March 9, 2021
*Wow I started this about a year ago. Now we have ANOTHER tiny human squawking frequently.
Not the perseverance kind of grit, we want to keep that in our lives.
The other kind that’s annoying and makes you feel itchy and irritable, like minor unnecessary arguments. I started the new year with a whole load of grumpiness. I was way behind in work, even though I’d worked all the holidays, because we also had a truckload of personal stuff to do (financial, family time, wanting to write for the blog after not feeling the urge to write for weeks, eating dinner every single night what is that why can we not just eat once a week??)
Solitary Diner talked about changing some things to make taking call less stressful. She can’t make call itself less stressful. But by figuring out that it’s the uncertainty of call, and how that uncertainty derails her, she was able to find a decent solution. By choosing not make a lot of plans on call days, she was able to appreciate it when call went her way instead of being upset when it didn’t go her way.
I had to make similar changes.
As parents: In our first year as parents, we had a tiny human squawking frequently. That derailment of my plans was doubly difficult when I’d had my heart set on getting some things done and getting some sleep that night. I tried to get everything done as things came up: caring for JB, answering emails, troubleshooting, admin work, walking the dog. But as my agent of change and chaos, while JB was the biggest variable, they weren’t the only one. As a result, I felt pulled in thirty six directions at once and I was always cranky. I finally tried compartmentalizing. When JB was awake, the only thing I did was handle JB and JB-adjacent tasks: laundry, clearing up, cooking, eating, organizing, packing lunch. All tasks during which JB could hang out with me and splitting my attention was no problem. There was no gourmet cooking happening, nothing on the stove ever needed my constant attention. When JB was asleep, the only thing I did was work.
Sectioning my day like that meant that while I still had to work a third shift, I was just tired, not tired, cranky, and frazzled.
I have to do something similar now that the pandemic is eating my brain and we’ve had JB home constantly. When I get tetchy, I have to do JB-adjacent things that don’t require my full attention.
Household 1: We recently just got my Roomba that I’ve been saving for. It’s been a 5 year dream in the saving! PiC pointed out that the dogs and their inability to drink without slopping half the bowl of water across the entire floor was going to be a problem. Roombas are not water bots. We’ve long been annoyed by the need to constantly mop up after our beloved pups who wanted to double as spraying hoses every time they drink but we’ve not considered what to ever actually done anything about it until now. I finally realized there was an area in the house I could move the food and water bowls to reduce the sloppage significantly, so I made the experimental shift. Mopping is down about 80%.
Household 2: I saved for years for this one. The Roomba itself is another way we’re gently removing some frustration. I want the floors to be vacuumed more frequently but I don’t have the energy or time to do it myself. The Roomba is a useful tool to help us out. Thanks to Wall-E, I imagine Ronnie has a personality as it scales minor obstacles, or gets stuck. I’m vastly enjoying being able to set Ronnie on the move and know my house is being cleaned while I work.
Household 3: We’ve stopped hand-washing all our dishes and instead run the dishwasher 2-4 times a week. If you told me ten years ago that PiC would relent on this chore, I’d have laughed my butt off. But here we are!
Work: I reconfigured software to give me quick access to my frequently used tools. Then I redesigned some templates that I were both clunky and didn’t work great. Now they are aesthetically pleasing and I get the job done faster! There has yet to be software to stop me from accidentally hitting “cancel” instead of “save” or closing a tab I didn’t mean to close, though.
All of this makes me think of that West Wing scene when Bruno tells the President that he would be a fool to ignore any tactic that won’t hurt them and can reduce drag on the campaign. I agree with the sentiment and really need to practice this more.
:: What things bother you? Can any of them be fixed with a small adjustment?
July 15, 2019
Walking the dogs, I see a lot of open garage doors. Sometimes, there’s a whole living room set up in there. People hang out enjoying the breeze (or the fog). The rest of time, the garages are storage units. Once in a long while, I spot a car parked, and it might be covered with stuff too, but mostly they’re packed to the gills with boxes and piles and more piles.
