The Walking Dead

Returning to work has been very challenging. Thanks to coffee, I am dragging my corpse to the office every morning, but just barely. I'm not going to be winning any performance awards either. I sort of feel like I spend all day every day at the bottom of the ocean, weighed down with large sandbags. All sound is muffled, I feel heavy, and it's dark.
I've tried explaining to Ceci that mommy needs more sleep now, but she laughed at me, and then she pooped herself.
I know women all over the world return to work after having a baby, but how do they do it? I'm barely scraping by here folks. What amazes me is that our workforce is filled with these re-animated corpse/ new mommies and society still functions. I'm reminded of a history class I took in college, where the professor talked about how China basically fell apart when the British introduced opium to the country, because everyone was so high all the time that nothing got done. That is basically how I feel about my job/ house/ life. Except I am sober. So that sucks.
But at the end of the day I get to come home to these two, so I feel lucky.

Working Girl

Well, now that I am just getting the hang of taking care of a tiny human it's back to work for me. Today is the last day of my maternity leave. Why I can't be paid a generous salary for blogging, surfing the Internet, raising Ceci, and drinking coffee all day is beyond me. I'm good at all those things. But the universe sees fit to throw me back into the workforce instead of blessing me with incredible wealth. And because I like to complain (another thing I'm pretty good at), I'd like to mention how lame it is that Washington state, unlike my homeland, does not offer women the opportunity to file for state disability benefits while on maternity leave. Thanks Washington, for being unsupportive of women and families.
On the bright side, my parents are here for a whole month to help out with the baby. Of course, pessimist that I am, I have gruesome fantasies of them accidentally scalding her with their coffee, sitting on her, dropping her, putting her out with the recycling, forgetting to feed her, or forcing her to listen to Garrison Keillor all day. Her little brain would wither.
Logic tells me that none of these things will happen. After all, my parents managed to raise me to adulthood without any fatal snafus. I just love my girl and I don't want to miss out on anything. Sigh.
I'm sure I'll feel better by the end of the week when I see that Ceci is still in one piece and she still knows who I am. And I'll be thrilled to see an actual paycheck again.
I'll leave you with an awesome healthy cookie recipe that actually tastes good and relieves some of that post-holiday binge eating guilt. Adieu for now, the next time you hear from me I'll be a working girl.