We had a very sweet house cleaner come by this morning to give us an estimate.  Good news/ bad news: she got here at 8:30 while I was still in bed and Joey was in his pj’s.  Oops.  At least the house looked like it normally does and I won’t feel bad that we duped her.
The estimate is what I expected: $120 per session, two sessions to start, then bi-weekly or monthly thereafter.  She has dogs, likes dogs, doesn’t mind dogs – these are good things with our three dumbos running around trying to get her attention.  She seemed nice, is fully bonded, and my husband didn’t lose his mind over the prospect of strangers in our home.
So I’m wrestling with the idea.  Seriously wrestling. 
On the one hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, we spend that much at Walmart. On things we ultimately use and throw away. {Don’t get me started on the ridiculousness that is paper towels.} 
On the one hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, we just had the “I do EVERYTHING AROUND HERE” spat this morning.  {In my defense, not true.  In his defense, totally true if you look at the hours between 7:00 am and 9:00 am.}
On the one hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, the calmest and most serene periods of my existence have correlated to having someone clean my house.  It makes me happy.  It reduces stress.  It makes husbands not resent wives so much for their messy, messy way.
On the last hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, we used to pay that much in cable. Or credit card payments. Or motorcycle payments. Or eating out. Or bounced check fees (yes, I suck).
Remind me again that I said this would be well worth the cost if it supported my marriage?  What would you do?

Update: I did it.  My husband has to do everything around here because I’m either working or gone.  If the situation was reversed, I’d hope he’d do the same for me.

Okay, maybe not ever, but a pretty darned good one.  Go read NOW: Simple Marriage on how to break free from marital gridlock.

Some of the commenters on Corey’s site didn’t understand the post, but it really resonated with me.  How about you?

Okay, you didn’t actually offer, but y’all did weigh in on yesterday’s money discussion, so I couldn’t help but wonder (name the reference): how do you handle savings?

I don’t come from a Savings Family so I can’t really do the whole Saving Thing the way my family did.  Like a good portion of the American public, they paid their bills and took out loans and mostly lived paycheck-to-paycheck.

Like a good portion of American kids, I want to do things a little better than my parents did, and so I want to save.  With a plan.  And less stress.  Because right now I’m saving but with a whole lot of stress.

To-date, I’ve either not saved (bad Marisa) or saved big lump sums into one single account.  One single account is fine when you have one single-minded goal (“pay off debt!”), but a little confusing when you have many goals.

Take our situation as a good example.  Once we pay off Joey’s car, things will change.  He’ll be going back to school, we’ll have no debt except the house and my truck, and we’ll be less into PAY EVERYTHING OFF and more into MANAGE EFFECTIVELY FOR A WHILE.  A long while.  Multiple years, years that will likely bring us lots of changes like children and, well, children.  {Could there be any bigger changes?  Unlikely.  Okay, maybe, but let’s not think about that for now.}  We’ll be a one-income family for the most part, and thank gawd my salary has increased so that it’s just about the same as our joint income.  With one less house (pleasegodpleasegodpleasegod) we should be fine but we’ll have a bunch of different goals: upgrade the kitchen, prepare for a baby, go on vacation, buy guns (kidding, though my husband would be thrilled).

So back to the savings: do you save into multiple targeted savings accounts, and if so, how do you decide how much to put into each one?  I get the concept but am struggling with the mechanics.  And hey, while you’re at it, any suggestions on how to be happy and united while one spouse is a full-time student and the other isn’t would be fabulous!

I’m a smart woman.  I know this.  And yet, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around my husband’s money management system.  It seems simple enough, but when I’ve tried to apply it to my life, I get stuck.

His method: every (weekly) paycheck, he deposits a fixed amount into his bank account and pulls out the rest in cash. Bills get paid automatically when they’re due.

So many parts of that sentence tripped me: Every. Weekly. Deposit. Fixed Amount. Pulls out the rest.  In Cash.  Automatically. When they’re due.

See?  Almost every word.

My method: every (every other week paycheck), I pay a different set of bills and adjust my budget accordingly.  One paycheck pays the mortgage, the other pays everything else, and twice a year I have a “bonus” paycheck.

