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choices

I know, I’ll just hire it out!

Apr 6th, 2010
by Jim Reverend.
4 comments

I’m overwhelmed with the very notion of maintaining a household. After a nine hour day and two hours of commuting, I’ve got three hours left in each day to get dressed, get my daughter dressed, feed us both breakfast, feed us both dinner, play games, take baths, read stories, pick up after ourselves, have adventures, and get to bed. And that’s assuming we don’t rest — not even once — from wake up to bed time. Single people without children and dual income families with children can probably relate to this as well. After work, there simply isn’t that much time in the day.

As much as I enjoy cooking, love making extravagant meals and trying new techniques, the time it takes to do so is not worth what I’d have to give up to get it. So this means I either make very quick meals, eat raw foods, find people to share the cooking burden with, or hire the job out and eat at restaurants.

A month or two ago I finally broke down and paid someone to pull my weeds, trim my bushes, lay down landscapers cloth, and put down mulch. I was just tired of the letters from my HOA and they were claiming they were going to pay someone to do it and bill me and I was afraid of what they were going to cost. So now, my flower beds look beautiful.

But my yard still looks terrible. And my HOA has started sending notes about that. My grass is not really grass. It’s mostly weeds — low weeds mind you — with grass in between. As evidenced by the vacant lots in my neighborhood, it’s simply the nature of things around here. Without direct supervision and control, the weeds grow and the grass doesn’t.

So I’m supposed to go buy some “weed and feed” product, lock my kid inside the house because she certainly can’t be around that stuff, and spend a couple of days not enjoying her and, instead, following some intricate and arcane pattern of water then feed then water then rain dance. Then I can’t let my kid outside for at least two or three days as I wait for that stuff to go away. The alternative, as I did with the flowerbeds, is to hire the job out. For $50-70 a month, someone trained to do so will apply a steady stream of life threatening chemicals to my lawn to ensure that it grows green and “Natural”.

I get around to cleaning baseboards and fans every couple of months. Storage closets and such can go a whole year without being rearranged. I get to the toilets and bathroom counters once a week or so. The daily use surfaces like the kitchen counters and such get cleaned as soon as they are used in order to maintain a livable space. But, if you stick your hand in my couch cushions, to be honest, I have no idea what you’ll find. If you take out the white glove and start wiping surfaces, well, you may as well buy those things in bulk. I try to teach my daughter about housework by including her in it. But spending hours and hours toiling with a toothbrush at bathroom tile grout just doesn’t make any sense. Not when that means my kid is going to have to spend that time alone. For $400 a month, there are at least 10 different cleaning services that are more than willing to do the job for me.

Throw in the pest control service, the lawn guy, and some landscapers and, for $650 a month, I too could have a home kept up to societies standards. Assuming a salary of $40k a year, that means I only need to work 8 more hours every week to afford it. Well, aside from the eating thing. And an interior decorator. And a shopping assistant. And a wardrobe coordinator. And a crafts specialist.

So my options are to hire all of this stuff out and work my butt off to pay for it, force my child to play alone for a large portion of the time we have each day while I perform these tasks myself, or just not do them at all.

Currently I’m choosing some combination of the last two. I try to spend 30-60 minutes each day cleaning with my daughter’s help. This is, of course, above and beyond the basic pick up and cleaning and laundry and such. And I try to spend another 30-60 minutes cleaning on my own before she wakes up in the morning. This works well for all the small jobs. But for anything that needs more than 30-60 minutes of my time, it just doesn’t get done.

The right way!

So I’m trying to find new ways to do things that allow me to tackle the big jobs in small pieces.

I’m trying to find non-dangerous, child-friendly ways of, fertilizing the lawn, killing weeds, and cleaning hard water deposits out of the shower.

I try to decorate the house in ways that don’t require renovation or lengthy installation efforts. And when something does require some additional time, I try to find people to help.

I’m trying to find people to share meals with. Ideally on a semi-planned schedule. This saves the cost of restaurants and either lets someone else do the cooking or brings someone else around to keep my daughter from being alone as I do the cooking or some combination of the two.

And maybe some day I’ll make so much money that I’ll laugh at myself for ever wondering why people tried to do this stuff themselves.

Whether you’re a single person without kids, a single parent, a double income family, or a stay at home parent with an active lifestyle — if you’ve got any ideas, tips, secrets, or magic tricks about how you get things done, I’d love to hear them.

