I have a weird dilemma that is eating away at me, and I'm not sure what to do.

My job at Yahoo! is supposed to end in May, when Resumix goes kaput and our fantastic award-winning products that I shortened my lifespan producing are end-of-lifed. (Yes, a long sentence for a long story.)

I have been working from home like a banshee during Julian's naps, and when Ashley comes to babysit in the afternoons 3x/week. Sometimes I don't have a project to work on (yes!), but most of the time I do. It's actually a great deal for me. I get to stay home with my baby and still collect my salary and benefits. Who could ask for more, right?

Except that it stresses me OUT trying to cram in all this work during my few spare moments. It means that I never get any time to myself at all, because I'm either doing baby care, cleaning/cooking/choring while doing baby care, or working away on my computer.

I've finally got a pretty good network of other moms that I can call up to do baby outings with on short notice, summer is coming, Julian is really fun to play with, and I want to do yoga, make jewelry, garden, sew, and update this journal more than once a freakin' week or two, among 78,598 other activities that float through my head on a daily basis.

Right now, for example...Julian is napping. I have a bunch of new photos to put up, but then I won't have time to write. I have Yahoo! work to be doing right now, so I shouldn't be doing either writing OR photos, but I'm hoping that I can wait until Ashley comes and then just jam on my Yahoo! work and get it at least partially done. It's a constant juggling act, and I always feel like a student with a paper due tomorrow morning, and right now it's midnight and I haven't done crap.

So I've been looking forward to May, because then I don't have to try to cram in all this work anymore and stress out like crazy about how long J naps, or whether Ashley can come babysit an extra day this week. I won't have that awful little voice nagging at me..."You have work to do Laura, the customer is waiting for you. You're getting behiiiiind!" That voice makes me really crabby whenever I hear it bitching at me.

I get a severance package and then a year of unemployment benefits when my job ends, so that's a sweet deal, except that it's an even sweeter deal *financially* for me to still be employed and have great health insurance and lucrative stock options still vesting and a 401K with 25% matching. Duh, right?

Getting to the point, I have the opportunity to do some work for our parent division and therefore possibly keep my job *after* May by working for them. They really need someone with my skillset, starting right now. That means that I'll have TWICE the amount of work that I have currently, and I will also have to deal with their team in New York. So WAY more stress trying to juggle everything between work and home, and that's just exactly what I don't want right now.

But then again, bringing home some bacon and fattening up my retirement account is pretty compelling, and keeping my techie career alive in case I need (or want) it at some point in the future is a good idea too.

One more thing. If I take this job that I don't want, and then can't hack it, I'll have to quit. That means no severance, no unemployment benefits, nada. And that's the worst option of all.

The parent division sent me the project details and links, and is waiting for me to evaluate whether I can do the work, and how much time I can put in each week. So this is the time to decide what to do. If I want to keep my job, I start in on the project (how?? with what time???). If not, I tell them I can't do it, or I can only do 5 hours a week or something like that.

Crap! The babysitter is coming in 12 minutes, J is still napping (naked, which means he needs to have clothes put on him), the house is a wreck, and I have a buttload of work to do (both for Resumix AND I still need to evaluate this project) during the three hours that Ashley will be here today. DAMMIT! Aaaaarggghhh!

Well, if you have any ideas for me, let me know, wouldja?<