Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Doing It All Backwards

For the last 11 days, Mark and I have been off work for Christmas Break.  It's been wonderful, minus the stomach flu that plagued us both.  I love having him home and I think that Karter loves having us both around even if he does go around shouting "mum mum" if I am not within 5 feet of him.  Mark goes back to work tomorrow and I start watching kids again, and while we both love what we do, I will miss having him around (and not just so I can trick him into unloading the dishwasher.)

Today, as I was watching Karter mimic Mark as he was working on the spare bedroom, I just wished that we could reverse the order of things.  Why can't we be "retired" when we are younger, with young children we want to spend time with, with spouses we still like (well, I will probably like Mark for the next 387839 years)?  Why can't we enter the workforce when our kids are off in college or starting their own families.

I mean sure, this isn't the most ideal situation.  Having 60 and 70 year olds doing work meant for young bodies probably isn't realistic.  But I wish there was another way to have more time for family and less for work.  Winning the lottery?  Getting my own reality show?  Ok, so those probably aren't very realistic either.

I suppose since it's not likely that Mark will find a position that requires him to work 20 hours for the same amount of pay, it's up to us to make the most of the time we have together.  I thought Mark was on board with my retire when you're young idea too, but after he was with a temper-tantrum-throwing Karter for most of the day, I think he was excited our break was coming to an end tomorrow...

No comments:

Post a Comment