if I spend my days staring at my computer with Jumperoo music playing a continuous loop in my head? What if I open my mouth to speak at a meeting but accidentally end up blowing a raspberry?

Okay, okay, and lest you throw up your hands in despair and write me off as the worst mother who ever existed, I am a little apprehensive about daycare for Piglet too. Not so much because I worry about how she'll be treated or anything, because I have every confidence in the facility she's going to, but just about how the change will be for her. If she's anything like her ma, she'll love the stimulation and new faces. But of course, in the last couple of weeks I've started to notice her acting a little more like a mama suck, even to the point where she'll wail when left alone with daddy. Luckily, this tends to only happen when she's crabby to begin with. And hell, who knows, maybe daycare will send her back all fresh and improved. Hah! Maybe she'll sleep and eat beautifully for them and never scream and always share! Maybe they can teach her to load the dishwasher and mop the floors too! :whistle:

My biggest fear is that this change will hit me like a ton of bricks in terms of trying to balance everything. I mean, realistically, now I'll have to do everything I do now, PLUS a full time job. (And yes, I'm going back flex-time for the first few months, but that's still pretty much a full time job since I have to bill 38 hours a week!) The flex-time schedule will probably help in the ramping up to full speed aspect of the transition, but it also means less money, which means less flexibility in spending on things like takeout, house cleaning, and outsourced laundry. It was tough to know whether it was the right decision to make...like, should I take this massive paycut if it just means that I have to devote more time to domestic drudgery? We shall see how it all shakes out!