It’s positively nerve-wracking to see people threading their way through the 6 inch path left between stacks piled right up to the ceiling. It looks like the whole thing is going to come tumbling down and crush them. It very nearly did, last week. The stacks of stuff atop the boat that clearly hasn’t been out on the water for quite some time because it couldn’t possibly be extracted from the garage were teetering precariously as the lady reached for something just beyond her fingertips. I didn’t want to be a creepy stranger though, since we don’t know each other, so I walked on, holding my breath for her.
It made me reflect.
That’s so much time and money sitting there. Time digging through your piles. Money re-buying things you can’t find and probably already have. Energy and psychic energy. I feel like that stuff preys on your mind. It does on mine, at least. Every time I look at something not being used, the money we paid flashes before my eyes: $100 for that bike we don’t use, $200 for that camera lens, $300 for my bike I’ve never ridden. It’s not a huge list but each thing and the associated opportunity cost makes me batty. One Frugal Girl did this to herself on purpose to train herself out of buying things, it really works!
And yet, we all have a tendency to hoard here. I’m as guilty as anyone else, with my obsession with reusing containers (and really nice note cards and really nice pens and a really good zipper pouch). Some of it stems from not having stuff when I was younger, I keep wanting to fill all the needs. Luckily, I also don’t want to feel crushed under the weight of my belongings, wasting time and money on storing things that just sit there moldering away. I want to feel free and enjoy our space. Emphasis on having space. So I embrace that feeling as much as I can.
Generally, we hold the clutter to a static volume so it’s not growing by much but that’s not good enough. Seeing what can happen if we don’t keep working at this decluttering, relentlessly, is a heck of a kick in the pants to get back on it.
I’ve been staring down (errrrr…. ignoring) my own piles in the garage and the office because a) I keep running out of time and energy and b) it’s really hard to get rid of things with a preschooler running around trying to reclaim everything. I need to tackle at least a box a week if I want to get on top of this but I’ve got to squeeze it into daycare hours.
Stress cleaning works well for me and I put it to good use last week: framed photos that I’m not ready to put up were all piled into one place, two boxes were emptied, piles of magazines were recycled, and a handful of books were set aside for donation. There are seven more boxes in the office and seven more boxes in the garage but two boxes and random floor clutter eliminated is progress!
We’re not trying to be totally minimalist. I remember someone tweeting that their house could burn down and they wouldn’t replace most of what they owned. That’s not us or how we think of comfort. We’re striving for a happy medium of having most of the things we need plus a few things we want.
Speaking of wants, S’s career break post brought up my list of wants. I don’t think it’s a secret that despite all the work I do to reduce clutter, I still crave things like a magpie. Not a thieving one. But definitely an avaricious one. It’s nice to get it out of my system because most of these wants boil down to money and having a nearly endless supply of it, set against my desire not to be found buried under my things like the worst episode of hoarders.
- This adorable Captain Marvel tutu dress. I barely ever wear dresses and I have never in my life owned a tutu but here I am, wanting one because this is so awesome. (This only comes in kid’s sizes)
- Refills for my Uni-Ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pen, 0.38mm Ultra-Micro Point. They don’t seem to sell refills anywhere. I hate the waste of just tossing pens when they run out of ink.
- A new ultralight laptop.
- A new backpack.
- Two beautiful brightly colored tablecloths for both the regular and expanded-with-a-leaf sizes.
- A water pitcher for serving guests so I don’t have to walk back and forth to the kitchen filling two glasses at a time over and over. I will have already put miles in cooking and serving before we sit down.
- A better organizational set of baskets for my office. I bought several baskets on sale from Michael’s dirt cheap two Christmases ago but they’re not quite enough for my needs once I gave some to JB and the dogs for their toys.
- A digital piano (which isn’t allowed until I have cleared my entire office of all unnecessary things. So maybe never.)
