Trying to have a conversation with my husband about what to do: continue working part-time, move to a “balanced” schedule, go back full-time, or quit completely and be a stay at home mom, feels like walking through a molasses swamp. Each step is painfully slow and laborious and we inevitably get stuck on this topic or that before ever being able to see our way to an answer one way or the other.
The conversation has been going for months and we’re not any closer to figuring out the answer as a unit as we were when we first started the discussion. For one, we can only talk about it when neither of us is working and when we’re not tag-teaming the children, leaving us a small window between 9-10 at night, which isn’t exactly the ideal time to talk about anything. And two, it’s anxiety provoking to wade through all the options right before bedtime when we’d much rather spend our 30 minutes of precious downtime watching Netflix’ed 30 Rock episodes.
The nightly scenario goes something like this:
Hubby pressing the mute button on the t.v. remote, “Have you thought about what you want to do with your job?”
Me looking up from my laptop, “Yeah.” I continue Internet surfing.
“What do you want to do?” Hubby fiddles with the remote, getting ready to press the volume button.
Me: “Well, I think we need to come up with a flowchart that shows all the different options we have, how they affect us financially and what the timeline is for each option.”
“I think that’s called a matrix,” Hubby corrects me. “Not a flowchart. Yeah, we need a matrix.” Hubby un-mutes the television. I go back to the Internet.
Tonight’s version was basically all of the above, ending this time with, “Well, let me know if you quit your job. Or decide and then blog about it and let me know when the post is ready for me to read.”
Tonight’s verdict: Still undecided. (Back to surfing the Internet).
The Verdict 