(Alex moseys back into the Den of Rambi. He finds a freshly-deposited article of sporting goods. A miniature football, spray-painted gold, with "PW" painted on in nail polish. It's strangely heavy, too heavy to be a really good Hacky Sack. Decent hockey puck though, eben if those weird deep grooves crisscrossing it make it roll just a little funny. Alex sets it back down with an authoritative clatter. Humming a tuneless little ditty, he begins languidly toe-kicking it across the parquet...)
Compensation schedules for the position of domestic-operations engineer. Loaded topic. Why am I not running like heck, or whatever???
Spouse has always anticipated/looked forward to being a homebased mother. As a nurse, her career is so flexible that she's not seriously or permanently "mommytracking" herself. We're currently engaged in a wholesale aggressive review of our long-term finances to allow me to (at least maintain the pretense of) do(ing) the single-income breadwinner daddy deal. I'll be compelled to draw up a household budget for Lover to administrate. I'm sure this will be a lively process, as our cashflow will be a close thing.
As the daddy, I'm quite uncomfy myself shoehorning Spouse into a budget box. I don't want her feeling dependent, but the alternative for us would be worse (a job which doesn't even cover daycare). So I seek to absolve some classic daddy guilt by wielding a paintbrush, hedgetrimmers, tire pressure gauge, even a garden fork. Remarkable how refined these social roles were in our collective childhood. |
