Blues

Going back to work sucks.  There.  Simple.

I tried REALLY hard not to have to come back.  You know, did all the right things.  I bought lottery tickets for EVERY DRAW during my time off.  Euromillions and National Lottery.  Nothing.  Not even a measly tenner.

So I’m back.  Clocking in.  Logging on.  Reading through the multitude of emails sent to me in my absence.  Deleting seventy percent of those emails.  Trying to get back into the flow of the office.

But it sucks.

Two weeks is not enough time to get to know your new life, to support the mother of your child and to appreciate the cute squishy thing that now lives in your house.

Obviously, The Creature agrees with me.  He decided that the night before my return to work would be his worst in almost a week.  Nice one son.  It wasn’t too much of a big deal; Mrs L was her usual lovely self and dealt with all of the graveyard shift.

Sleep didn’t come easily.  A combination of not wanting to go back and crying (his, not mine) saw to that.  But I slept enough to wake up and go to work.  Enough to forget to spray myself with anti-perspirant.  Enough to leave my laptop at home; prompting an eruption of expletives when I realised, ninety percent of the way through my commute. 

I won’t lie to you all, I am jealous of Mrs L just now.  I know that her maternity leave will be hard work.  Harder work than if she was going to work.  Harder work than I will be doing at work.  But I still covet it.

Last week I posted about the range of things I’ve already noticed changing in our little boy.  Now, when I sit at my desk, I’m wondering what new things I’m missing.  I looked at him last night, he looked back at me, and he looked different.  What will have changed come the end of the week?

I now understand the plight of the working mum, who feels cheated when they miss the first words, or the first steps.  Perhaps this is dangerous grounds for complaint, but won’t somebody think of the dads?  Rare are those of us who don’t miss out on almost all of those fantastic firsts. 

I’m probably soppier than the average man when it comes to things like this.  Maybe most blokes just don’t care.  Maybe they all just want to go back to work so they can escape the screaming.  So they can talk about football and other man things.  I don’t know.  I just know that for every hour I spend at work there’ll be somewhere I’d rather be (frankly, it was ever thus, even pre-baby) and something I’d rather be doing.

No doubt I’ll get used to it.

This has panned out to be rather a whingy post, sorry about that.