Goals

We've been so busy.
Too busy.
Busy enough that we woke up one morning and realized we had barely talked in days.  Realized that if something didn't change, we would wake up one morning and not know each other.  Wake up one morning and discover our son was asking for the car keys, and last thing we remembered he was a tiny baby.

I don't know what the final straw was.  Realizing we barely knew each other anymore?  Joshua taking his first controlled, unassisted steps--walking across the living room--at day care?  Josh throwing temper tantrums after not seeing either parent for 24 hours and often much longer?  His first birthday?
Or just plan weariness?

So we finally talked.  Decided--okay, I demanded--that Josh needs a parent primarily at home, a decision we've made before that never lasted due to either financial pressures or work insisting on scheduling me more hours a week than I wanted.   It can't be Rob right now; his company's baseline hours a week is 57 and he has picked up a side construction job for a few months.  Plus the extra overtime that gets mandated constantly.
So it's me.

Besides that, we realized we needed goals.  We needed to get control of our finances, there is no reason we have so little left over at the end of the month when our combined income is, well, closer to six figures than to five.   There is no reason we keep forgetting to pay bills--or we don't forget, but we're not home long enough to write checks. 
We also needed time together as a family.  Not just as a family, but we need to remember we live in a community, and not be so isolated and fractured.

We've made these decisions before.  They never last.  These decisions don't work well with our lifestyle, and we have no idea how to change a lifestyle.  So we decided, instead of making decisions, to just make goals to work towards.

Goals such as:

• To be debt free, excepting mortgage and student loan payments(combined: $1000 a month), by the end of the year(completely doable, thanks to not using credit cards).
• To invite a family over once a week, or twice a month in the busy summer months, so we can reconnect with people and feel like we have friends.  I especially want to invite over those who may not get invitations that often.
• To go away for a weekend in June and August, and plan for a long, three week vacation in the Carolinas and Virginia come winter.
• For me to finish nursing school.
• To find a church we're comfortable in and attend it on a somewhat regular basis(not really holding my breath on this one)
• To take Josh out of day care(a decision that made me cry, since I am firmly convinced of the academic and social benefits of day care) and put that money towards paying off the jeep and fixing up the house.

It's a start.
Not a great start, but a start.

Adjusting

Thursday is my last shift in Ovid.  They don't know it yet, but it's pretty obvious it's coming.
I simply cannot work my schedule around Rob's, and he's making more money and carries the insurance for the family, it's my job that has to go.

I keep pointing out that maybe he would like to be a stay-at-home dad, and he keeps pointing out that it makes no sense for him to quit his full time job so I can get one.  Also, he's a little on the old-fashioned side, and has made it clear that he believes it is the husband's responsibility to provide for the family.
Which is all well and good, but full time day care is just about unaffordable, and when both parents are working 24-48 hour shifts, day care is pretty much impossible.

So I am relegated to staying at home with the baby.

I know there are women who love being stay-at-home moms.  Women who knew from the time they were young that they wanted to get married and have babies and create a home.  Women who spent their youth preparing for this.

I was not one of them.  I wanted a career, not babies.  I wanted an apartment, not a country home.  I wanted a lot of education and a job I enjoyed, not cookbooks and vacuuming. 
I didn't plan on falling in love with a paramedic, or being a paramedic myself.
I didn't expect that it would be almost impossible to coordinate two full-time paramedic schedules with child care. 
I certainly had no intention of falling in love and marrying someone who believed that it is the man's responsibility to provide financially for the family.
But I did.
All of this happened.  So now I am left asking--what do I do now?

Can I say that I am a little resentful?  That I don't know why my husband's career is taking precedence over mine?  Why his job change effectively means that I will never be a full time paramedic again, that there is no career track for me, that the most I can hope for is 12 hours of gainful employment a week? 
That I have no idea what stay at home mothers of infants do?
And that I don't really want to know?

But we have to look at all of this from a pragmatic and financial standpoint. 
And pragmatically, financially, working 45 hours a week isn't feasible for both parents in our household, and it appears to be my career that has to be sacrificed.

And it isn't to say that I don't love my Joshua.  Because I do.  But I'm not the type that is happy at home all day.  I long for big people conversation, ideas, things to do.  I worked one day last week, and my house got completely clean, and Josh and I went for lots of walks and to the park, and I cooked dinner every night, and I was totally, completely, depths-of-despair miserable.  Gas prices are too high for me to drive anywhere, and there isn't anything in this little town to do other than go to Wal-Mart.

So I feel stuck.
And bored.
And trying to figure out how we're going to make this all work, when one of us really doesn't want it too.