I miss being home. I miss having that time to myself. Being able to get the kids off to school, sit around in my pajamas and just... chill. Watch TV, surf, read. Clean. I'll admit, most of the "my" time, admittedly, was idle time. Which was what got me thinking about getting a job in the first place. As I sat around, debating over when to do X, Y and Z - and then deciding that deciding when to do it was too much work, thus going back to being idle. I have to remind myself that the majority of my time was spent not doing much and then quickly making up for it later. Which seemed to work, for the most part. But somewhere in that "not doing much" time I thought that possibly it was time for me to get a job outside the home.

The picture is of my office about the 2nd or 3rd day that I was there. After everyone had left and I was able to dig around (which I was told to do, calm down there), chillax a bit and just look around going, Wow I have my own desk. Cooooool!! It is a little messier now, but not too much. At the end of each day I kind of shovel everything into a drawer and then bring it out the next day. I always bring my pink water bottle, which you can see sitting on the desk. Got it from Starbucks, the filthy bastages. On sale. It's cute, right.

Slowly I'm getting the hang of things. I've made bulletins (there's a LOT of bulletins during Holy Week, which is when I started), updated the calender, updated all the open building permits, complied a newsletter and yesterday did my first bulk mailing. I enjoy office stuff, computers, the clicking of keys, answering the phone, saying hold please and pressing the HOLD button, stamping things, stapling, filing... I won't even get into my love for office supplies. Honeychile, I have a wicked thing for office supplies.

Company pens are my favorite. I once had a reader send me a manila envelope filled with company pens and I nearly fainted with the sight of it. Staplers, letter openers, clips, markers... just love having them around. One of the first things I did when I got a desk in my own apartment was fill out my office supplies buying way more than any stay at home mother of 17 would need. But I digress. I just can't help it. We get to talking office supplies and I forget all else.

For the most part I feel very adult and responsible, but every now? Between you and me, every now and then I feel like I'm 10 years old again, pretending to play office secretary with my pencils, pens, notebooks and date stamp which I made my mom buy for me because I loved to play office.

I also used to play Seaport Hospital, my good friend and I. Even though all we had for a nurse's station was an old brown dresser in the corner of an upstairs hallway with a bunch of papers and pens and a pretend phone for intercom and calls, my mind remembers our setting as a slick, rounded counter with important nurse stuff (flashy phone, charts), my friend and I with crisp white nurse hats, smooth white stockings and blue sweaters to keep us warm while we did our important jobs. We had clipboards and small sheets of paper, stacks of them, that we spent an entire day preparing, each with the same outline so that they looked like a patients chart, with Seaport Hospital at the top of each one. Words like "STAT" and "blood" filled in the lines and then scribbles for signatures. We had imagination galore.

I was talking with her the other day and told her about how I felt like I was totally playing secretary sometimes and she said, Girl why do you think I became a nurse with all my forms and patients and stuff? Just like Seaport Hospital, I feel like I'm playing "nurse" half the time.