Two days ago I received a call from a friend and former coworker. She begged me, "Come work for me! They're going to let you work part-time from home." I'm more than flattered - this is a large health insurance company that rarely lets people work from home and almost never lets them work part time. The catch is that I have to go through one of their approved vendors. So this contracting firm will add money to the top of my hourly rate. I've already set the ball in motion to get signed up with them.

You'd think this would be a source of great joy. After all, it will help solve my cash flow issue - the issue being that my main cash flow is my credit card. But no.

Apparently I'm a giant ball of stress. This was brought to my attention this morning by my two and a half year old daughter. "Be a little nicer, Mom," she said. "Be a little nicer." I wasn't yelling at her or anything, but somehow I get this clipped tone to my voice. My husband has tried to explain it to me for years, but I've mainly blown him off. It's taken my little girl to make me see how my tone really can be sharper than I realize.

So I'm trying to calm down. I know it will be stressful. I've been told, "Don't worry. I really mean give me only a many hours as you can. Twenty hours a week would be great. More if you can." But I know how I'm built. I need to take some deep breaths and realize that I can only do what I can do. My daughter will play on her own sometimes now so even though she's no longer napping, I might be able to squeeze in some time during the day. If not, then her dad will watch her and I'll put in as much time as I can on the weekends.

Everything will be good. (Deep breaths.) Plus, it will mean I can stay home with my daughter just a little bit longer.