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We are two working mothers — Lauren Rose, the director of business development for Name Bubbles, and Betsy DeMars, the assistant managing editor at The Saratogian. Try as we may to be really good at both, balancing motherhood and career can get pretty messy. As professionals, work schedules and mommy schedules often collide. So, we plow through, hoping at the end of the day, our kids — Lauren's 5-year-old son and Betsy's 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter — know how much we love them.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

It's just a little eye twitch, right?

You know stress has seriously begun affecting your body when a nagging eye twitch won't subside.

About three to four weeks ago, I noticed a strange pulsing or twitching in my left eye. Its onset seemed to coincide with an uptick in the demands in all areas of my life. While I always operate at a high stress level, once school started and the getting my son through fifth-grade homework (exhausting) was piled onto an already demanding work and fall sports schedule, there it was, a strange sensation like my eyeball was beating.

"It's lack of sleep, stress, and too much caffeine," a co-worker told me.

Hmm, I'll have to work on those areas.

Wait, what's this? My right eye also has now developed the twitch. I stared at myself in the mirror the other morning to verify that, indeed, the problem had spread. What had exacerbated the problem?

Just when I thought the pace couldn't get any more harried, last month my side-job as adviser for the Skidmore News student paper kicked in for the semester. Yes, it's basically a once-a-week commitment, but preparing for my meeting with them on Sunday nights takes a good chunk of my Sunday afternoons. Once we get home from church on Sundays, it's lunch time. Then I have just a couple of hours to try to catch up on laundry and clean the house before I need to settle into work mode.

It hit me this past Sunday — a beautiful fall day — when my husband had a great idea of taking the bicycles to Spa State Park for a ride. And I just couldn't go — so depressing.

All work and no play makes Mommy very cranky. Just ask everyone else in my family.

So I've come to the conclusion that something has to give. I keep thinking things will slow down — after this big project at work, or this sports season ends, or people in my house stop making dirty clothes. But at the risk of my face exploding, I probably can't wait any longer for something to change.

Stay tuned — it's time to prioritize.

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