this woman’s work

Brett goes back to work tomorrow and he will be missed. Things I will miss most:

• His morning pancakes
• The way he brings me a second cup of coffee while I’m sitting at my desk
• Being able to start the morning at my desk undisturbed
• Knowing that he’ll run the kids to the park and/or library and otherwise fill their lives with wholesome activity
• His annoying singing in the morning
• Having him open the window I can’t reach above my desk
• Chatting with him over lunch
• Talking myself through writer’s block will he patiently listens
• Watching him serve dinner with a flourish and more singing
• All the errands he somehow finds time to run

Well, now I’m a little sad.

This has been a difficult year full of growth and struggle. I’ve learned more than I really wanted to know about the inner-workings of my financial fears and we’ve worked through so much as a couple. I’m excited about this next stage because I think it can get us where we want to be faster (mainly, getting Brett home again with a more stable budget — unless he loves his job so much he wants to stay there, too) and I’m also nervous about keeping up this level of work with a more challenging schedule.

The flipside of the challenging schedule is that I’ll be forced to leave work with work instead of carrying it along with me. I think if I drop most of my pro bono efforts that it’ll go a long way to freeing up my time. I also am going to do a lot less in-person networking and more working the network I already have (because I need to think about marketing, which always seems counterintuitive when I’m really busy but eventually the slow times will come back). And having the one car is going to be annoying. (There’s a bus that we think runs near his job but how near and the length of the commute have not been confirmed. We do know that it’ll be a trade-off: Having a car or having Brett home in a timely manner. It’s not economical to drive him myself gas-wise.)

I got most of my business systems worked out so that I can work more effectively and it’s going to be easier now than it was before Brett came home. (I wasn’t juggling nearly as much work then but what I was juggling I was handling badly.) Besides, it’s only seven weeks of Brett being gone days and then it’ll be a lot easier. (I do my best work in the morning and tend to burn out by about 2pm, which is when Brett will be heading out when his schedule changes.)

So we will be back to a 2-income family. I made a full-time salary in my ePreg days but since then my paychecks have been very much of the part-time variety so this will be the first time in quite awhile that our coffer will have the benefit of two folks throwing money at it. We’re thinking six to eight months and then we’ll reassess barring any exciting developments on my end.

I will also have less time to write for myself for the next two months, which makes me sad/frustrated. Thing is, it’s about long-term plans and knowing that it’s a priority for our future does much to ease my grousing.

Sometime I want to write more about how it’s been to change out our traditional gender roles (husband working, wife carrying for kids & home) and how it has and has not impacted our marriage. I will say that it’s been a bigger deal for people around us than for us although it did force us to confront some of our ingrained ideas about how our family works.

Brett just awarded me employee of the month at, you know, Smart Cookie Communications. I guess we’re going to take turns with that. I hope he’s buying me chocolate to celebrate.

When people ask me what my husband does (or ask Brett what he does) we’ve been saying he’s home with the kids but now we’re going to say that he handles the accounting for our business because:

1. He does.

2. It engenders less discussion.

3. It’s easy for the two of us to forget how vital he is to our daily operations and we need to put it at the forefront of our minds.

I can write for days and days but am easily bored by mundane things like billing and keeping track of W9s and remembering to send back contracts. If he didn’t help me with that stuff things would be so much more muddled around here. Plus he chases down people who haven’t paid, he handles all the insurance and retirement issues, and he deals with our tax records. I would be drowning in a sea of paper (and likely not even noticing) if he didn’t handle all that.

But this month I get to be Employee of the Month because I promised to catch up on the book reviews even though I am easily bored by them and he’s trying to cheer me on so I can get ‘em off my desk. Whenever I send an invoice out, I cc him for his records and I just sent one so he emailed me back and let me know I’d be getting my plaque any minute now. Maybe they’ll put my picture in the company newsletter!

If I hadn’t already snatched him up, I’d just marry the heck out of that guy.