First Week back to Work

I went back to work this week after taking almost 2 weeks off for moving from California to Oregon. Going back to work actually was harder than I thought.
It was not because of the office location. It did not take me too long to find my office. I had been to Oregon site a couple times before to support the last platform my group built. Although it had been a couple years back, once I was in the parking lot, some of the stuff started to come back. In addition, it was always easy to follow the flow. If you saw someone walking certain directions, it was not too far from where you needed to go as well.
It was not because my stuff was not there to wait for me in my cube. I sort of expected it. After all, it was my first day. It did took me a while to locate them. I almost had to call Sacramento to ask the shipping where they sent the stuff. The admin was helpful enough to have another man to help me to move all my boxes to my cube. Finally I was back to the cubical life. A small cube among strangers. After the computers were turned on, that is when my real stress started.
The stress came from my work. After all, I haven't touched my stuff for almost 2 weeks. I was behind. I was not just a little bit behind the schedule. I was very much behind. Everyday, I arrived at work before 8 and forced to leave after 5, since I needed to pick kids up from the expensive childcare. Then I would work from at least between 9 - 12 if not more. Come to think about it, if I did not get the childcare taking care of, I would be in even bigger trouble. With my working "ethic" getting better, my tempter got worse. Small things at home got me every time. Steve is also very busy. He is behind of his schedule. Why I am not surprised? At Intel, it seems everyone is always trying to catch up. But my question was who should do more things at home?
Sometimes I wonder why I go to work. Of course, as usual, there are many reasons. When I was young, it was because I thought that women can be as a good of an engineer as men; because I could do it. Then I had children, I wondered if I should quite, because it was so hard to be tired all the time. However, when I realized that taking care of a baby was so much work, I decided being a working woman was easier. I always admit to people that stay home moms have harder job because they almost never have their own time.
This week because I was so stressed out from work, because I had no friend to talk to, I understood one thing. Friendship makes a world difference in one's life. I truly understood why Shannon did not want to move away. It is so hard to live in a place that you have none of your familiar people that you talk to all the time. I miss all my friends so much! I miss my routine life, my boot camp classes, everything I had set to do everyday. Steve looked at me and said that we could pack back up and move back. haha... I know that he was joking, but it was not funny. I understood why I have to work. I met my two long lasting friends at work: Vicky and Nancy. I was IMing my friend Vicky yesterday. She moved to Boston back 2002 when Intel was trying to lay her off. She still remembered her loneliness when she just moved there in the middle of winter. That was so many years ago. Nancy said to me that she still remembered many years ago, the first time Vicky and her saw me outside Level One parking lot, we were meant to be friends. We laughed about that a lot, because it was the day I went to interview with Level One and they had fire drill. Nancy and Vicky were standing at the parking lot eying me. We were young and none of us were married. Nancy did not want me to forget about it when I left Sacramento. I won't...