Because I don’t get paid on the same days every month, and because Comcast totally sucks and manages to change my bill every month (despite having the same services every month), I don’t do automatic deposits.  Yes, I’m the one in this relationship that prays to the gods of bank balances when she checks hers, but I’m also the one who doesn’t trust the whole auto-pay thing.

~~~

For a couple of increasingly important reasons, it’s very important to me that we combine our money.

1 – I make more than he does. 

I think I’m more uncomfortable about this than he is, frankly, but I hate the imbalance.  It feels very awkward, and if I wanted to be awkward about money the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have minded dating so much.  Also, I want us to be making the right decisions for our family, and that’s hard when you’re staring your single life in the face.  Who wants to make the choice to make no money for a while when right now you’re making some money?  Not your single self, that’s for sure.

2 – He’s going back to school in the fall. 

To-date, he pays his bills and I pay mine.  Sort of.  We have two houses, so he pays for his bachelor pad and I pay for the one we live in, but it’s roughly equitable.  That goes out the window when he goes back to school, and I’m already anticipating the skyrocketing awkwardness.

3 – I’m sick to death of the “who’s paying” arguments. 

I don’t care what you say, he who pays for the thing has more leverage, and if not more leverage, more resentment. I see it in myself and I hate it, so, I want it to go away.

4 – Our goals aren’t always clear because we each target our money for different things, leading to nasty surprises.

We’re both pretty responsible money managers, but simply because we don’t share a budget, I feel we don’t always have the same micro-goals.  Macro-goals, sure (we both want to buy an island and retire in comfort, like, tomorrow) but micro-goals?  Sometimes not so much.

~~~

So having decided that combining our money was very important to me – and finally being at the point in our marriage where I recognize and respect that it’s not as important to him – I decided to cave on the money management strategy and go with his.

Setting the whole magical math aside, it sounded easier.  Well, except for the part where he does math in his head based on the day of the month every time he checks his balance, but since we’re using his account, he’ll keep doing the math.

Plus, since I no longer have an overabundance of time during the day (though I do manage to find time to blog, don’t I?), I’m finding it hard to do all of the things that my money management strategy requires, at the time it’s required.  Like paying bills and doing a budget before I spend money. *gulp*

And, I really liked how having goals and sharing a budget helped us feel like a team.  I would like that again, but without clear targets (like paying off credit cards) we haven’t been as diligent.

~~~

This Friday will be the first paycheck on this magical money system (which I should admit is actually quite simple: take fixed costs for the month, divide by two, and add one instance to seed the account) and I’m pretty excited.  Some goes into his account to pay the big fixed bills (mortgage, insurance, truck payment), some goes into my existing account to pay the smaller semi-fixed bills (utilities, Comcast, various subscriptions), and the rest goes into my new account. 

At some point I’ll add a direct deposit to savings, but for now, I kind of enjoy writing the savings check to myself – and depositing it in a real bank with real people like a real adult – so I’ll keep doing it until it doesn’t work for me.  And I should probably make the bill-paying part automatic, but first I want to make sure money goes where it’s supposed to.

See what a grown-up I can be?  {As long as I don’t tell you that the real reason behind making a change now is that I’ve run out of checks at my old bank and don’t want to order more.}

Anyone else end up going with their husband’s money management system?

After a marathon twelve hour fight on Saturday, we approached each other warily on Sunday.  Sure, we’d fallen asleep together, reaching for one another in the middle of the night for comfort and solace and reassurance, but the morning after is unpredictable.

Sure enough, the smoldering argument caught fire.

In the end, he saved us.  Despite my best attempts, I couldn’t.  And as we surveyed the damage from the haven of our bed, I realized something important.  Two things, actually: sometimes you have to unlearn a lesson, and some people can’t dabble safely.

~~~

When I started dating Joey, I was fresh off the heels of two horrible relationships, one romantic, one not.  The romantic relationship had ended very badly, leaving hope and instincts – and almost my career — in its wave of destruction.  The end of the platonic relationship hurt even more, so I’d decided never to try to talk my way through a problem.  Some problems exist in a world outside of words; they can’t be solved by talking.  In fact, talking only camouflages the reality of things that won’t change.  “Talking through it” becomes a euphemism for wasting time because you’re too chicken to do what must be done.  Leave.