- All of the books: Seanan McGuire’s, Sabaa Tahir’s, Daniel Jose Older’s, Terry Pratchett’s, Cassandra Khaw’s, N.K. Jemisin’s, Nnedi Okarafor’s, Zen Cho’s. All of them. A glorious library full of books that won’t hurt my hands, a hammock, and a fabulous cushy chair in which to read.
- A group vacation with my closest friends where I’m actually on vacation.
- A three week vacation in Japan with people we enjoy and that are good with JB.
I’m working on channeling my wanting for things into only very useful things we’ll use for many years but it needs some work.
:: Are you comfortable with how much you own?
January 21, 2019
I’m having a bit of a patience problem.
- I’ve almost closed out the 2018 budget but there’s one last check to be cashed from December 1st (when is it ok to tell someone to take their damn money already??)
- I was fortunate enough to have a choice between maxing out our IRAs this year right away or investing more in our brokerage so I did the former to get it out of our hair.
- I’ve calculated our expected cash flow for the first three months of 2019 and scheduled automatic savings to reflect that.
- I’ve calculated our expected large expenses for the year and scheduled automatic savings to cover them over the course of the year.
What’s left?
Mostly the everyday things.
- Working my job every day with attendant frustrations so I can keep earning that paycheck that feeds our savings and investing.
- Feeding my family – meal planning, grocery shopping, thinking about diet stuff.
- Walking the dogs – training Sera, making sure Seamus has every possible health need covered.
- Making sure to the best of our abilities that JB grows up to be a good and decent human. We also need to get zir into some sports and activities to be a bit more well-rounded and make a few more friends.
- Reading all the good books I can reach (more more more!)
- We’ve got one big trip for later this year to be planned out. After that? Probably staying close to home for a while. Now that Seamus is showing his age (his hearing is suspect, his eyesight seems to be less sharp, he’s definitely much crankier) we’re going to curtail international travel so we can spend this time with him.
These are good things. I’m enjoying them. I’d like to enjoy more of them. I’d like to be out in the garden ripping out the rest of those weeds now that the rains have softened the previously rock hard ground.
I should be pretty content.
Instead, the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessively sitting here staring at our accounts, glaring at them to sprout 100x their income as if Power Stare is a method of investment growth (it’s not). I’ve been cranky and impatient. (more…)
November 19, 2018
Last summer, I talked about how we made it work around here and I think it’s worth revisiting a year, and a lot more stressors, later.
We’ve been settled into the new home for a year now – thank everything for being done with the massive renovations. We’ve been ignoring all the other projects around the house that need doing for a while just to recoup our savings and sanity.
We still manage with just the two of us: working, parenting, maintaining a semblance of a personal life. I continue to blog, albeit a bit less with my job problems, and added a monthly massage to help alleviate my pain. He has picked up a hobby again and we try to ensure he gets out at least once a weekend for exercise, during which time JB and I spend quality time together. Mostly we spend that time cleaning and puttering around the house but once in a while we can have a friend visit. We are adding some visits of our own to PiC’s friends we don’t see nearly often enough.
Childcare
Daycare: JuggerBaby is in daycare five days a week, now enrolled in their preschool program (for all 3 year olds and up). We’ve been on the waitlist for the local preschool since 2015 but no dice so daycare and $$$ bills it is. They’re in a new facility now, still open from 6:30 to 6:30 which is still really important for us and spoils us. I know we’re going to face an uphill battle once ze is enrolled in public school – apparently the school system still works on the assumption that at least one parent will be home and ready to accommodate all sorts of weird scheduling.
Last year, we added one chauffeur day to my schedule but PiC needed some more him-time so I now have two designated drop off days.
Babysitting: We tend to avoid babysitting because at $25/hour, it REALLY has to be worth it but we’ve been terrible about hiring the sitter for anything. Maybe we should have tried for our anniversary? It’s felt desperately needed and yet we don’t really have any space for it to happen. (more…)
October 3, 2018
PiC and I were having one of our talks about life and stresses. He’s going through a particularly rough time at work right now with no specific end in sight, and in our discussion, I had a realization that may be incredibly morbid.
