A wordy post about two incomes

Much has been said recently around my corner of the internet about families sustaining on one or 1.5 careers. It seems in most of those, the wife has taken the career backseat, gladly or willingly, or even hesitantly while knowing it was what was best for their family.

I thought, perhaps, I would weigh in on my experiences.

I do not like talking about work on here beyond whether I’m busy or not. I have no upward mobility. There could be chances for that if I willed it, or wanted to go job hunting in another company, but I really don’t will it. I enjoy my job, I like my company, my coworkers, my manager. However demanding it is, those demands wax and wane. November was a hard month. It was a demanding month. But not every month is – some months I take no work home, only travel locally, get home in time to pick up the kids from daycare almost every day. I have been with my company for nearly eight years. I started at the bottom, and I’d say I’m near the top now. I don’t want to go any higher; I feel like I’m still constantly learning in my current position while still content and confident in my abilities. My job is high pressure, but not a constant high-pressure like those management jobs.

I feel I am a better mother when I am not with my children 24/7. I cherish our weekends. We eat dinner at the dining room table every night all week (as long as I’m in town, which is probably 90% of the month). I cook most nights, but we do go out for dinner sometimes, especially on the weekends, and the boys are very good at restaurants.

Before this, I worked in retail management. I was in middle management which included a lot of hours, a lot of pressure, a lot of problem solving and a lot of running and not much money. I cried a lot, sometimes at work and often at home. I did this while attending college full time and working at the school newspaper full time. I spent a lot of years in retail, enough to know I could never go back.

My husband’s work life has been more tumultuous. He also worked for the same retail company I did, in upper management (we worked in different stores) for a lot of years. He was laid off right before we got married (while we were trying to pay for everything, THAT was stressful). He finally got a job in IT and also hasn’t looked back. Two years ago he was laid off again, and after six months he found a new IT job, actually with the company who took over his old job.

He now works from home several days a week, and often even on the days he works in the office he comes home on lunch and stays home. He works hard, but has the leisure to get things done that need doing (like laundry or cleaning the kitchen) while he works. When I’m working late or out of town, there is no stress about who will be taking care of the kids, who will be picking them up, or what will happen.

My husband is the primary caregiver. I feel sometimes like this makes me less of a mother. My younger son has only ever known things this way, and he clings to daddy. This morning he woke up a grump and didn’t want anything to do with me, even though I had gotten up early to make oatmeal for them (I was due a hug after he started eating). My older son is still a momma’s boy, and it bothers my husband a lot that S prefers me over him but I feel like he gets everything with the boys and I should be allowed this one thing.

I honestly don’t know where I’m going with this post. We have two reasonably good and similar paychecks. We don’t have to scrimp, and we live well within our means so we are able to do what we want without much thought to cost (some thought, we aren’t exactly rolling in it). Most of my paycheck goes directly into savings. Actually, all of my paycheck goes directly into savings, and we pay the car payment out of it, and the credit card (which I pay off every month) and we help out certain family members out of it. We could feasibly live off one income, but we seem to be in a good place right now. I would love to work part time and have more time with the kids. However, with the type of job I do it’s not possible unless I were to “switch sides” as it were, which I’m not willing to do without feeling like I’ve sold my soul. (Aren’t you glad I’m being so specific?)

I don't (often) envy SAHMs, but I am amazed at their ability to be around their kids all the time without wanting to jump off a cliff. I don't has enough confidence in my parenting skills, as it seems.

So there you have it. Two incomes. It works for us.



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Alone Time

On Tuesdays the boys spend the day with their grandparents, and my husband picks them on the way home from work. This means that I get a couple hours to myself before the rest of the family gets home.

I crave those few hours.

I feel bad about it sometimes, but when I can't have that time I feel cheated. Something happens and I have to pick up the kids, or they are home when I get home ... I just feel like it's my break. My time.

Today I did some grocery shopping, started a load of laundry, made dinner. Watched a little of the DVR shows the C didn't care to watch. I blogged. I chose to do chores today while I was alone but I love that I don't have to. If I sat on my butt and read for two solid hours no one would care. Occasionally I do just that.

But today I got things done. During my alone time.


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Merry Thanksoweenmas!

