I’ve been struggling for a while with what I want to be when I grow up. (My whole life, perhaps??) I currently am a stay home mom, run a little online fabric shop, do some back-end web development, and occasionally sell cloth diapers online. Before I became a stay home mom, I was a web developer/applications programmer in an IT department out in the “real world.” Sometimes I wonder if I could go back to that.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. I love that my daughter’s learning to read. I love that I’m here when my oldest gets home from school to hear about the cooking of eggs in FACS class (pretty sure this is what we used to call home ec.), the drug of the week/month in Health class (“Mom, did you know that meth is really, really bad?”), and the bus driver who seems to be trying to carve out her one little spot in the world where she has total control (assigned seats, anyone?). I love that my youngest thinks any kind of truck coming down our street is just fabulous, and that a good day is spent playing pretend kitchen, marching like a duck, vacuuming, and making a lego house for dinosaurs.

Sometimes, I just wonder if I could go back. Would anyone even want me back? Or would they just laugh and say, yeah, what you knew how to do was nice five years ago, but we’re onto newer and better things. Five years ago.

What a bummer! As it turns out, you cannot simply buy a new minivan because the battery on the current one died. (I’ll admit to considering this yesterday.) So, this morning, I pulled out the trusty AAA card and called to get a jump start for the minivan.

I called around 9, and apparently they don’t have anyone really local to us in the service provider network because the sent someone from a business half an hour away, so he arrived around 10:15. My daughter was at preschool already and didn’t need to be picked up until 11:30, so this was fine, if you ignore the anxiety it caused my youngest. He was waiting for the tow truck. There are few things more wonderful in the world of a two year old than a big truck. Garbage truck, FedEx truck, UPS truck, anything hauling a bobcat, the kid loves trucks. Now, imagine his disappointment when the guy arrives in a minivan! We already have one of those, and there is nothing cool about it.

My husband is working from home. I’ll be honest – I’m a bit leery of the whole thing. He may claim to be an introvert, but I’ve seen him at work. He does well with other people, and he likes to manage people. Can you do that remotely? Sure, but it’s not the same. I know, I know. I’m a strong proponent of telecommuting, actually. I used to do it. We’ll see.

I must admit, though, it was nice having him home this morning when I went to take our daughter to preschool and the battery was dead on the minivan. (Note – little girls who are strong enough to open car doors are not necessarily strong enough to close them and henceforth will not be opening doors to get things out of the car alone. This is the second time in just a couple weeks that this happened.)

So, here we are again. I did this once before and lost interest after a while. We’ll see how long this lasts.