I am not deeply stressed by our three kids (2 and 4 legged alike) because this is all temporary. Parenting woes, power struggles, training a new to us dog, juggling work and relationships, love and friendship, finances and fun. All of it will go away. JB will grow up and leave. If we’re lucky, ze will always want to come back and spend time with us but no one can see that future. The dogs, honestly, will not live for 20 more years. Everything in front of us, including the mortgage if we’re diligent but not the house if we’re lucky, will be gone from our day to day lives.
Nothing is permanent. Nothing stays the same forever. Whatever good I have in front of me, it’ll go away. Whatever bad I’m staring down the barrel of, it’ll pass.
I know what it is to lose a parent, to lose the people you love and cherish and respect, to lose people who have just been getting started in the world. I know what it is to mourn and to have the edges of grief blunted, to have their memories fade with time. I know that in years to come, we’ll lose more because life is also aging and dying. I know that that’s going to happen with us.
Somehow, that thought galvanizes me. I try to do better, be a better person, be more humble, be more confident, love hard and authentically, whine less (a little less). Our time here is short. It needs to matter to me because it doesn’t matter to the universe as a whole. The vastness of how little I matter as this tiny speck in the cosmos is reassuring.
This makes my life with the responsibilities I chose, that I got to choose, feel light in comparison to the weightiness of the day to day pulls on my time and energy. Obviously I get stressed in the moment, of course, after the third go-around with the 3 year old or fourth meltdown of the morning but way deep down, I still have an even keel because objectively this is the best I’ve ever had it. Everything that’s tough right now? Is here in my life because I got to choose it. The very privilege of getting to choose my life, life companion, family, friends, and a hobby, even? Boggling. I’m grateful for that choice.
I’ve lost so much over the years to illness, to my own body’s frailties, that I cannot help but be all in on what I get to have now. Tired? Sure. Frazzled? Yup. Worried, uncertain, furious about the state of society? Absolutely. But overall? Grateful for what I do have.
August 30, 2017
I see some form of this question off and on in the various forums I haunt.
We’re in an Extra Hustle chapter of our lives this year and are hanging on by the skin of our teeth: all our conversations revolve around how we’re going to survive the coming day (taking shortcuts, cutting or trading errands and commitments) and the house. I’m sick unto death of discussing house stuff nonstop but we still have a ways to go.
When we’re not, we manage with just the two of us. Our family members with kids all have at least one grandparent actively supporting them, on a daily or weekly basis, if not both sets of grandparents. That’s never been the case for us, and a few years back, I was pretty freaked out about the prospect. I had to mull it over for years. No amount of reassurance allayed my worry.
In the true spirit of my alma mater, I had to learn by doing.
Childcare
Daycare: JuggerBaby is in daycare five days a week. For nearly $2000 a month, they’re open from 6:30 to 6:30 which is highly flexible for both of us, though we run late enough that we’re occasionally rushing in before they’re closing.
To save money ze was enrolled part time for almost a year. Full time is awesome. Ze loves it, I preserve energy. PiC was the sole chauffeur because it was on his way to work, but after ze started full time we compromised. I now go out of my way at least weekly to drop off and pick up so that he can have a bit more freedom those days.
Babysitting: We’ve struggled to find anyone in the right age group to watch JB. We ended up hiring a daycare teacher to pinch hit on occasion. We tend to avoid babysitting in small part because this year has been amazingly expensive on the home front but also because we tend not to prioritize going out. That’s not JB’s fault, though, we’re staying-in types.
I do feel it’s important that we hire zir at least quarterly to make sure we’re still considered clients, though!