I’d become great at running like hell when things got rough and it worked.  My relationship with Joey thrived on the real stuff, not just words.

One night, I made an excuse to leave and was headed out the door when he stopped me, gently, and asked me to tell him what was wrong.  The resulting conversation is forever burned into my brain as the one where I learned this lesson: Stop. Don’t Run. Talk things through.

Him: “We’ll be okay as long as we’re talking.”

Me: “What if it can’t be solved?”

Him: “As long as we’re talking, we’ll be okay”

I believed it.  I stopped running.  From that moment, I stayed, planted my feet, and fought.  I’d learned a lesson, and the lesson was that you have to fight for what’s important.

~~~

Not surprisingly, what seemed like a personal emotional milestone corresponded with a sharp uptick in the number of fights we had.  I’m nothing if not a good learner (unfortunately), so when the instinct to flee kicked in, I dug in my heels and prepared for a fight.  ‘Twas not fun.

And until yesterday, until I realized I’d told that story – okay, flung that story like it was a spiky ball of fury – during every. single. fight. we’ve. had. since, it hadn’t occurred to me to consider that some lessons shouldn’t be learned so well.

The good lessons don’t require constant defense.  And some lessons aren’t meant to be black-and-white, or figurative, or anything other than a nice thing your boyfriend tells you that makes you realize he’s a keeper. 

~~~

My ex-friend was an addict.  Because we had the type of relationship that involved incessant talking and analyzing of everything that’s ever happened, ever, we talked a lot about addiction and AA – to the point that I borrowed his AA book so I could read it for myself. {Finding that book on my bookshelf may or may not have knocked a few years off my mom’s life when she came to visit and was looking for something to read.} 

I learned that you can have an addictive personality and be addicted to feelings and emotions.  I am, and was. 

I learned that some people can’t handle moderation.  I can’t. 

I learned that people who are prone to addictive behaviors and loss of control need to be constantly vigilant.  I do.

And I haven’t been.

On Sunday, after my husband carried my pathetic, crying body to our bed to force upon me a hug I’d refused, I remembered all of this.  I remembered that you know someone has a problem when they’re truly, painfully remorseful every time they lose control, and yet, they continue to lose control, utterly convinced that this time won’t be like last time, every time. I remembered that some people can’t dabble in the things they find dangerous.  I remembered that I don’t do moderation – I can spend or save but not both, remember?

And I remembered that I own my life and my actions, and that even though my husband was at least equally to blame for our marathon fight, I can’t control him.  Hell, I can’t even control me.

So I came to the only conclusion left: I’d have to stop fighting, cold turkey.

~~~

Every time we fight, he runs and I chase.  I can’t explain it, now that I’m not in its midst, except to say that I firmly and honestly believe I’m doing the right thing by hunting him down so we can “talk things through so this never happens again.”  He flees, I chase.  It’s an ugly dynamic, one I swear I want to change.

But it’s not enough to tell myself I’ll stop chasing.  Once the switch is flipped, the fight takes on its own life.  And while I stand by my belief that everyone fights (they do, even if they call them disagreements), not everyone fights like we do.  In fact, I think most people can’t even fathom fighting like we do.  Those people are smart and normal and have healthy relationships.

We do have a healthy relationship except for when the gloves come off, which is like saying the weather in Oklahoma is perfect except when those pesky tornadoes come through.

I come from a long line of devout fighters, women who will dig in their heels and let the monster explode through their words, and my instincts once the fight begins are not to be trusted.

So I’m not fighting anymore.

My husband’s advice wasn’t bad advice, not at all.  Running away from every problem isn’t the way to build a relationship, true, but some of us shouldn’t ever negate the part of our brains that tells us to run, just for a little while, lest things get ugly.

Some of us need to flee.

~~~

Disclaimer: nobody was hurt physically.  No wine glasses were thrown.  Very few ugly words were used, though words were often used in a very ugly manner.  Nobody is getting divorced, though everybody is well aware of how close we came.  Nobody is going to work and deciding not to come home, nor is anybody going on a business trip and staying gone.  Everybody had a pretty good day once everybody else agreed to this abstinence-only plan.

