Sustainable Life
with Bibi
In general, I'm a crunchy granola mom (sometimes read: hippie) with no specific philosophy on life. Our family makes it from month to month with my husband working full time as a teacher, and me staying home full time with our daughter, while taking in paid jobs as they come my way. The family budget is tight, but we try to do our part to clean up our lifestyle and our planet.
To learn more about Bibi, check out her profile on Work It, Mom! and her personal blog, Mamasense.
For our family, I happen to be the stay-at-home parent. Sure, I work from home. But, I’ve noticed that when you are mainly home all day, people expect you to be able to drop pretty much everything at a moments notice. There are of course some wonderful exceptions including: fellow moms, my own parents, and my husband, but most everyone else doesn’t get it.
Being that I pretty much have unlimited access to the phone and a car during the day (unlike my husband), I have pretty much taken over the responsibility of anything that needs to be taken care of during business hours. That includes but is definitely not limited to: dentist appointments (making the appointment and keeping it), anything having to do with the city offices (i.e. property taxes, and car registration), repairs to the car (taking it to the shop…not fixing it), talking to insurance companies, etc. etc. etc… Seriously, the list goes on and on.
I usually don’t really mind this stuff. These sorts of things don’t come up all that often, and I can usually fit them in on days when I’m not working. However, that was before we started this process of buying a house. Now I’m literally making calls and running errands every day, and my tired little pregnant self has had it up to here with getting the right paperwork, and making sure it has the right signature on it.
Today I had to go to the bank and get a cashier’s check. That’s a simple enough task, so I thought I would go straight after breakfast to get it. It turned into a parent’s worst nightmare two minutes in, because I had forgotten who to make the check out to.
That’s a small thing if you don’t have a one and a half year old in tow. Of course my little climber was trying to run all over the place and screaming “NOOOOO” any time I tried to stop her. And this was all while I was trying to get a hold of my husband or realtor to figure out how the check needed to be made out. To top this scenario off, I had allowed my daughter to wear her “big girl pants” (she just learned to use the potty), and I was praying that she wouldn’t pee on one of the banks nice chairs. Thank all that is good in the world that she didn’t.
I know that this is temporary, but I’m a little worried that I’m about to turn into one of those jerks that are rude to service personnel. I guess the stress is getting to me, because I have a hard time keeping myself from doing little rude things like sighing, or rolling my eyes, or running into an office and screaming “WHERE IS MY CORRECTED PAPERWORK???!!!”. My husband says it’s the pregnancy hormones…someone should mention to him that pregnant women women in general don’t like to be reminded that they’re hormonal.
For now, I’m keeping it pretty well controlled, but that closing date can’t get here fast enough!
Who deals with the business stuff in your family? Are you happy with the distribution of this work?
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Congratulations on your pregnancy!
I had to laugh when I read the part, “of course my little climber was trying to run all over the place and screaming “NOOOOO” any time I tried to stop her.”
The very same scenario is played out in our house and in public multiple times throughout the day. (The worst was this past Monday when I went to the store and my son had such horrible meltdown that a fellow stranger shopper held the shopping cart for me so that I could sit my son back down in the cart seat AND the cashier checked us through with lightening quickness, and without checking ID for wine coolers!) My own patience is worn thin and I, too, find myself glaring and rolling my eyes at the store (and, in the case of our recent shopping experience, then felt genuinely bad after strangers helped me with the little one.)
Family and friends tell me to cherish this phase of my son’s life, and I TRY to … it’s just a bit chaotic at times.
KC | February 18th, 2009 at 4:40 am
One of the nice things about being at home is that you can make appointments for the middle of the day because there are fewer people. My pediatrician appointments are usually at ~2 PM when all the kids are in school. When I get there, I only have to wait 5 minutes before being called inside.
DH deals with business stuff. I hate business stuff because I don’t really understand it. He pays bills and deals with car stuff. I deal with appointments for my children and me (he makes his own doctor appointments), household duties, buying gifts for weddings/baby showers, and other stuff that women generally do. The only thing that bothers me is that DH is lazy when he’s home, probably because he knows someone else will do it. He doesn’t do anything unless I tell him to. He doesn’t volunteer. If he has nothing to do, he turns on the TV. If I have nothing to do, I find a way to make the house look better.
Linda | March 1st, 2009 at 7:55 pm