Dreaming of Alligators

Sep 11th, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet
snap snap

snap snap

Last night I had a disturbing dream. This always seems to happen when I can’t find a way to get comfortable in bed.

I was talking on the phone with Emily. Celeste and I had just been some place and Emily was mentioning that there was another place near where we were that served tea that might be fun to visit with the kids one day. So, Celeste and I were taking a walk though a small park that joined the two in order to go check it out.

As I walked through the park I was holding Celeste in one arm and still talking to Emily. I looked over through some trees to the right at a pond and saw an Alligator there, just coming out of the water. Before I could run he snapped at us catching Celeste’s left leg in his jaws just below the knee.

Here’s where it gets even stranger. The alligator didn’t bite all the way through. In fact, if he would just open his mouth she would more than likely have nothing more than a few puncture wounds that would heal quickly. So I was holding Celeste with an Alligator attached to her leg and had a choice to make. I could kick at him, maybe getting him to let go, or maybe pissing him off so much that he attacks us again, this time, no doubt, much worse. I could pull Celeste out of his mouth, more than likely leaving her leg seriously damaged and then run like hell. Or I could just wait to see what he does next, hoping that he opens his mouth and leaves us alone.

This scenario is how I see almost every difficult choice I have to make. And similar choices are currently at the forefront of my mind.

In my dream, the last part of it, from the bite onward, continued to repeat itself. Each time I’d try something a little bit different. The outcome was never good. In one scenario, we managed to break free from the Alligator only to find his friend waiting a few seconds down the path. However, in my dream, waiting it out was never attempted. Trusting the Alligator was simply not an option.

mental health, part I: a final answer

Jun 27th, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
4 comments

It’s a constant state of confusion in here. In thought I go from one extreme to another and it’s often hard to sort out what’s left in the end. Sometimes, what I need is a final answer.

I’m making tea and I step on “The Foot Book” and think, I should clear this clutter. I’m checking the mail and I notice the grass growing from inside my cedar bushes and I think, I either need to pull that grass or pay someone else to do it. I sit down to enjoy my tea and write a few words and I think, I should be cleaning her playroom.

Having a high level of introspection doesn’t do any good if I can’t focus myself enough to actually draw a conclusion from it.

As soon as my little girl wakes up, though, then all that ends. I’ve learned how to give myself a task (sometimes randomly, if I’m unable to come up with a decision) and follow through with it. And I employ this as a rule whenever my daughter is awake and in my care. Otherwise, the confusion in my head only carries over to her.

Those that see me regularly and both with and without Celeste must see a strange duality in me. And now you can see it too. Fun huh?

Doing some research I found that even the lowest of the platform beds I can find hold the mattress at a height of 12″. My frame and box springs currently sit at about 14″. 2″ is not really going to make much of a difference. At least not enough to make it worth all of this trouble. So I’m either going to stick with what I have or build something of my own out of 6×6″ posts and a set of IKEA bed slats. I’m trying to find a way to mock up my plan so I can test it out before buying the material to see if it’s too low.

Sometimes, having too many options is a bad thing.

Consider the husband and wife who have no options other than one another. Due to circumstances, whatever they may be, if they separate, their happiness, stability, finances, and social standing will all be worse off apart than they are together. That couple stays together. Period. That couple makes it work. That couple figures it out. Because there’s no other place to go and all they have is each other. You throw in another option for either of those people, and the whole game changes.

All of this talk of projects reminds me of a few things. I still haven’t painted the base boards for the living room. It’s like a 30 minute job and I haven’t done it yet. I’ve been putting off doing it with Celeste around: paint, heat, manual labor, and a toddler just won’t mix well for me. I know myself well enough. And when I finally get time without her, I’m too busy with other things. Which is why the new “stay home more” plan is a really good lifestyle change. Important for sanity.

Thinking about the flooring reminds me that Costco is currently having their flooring sale again. $8 off each box, which is a really good deal. Before all of this talk of selling houses and renting houses my plan was to buy enough hard flooring to finish every surface in my house the next time it went on sale at Costco. Now I’m not sure if it’ll just go to waste. I know I need to do at least two of the rooms. So that’s a start, I guess.

Thinking of the house reminds me of the fact that I’m about a week a way from finalizing my refinance here, which might be a really bad idea. I save about $120 a month, which is awesome. And rates are going back up, so if I don’t do it now, I miss a window. But, at the same time, due to loan costs, if I try to sell this place in less than 3-4 years after refinancing, I actually end up worse than I was before, cost wise. So deciding to refinance is really like deciding to stay her for at least five years, which is the same as deciding to put Celeste in school here.