So I’ve been on a self-imposed, accidental blogging moratorium over here. I really didn’t mean for it to happen, but with the busy busy work/home/holiday season upon us, it was either carve out additional time for myself for blogging and give myself a breakdown, or just take a time out. Turns out I didn’t have time to ask my doctor to up my crazy pill dosage, so I went with the time out. Everyone else did NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo, and I did NoMoBloPo (No More Blog Posts). Ha!
So much has been going on here that I would be a bad blogger/friend/stalker if I didn’t mention (in brief) what my November held for me. Work was unbelievably exhausting on its own, and although I don’t talk about work much here, I only saw my desk eight days this month. It’s hard to keep up with work when that happens. I did not keep up with work, so I’ve been taking things home and trying to catch up. December will be a catch up month.
November 9-11 I hopped on a plane that took me to NOLA where I met up with 50-ish of my best blogging friends that I had never met before. To say I was nervous was an understatement – I had full blown hyperventilating anxiety attacks in the weeks leading up to it. But I really wanted to meet these ladies, and I knew if I could get a hold of myself I’d have a blast, and I did. I really did. I miss those women so very much already. New Orleans was fun, but what made it for me were those friendly wonderful women. My friends. Kammah. Ginger. Tara. Whitney. I didn’t write a re-cap, and I don’t know that I would do it justice but so many of them have written fantastic recaps already. Mine just wouldn’t compete but know I feel exactly the same as they do, about every little piece.

The following weekend my best friend and her family came down from Delaware to spend a week in Orlando, and we trekked over to spend a few days with her and with them. Henry had never been to Disney and Spencer went once before, but it really was magical. All of our children, having so much fun together. Spencer held hands with the girls all weekend and we all had the best time. Monday I spent just with Becky doing non-Disney things – pedicures, lunch at Seasons 52, outlet mall shopping.

Then of course there was Thanksgiving weekend. Family and food, excellent. We did some BF shopping and got our own presents rather than exchange presents at Christmas this year. I got knives, hoo boy. I needed knives. C got a tablet, which he has been attached to ever since (which I totally understand, given my obsession with my iPad). We even got some slip n slide action in over the holiday weekend before the weather turned chilly.

So there you have it. I have been busy. I have been weighed, I have been measured, and I have been found wanting. Apparently, January will be a new year! I’ll try to keep up.
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More blathering

It's between doing actual stuff and blogging, so lucky for you I decided to blog! Ha!

My video blog was so MANIC I'm actually a bit embarrassed. I am not a public speaker, so the prospect of a) posting a video of ME and b) not preparing any answers so the questions and c) ONE TAKE IN MY CAR WHEN I'M TWO HOURS PAST MY LUNCHTIME. So ... yeah. I would redo, but I don't think it would be any better. I swear I'm not that manic in real life. Well, maybe I am. Becky? MamaFuss?

But I had no idea what to say about the question about three things about me. It is true that five minutes into a conversation with me, you're likely to know my deepest, strangest and most mortifying secrets. Nothing is off-limits in my conversations and I apologize in advance. But here are a few things that may or may not come up in New Orleans:

1) I can never remember to turn off my flat iron, and if I do remember, I still don't remember that I did turn it off so I get worried. I've turned around from trips to Orlando to go home and turn off my flat iron. I've been late to work because I turned around. I've sent my neighbor over to my house after I got to work on numerous occasions. If I leave before my husband, I text him to check (honestly, you'd think he would automatically check). I think this is because my old iron had an auto-off.

2) I have the same issue driving other vehicles, because my car has auto-lights.

3) I watched very little tv growing up. I don't remember anything other that PBS (Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Mister Rogers) until the early 90s when my brother was young. Then I've got Saved By The Bell, California Dreamin', Rugrats and all the early 90s Nickalodeon shows. I never watched Friends when it was a weekly show. I started watching it in reruns in college. Of course, now I'm addicted to tv, but I have a guilt about it because I watched so little tv before, that I have a hard time adding new shows to my watching repertoire.

4) I cannot sleep on airplanes. So I will be tired.

