PTO

Before I had kids, I worked outside the home. I worked in marketing and dabbled in graphic design before I got married. And after my new student-husband dragged me back to Utah for another almost four years, I worked as an office supervisor in a campus student employment center.

In both of these jobs – in the real world – I had PTO (Paid Time Off). At the time, I referred to that time as sick and vacation days, but where my husband works now they don’t distinguish between the two. He just gets “x” amount of PTO hours every month. But, I digress…

During all my years in the real world work force, I hardly ever used any of my PTO. In fact, I could use the fingers on one hand to count the number of times (and no, I don’t have freakishly deformed hands). It’s not that my jobs weren’t stressful. At times, they were beyond the point of stress. Processing over 14,000 student hires, for example, in about a month (while 3 months pregnant, I might add) is no picnic. But nary a PTO hour did I take.

My point? Just this… I want my PTO back. Now.

Motherhood is by far the most difficult work I’ve ever done. And I don’t get any PTO. That hardly seems fair to me.

Like this morning for example, in the one and a half hours since my boys got up, they’ve managed to dismantle the same bookcase four times (I know, I know. My fault for putting it back together each time, right?), have three stinky diapers between them, and soak the kitchen floor with a spill-proff sippy cup. Now that’s talent. And I’ve still got at least an hour until Dylan’s morning nap.

It is on days like this that I feel like cashing in some of those PTO hours from my “real world” jobs that I never used. I feel like calling in “too-tired-to-deal-with-my-bosses-today” and doing something just for me. Inevitably however, on a day like today, one child (or both) will do something so precious that I am forced to feel guilty for even contemplating shirking my duties.

But as that hasn’t happened yet, I still feel free to complain to nobody in particular that I need my PTO. And while I’m at it – some pay period and an hour long lunch break would be nice too.

Sidenote: The picture I included with this post was taken shortly after we had moved cross-country. Dylan was less than a month old when we moved. That’s right. We drove. 2 ½ loooooong days. With a newborn. And my postpartum aches and oh, the pains. Stopping every two hours to nurse. Is it any wonder the three of us look like that? I’d say at that point, we all needed some PTO.

(Although, Blogger finally let me upload the pic, as you can see there are still issues. I'll see if I can sort them out.)

Edited to read: It looks like everything sorted itself out. Good thing too. I don't know anything about html!