Sacrifice

This thread on Blab it a nerve with me:

After my son was born, my wife scored what she thought was the dream job. And so it was.

But it didn’t take long to figure out that she was working to pay the car note and daycare so she could go to work to pay the car note and daycare. At the end of the month, we were maybe $300 richer. And that’s if nothing went wrong.

We both had jobs that required us to be out and about – not in an office. In my case, I was a top repair tech at a Telecom firm. I saw 4-6 ‘screamers’ a day. These were people who had chronic issues that others had failed to resolve. Each day I took off made the rest of the days misery.

And shit would go pearshaped all the time. The Day Care lady would want to skeeve off a day and declare that the kids had a fever. Then, it would be an arguement who could take over, me or her.

Eventually, she bailed on a leave of absence, figuring that when the boy went to school, she could claim that chit back and start where she left off. I had a company car. We took our Jeep Cherokee and traded it in for a Mercury Sable plus some cash. Blew some debt and started off.

We scrimped a bit. I had already planted a garden and was fixing up the beater house we had bought. She went into business for herself, and the first year netted more than she would have working for the man.

It wasn’t long before Kid #3 came along. She was pissed. It took her a full trimester to reconcile that the leave of absence was toast and her plans were gone.

But we got through it.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and I’m sure she wouldn’t either. Times were tough, but they were the happiest of my life. It wasn’t more than a few years that I bailed on my job for a consulting firm, 20K+ more a year, and full paid benefits.

Life got easier.

Far as what the poster said, they are wrong as wrong can be. It can be done, even today. I’m watching my daughter do it.

When I got laid off in 2003, my wife went back to work. Tech was dead, but accounting was booming. I became the housewife.

I loved that job.

Get the kids ready and off to school, clean cook, pick them up, get them started on homework and dinner. When it was her that did that, add to that volunteering at school, taking the kids to parks and trips to all sorts of educational sites in the DC area where we lived. She continued that when we moved to DFW.

She wasn’t sitting around all day, eating bon bons and enjoying an ‘easy’ lifestyle.

It’s work. But satisfying work that has to be done.

I’ve met more than one couple down here that have two car payments – $1200+ total, plus a house note. Find themselves with child, and look to have a new bigger house built. Out. of. their. minds.

I had a cowoker that did that. I was stunned. He lived in a nice neighborhood in Plano, in a good size three bedroom house. I told him he was nuts. He could have a few kids before needing to do that, especially in an economic downturn, like the tech blowup in 2003.

I don’t think it was a year later, he’s divorced. No wife. No kid. Rattling around an empty new house with his truck payment and child support, divorce raped.

I know at least three men around that time that this happened to. To them, a kid doesn’t care about your car or house. Only you. You could move to a trailer and they’d be happy.

To the women; you only have a little over a decade where you can do this. Give up the bullshit and raise your kids. You can go back to the nice house and car in no time.

Time, that I can tell you, moves so fast.