I've been having a really tough time emotionally and mentally (as most are, I'm sure). Pregnancy hormones certainly don't help. Last week, I snapped at my 1 year old, and my heart shattered in a million pieces at his response. I had honest conversations with my husband and my bosses that I was really struggling with balancing everything, and everyone really stepped up.
My husband approached his managers again asking to work out a plan, or barring their flexibility, letting them know that he'd have to voluntarily cut his hours to help out at home. Fortunately, they are trying to avoid that. It's still not ideal, but they are letting him work the middle of the day from home twice a week. He still has to go in for an hour or 2 in the morning and evenings to get his assignments and then debrief, but he'll be home for 4-5 hours to help with baby care while he works.
My bosses basically offered me even more flexibility and made it clear that my promotion wasn't in jeopardy. Rather, I should do whatever I needed to take care of myself as they can't afford to lose me right now.
All of the conversations really helped my mental health. While I'm still in physical pain most days, the stress is a lot more manageable knowing that I don't have to feel guilty stepping away from the computer when my son needs my attention.
I do feel incredibly grateful that my husband and I are both still working with jobs that will hopefully weather this recession. But I also cannot wait for things to go back to 'normal'.
Financially, we are okay. We did a cash-out refinance in March. That, coupled with a large tax return (I wasn't sure how things would shake out with my husband's deployment, so we didn't try to minimize the refund), the stimulus payment, and overpayments to the closed mortgage have given us a large influx of cash. We've saved most of it, but have done a few yard updates since we're confined to the house for who knows how long. The deck addition has suddenly decided it's had enough, and the boards are significantly warping to where we can't open the screen door in the afternoon after the heat has expanded the boards. We got a reasonable estimate to fix it, and since I cannot comfortably go up and down the stairs to let the dogs out several times a day (especially with the baby), we've decided to fix the deck. That is our last update for now.
We're continuing to pay our minimum debt payments, but not adding additional payments.
Lastly, we decided to change how we eat. With all the stress, we're still eating out way more than I'd like. We're going to make 2 1-week meal plans of standard things that are really easy (think spaghetti, tacos, chili, chicken and mac and cheese, fish and rice, etc.), and just alternate weeks. It'll get boring and repetitive, but since almost every other aspect of living is these days, we think this'll help (hopefully...).
Pushing Through
April 22nd, 2020 at 02:48 pm
April 22nd, 2020 at 10:46 pm 1587595612
April 23rd, 2020 at 04:56 pm 1587661016
April 25th, 2020 at 06:13 pm 1587838406