Round and round we go, chant the voices in my head...

As the day I head home gets closer and closer I can hardly WAIT...even though I know that it is very likely lil girl will cling to Dada instead of me...when she and I came home from a vacation together in CA, she freaked out when she woke up to Dada changing her instead of Mama.

I have tried to prepare myself for the hurt that I will feel if M rejects me in favor of other, lately more stable figures in her life.  I hope she won't forget me, or resent me for being away for so long...I still haven't decided if this job is for me permanently.  It will be a few months yet, and having seen the cost of daycare out here first hand, I'm not eager to move M until we know for absolutely, positively SURE we're making a transition out here. 

Still the little voice in the back of my head, that selfish little voice, whispers every so often, "Oh, you could afford to bring her out with you, and wouldn't you both be happier??"  But then the doubts begin to circle around the little voice, chanting, "But how do you feel about the job? Is it definitely for you or not? You shouldn't drag her out of her nice, safe, relatively cheap daycare that she loves for out here amongst strangers!  What about the neighborhood, what if something HAPPENS and she's with you?!"

*sigh*  So the voices argue back and forth in my head all day long while I try to concentrate on doing my job.  The job I'm not sure I like enough to stay past the initial contract.  It's nice being "just an admin" again, on the one hand...it's nice not having to be on-call for once in my career, it's not not being expected to work extra hours for no extra pay.

But the cost of living out here is sky-high, in more ways than just rent, even though that too is ridiculous.  I can deal with the weather (I'm forever freezing) but my husband, poor dear, would melt.  On the other hand, the job market out here is excellent in comparison to pretty much everywhere else, but along with that comes the realization that I have no friends or family out here to lean on. 

I just don't know...and I hate not-knowing.  The average decent daycare out here is double what we pay for the one in Sidney.  And it's hard to justify pulling little girl out of a daycare who's willing to go the extra mile...for instance, they give her extra helpings of food if she's still hungry (and invariably we hear from the incredulous daycare lady at the end of the day, 'Do you know your daughter ate THREE SERVINGS of ?!`) as well as helping her with walking and other such things.

So...I dunno.  Nights out here are hardest, when I lie alone on my air mattress and wish I had a nice warm husband to cuddle, or that I could wander down the hall to my daughter's room to listen to her breathing.  I try not to think too hard on those things, because it always puts me in tears.  I miss my old life so much, even though I know there's no going back.  I know that going home will make me happier than I've been since this all started...and that leaving again will likely result in me crying the whole way back.

Why can't this country be like other countries in the world and give me the first two years of my kid's life off work?