I hate my head sometimes.

And maybe renting this place out was never an option to begin with. The guy that came to see it had said he’d call yesterday to let me know what his family thought about the place. I never got a call.

Like I said, sometimes having too many options is a bad thing. My life might be easier and I might be healthier if I simply forced myself to make a choice and then stuck with it. In certain cases, reevaluation is okay after some time to make sure nothing better is being missed. And, in most cases, these choices won’t be able to walk away from me.

The next four days

Jun 24th, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet


My family rarely bothers to tell me about anything until it’s too late. So, if I can’t make it I don’t feel bad. Or rather, I do, but I know I don’t deserve to and am trying to talk myself out of it.

But, regardless of all that, I’d like to see my brother if he’s in town.

Friday night I have a birthday party to attend for a friend’s 2 yr old daughter.

Saturday night is the celebration of yet another cycle around the sun for a very dear friend of mine.

My brother is leaving early sunday morning. He just happens to get in tomorrow.

So, if i shake everything up, do some super packing tomorrow morning, go to work really early, leave early, and get Celeste early and book it to my mom’s I can have a hectic day filled with lots of driving, my brother, his two kids, and my parents being busy with something in the stockyards.

I just don’t know if it’s worth it. Getting out there on a week day is really tough. It doesn’t seem like I should jump through hoops when noone could even be bothered to tell me when he was getting here.

Ugh. I don’t know.

thoughts on moving, part II: the whining game

Jun 24th, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

The problem with moving is that if I’m not careful I’ll end up in something just as bad as where I am now, just bad in a different way.

Apartments

An Apartment (vs a Rental House) seems to make the most sense on first thought. But there are some issues.

First of all even the biggest apartments are, generally speaking, smaller than the smallest houses. In most areas you’d be hard pressed to find a house less than 1300 sq ft. And, in most areas, you’d have a hard time finding an apartment larger than 1500 sq ft. They exist. I get it. But, they are not plentiful.

I have a lot of stuff. Granted, I don’t NEED all of this stuff. But, I have it. Which means I’ll have to do something with it and get something else in exchange if I move some place smaller.

For instance, I have a king sized bed. The smaller bedrooms that often come with apartments can have trouble fitting a king sized bed in it. If it does fit, there’s rarely room left for a desk and computer too.

I have a large, square, bar height dining room table that seats 8. This is unlikely to fit in any apartment dining room.

My living room furniture will probably fit. I have a big living room now, but a lot of the space is used for walking, so there is not as much furniture.

At the very least I’ll need a smaller dining room table, and maybe a smaller bed too. I might also need a smaller desk, I may also have a few chairs to sell. And I have a second dining room table that I’ll need to get rid of. And a large outdoor picnic table.

And I’ll either need three bedrooms, a very large master, or a large living room with a conviently placed dining room.

And I’d really prefer the hard flooring. It just makes more sense. And by the time I find all of that stuff, I’m looking at an apartment in in the ghetto or a place that runs about the same as my mortgage does right now. So, it looks like I’m not actually going to save any money there, and that’s still no promise I’ll find a place.

Unless I deliberately pick a place right next to C’s daycare, I need to assume at least a 10 minute drive in Carrollton traffic. So, my 1 hour round trip becomes 20 minutes round trip, maybe 30. Which leaves me 30-40 minutes a day in time savings or 1.5 to 2 hours a week. Plus another 1.5 to 2 hours a week in work travel. Plus another 1-2 hours in other travel. So I’m still looking at 4 to 6 hours a week in time savings. Which is good.

And I’ll still get my cash savings on less toll tag usage and cheaper utility bills. $200 to $400/mo worth, I’m guessing.

Rental Houses

A quick poke here and there found a decent house for rent in Carrollton.

The rent is the same amount that I’m paying now for my mortgage. So there’s no savings there.

It’s about 15 minutes from C’s daycare, so the time savings is roughly the same as the apartment estimate.

Utility bills will be a little higher and there will be a few thises and thats I’ll have to cover that I wouldn’t in a house, so savings are less.

But, with a rental house I’m less likely to have to make my furniture and belongings smaller — certainly not to the same extent. But, at the price I’m looking to pay in this area, I’m going to have a harder time finding a place and an even harder time finding one that isn’t trashed out on the inside.

It will probably not come with a pool or a playground or any of that stuff like an apartment does either.

