More proof that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed

Well, Spouse will be home late from work again. Last week they were anticipating a new project rolling out, and everyone was asked to work different or extra hours — Spouse offered to work from 11am to 8pm. On a personal level, he LOVED it because he arrived at work *awake* and felt so productive. But it meant that he didn’t get to see the kids much, and he missed them.

And here’s the part where I show my [ignorance? privilege?] . . . it *just* clicked with me on a new level that he couldn’t do any of that if I weren’t at home. It’s almost as if my decision to forgo a career is enabling QueVeeCee to take advantage of us. If I weren’t here to pick up his slack, he would have to leave on time. They would have to deal with it. Why can’t we decide to live as if, invent a nanny as [brilliant] others have done, and make him leave on time? Because then he might be seen as ‘not a team player’ or ‘having a bad attitude’.

Sadly, they don’t seem to acknowledge that it’s hard to be ‘team player’ when you can’t pay your bills, you’re not entitled to a bonus or overtime, and the biggest luxury in your life is a trip to Starbucks.  We’ve been studying the budget this week and trying to figure out: What can we cut back on? We canceled the newspaper, cut the babysitter down to once a week, we don’t have cable TV . . . OK, I should confess that I spent $24 dollars on yarn last month . . . We’re not buying the kids (or ourselves, for that matter) toys or clothes with any regularity (as in, haven’t purchased any of those things in 6 weeks or more). I’m sure there are things we could do differently — I guess we could cancel our cell phones — but I REALLY resent having to do so.  It would be one thing if we sacrificed so that we could have more time together, but to ’sacrifice’ in order to be able to bounce 5 checks instead of 8 is just sickening. We’re not driving new cars or eating at fine restaurants or eating at crappy restaurants or seeing movies or decked out in name brand clothing or watching a flat-screen TV or buying any books or remodeling our home or shopping at Whole Foods, or . . . or . . . or . . .
And it doesn’t help that today is the day that he forfeited 2 weeks vacation. They have a ‘Use it or Lose it’ program and he didn’t use it, so . . . (um, work ethic, anyone?!?!). It looked like he was going to get a new job in time to cash in that vacation (Mommy was gonna get a new bike!) but the company he was interviewing with was working with another company that deciding to cut back on some new ventures so . . .  We toyed with the idea of him quitting, knowing that with his unpaid vacation we’d be getting a paycheck until mid-November, but we just couldn’t justify the risk.  So, farewell to 2 weeks vacation pay.

Eh, it could always be worse.  I know.  It just *feels* pretty crappy right now.