The Pressure Is On

Today, Drew and I went to her new school, Green Acres, to register. The theme song for the old TV show has been going through my head all day. In any case, she starts school tomorrow so that is a good thing.

The not so good news is that their kindergarten only runs Wednesdays and Fridays and alternate Mondays. So I still have most of the rest of the time from now until the middle of June to contend with in terms of getting her in day care or finding someone to watch her while I'm at work. To say nothing of the summertime when school is out. Trying not to get ahead of myself, but I'm being told I'm not eligible for a lot of things right now, with regard to subsidies and so so forth.

In the meantime, She will be bussed to school from in front of my building and dropped off at just after three, which means until I can arrange to have someone pick her up and mind her for two hours until I get off work, I have to be there to meet her at home... so that means another missed two hours of work.

Work is already pressuring me to return to a 40-hour schedule. They are going to have to accept the fact that I will not be working extra hours again, ever. This whole situation with scheduling changes and me not knowing when the busy days are going to be and not knowing if I'm going to have to work late until a day before is not conducive to my single parent status. I'm going to have to tell them flat out that I'm not doing it. On the plus side, they've hired a new person who seems to be willing to do weird hours, and she has some skills, so maybe there is a system that we can work out with the three of us. I'm trying to put my own personal feelings about this crappy job to the side for the sake of getting through this next awkward patch of time.

It's like a race now, to see how quickly I can get settled down -- all my concerns about housing and money and all those long term things are more important now, and and the learning curve for me is low. I'm having to do all these things that I should have done years ago, and it's hard, and I'm not satisfied with how not quickly it's being arranged... but I have to remind myself it's only been six days.