We are on the verge of a two-week trip involving first a visit with my parents and then a road-trip to visit Rob and then on to visit a bestie who lives in the town where Paul and I got married and where Rob was born. I get a little flustered packing for one/familiar journey, but this is a whole new pack of eggs. A major soothing element is that with a ROAD TRIP it is super easy to stop somewhere and buy something. It can even be FUN. For example, we are going to need a cooler, and Paul suggested we buy it at the local chain where we used to do most of our shopping in those early days, and maybe we can even find a cooler branded with the name of the store and that would be fun; but even if we can’t, we will have the memory of buying the cooler there.
Meanwhile we are also preparing for Edward’s surgery next month. We have been back and forth to the hospital half a dozen times for various preparatory tasks (MRI, ultrasound, etc.); each journey takes 6-8 hours, depending on proximity to rush hour and whether the procedure is a 15-minute thing or a 3-hour thing; we have tried to get the tasks combined and that has not been possible (e.g., very limited MRI appointments, specialized ultrasound only done on Fridays, this doctor has only this one appointment between now and September, etc.). A couple of friends have pointed out how lucky the timing is with me being out of work for all this, and it really is.
I’m afraid it is also resetting Paul’s expectations. I had a big struggle, when I went back to work, getting him to understand that if both of us were working on a day a kid needed something, it was no longer a matter of me automatically being the one to figure everything out and change/cancel my own plans: he had become fully accustomed to the SMALLEST inconvenience on his part completely outweighing even a LARGE inconvenience on my part. He finally, finally, FINALLY got the the point of MOSTLY understanding (i.e., he would still default to “Nope, I can’t do it, I have an appointment / planned to go in to work that day,” but then with nudging would start to say “OH! Yes, no, I can maybe swap days / change my meeting / change my appointment / work from home”), and now here we are again with me able to take allllll the tasks and Paul not having to think about it at all. We have a big scheduling conflict today (I have an appointment, AND I have to take Henry to an appointment, AND the hospital two days ago scheduled something else for Edward that MUST be done today and CANNOT be rescheduled, PLUS we have one fewer car than we need for the people who need cars for work/appointments), and I brought the issue to Paul to see if he could work from home to free up a car and he immediately dismissed it: nope, he had to go in to work. I had to cut off his long explanation of all the reasons he Really Had To Be There in Person, because it’s not relevant: if he’s not available, he’s not available, and I need to move on to figuring out what can be done.
You might be thinking, “Well, but he can help figure out what can be done!” The thing is, he mostly can’t. That is not one of his areas of skill. Furthermore, his mind immediately leaps to a dozen different things that cannot possibly work, and then he is talking them into the air and I have to explain to him why each one doesn’t help / won’t work—so now I’m spending my problem-solving time teaching Problem Solving 101 to someone who has already taken the class a dozen times without passing, and he is getting irritable with me for smacking down all his attempts. Like, he is TRYING to HELP, and all I’m doing is PICKING APART HIS IDEAS!! But what is actually happening is that he is twenty steps behind and not good at this to begin with. We don’t all have to be good at the same things! But let me work on it without having to tell you AGAIN that we are SHORT A CAR so NO we can’t “just” do it the way you took four seconds to think of!!!!
Anyway. I AM good at this, so now we have a complicated ballet of a schedule that gets everyone to where they need to be. It involves me doing a lot of chauffeuring; it also involves Edward taking a commuter bus to the city, which has me nervous, but happily we had an appointment earlier this week so we took that same journey together and I had him lead the way and figure out how, for example, to find the right bus, and how to get from the bus station to the hospital—so I think overall this is going to end up being good adulting experience, and also everyone else gets to go to their work/appointments, AND ALSO we can use this idea again in the future if we get stuck.
The way this resonated through my entire SOUL:
“ now I’m spending my problem-solving time teaching Problem Solving 101 to someone who has already taken the class a dozen times without passing “
Not specific to my husband, but just a feeling I can FEEL from your description.
I came here to say this! So, so good. And I’m glad you have found a way to nip that in the bud, Swistle, to move on to productive problem-solving
I have been going through some of this same exact, “No, that idea won’t work, try to keep up” conversation but with my teenager this week. It’s hard because he hasn’t failed the class before but he doesn’t always want to chip in to help with driving and it FEELS like he’s trying to suggest solutions that have him minimally involved, whether consciously or unconsciously. BUT we pay for your parking, insurance and $$ car repairs, so you can indeed pick up your brother and sister sometimes.
My husband has just found out/decided that he has to go to England for an indeterminate amount if time – his mother has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a time-remaining of about 3 months. He’s going tomorrow. He had me book his flights, measure the size of his bag for carry on, pack his clothes into a compression cube… and then instructed me on how to mow the lawn while he’s away.
My dude! I know you’re stressed, but Holy Cats!
And I get to drive three hours each way to the airport.
We don’t all need to be good at the same things but when I get stuck being the scheduler/solver of achedule-problems I do often wonder why *I* am the one who is good at it, since I absolutely do NOT ENJOY it…
YEP. My spouse is, fortunately, way way better at this than Paul, but I definitely have people who have… not yet passed Problem Solving 101.
