On exams, guilt, and plumbing

Let's see here...

The good:
I still have finals this semester, but I've finished my HESIs. The HESI (Health Education Systems, Inc.) exams are standardized tests that my program requires each semester. The ones we take are specialized exams for a particular subject: this semester we did maternity/pediatrics and our medical/surgical exams. The med/surg exam is supposed to highly correlate to the scoring on the NCLEX board exam we have to take for licensure, and it is also sort of my worst subject, so I spent the two weeks prior to the exam making myself physically sick with anxiety. In between bouts of panic, I studied for it. And now all is well! I did well on both exams, and in fact pretty much  aced the med/surg exam, surprisingly enough. So on the one hand, yay for me! But on the other hand, I used up all the fucks I had to give on the HESIs, so now I'm having a hard time getting myself motivated to study for the actual final exams.

The bad:
There's no bad! I had to get a plumber out here to fix my backed-up sinks, but they came! It's done! (Thanks, Caleb and Phillip at Viking Sewer and Drain!) I even got a new faucet out of the deal, so it's all rainbows and kittens except for the bill. I've got to get a new washing machine, as ours is slowly making its way to to the great appliance store in the sky, but that will be managed before the end of summer. 

The ugly:
It's two about three weeks before I start my internship, and I could not be more excited. This program is going to be fantastic for me: great experience, hands-on learning, and I even get paid! It's wildly thrilling and humbling to have been accepted, and I know it's going to be career-making for me, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm making my way at the expense of my kid. She'll be full-time at her day care starting this summer, since I'll be full-time at my internship. She loves her "school" and is getting so much out of her time there, but I can't quite shake the feeling that I should be at home with her all the time, planning outings and putting together crafts from Pinterest and basically being a combination of Mary Poppins and June Cleaver. I feel like a total dick about this, because it's such a non-issue. I feel guilty for making a choice to work outside instead of making her my work. I feel guilty for having her spend so much time with other people when her childhood is so short, because I should be grabbing every moment and enjoying every second I have with her. But the honest truth of the matter is that I enjoy my time with her more when there's less of it.

I've spent the first 3 years of her life home with her. It's been invaluable for both of us, and if I could do it over again, I absolutely would. But I can't say that I enjoyed my time as a full-time housewife/mom. It actually sucked. Well, that's not true. I had a lot of fun here and there, but overall it's not an area where I excelled. I like the cooking part. I hate the cleaning part. I don't want to spend all day doing laundry. The few times I managed to have an entirely clean house were a whole lot less satisfying than I think they should have been, considering the effort I had to put in to get there, and then about 20 minutes later you'd be hard-pressed to believe I'd done anything. It was exhausting. I felt cranky and overworked, overwhelmed and under appreciated. If I'd had a boss, I would have been fired. Instead, I just felt like a failure. Isn't staying home full-time what you do when you have kids? Isn't it was I'm supposed to want? I don't want it. What kind of mom does that make me?

Honestly, I think it probably makes me pretty normal. And there is a part of me that thinks my family will be better served long-term by seeing me do something I love, making a difference in our community, and being an example of a leader and a strong, intelligent woman than they would be watching me swear while I circle impotently round and round the house trying to sweep up all the dog hair. I know that there are parents who don't have the support I've had. People who aren't able to make the choices I'm making, and who may wish the biggest problem they had was some ludicrous guilt they pile onto themselves. But there you have it.