But we will have privacy, and safety, and comfort, and space that comes with being in a house.

Apartment vs House

I’ll consider both avenues for now, but I’m thinking an apartment just makes more sense. Also makes me a bit more versatile in the event that I find a house I want to BUY or if for some reason I need to move out quickly.

Is it worth it?

But I still have to ask the big question: is it worth it?

Let’s add it all up.

  • CON: I’ll have to be a landlord. I’ll have to deal with a tenant, and make repairs, and collect rent, and all of that. If he stops paying rent, I have to scramble to make ends meet, kick him out, clean the place, find a new tenant, etc.
  • PRO: I will save 4-6 hours in time every week. Maybe even more. It’s not huge, but it’s something. That averages out to an extra hour in every day that I see my daughter each week.
  • PRO: I will save $200-$400/mo. I will more than likely spend most of that in non-rented months at the house, travel to and from the house, maintenance contracts, and the like. But, it’s still savings.
  • POINT: My place will be too small to entertain large groups. But I rarely entertain large groups now and have plenty of friends with houses willing to do so for me should the need arise.
  • CON: I will probably have to put a lot of work and effort and money into buying new things that will work in a new, smaller place. In the end my life will be leaner, which is good, but I’ll have to bleed cash to get there. And, in the end, when I do move back to a house, I’ll more than likely want to beef things back up to fill the house in. This is wasted money and effort. But, I might get lucky and not have to change too much.
  • PRO: I will have a smaller place that’s easier to clean and cheaper to maintain.
  • CON: I will be MUCH farther from the neighbors and friends I’ve made near my house.
  • PRO: I will be closer to C’s mom, my friends in Carrollton and Lewisville, my parents, and my friends in the Keller area.
  • CON: I will no longer have a guest room. Friends from out of town, guests making a drive to visit, and my mom in upstate new york will no longer have a nice place to stay with me. Sure, there are air mattresses and all that Jazz. But it’s not the same.
  • CON: I’ll most likely end up in an apartment. Which means, at least at first, finding places and ways to play with Celeste will be more difficult. All of our old tricks (sitting on the front steps, petting the kitties, and coloring with sidewalk chalk, for instance) are likely to no longer be valid. Additionally, she’ll have to get used to a new place, a new room, a new life style, new noises, and all sorts of new things. But we’ll have eachother to get through it with.

It seems like all of the CONs can either be evened out by a PRO or can be consider a “deal with this one time and be done with it” other than the “being a landlord” bit. And there’s just no way around that one.

Thankfully this first potential tenant seems like a really nice guy. He’s willing to help me out and understands that I’d be going out on a limb for him. Hopefully that means he’ll take care of the place and not be too much trouble. Maybe, when the timing and the price is right, he’ll even buy the place.

Staying here.

Let’s not forget that staying here is still an option. The good thing about it — the best thing about it — is that nothing changes. And even if life isn’t PERFECT right this second — Celeste and I… we’re doing very well. We’re happy. We have lots of time together and a lot of the time that we do have is quality time. Even with all of the issues and commuting and what not, I’m pretty sure I get to spend more time with my daughter every given week than most dad’s do.

Help?!?

As I was telling my awesome friend Kelly earlier today, I don’t internalize stuff like this very well. I have trouble walking away from anything, and making final decisions scares the crap out of me. So… if any of you can shed some insight on this, weigh in once again, and offer any final thoughts, it’d mean a lot to me. I just want to make sure I’m making the right choice.

If I am — if finding an apartment makes the most sense — then I’ll wait until my potential tenant says go and I’ll jump in with both feet and I won’t look back. Because I know that’s the best way to do it. I just need to make sure it’s the right jump before I take it.


thoughts on moving

Jun 23rd, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
18 comments

(I’m actively seeking insight and feedback here. It’s a decision where the pros and cons seem to be equally weighted and I’m looking for even the smallest thing that one of you might have to help tip the scales.)

[This conversation has been started else where, so some of this is a cut and paste, and some of it is new information. I'm sorry if you've seen some of this before.]

I tried to rent or sell my house for so long that I just gave up and started settling in: Getting rooms defined to their best purposes, Rearranging furniture to suit me, Putting in hard flooring, Making plans for the back yard.

Now I have someone wanting to rent it.

There are two things that would make my life easier right now:

1) Being closer to C’s daycare and closer to work. This will save commute time, gas money, and toll tag bills.

