The neighbor pulled into her driveway at 3:30. My home office window faces this driveway, my peripheral vision disallowing ignorance of their comings and goings. The 3:30 arrival kicks me into gear, reminds me if I haven't showered yet that I am somewhat pathetic, that my daughter will be out of school in an hour, that I have two and a half hours left to go before I really have to stop to make dinner.

Three-thirty is often when my blood pressure starts to rise, realizing I'm not going to finish the list I made at 7:30 that morning in time for dinner.

The list isn't realistic. But that doesn't matter to the panic, and that's something I'm working on but circumstances don't always reinforce.

Sometimes I let my mind wander to my life if my workday ended at 3:30, if it were me unloading my car and following my child around in the sunshine. If it were me off in the months of summer. My neighbor to one side is a teacher, to the other a guidance counselor. Jobs fraught with their own troubles, for sure, but these don't matter when I'm stressed and daydreaming about what it would be like to be someone else, someone in the sunshine. Reality doesn't matter in daydreams. Regardless of how much you love your work, daydreams make the world go 'round.

I let my daydreams play as day continued into evening and I went back to my computer after giving the little angel a bath. Just as I used to take the Sears catalog to my room when I was a kid and circle everything I would buy if I had a million dollars, I find myself reimagining my days if I pulled into my driveway at 3:30, finished with work.

And I wonder if she looks at my darkened windows when she leaves to teach at 6:15 am and envies me, still asleep.

I just watched my manager win $15,0000 on Jeopardy.

I took Friday off. But then there was this really important call I had to be on. Approximately fifteen minutes before that call, as I was frantically cleaning because my parents were coming, the neighbor walked in. To tell me our other neighbor, who watches both our girls after school, is moving. In a month.

We talked about how we were going to squeeze through the month of May before school gets out and her daughter stays home with her (she's a teacher) and my daughter goes to already-planned summer camp.

"The thing is," I found myself saying, "say for instance she comes home and I have a really important conference call in eleven minutes," and the neighbor was all, "yeah, yeah," and I felt myself fighting tears because all this was happening and my neighbor was in my foyer and my husband and daughter were home and I really, really did have a super important conference call in eleven minutes.

I had to very rudely excuse myself to go upstairs for the conference call. And then I shoved the whole childcare problem to a back corner of my head, where it pops up from time to time like a rubber duck that refuses to stay submerged. It was there, staring at me, when I woke up this morning.

There are options, they just have to be examined. The child isn't going to like any of them that we can afford, that are practical. After a week of spring break, I could barely get her out of bed this morning. I could barely get myself out of bed this morning.

I think I need an entire day of sleeping. That would fix EVERYTHING.

When I was in college and my friends and I went out to eat (which was more often than not), one of us would inevitably use the restroom and return to a rapidly cooling sandwich or a nearly-gone pizza. It's one of those inevitable laws of life -- things happen when you have no ability to deal with the ramifications.

For instance, if you really want to finally finish scraping wallpaper off your kitchen, wait until your company is launching a huge redesign! And while you're at it, maybe five literary agents will ask to see your whole manuscript almost an entire year after you started sending it out.

I'm scared and hopeful and scared about how this week will end.

... you have three different notebooks from three different areas of your life open with a list of uncrossed-out things on your desk

... you have to think really, really hard to remember what you did last night, and then you remember, hey, that was important! and are amazed you forgot

... your cat won't speak to you because you forgot you wouldn't be home until an hour and a half after her lunch

... you hear Twitter go off and jump because you think it's an actual bird in your house

... you realize next week is spring break for your kid but you totally forgot it starts on Friday

... you broke all the rules today and finally bought your girl the stupid pink Kid Snuggie she's been wanting since Halloween because it made you feel more normal than the three notebooks

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Hey! I finally reviewed a book I've had for more than six months! Check out the fabulous Nicki Richesin's latest anthology (up with anthologies!) on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.

