Back to a Balance

~ Laura

Steve went back to work this morning. I dropped off Jonah at 8 at the high school; he has a winter track meet in an armory in Manhattan. Ian and my mom and I will go out for breakfast shortly. Afterwards, we’ll do some returns. I love doing returns. I feel like I’m earning money.

I’m still limping around here. Recovering from the holidays. The holidays are always an equal amount of fun and work, but a couple of times this year, the work outweighed the fun. I had to cut some corners. I didn’t send out holiday cards. The boys weren’t wearing their finest clothes. I cut back on the number of food courses on Christmas Eve. We resolved to cut back even further next year. Still, there were a several moments of purity that made it all worth it.

I’ll post some shots of our holidays later in the week, but I’m ready to move on. I need some politics and culture posts. I would make a terrible lifestyle guru, because I get sick of house and home stuff quickly. I mean I love it for short bursts of time, but there really is more to life than a perfectly decorated tree and scallops wrapped in bacon (even if I do cook up fabulous scallops). I’m actually looking forward to a writing deadline at the end of the week, because I need to use another part of my brain.

Yes, there’s more to life than food and drink, like snarky commentary about Britney Spears’ new show in Las Vegas.

unnamed

(Christmas Eve. Missing moi plus the two grandmas. We’re cooking up the little fishies in the kitchen. Also missing is Ian, because he’s the photographer.)

Published by Laura

19 thoughts on “Back to a Balance”

  1. We just got back from visiting the family in NY. Lots of fun times. On Saturday we spent the day in the city (just my husband and I–the kids wanted to hang out with their cousin and play video games and go to the diner). We went to the Frick to see the Vermeers, which ended up being only one in the special exhibit, but it was a big one (Girl with the Pearl Earring), and I saw The Goldfinch, the subject of the eponymously named novel. Then on the train ride home I tortured myself by re-reading the museum scene at the beginning of the novel. Then we went to Brooklyn to visit my uncle and his family and had really cheap and spicy Indian takeout.

    Like

  2. Hmmm, I wonder if I would get sick of house and home stuff if I did nothing else. I wouldn’t want to be a SAHD, because of the lack of respect from my peers, but that’s a different issue. I really don’t know if the activities themselves would pall.

    Like

  3. Y81 – in Japan, you have to notify and pay for discarding things like furniture. ‘Large Household Garbage’, it’s called. So, you have these salarymen who have been getting out of the house at 630am and coming home at 11pm half in the bag from drinks with the guys at the office after work and suddenly they are retired! After 30 years, and they are home with their wives who have gotten very used to life more or less without them, and when they are out for tea with their buddies they call these guys ‘large household garbage’.

    If you were a SAHD, your peers would be the other SAHDs at the tot lot, or the other actives in the PTA.

    I’m now eligible to retire, and am thinking of going part time, so this stuff is salient for me, too.

    Like

  4. Laura said:

    “I didn’t send out holiday cards.”

    I’ve been pretty spotty the last several years. My current goal is just to send out some check-in emails over break–we still have TWO WEEKS of break.

    Facebook is killing the Christmas card, isn’t it? We got a fair number of cards, but I noticed that at least 50% of the Christmas cards we got this year were institutional (school, Caritas, the college, etc.).

    dave s. said,

    “I’m now eligible to retire, and am thinking of going part time, so this stuff is salient for me, too.”

    You know what they say–retirement means half the money, twice the husband.

    I think part-time is a very good idea. I worry about the guys who go directly from full-time to no-time at an early age, thinking that leisure activities will fill up the time. It’s a long time from 50 to 95.

    Like

  5. thinking that leisure activities will fill up the time. It’s a long time from 50 to 95.

    That’s while it’s good to make your leisure activities include heavy drinking and/or dangerous activities. It’s more fun, and lessens the chance that you’ll live too long.

    Like

  6. I love holiday cards, though I don’t send them out myself. I keep thinking of doing it (maybe late, for New Years), because I want to support the institution. But I agree that all the other means of communication is seriously changing the cards — a number of my circle who are religious (in the secular sense) about cards didn’t manage to get them out this year.

    We do not celebrate Christmas, and travel for the winter break, so it is one of our most relaxing times of the year. Reading books, hanging out at the beach, cooking (which we never have time for at home), family dinners, . . . .

    A number of others I know also travel for the holidays, increasingly not to family, but just to travel, or travel with family to destination vacations (it’s a long break, and a good time to visit the more tropical regions of the world, especially if you live in a region of darkness).

    Like

  7. One of the holiday cards we receive is a PDF, shared via email. I enjoy that too, and it’s much easier to send than paper cards via the mail.

    Like

  8. Amy P.–My wife retired this year. I guess you could describe it as having twice the wife. Of course, if wifeliness is a net plus–and it is–then having twice the wife is a good thing. The same presumably applies to husbandliness.

    Like

      1. Amy P.–Maybe not, but my wife is more like a diamond than a pizza, and a two carat diamond is at least twice as good as a one carat diamond.

        Like

  9. We feel that we’re still recovering from the three-year-old getting sick in mid-November. We’ve hobbled through Thanksgiving, our annual holiday party, and the holidays themselves. At least one (and usually more) of our four have been sick continuously, but by slogging through we managed to get cards out, presents bought, and dinners consumed. I’m a bit jealous of everyone who’s posting post-holiday thoughts — today was the first day back in our house with my wife working from home and me keeping the kids out of her hair, which will continue until school resumes on the 7th. This year I may celebrate the opening of mardi gras season with gusto.

    Good luck to you all!

    Like

  10. We are among the ones who travel (from cold places to warm). But I think that hanging out at in-laws for two weeks is now more than we’re enjoying. Need to get to the beach more. We’ve had colds and slept a lot. Great to see our college-aged kids here with their cousins. I’m going to be here a week longer than the others and I’m not sure that was a good idea. I’ll know by the middle of January.

    Like

Comments are closed.