Bonus help: Very occasionally, we have house guests who also love playing with zir. This gives us an odd hour of reprieve now and again. Our most recent house guest was an absolute unlooked-for godsend – he would always play with JB when ze charged out of bed in the morning or stampeded home at night. This happened at a rather crucial time in our household and freed us up to discuss decisions that had to be made quickly and jointly.
Parenting
This is distinctly different from childcare which is not a replacement for parenting. Childcare is a critical supplement to our lives and I’m thrilled there are so many people who love JB outside of zir own little family but it’s our job to raise our child.
We’ve joked that I’m always the Bad Cop, he’s the Fun Cop. This is true. But we both remain responsible for being patient, disciplinarians, and educators. Sometimes one of us can’t keep it together, and the other has to step in. Thank goodness there are two of us because whoooo that child can push our buttons.
Careers
We’ve both earned promotion and raises in the past 3 years – the same three years that include my pregnancy and the first two years of JB’s life. It’s not to say that I haven’t taken a hit for motherhood, I have. It still pisses me off. PiC didn’t take a similar hit. I realize that it has a lot to do with the size of our shops so I’m willing to consider that might have been an isolated incident, if I don’t see signs of that issue being repeated.
We’ve made huge adjustments to our jobs and haven’t suffered unduly for it: we work fewer hours, became more efficient. We fit in work around the odd shape our lives take, force our schedules to be flexible and we’ve both taken hits on our productivity. We rotate who takes those hits by prioritizing very specifically for what’s important to our jobs.
Important ground rules makes this work.
Pre-children, my work hours were sacrosanct. I wouldn’t take a single personal phone call during my work day. Now, I walk the dog, run two errands, get back at my desk to clear my emails and guide my staff all in the morning. Rinse and repeat for the afternoon! PiC never had that rule but he also can’t bring home 90% of his work, so when he has to work in the evenings, I cover bedtime to give him time. For my part, I once worked 7 days a week, and late every night, so now I only work week nights if it’s critical.
We’ve been lucky that even while growing in our roles, we haven’t increased our travel time. Heck, I’ve minimized my travel over the years, which is the opposite of many senior roles in management. This may not last so I cherish it.
My chauffeur days are scheduled on days that PiC usually needs the coverage. There’s an implicit understanding that if I’m feeling 14/10 pain or fatigue those days, he takes over. There’s also an explicit promise that he doesn’t get to make that decision for me, I have to. The problem we ran into was that he was trying to look out for me, and didn’t trust that I would ask for a pass if I needed it. He wasn’t wrong that I avoided it but it was because I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t over-extend himself trying to spare me. We were both well-intentioned but stupid. This agreement works better – I have to make the call and he rolls with it. If he can’t accommodate, then we’ll figure something else out.
The person who has a meeting or phone call gets priority. If he’s running late for work, and he’s driving – that sucks. But if he’s running late and has a meeting – I take over and chauffeur. For me, we only clear the decks for the important calls. Not all of them are and those calls don’t get the same consideration. I also schedule more of my calls for the afternoon to keep our mornings calmer.
This helps us make decisions on the fly because we both struggled with being over-accommodating. Much trial and error, and a few spats over misunderstanding, got us to this point. Now we have a better handle on what’s grumbling about running late and what’s truly important.
I firmly believe that, like alcohol, being a parent just brings out that which was strong in ourselves anyway. I guarantee that we didn’t always get out the door on time when it was just the two of us either!
Around the house
Most non driving days include tidying, cooking dinner, and doing laundry in addition to my regular 9-to-5 work. PiC prepares all breakfasts and lunches. On my chauffeur days, I do our grocery shopping – produce is best on weekday mornings! But I don’t take on additional housework. Unless I feel like it. Sometimes the soul needs to do laundry before it can process another stupid email.
Ideally, PiC should hit the gym on my driving days but sometimes he just gets more work done. That’s his call but once in a while I will press him to make sure to get that workout in – it’s better for our mental health.
Dog walking, feeding, medicating, twice a day, five days a week: me.
