Hi, guys! Geez, its getting where I check in about once a month right now.

When you're mom to two teens it seems you're stretched farther than ever in all directions. I really wished to have some kinda part time job so I could feel more like the rest of the world and got to see more people than being always caught in the house.

I always felt when you've got kids, it was always a nice balance, the parttime job. To be out in the world socially, doing something that you hopefully got appreciation for and pay to offset the best job in the world with the crappiest benefits money-wise/ sometimes appreciation-wise. But those out of the blue hugs more than make up for it.

So I must be nuts (been accused of that in the past-pre stroke even) that I still love being a mostly at home mom. I've gotten the chance to spend all of the summers with my kids and now school is calling once again. They've really bent over backward making accomodations so that Betsy (all us girls in the office got on really good--even during the crazi-late minute times till school's out back in june) even when its was nuts with work and parents and kids, we'd still have fun, so now they want me to take on a 12-month position as their bookkeeper. Even to the point from now till the start of school which is 5 weeks away, if I can give them even 10 hours a week and get to the usual 20 hours a week once school starts that they want me for it.

Betsy (the other gal) has three younger kids at the school grades1-3 (But she's a nonstroker, not fatigued and full of calm) but I figure (I've got one 8th grader now and I have fatgue) so since

basically Betsy and Laura (A board member who's the big-one in finance) and me (in a small role) basically get to set up a new/improved precident-setting,/role for the accounting/business department for the school -were charter school less than 10 years old and already award winning for our environmentalism.

It seems we can make up our own schedules as long as the job gets done when they need it by. My DH is encouraging me in this as I can hopefully learn some stuff that working with the control freak I was, would only let me go so far in my "education" that I can picture maybe using at his office one day. Also this job is literally two blocks from my house. I just Hate the idea of comitting to 12 months a year! Around here my summers with my kids are like sacred (considering dad works a 80-90 hour week this crazy summer) even tho the son now is mostly with dad during the day at the office working.

I just feel bad for my 12yr old who's a girl, she seems to really need a mom/buddy to offset the skirmishes with the bitchy girlfriends. I can't hang her from a hook, don't want her to be bored to death reading at school with me, can't picture her hanging with the grandfolk's....I know its only for a few hours a day, Tuesday thru Thursdays, we'll have to figure something. She keeps saying (right now but she hasn't done it for five weeks yet) she'll hang out at home. What in the house with the TV alone? That's not summer to me and I can't picture an entire summer of it next year. I'll just have to summer school her to death next year as I've had the new freshman/boy doing that this summer. I'll just have to do it in a more extended fashion if I want this to work. I can see how its a great opportunity to learn for me, I just don't want to leave the kids to loose ends...balance , balance, that's what it always seems you're reaching for in life with kids...

especially as a stroker-keeping your precious energy at a good level and taking care of you even when you're trying to take care of them! And I haven't even got some tan, I've just been trying to keep my plants watered! balance, balance, juggle, juggle.........yi,yi,yi :dribble: so how's your summer or what's left of it--seems like August always flys.........