From Playdates to Paydates

I had my benefits orientation for my new job on Monday. That was the first real back to work situation I have been in. There was a paper with a schedule on it and it said paydates and I when I first saw it I thought it said playdates...shows where my mind has been for the past year. I have never been good at understanding all the benefits, insurance and everything else but the meeting made me realize that being back at work is not going to be bad. I've done this before...this is my 4th job actually and I have already worked in 2 school districts. I felt like it was all coming back to me and hopefully I will get right back into the routine. I was only away from Max for about 4 hours so that wasn't bad but for the real school day I'll be away from him for about double that. I actually counted the number of full work weeks on the schedule and out of 52 weeks in the year there are 32 weeks where I will be working 5 days. Other than that we get summers off, winter break, spring break, lots of holidays, and professional days. And I can't forget that Baltimore County closes as the first snowflake touches the ground. That was hard to deal with when I worked in Philly. There would be a blizzard and school would not be closed. When you think about the amount of hours you actually work in a school, the pay and benefits are really amazing. When I worked in a hospital in virginia I had to accumulate my vacation hours so that I could take off more than 1 day at christmas time and I didn't get paid when I took off for the jewish holidays because I hadn't accumulated the time. I'm excited to be back on this schedule. If I have to work, I guess this is the best way to do it.