Final evening and weekend walks: him.
Wash and put away dishes: both.
Swiffers: mostly him.
Vacuuming: mostly me.
Trash, recycling: mostly him.
Money mgmt: all me.
Clearing the table: JB
Car maintenance: all him.
Putting away groceries: All of us. No one touch the yogurt or JB will have a fit, though, that’s zir job.
JB is responsible for giving Seamus his evening treat, throwing away Seamus’s trash, putting laundry in the wash, and wiping up spills.
Whoever uses the last of something is responsible for refilling it and too darn bad if you’re the one who hit the end of the cooking oil five times in a row, you refill it (AKA me). PiC runs all the other physical errands (getting gas, bathing the dog, stopping at the store, etc). We maintain a reasonably clean and near-tidy home, no one’s looking for Housekeeper of the Year awards on the back of anyone else’s labor.
The point is that we operate on the good faith that neither of us are looking to dump work on the other.
The friends and family plan
Outside of our family life, I work hard at maintaining friendships and like-family-ships. I choose to eliminate toxic people from our lives intentionally, and likewise intentionally dedicate time and support to good people.
When things are temporarily out of whack for us at home, with work or each other, or JuggerBaby is taxing our patience to the very limit, this outside support keeps us upright. This keeps us from boiling over at each other and causing real, permanent harm, and gives us much needed perspective.
The lessons we’ve learned in getting here
- Learn to speak up when we need to change part of the routine, whether we want to introduce change or not.
- Have conversations in the moment, not confrontations after you built a head of steam.
- Prioritize! You WANT to get fifty seven things done. You NEED to get ten of them done today.
- Look for ways to relieve your partner’s burdens and volunteer. Your partner should do the same.
Being proactive means that you can have faith that no one is dumping work on the other and that you’re both doing your best. Or trust, rather, since I don’t believe in operating on blind faith. Your partner is who your partner is – can you trust them to be your best advocate? I can. PiC always looks out for my best interests and I do my best for him. With that trust, resentment can’t get a toehold.
:: What does balance look like for you? How do you create balance in your life or relationships? What’s the toughest part of finding your balance?
June 28, 2017
Over lunch with friends, my fortune cookie said: you will never need to worry about a steady income.
What’s your first reaction?
A) SCORE
B) Why, will I be too dead to worry?
My second fortune cookie said: You will always take on the hardest possible tasks in life.
That’s not a fortune, that’s a character indictment. So judgmental.
My third fortune cookie: You will live many years in material comfort.
Could they be the last years? I am happy to keep working to earn my way while I’m relatively young, it’d be nice not to have the “many years” dry up before I do.
It’s possible that I take fortune cookies far too seriously. It’s not at all possible that I eat too many fortune cookies per meal.
Ok, but big picture, here.
I’m not a risk-taker. I make highly conservative decisions at the best of times because I’ve known some of the worst times. Since I was 18, no job could be considered on the merits alone: challenges, opportunity, compensation. They had to be weighed with respect to the kind of sacrifices it would require from me, the impact they would have on my quality of life after I subtracted the time and energy required to do the job well.
Chatting with a friend who came to chronic pain late in life this week, they’re becoming burdened with the same uncertainty and reluctant awareness of their startling new physical and mental limitations. They’re taking steps back from intriguing job offers that they would have leapt at ten years before, declining opportunities that sound amazing and challenging with the queasy awareness that it’s amazing but very likely just too much for the new them.
Being a saver is definitely me, but it’s hard to tell whether I would always have been this conservative if a chronic pain disease hadn’t taken over my life. It’s also hard to tell if I can train myself to see past my limitations to find opportunities that won’t seriously negatively impact our lives even as they expand our horizons. Do such opportunities exist? I don’t know, but the first step is asking the question, right?
:: Are you an optimist or pessimist, a saver or spender? Do you save anything for the return trip, or do you put all your energy into your outbound journey, like the guys in Gattaca?