Loving:

• It’s Friday.
• It’s sunny!
• Until I moved to Tennessee, I had no idea there were so many different colors of green.
• Things are blooming.  Something smells fabulous in the backyard.
• Tonight my husband is joining me at Dinner Afare to make yummy dinners to freeze.
• Did I mention the sun?
• Indiana is feeling good enough to be a butthead again.  He ran away from me today and all I could do was smile.  Six months ago he couldn’t run! {Go, meds!}
• Banana Republic Outlet + 30% off Friends and Family discount from a sweet blog friend = two skirts, two dresses and three pairs of pants for $200.  I swear. {Thanks, Mrs. Gilmore!}
• Being married to someone who hates shopping but goes with me to be nice, then goes hog-wild finding “deals that are just too good to believe!”

Hating:

• We can’t sleep.  If one of us is asleep, the other is tossing and turning – unless the non-sleeper decides that yelling, “Shut up!” to the whiny dog is an acceptable outlet for frustration at 2 am.  {It’s not.  It is, however, a really great way to make your wife very angry – yet another reason not to be able to sleep.}
• The curtains I thought I’d love are… meh.  If we don’t make a decision quickly, we’ll be stuck with them because they’ll be dirty and unreturnable.
• We don’t have a fence.  We need one, soon, because dogs should not be inside laying around in utter boredom when they could be outside napping in the sun.
• That we’re STILL not finished with the other house.  We are getting closer, though. If only I hadn’t convinced Joey that we (ahem, I) should paint all the trim.

What are you loving/ hating today?

I crave routine, and yet, I completely hate following one.

I’m home for two weeks and feeling like I need a plan to stay productive and get through the days with something real accomplished.  Yesterday’s a good example of how not to do this: I had ten meetings, sent a bazillion emails, instant messaged with a billion people, and at the end of the day, none of my big projects had been moved forward.

Granted, I had a last-minute doctor’s appointment (read more here if you like TMI) – one where I embarrassingly kept my laptop open and online all the way through the prep stuff (getting weighed, cuffed, temp’d, etc) because we were frantically vetting a “creative idea” with only hours until our big boss got in front of a camera for a press conference. 

I work in software development.  Creative ideas are never a good thing, and yet, we continue to try.

Speaking of, do you work in an industry where hope is often the strategy?  I like to think I don’t, but I do, OH BOY, I do.  We got into a big debate over whether I was being asked if something was possible or probable, because they are very different concepts.  Possible?  Sure.  If the planets align and every one of the next 43 steps goes perfectly, yes, that’s possible.  Probable?  Um, how do I say this diplomatically?  Hell no.  HELL no.  Because if any one of those 43 steps goes slightly less than perfectly, the whole thing falls apart.

We work in software.  Nothing ever goes perfectly, and if it does, you just haven’t gotten everyone’s opinion yet.

So, back to my point: I have a blood pressure cuff on one arm and I’m typing with the other, waiting to pick my cell phone back up to jump back into one of those oh-shit-all-hands-on-deck kinds of calls, and the sweet nurse asks – with a very innocent look on her face – if I drink regularly, and how often.

Daily.  A drink or two.  On average.

And swear to gawd, I thought, “Hey, there’s a routine!”  Because despite my best attempts and ideas, I’m just not finding a routine that works for me when I’m at home.  I’m in a routine, fo sho, but not a really great one.

I get up (late), drink coffee (my husband leaves it for me when he goes to work), throw on a jacket to take the dogs out (if my husband hasn’t taken them out), and climb back into my comfy bed with my laptop and Blackberry.  Sometime around lunch time (like right now), I will leap out of bed and throw on real clothes in an effort to pretend I didn’t spend the morning in bed with my laptop.  This, though, only on days my husband comes home for lunch.  On the other days, this series of events happens right before five.

And then things go to hell.  My teams are west-coast based now, so they get going around 11:00 am my time and keep going through 8:00 pm my time.  At least.  So from lunch-ish until I refuse to go on any longer, I am on back-to-back calls while guiltily multi-tasking by replying to emails, instant messaging, taking the dogs out, and going to the bathroom.

Yes, going to pee is a multi-tasking event, whether the pee-er is a dog or a human.