2) Having a smaller place, requiring less upkeep, utilities, cleaning, and maintenance. This will save energy costs, and cleaning time.

These things are both provided for by moving to Carrollton/Lewisville.

Here are the current arguments.

Daycare

C’s current daycare is one of the best there is, we’re getting it at half price, and C’s mom and I are splitting it. That means I’m paying 25% of the real cost. Considering how expensive daycare can be, this is awesome.

If I’m willing to foot the entire, full-priced daycare bill, I could conceivably find her a daycare closer by which would save myself lots of commuting time on work from home days and a little commuting time on work from the office days.

But, I don’t know that C’s mom would drive her to “my” daycare. Which may mean that she ends up paying more to keep C in “her” daycare and then we’re both spending more than we need to. I’d still have to drive to “her” daycare every other day to get C. On top of all that, it may only piss C’s mom off to find that when before she had a 0 minute commute to pick up C, she now has to drive 60 minutes round trip to get her, at least every other day.

Switching to some other custody schedule in order to limit the pickups and drop offs only means my daughter spends MORE time in day care and I have to go LONGER without seeing her. Which is also not ideal.

Smaller is Better.

C’s bedroom is upstairs. She never sleeps in it and I keep all of her clothes in my room. My office is upstairs. But my bedroom is big enough to hold it as well. I bathe C upstairs, but I could just as easily do it downstairs. We rarely, if ever, use the upstairs balcony. There’s a gameroom upstairs that just collects dust and cat hair.

Celeste has a playroom downstairs. If it were a bedroom instead, it would serve both purposes. If I moved my office downstairs then I wouldn’t need the 3rd bedroom either, unless I had guests sleeping over.

Basically, I don’t need the upstairs on my house. At all. That means that at least 1/3 of my house is absolutely wasted and unused.

If I had a smaller place (say 1500 square feet, or even less), I’d have 1/3 less to clean, 1/3 less to heat and cool, and 1/3 less space to fix when it breaks.

Closer makes sense.

Living in Carrollton/Lewisville (from now on C/L) would take 1 hour off of my round trip commute to my mom’s house, which I make weekly. When my mom moves to Rowlett, it’ll take an hour or so off of that trip too. It would take 1 hour off of my round trip commute to work, which I make 2 or 3 times a week. It would take 45 minutes off of my round trip commute to daycare, which I do 2 or 3 times a week. It would take 15 minutes off of a trip to the grocery store. 15 minutes off of a trip to the doctor. 10 minutes off a trip to C’s doctor. In almost every case I will pay less in tolls if I have to pay tolls at all.

It brings me either closer or make no change in distance to almost every single person I know with a few very important exceptions: my neighbors.

My neighbors.

I have the world’s best neighbors. And I mean neighbors in the plural sense of the word. Multiple neighbors.

I’ve lived in many houses with my parents. I’ve lived in many apartments by myself. I’ve never had neighbors as loving and as caring as the ones I have now.

We sit and talk in our driveways. We visit one another for dinner. We’ve gone out to a lake house together. We’re making 4th of July plans together. We stay up late and drink some nights. They helped me put in flooring. We swap child care tips. They’ve offered many times over to watch Celeste as needed. They drove all the way out to my mom’s place for C’s birthday.

They are amazing people. All 6 adults. All 5 kids. And there are even more neighbors near by that I am close with and might be closer to in the future.

Am I just the luckiest guy on the planet? Or was I just not trying hard enough in the past? I have no idea. But I do know that my neighbors feel like family and leaving them, their company, and the support we offer one another isn’t something that feels good.

Conclusion?

My basic math for moving looks something like this: If I move into an apartment, I’ll save about $200/mo on “rent”, $200/mo on utilities, $200/mo on gas and toll charges, and, on average, about 5-7 hours a week in time. If I can find a house to rent instead of an apartment, I’ll save a little less. This is time and money and energy I can spend relaxing, out with friends, or growing/learning/playing with celeste.

The one compelling argument for staying is my neighbors. Yes… I could still drive up and see them. They are only 30 minutes away from where I’m planning to move. And, if where I move doesn’t work out, I’d be renting my house out, so I could always move back.

And at some point in the future my situation is bound to change. C’s daycare will end and we’ll need to move to a good school district. C’s mom and I will change custody patterns. I’ll get a different job or start working for myself. There are so many options. In that regard it almost seems silly to pack up and move everything just to solve a problem that might solve itself down the road. Then again, 3-4 years is long enough for it to make a difference.

What are your thoughts?