Mine is a family in which one spouse (not me) works the overnight shift. At least from my perspective, the arrangement bites. While my wife is sleeping during the day, I'm a work. While she's at work, I'm sleeping. When I come home from work, off she goes to her job. Ours is a "hello, goodbye" arrangement pretty much, which blows.
Fortunately, this isn't an everyday occurrence. There is a upside.
My wife is a nurse, which as any nurse can tell you, means she has a wacky schedule that defies logic to anyone other than another nurse. She tends to work a lot of hours in short bunches and then has a lot of days off in between. Herein lies the upside. Keeping track of when those days fall, however, requires a master's degree in organization, and I'm still stuck in kindergarten where that's concerned.
Why work at night? One, she's like it. Two, it pays better. Three and probably most important, it works out for our family schedule-wise in terms of getting kids to school, picking up kids from school, etc. It really comes down to practicality. As is the case with any good mother and father, it's a matter of sacrificing personal betterment for the betterment of the whole.
For my wife, the sacrifice is primarily a major hit to sleep on nights she works. She regularly flows between a "normal" day schedule when not working to a night schedule when she does. That requires regularly staying up 24-plus hours to make the transition. I couldn't do it. On weekends when she works, it means combating a house full of kids and dogs and cats and whatever other forces are at work making incessant noise while she tries to slumber. I couldn't do it. On school days, it's arguably worse, as she has to somehow stay awake long enough, after already being up 24 hours, to get our wee one off to preschool before she can collapse and hopefully catch some ZZZs. I couldn't do it.
As much as I dislike our dueling work schedules, it does give me scads of one-on-one time with my little one. Sometimes, I feel like my vocabulary is regressing at alarming rates because of such, but I know the hours we spend together is going to pay off down the road. We're forming a bond that will overcome the inevitable squabbles bond to surface.
The arrangement also means I have plenty of time to play guitar without worrying about who I may be offending. I can also watch pretty much any crappy, violent, nonsensical movie or TV show I want without worries of judgement or mockery entering the scene. And did I mention that there's no obstructions to making late-night snack runs?
Still, those pluses pale in comparison to the minuses of sleeping alone and talking to the walls. But here's the deal, we have a two-income family. Some families that want that don't. We work in the fields we trained for. Most never even get to train. We make the best of the situation. Many people let the situation dictate the worst. Most positive is that the arrangement isn't permanent. I know so many people who spent their lives stuck in a crappy occupation they detested. Our arrangement is by choice.
Still, cuddling up next to a dog with stinky breath just isn't the same as the missus.
Fortunately, this isn't an everyday occurrence. There is a upside.
My wife is a nurse, which as any nurse can tell you, means she has a wacky schedule that defies logic to anyone other than another nurse. She tends to work a lot of hours in short bunches and then has a lot of days off in between. Herein lies the upside. Keeping track of when those days fall, however, requires a master's degree in organization, and I'm still stuck in kindergarten where that's concerned.
Why work at night? One, she's like it. Two, it pays better. Three and probably most important, it works out for our family schedule-wise in terms of getting kids to school, picking up kids from school, etc. It really comes down to practicality. As is the case with any good mother and father, it's a matter of sacrificing personal betterment for the betterment of the whole.
For my wife, the sacrifice is primarily a major hit to sleep on nights she works. She regularly flows between a "normal" day schedule when not working to a night schedule when she does. That requires regularly staying up 24-plus hours to make the transition. I couldn't do it. On weekends when she works, it means combating a house full of kids and dogs and cats and whatever other forces are at work making incessant noise while she tries to slumber. I couldn't do it. On school days, it's arguably worse, as she has to somehow stay awake long enough, after already being up 24 hours, to get our wee one off to preschool before she can collapse and hopefully catch some ZZZs. I couldn't do it.
As much as I dislike our dueling work schedules, it does give me scads of one-on-one time with my little one. Sometimes, I feel like my vocabulary is regressing at alarming rates because of such, but I know the hours we spend together is going to pay off down the road. We're forming a bond that will overcome the inevitable squabbles bond to surface.
The arrangement also means I have plenty of time to play guitar without worrying about who I may be offending. I can also watch pretty much any crappy, violent, nonsensical movie or TV show I want without worries of judgement or mockery entering the scene. And did I mention that there's no obstructions to making late-night snack runs?
Still, those pluses pale in comparison to the minuses of sleeping alone and talking to the walls. But here's the deal, we have a two-income family. Some families that want that don't. We work in the fields we trained for. Most never even get to train. We make the best of the situation. Many people let the situation dictate the worst. Most positive is that the arrangement isn't permanent. I know so many people who spent their lives stuck in a crappy occupation they detested. Our arrangement is by choice.
Still, cuddling up next to a dog with stinky breath just isn't the same as the missus.
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