I can’t help but feel bad.  This job is great for me – it’s perfectly suited to my personality and experience, but I feel like my family is paying the price at every turn.  My husband has picked up the slack (a lot of slack) around the house, the dogs are awesome and patient and just hang out doing nothing until someone gets a break and lets them pee or remembers to feed them, and the cats have learned to hang out with me in the office.  Well, okay, that’s also the cat room, but still, they do wait for me on my office chair when they want some lovin’.

So I guess I’m saying I have a routine but I don’t like it and I wish I was more in control of it all.  I wish I had time set aside to think.  I wish I could stick to one time zone consistently.  I wish I was a little bit taller… (name the song).

And then I remember: I do.  I am in control.  My calendar is mine to manage.  I’m the only barrier to having more think-time, an earlier start to my day, time blocked out to relieve someone’s aching bladder.  Me.  All I have to do is choose to get up earlier (EST), stick to my regular wake/ sleep schedule no matter which coast I’m on, set aside time to put away the laundry I’ve sworn I will deal with for a month, pay attention to one (okay, two) things at a time, and deal with email in one quiet hour at some point in the day.  Nothing’s stopping me but me.

I hate it when it all comes back to me.

~~~

Afterword: I asked my husband if he wished I was back on my old schedule or if he thought this was survivable.  He sheepishly replied that he liked having more time to himself, a break from me when he gets home, and actually getting the chance to miss me every couple of weeks.  I picked a good one!

This is a public service announcement:

When you take a new job requiring cross-country commutes to the office and cross-office walks to the bathroom, the following may later cause pain and discomfort:

• Drinking liquids only for the caffeine or alcohol content.
• Waiting for just one more meeting to end before going to the bathroom – for five meetings in a row.
• Taking bubble baths to de-stress.
• Did I mention drinking nothing that doesn’t contain caffeine or alcohol?  For weeks?

You know what I’m saying here, right?  You saw where this was headed? 

Consider yourself warned…

… and now would be a good time to get on good terms with the sweet ladies at your husband’s Primary Care Physician’s office (because of course you’d make three phone calls to find him one but never get around to finding your own) who will kindly and cheerfully fit you into the schedule within 30 minutes of your phone call.

I love all these sweet southerners.

(Go drink water.  Now.  And call a doctor if you don’t have one.)

~~~

Speaking of, is anyone else freaked out by Brittany Murphy’s death?  Iron deficiency because she’d been on her period and drug interactions caused her to DIE.  And if you look at the drugs, they’re not DRUGS but regular OTC drugs likely taken because she’d had the flu.  AND SHE DIED.

I don’t know about you, but I’m freaked.  When druggies die?  Meh.  A 32-year old woman who’d been on her period, mixed up cold meds and was a little on the skinny side dies?  Two of those three things might actually happen in my life.  I’m freaked.

So I’m taking vitamins regularly for the first time ever — gummy kids vitamins, but still, something, right – and drinking V-8.  I still don’t drink enough water (yea, read the first section up there), but I’m trying.  This reminds me of why I buckle my seatbelt on airplanes now: because I wanted the intro to Lost once and that was enough.

Penelope often writes about productivity, and like her, I’m thinking all the time about how to get my life in order and get real things accomplished.  I’ve tried more than one planner, a fake schedule, a chalkboard wall of goals, moving offices, rearranging offices, decorating offices, and berating myself.

But none of those have worked, not consistently.

Then I spent two weeks in our company’s offices in Seattle.  Suddenly it was clear why bloggers and home-based workers write about productivity and regular office workers don’t.  There’s no time!

In ten days, I had more than a hundred meetings.  One. Hundred. Meetings.  And while I wasn’t meeting, I was informally meeting – chatting about real stuff with coworkers at the coffee machine, in the elevator, at the coffee shop, at dinner, over drinks at happy hour….

It was workapalooza.  I loved it.

Now I’m back home and struggling.  The job is still the same, the to-do list just as long, but I’m not compelled to accomplish things by virtue of my location.  When I’m in my office (in Seattle), I’m surrounded by work.  Other than making a doctor’s appointment on my cell phone, I really have no choice but to do work things while I’m at work.  I’m in 100% work mode, so much, in fact, that I have to make the conscious effort to “de-work” before I call my husband or all the poor guy hears is a play-by-play of my day.

