Me my life and I - HELP!

Or maybe just re-read the first page of this thread.

There is one spot I may have luck. The liquor stores will be able to sell liquor on sundays starting this sunday (I think it's this sunday) and I imagine some store somewhere might want help for the extra shifts. I know alcohol.

course I won't have the time off to apply. hmmm, maybe I'll take the time off to apply. Course then I lose $.

Faced with a problem with no clear solution, but rather several potential solutions each with a set of risks is tough. Many times the easiest course is the one we take; we procrastinate and let nature take its course. That is what it seems you have done. Is this the optimal outcome for you? Probably not given your remarks in the thread.

Here is my advice:

1. Take some time and seriously think about what it is you want out of life. What is your goal? How much discomfort are you willing to accept to achieve that goal? Is the goal achievable? If you aren't very young and don't have excellent hand-eye coordination, don't expect to become a brain-surgeon. Do you want/need financial security in your old age, or can you accept living a very restricted life on charity? What gives you the most pleasure? What are you best at doing? What tasks or environments are unbearable to you? From everything you've said, you are not happy nor satisfied with what you have been doing for several years. Follow your bliss. Be honest with yourself.

2. Once you have a well defined goal, and have reconciled yourself to the consequences of your choice, you can begin to design a course of action to achieve your goal(s). If you will need a college education, then you need to get enrolled somewhere without delay. If you need skills you don't yet have, where and how will you acquire them?

3. This may be the most important ... Don't put off until tomorrow, what needs to be done today. Bite the bullet, take the risk. Don't just dream away the summer only to awaken with a foot of snow as your only blanket. All we really have is today. Yesterday no longer exists, and tomorrow will never come. Day will turn into night and 2004 will become 2015 before you can wipe the sleep from your eyes. Face the risks, and act.

I don't think so, we'll see.

Asherman - I fully admit that I let myself get into this situation. I always do tend to let time make my choices. I actually like the kids, I just don't like the low-pay/no-benefits/bullhookie.

asherman, can you go to the east coast and say that to littlek every coupla days?

<sigh> that other family. I can just imagine what they might give you in severance. they'll have to do something, so they won't look TOO bad to your sister. but they'll do something that doesn't really cost them anything/too much. that'd be my guess.

I look at this with a certain long view that may be from so far away in age and space that it is inappropriate. But from here I see you sort of trapped (pardon me..) Have you decided on nannying as your business from now on? do you want to go to school or not? (I see you as too tired to go to school after nannying, or I would be).

Is there anything else that you fancy doing? I am a three career person, or you could say a two career one with a big hobby, so I have a certain bias to moving on if I feel trapped. I still see the situation where you are at the behest of everybody else. You don't have a series of clients but have one or two, family to boot. I know trouble from clients, even just delays, and an alternative is a nice thing at certain times. Could you organize a nanny service, work together with someone else and build the business? Get yourselves some insurance as a firm.. nothing is more expensive than self employed health insurance, I say in despair myself. Right now you are healthy. It is harder to pick up insurance as a tiny company when you are older with a spotty health record.

If you would rather do something else in the long run, could you take a stultifying but betterpaying job and go to school at night, say at an university extension? We are on different coasts, but back in west LA, UCLA had an incredible extension program, frankly much more career practical than the regular university, really really good programs in it, some careers I had never even thought of. The courses are expensive, I am not sure what they are now, but let me guess around $300. for twelve weeks, one class. But you can take one at a time, when you can, and pretty soon you know people in that field.

You could conceivably do that if they have that in Boston and you are free on a couple of nights from monday to thursday.

Ah, little k, this was probably out of line, and doesn't answer your immediate question.

It is messy to take a job, if you can get it and then quit.

One of my best and worst jobs, at the same time, was when I went up to ucla and looked at the student employment center board. (I was older than you are when I did that.) I called about a job being a researcher on a project in the art department, which turned out to be for a professor putting together an exhibit on land use at a local museum. I started as a researcher, having trouble even finding the library (there are about fourteen libraries there), and became the coordinator with 28 helpers at one point. Not that I am so great, as that there was that kind of opportunity there.

I didn't work there at the time, but had gone to school there. Not so sure that makes any difference re looking at the board and calling.

Is taking care of other people's children your bliss? Does that fulfill your sense of destiny? If not, then its time to make a change. You have to weigh the benefits and costs of each course of action. You love taking care of the kids and avoiding taking the risk of doing something else. That's the positive. You dislike the wages and inability to provide for a future that is rapidly coming upon you. You probably dislike being a servant in your sister's house where she is "Mother and Mistress", and you must meekly knuckle under to keep the peace. Those are the price you have to pay for the benefit of nurturing someone elses children.

Why not have children of your own to nourish? It isn't exactly PC, but find a good man with a steady job and get married. Run your own house and garden the way you want it. Bake cookies for the children and steak for himself when he returns home after a day's labor to provide for you and the children. It's unfortunate that more folks aren't willing to become pretty much full-time homemakers. Comfortable and happy homes don't just happen, but require attention and care. Marriages are not just nominal partnerships, but real partnerships that achieve far more than either individual could possibly expect acting alone.

I have to go to bed so I can be awake enough to train the new girl tomorrow. Thanks all.

Hmm, I see Asherman and I cross posted with similar povs to a point.. that is think big in some direction.

Oops, didn't see Osso and Asherman's second post.

Osso - I have a b.s. in useless information. But, it's a degree. I don't particularly want to take care of kids for a long-term career. i considered teaching, but I think that the bullhookie would kill me. I am exhausted after work, tis true. But, moreover, I have pets who need attention among other things.