If this comes up again, can you suggest to Paul that you could use his solution if *he* rents a car, but that otherwise his car is needed? I am also not sure about immune-compromised person taking a bus at a season where the bus windows will definitely be closed unless his masks are a really good fit; I am a huge fan of taking public transit! It is a good, usually less-expensive option vs. having a car! It is way kinder to the environment! It reduces traffic congestion! You can safely do things [read, type, knit] while on public transit that you cannot do while driving! It is not too germy for normal people! But immunosuppressants change the math a lot?
Anyway. Yes. I am sorry you have to deal with all the juggling, and hope packing and trip planning and traveling and Edward-surgery-prep all go really well!
Re the scheduling and related problem solving, SAME, girl. Delegating tasks is how I handle it with my spouse (‘though I’d rather he would take initiative in the first place). However, he also has a very short attention span (probably undiagnosed ADHD) and seems to instantly forget important tasks regarding his role. I do not like constantly reminding or repeating myself, although I have do that too. I’ve also just let him fail to do things that he was supposed to do and have him face the consequences full on, but that can be disruptive to me. Hope your trip is fun and even relaxing!
I am a tenured professor in Problem Solving 101 and I am really, really, really, REALLY sick of my job. I feel that deeply. I have to say my husband is very good about doing stuff and in fact he has the easier way to do it, i.e. he sometimes works from home, he has been at his job a long time, my job is definitely of the do it in person variety, I have two of them so it’s constant. But it really galls me when someone comes up with a solution in, like you say, four seconds and dares speak it to me like, are you kidding? You really think I haven’t already thought of that and dismissed it? Insulting.
I started this post feeling happy that Paul had been so good about making helpful suggestions related to the cooler…
…and I guess I am still happy that Paul made helpful suggestions related to the cooler.
Yes. Yes. We will focus on how nice it is that he had a good idea about the cooler.
Isa Medina’s Daycare for Men, pt 6 (which I watched on IG but is probably really a Tik Tok) spoke eloquently about male problem-solving.
My husband is retired, and whatever expectations anyone might have about how this goes when he has MORE free time than you? Give them up now.
Yay for the cooler, though. That’s, let’s see, one.
I had to laugh, because it’s sort of the opposite in my house. I’ve been a homemaker since our oldest was one, and in the early years my husband really wasn’t available. I mean in an actual emergency he could (and did) drop everything, but generally his day was in the office and scheduled tight. Or he might come home and tell me he was leaving in the morning and would be gone for 48 hours. Seniority, a general shift in his job and the technical ability to work remotely most of the time (thanks pandemic) has given him so much more flexibility. And I haven’t really caught up. Like, kid too young to be home alone for long is sick and I’m supposed to be somewhere that day. So, I start trying to figure out how to adjust my schedule and he’s calmly “you’re good, I can work from home until you get back.” Or, the kids need to be in different places at the same time and I’m asking questions to figure out who can go early/stay late and he’s like “let me check for meetings, maybe I can take one.” It’s been literal years and I’m just starting to remember to ask him about his schedule.
I feel this also as the master of logistics.
I wonder if someone could drop Paul off and someone else pick him up with his car so it’s not sitting Idle all day while he works. I imagine with was considered already, but worth a try – just because he has to be at work all day doesn’t mean the car has to be too.
Just a few days ago I had to pack for a trip of undetermined length (but probably in the rough area of a month and a half) and it drove me crazy not knowing what to take, and I was also trying to fly without checking bags and I left behind things I already wish I had.
My wife is generally better at logistics than me, but I was a SAHM for a while so I had more day-to-day responsibility for managing the kids’ lives. As they’ve gotten older and their needs change, she’s shifted more into the default parent role that used to be mine. I used to feel guilty about this but now I don’t because roles change over time, I did the intensive little kid years, plus she’s retired and I’m not. I think the biggest thing she handles is dealing with medical bureaucracy, which is a big part of parenting our college-age kid.
Oof. Yes, it’s charming that Paul had that lovely and sweet thought about the cooler, let’s focus (at least partly) on that.
My husband has needed to go to urgent-care-followed-by-ER twice in the past ~3 weeks, plus 1 additional urgent care (they tried to encourage him to go to ER but he refused, which was legit), and a medical procedure that involved him being knocked out, albeit in a “like for a colonscopy” sense not in a “we’re putting you under” sense. (The first 2 urgent care + 1 ERs turned out to be for side effects from a medication that has since been replaced by a different medication that is working better for him, the other u. care + ER was for getting dehydrated after being out too long in the obscene heat, the procedure was related to the same ongoing condition the meds are for). I cannot tell you how phenomenally grateful I have been that we live literally less than 1 mile from the ER (and 2/3 of the urgent cares we visited) as well as the hospital where the procedure was done. And conversely, how often I have thought about how phenomenally hard this would be / must be were we farther away. I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with that to navigate Edward’s care.