I have a new focus, then, on making my home office more productive for me:

It must not contain anything that’s not strictly work-related.  The quilting stuff needs to find a home out of sight; the bookshelves need to be cleared; the bill-paying paraphernalia should never be dumped on top of my desk for days (ahem, weeks) on end.  And I think the cats need to find another place to hang out.

All visual cues need to be work-focused.  In Seattle I watch the ferry boats or look at my whiteboard.  In Knoxville?  I see bookshelves full of books to be read, a couch covered in cat hair, the fabric for that quilt I’m supposed to be working on, the uncomfortable chair I really should get rid of….  I do have a pseudo-inspiration board with some work stuff on it, but it’s stashed behind my chair. 

I need to suck it up and get dressed in the morning.  As I type at 11:00 am EST, I’m in my pj’s in bed with my laptop.  I tell myself I’m working because I have my Blackberry with me (and I’m reply to emails), but without my key fob for the VPN or my notes or my planner, I’m not really doing anything.  For heaven’s sake, I’m blogging about not doing anything… while thinking this paint color really needs to go.

I’m like Penelope in this post except I’m obsessing over my house instead of my words.  My advice on how to get unstuck?  Find a place where you can’t avoid what you have to do.  Then go there.

When I was asked last week how I felt about my new job, I said with great sincerity, “I love it and hate it in equal measure.”  That’s how I know it’s right for me.  I’m equally exhilarated and terrified, excited and worried, interested and wanting to hide under my desk.

I was so struck by the comment, in fact, that when I interviewed a couple of people for an old buddy of mine, I said to them, “I completely understand why you’re excited about this gig, but can you tell me why you’re worried?”  The guy who said he wasn’t?  Not my guy.  How can you be sure you’re in the right place if you haven’t examined the reasons you shouldn’t be?

~~~

I think we’re ready to start talking about having kids.

Did you catch all of the qualifiers? “I think,” “we’re ready,” “start talking”?  Not an accident, folks, not at all.

See, I’ve spent my entire adult life trying not to get pregnant.  Hell, until very recently, I wouldn’t even talk about sex, much less turning that unmentionable into something so much bigger. 

You know, like having a child.

Even the phrase “having a child” is a new one in my world.  “Kid” I can handle.  “Child?”  Yowza.

My husband is blessedly laid back about the entire thing.  In fact, early in our relationship when discussing birth control he mentioned that it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if we got pregnant; he’d always planned on having kids by then anyway and he knew he wanted to be with me.  My response? A blank stare and empty brain.

So here we are almost three years later and I think I’m ready to start talking about having kids.

~~~

Why is it so uncomfortable?  Every time I bring it up to Joey, I feel silly and uncomfortable.  Today I spent some time thinking about why.

I think it’s because for every Next Big Relationship Step before this one, we had to dance.  Exclusivity? Considering Marriage?  Living Together? Getting Married?  These are topics you dance around, one person pretending it’s not important while the other gauges their level of interest.  And let’s be honest, traditionally those Next Big Relationship Steps were taken by the man. 

Hey, I said “traditionally.”  I may or may not have been the instigator more than once… and the resulting fallout from my drama at his reticence was something I swore I’d never repeat.  So I pause. I qualify.  I wonder how to start nudging my career and our lives to accommodate a child.

Yet I still get tongue-tied when I try to bring up the subject with my husband.  I’m reminded of our early engagement when I wanted so badly to lay around and talk about our wedding – and he just wasn’t interested.

I’m determined to learn the lessons I thought I learned from our engagement, and one was that if I’m not comfortable with the words, I need to stop before plowing forward.  I couldn’t stand the word “fiancé,” found myself stuttering at “engaged,” couldn’t spit out “our wedding” until, um, just a few days before we got married.

So for now, I’m practicing the words in my head.  I browse the child development aisles at the bookstore – and I don’t hide it from my husband, who frankly doesn’t care. 

And for the first time ever, I thought about my own child.  Not just a kid, but MY kid. 

Exhilarated and terrified in equal measure. It’s a sign. (ha)

Anyone else feeling this way?