Wednesday, December 05, 2012

When I complain about solo nights, remind me that they seemed like a good idea at the time.

Ben used to adjunct fairly regularly for a private school in our area that offers career-track bachelors programs for professionals.  The classes meet at night (duh, because most professionals work during the day-- not me and Ben necessarily, but most people with jobs), and the students are in cohorts, taking one or two classes (that meet once a week for 4 hours per night) every 5 or 6 weeks with the same group of peers.  It sucked ass for me, especially about a year ago when we were adjusting to life with 3, so Ben stopped signing up for classes as regularly, and enrollment dropped because I don't know if you have heard this, but the economy is in the shitter.  (Sorry to break the bad news.) 

ANYWAY, he signed up for a class coming up here in a little bit and forgot all about it for the better part of 8 months until he got an email reminding him.  He called me at work, expecting me to tell him to drop it because I hate doing solo nights with the kids and have 1 or 2 a week this semester because of Ben's regular class schedule.  Instead, I thought of the great room remodels we are embarking on in the next few weeks, the astronomical price of my Pottery Barn Kids shopping cart and the ridiculous amount of prints and wood signs I have favorited on Etsy for the big boys' new room, and I sucked it up and told him I was so happy to hear he had the class coming up because we could probably use the money. (We have been planning to spend a lot on the kids' rooms, but how nice would it be to not have to use the money we've saved?)  Then an hour later, he called me back and said he got another email asking him to pick up an additional section, meaning he'd have 5 weeks of teaching 2 nights a week, and I'd have 10 nights of putting the kids to bed all by myself, a couple of these occurring after I had been home with them ALL DAY LONG.

If I were a stay-at-home mom, I would not think twice about this (although I would bitch for sure), but because I have work to do even on the days I don't go to the office, I definitely balked (silently because I am a grown up).  But then I checked my calendar and realized I am on break for the majority of this debacle-to-be.  And I also realized that even though I have already shopped for Harry and Jack's rooms, we still need to pick out and purchase 2 dressers, a crib, miscellaneous wall art for Cooper's new big boy room (that will still have a crib in it because he is not a big boy) and a whole bunch of girl decor.

SO, I said, awesome-- what an unexpected bonus!  And Ben was like WTF? 

And now I am screwed, or will be soon.  When I complain about it (AND I WILL), remind me that I did this to myself, okay?



There will be many other nights like this.  When the children are winning.

3 comments:

  1. The couch cushions all over the place makes me twitchy like no other mess, but they do it almost every day and it makes them SO happy, so who am I to stop them?

    Yay for bonus income! We went the other way because I went down from three to two classes (by choice because one is a prep and I was overwhelmed already this semester by three sections of the same easy class). Sounds like a good plan for you guys! Ten nights is no problem!

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  2. I agree, ten nights is totally do-able! Especially when it means slightly more free reign for buying the girl stuff.

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  3. You are brave. But it's only 10 nights. You could handle just about anything for 10 nights. Except puking. I think that would be impossible.

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