5) I have seen my children for approximately one hour total all week, so I have serious mom guilt about going to NOLA this weekend. This will not keep me from coming and enjoying myself at all, but they keep asking me to take them to daycare. I cannot take them because I have my company car so no carseats and they seem so heartbroken. I'm having a harder time than usual.

6) I do not have a lot of the issues that most people appear to have. I do not get up with the children often. They sleep pretty well and I don't wake up for much of anything, so I almost always get a full night's sleep. If I don't, it's usually my own body's fault. My kids are generally healthy - H has never had an ear infection, and other than a couple rounds of Albuteral when he was under a year, one time of the flu (we all got it last Christmas) and a few colds he's rarely sick. S had two ear infections, gets mild fevers occasionally that don't get worse but never even gets colds. They are very well behaved (in public). They stick with us and listen and  I get other-mom guilt toward OTHER moms because I don't have to deal with all the stuff they do. Why should I complain? I'm never up 8 times in a night. I'm never cleaning up vomit and I'm never dealing with a lot of craziness. I think my threshold for dealing with these things is a lot lower because I never have to.

7) I am so jealous of the people already in New Orleans.

Oh dear god, it's a blathering vlog

I apologize in advance.

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What I know now: Twitter edition

I thought it was such a cop out when my blog friends left blogging for Twitter, and never looked back.

And then I got involved in Twitter.

I opened a twitter account five-ish year ago, when we were looking for houses, I was pregnant, and continued through back to work after Spencer and my last tweet was about being a new homeowner. I didn’t really like Twitter back then. I didn’t see the point in following celebrities (okay, so I still don’t), and I only followed IRL friends who were way cooler than I was … a pregnant old married house-hunting woman. My feed pushed to my text messages so it was always buzzing but the tweets were never for me, so it was like reading other people’s conversations but never being involved. Another way to feel left out.

Anyhow, so I decided that Twitter was just not for me, and spent four years pooh-poohing the whole thing. Twitter? No, that’s just silly.

Ahem.

Two months or so ago I got back on, met some really fabulous ladies, decided to up and go to NOLA with them in a week (freaking out NOW!) and now I’m fabulously addicted. Which is why I’m never here anymore (although I do have plans for more child-related posts because everyone needs to see how cute the kids were at the pumpkin festival and Halloween) and why I’m also rarely posting on Facebook. A few of my friends used to make fun of me for the amount of status posts I did to Facebook. I never did the diary thing, but I did post snarky comments many times a day. You know what? No one bats an eye if I do that on Twitter.

Well, if they do, I don’t see it.

What I read: October

In the Shadow of the Banyan - Vaddey Ratner this was a thinly veiled autobiography-turned-fiction and I LOVED it.

 

When in Doubt, Add Butter - Beth Harbison  I stuck this on my to-read after looking through a bestseller’s list, and it was good. Not great, but good. Fun.

 

Charm City - Laura Lippman  I forgot this was on my list originally, but it came free on my ebook library list. Very enjoyable.

 

What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty  I felt so strongly that this was Regarding Henry (remember that movie?). I knew how it was going to end, I liked it but I wasn’t totally in love with it like most of the internet.

 

The Cost of Hope - Amanda Bennett This was last month’s book club book, but I didn’t get it in time and so I read it this month instead. It was very interesting. The focus was on how much her husband’s cancer treatments would have cost if they didn’t have insurance. This made for a much less-emotional side of the loss. I would have appreciated more passion but I thought it was an interesting take on something so heartbreaking – the decline and death of a spouse.

 

Dark Currents - Lindsay Buroker  I adore this series. I ignored all my other books to keep reading.

 

Deadly Games - Lindsay Buroker  see above.

 

Conspiracy - Lindsay Buroker again.

 

Blood & Betrayal - Lindsay Buroker  and again.

 

Manhunt - James L Swanson This month’s book club book. It’s really interesting, and I haven’t finished it in time for tomorrow’s meeting (I would have if it weren’t for those lovely Buroker books). Somehow I didn’t really grasp how devastated John Wilkes Booth was about the surrender of General Lee, and about the end of the Civil War. That kind of passion about politics … well, I just don’t have it. I have my beliefs but I don’t think anything could cause that kind of reaction from me. The threat of bodily harm to my children, maybe, but that’s about it.