Okay, here's the other reason I love my new job: The Holiday Hot Mess Photo Contest. It was birthed from a discussion of holiday visitors and OH THE COATS AND THE BOOTS AND THE PRESENTS AND THE TISSUE PAPER.

AND THE PACKING PEANUTS.

AND THE CARDBOARD.

AND THOSE LITTLE TWIST TIES.

I hate the little twist ties with the force of a thousand suns.

The only good part about all this crap is that it's funny! Who doesn't love a photo like this?

 

Just throw your coat anywhere.

Seriously, if you don't think that's funny, then your heart is too sizes too small.

I saw her coming as I carried my tea down the hall.

"Rita!" she called. "Before you leave us for your dream job, there are a few things I want you to blog about."

I paused. Taxes? NOT AGAIN.

I turned slowly. I've actually blogged about taxes before. (Find my headline in this article.) (I'll give you one guess.) Some of my posts can only be found via the Wayback Machine.

Please don't ask me to blog about taxes.

"I want you to blog about how great my butt looks." And then she threw back her head and laughed and laughed.

I sighed with relief. That, my friends, I can do.

I will miss my dear friends here at H&R Block. I will miss our Chipotle lunches. I will miss checking in with the Ultra-Pool. Believe it or not, the people who build online and software tax products are actually wicked funny, as one must be in order to spend years in this business arguing over semantics with Harvard-educated tax lawyers.

I don't care if you went to Harvard. That word does not mean what you think it means.

So, my friends, I'm sorry to go. Sneak onto Twitter and follow me. Please don't give my cube to a tool. And for God's sake, kick some tax.

Happy Monday! I'm still asleep and preparing for my last day at H&R Block tomorrow.

You can now read my reaction to Lynn Harris' article on BlogHer.

I remember last August reading Erin Kotecki Vest's post about her new job at BlogHer and being so jealous, even though I know Erin and I know how hard she worked to position herself for that job.

I've struggled as a working parent. I hate the commute. I hated having the little angel be the very last kid at daycare. Sometimes I was very bitter.

Somewhere, in the midst of my ruminating, I realized it's not fair and not realistic to wait for life to reach out and hand me my wishes on a platter. I realized the only person who could change my career is me.

I want to be a writer, one who spends my time thinking about real issues that matter to women (men, too, but I'll be honest -- women). One who takes time to follow current events and distill what they mean to me and to humanity. One who reads great blogs and responds to them. One who doesn't have to sneak onto Twitter and worry The Man is going to put the smackdown on my Internet access.

When Sleep Is for the Weak came out last September, I thought I was done. I thought my life would permanently change. But (as authors will tell you), it didn't. I realized there needed to be more books, that this first book was just a stepping stone, a calling card, a launching pad. I cut back to four days a week at my corporate job to have more time to write. I got my first national magazine hit in the November issue of Scholastic Parent & Child. I started selling more articles online. I started getting paid more to do what I loved. I started working on my novel, posting my work on Kindle, taking on more responsibility at BlogHer, and yes, there were a lot of days when I thought blogging might possibly be a ghetto in which I'd never get paid a living wage. People asked me why I wrote for free or nearly for free. I've made about 50 cents an hour on a good day for the past five years doing what I love.

I've pitched more ideas than I care to share that have gone nowhere. I've pitched a few that are in flux. My writing notebook is overflowing with half-baked projects, pitch ideas, lists of topics about which I mean to write. I've struggled to compartmentalize that writing into the time I have for it. I've nearly quit reading due to the time it takes to write.

That is going to change.

I've accepted a position with BlogHer as assignment editor. I start in two weeks. After five years of people asking where I'm going with this blogging thing, I finally have an answer. I'm going to funnel all the ambition, grammar geekdom, corporate organizational skills, excitement and intellectual curiosity I have into the BlogHer editorial team. The one led by Katie Couric's top four pick for most influential people (not women, people) in new media.

And I'm going to stop questioning my instincts.