Asher - I have no idea how to respond to your last post without offending you.

Offend away ... I'm used to it.

I amended mine after I saw Asherman's second paragraph, which was after I posted... but he is right for some.

Oh, the pets, well, you know I sympathize. I had a husband when I took those particular 25 classes, and he took care of the dog, but he resented my school time. Count your blessings, though I don't mean that quite as sardonically as that sounds.

Two night classes a week = one course. Some of the classes happen on saturdays, but the mw or tth ones are the beef of the programs. That means getting home feeding dog/shooting cat/putting both in crates (gag) running to class, leaving as it ends running home opening crates. Can be done, and done more easily with pals to be there once in a while.

The thing is, I had decided to do the new field, landscape architecture, after I had taken two classes, and got jobs in the field as I was going through school, the first one being that landuse exhibit. The thing is, you don't need so much to commit to a new degree in a new field, as perhaps redirect interest and learn on a new job. And that can happen fairly early on in a series of courses. Well, it did for a bunch of my friends.

Another story, one of the women in my land arch classes had a husband who was in it with her. Together they were stars, both very good students. But he was always playing games and playing with locks. Was it Atari? I was only mildly interested, when we were over there for parties, sign of my computer dullardness to come.

She ended up dropping the extension, since she didn't have a degree and you need one to get licensed and drove massive mileage daily to go to Cal Poly, and since got her degree and licence. He left before finishing and took some locksmithing course. He now has a really successful international security company (I said he was smart).

I don't mean to rattle you with them, I wouldn't drive that either. But they are quasi-poster folk for following a course, or starting your own business from a hobby, in his case, locks.

What about animals, a vets assistant course? Not that that is so high paying, but might be an intermediate thing.

What about temping for an agency, like Kelly? They understand if you'll be starting something soon and find you work by the day or week until it starts... it wouldn't be your dream job but it might be enough income to keep body and soul together until your sis is ready for you to start again... Might also give you a view of what you're not doing, either draw you in that direction or reaffirm your (at least temporary) commitment to nannying.

Ah, I remember taking a typing test for Kelly fairly early, not sure quite when. I got eleven mistakes, or maybe it was 83.
Anyway, I felt badly. I think it was in a particularly desolate time, which I don't want to go in to here, and I was in some sort of tharn as I walked into that place. I walked out with a sense of what I would say now as screwed. I wouldn't have used those words then.

They called me.
I never went.

I had other stuff going on. But if they called me, they would call anybody, as I know how I messed up that test.

Especially since I have gotten particularly speedy at typing since then, though not as good as a couple of my friends who type like lightning.

My friend Mary (Pan Am Stewardess, LA schools teacher) has in her past taken temp jobs and enjoyed them.

I'd better stop posting, I might need to try it.

I'm glad you gave the go ahead, Asherman, as I also had to sit on my fingers to avoid responding to that one.



Uh... OK. How on earth does that work? There are so many flabbergasting assumptions there that I'm having a hard time picking each out to refute. First, there is meeting someone, the difficulties of which littlek has chronicled here extensively. Perhaps she should be less picky? Just settle for any old guy that is nice enough and has a steady income? And then, since part of the point is to have kids, stay with him for at least 18 years?



This is not even going into what most men today would think of a woman whose explicit goal is marriage and children so she doesn't have to work to support herself.

I do agree with the aspect of being a full-time parent (either the mom or the dad) is a good thing that doesn't really get the respect it deserves. But all the rest of it... eek.

I don't know about that, soz. The older you get, the more family-oriented the men often become. I'm thinking of 4 or 5 of my friends who married in their 30s. Their husbands had children from first marriages and were looking for a good stepmom. Then the couple had more children of their own. Most of these women did not work outside the home while the children were small, although most were active volunteers.

So I think the choice still exists. And it's a good choice for some.

Which choice?

Getting married to a guy just to support yourself? Of course it's a choice, and I can believe it works for some people. Lots of things are choices -- arranged marriages, LOMBARDs (just read this in the NYT, Lots of Money But A Real Dope), "forgetting" to take your birth control pills and trapping someone into marriage. That doesn't make it a good choice for littlek. (But I won't speak for her.)

My main objection is intent, a career path sort of decision. If littlek meets someone she likes, they get married, they have kids, they decide she will be a stay-at-home mom, well, great! I have nothing against the stay-at-home parent part, itself. (Which is good, since I am one.) But in the context of "how do I support myself?" or "what job should I get?", which is where this came up, I object.

Women's liberation was all about giving women the choice of entering the workplace or staying at home. It wasn't about compelling women to enter the workplace. Society still has a need for stay-at-home moms, and I think that's a very valid "career choice." So, for that matter, is stay-at-home dad.

Are you suggesting that it's only okay to decide to stay at home AFTER you've had a job in the workplace, but not before?

I knew that post was going to generate a firestorm.

Natalie and I have been married for almost 40 years. There were times when we were desperately poor, but together we overcame that and now are reasonably well off in our old age. We both have advanced degrees, and that was only possible by having a spouse who could keep the family afloat while the other worked on their degrees. Our two sons have grown up to be fine men with good educations and a secure place in the world. Did this all come about in some hazy romantic relationship?

Nope. Natalie hates housework to the max, and I have over the years done most of the decorating and housework while she pursued her career. I'd have been happy to be the stay at home parent, but my career (which I loved up until the last five years before retirement) produced more than double Natalie's income. My standards are also a lot higher than Natalies for a lot of things, and it drives her nuts. Sometimes I think she must be nuts for staying with me so long. Her habits and spending for nonsense would probably get me off with a verdict of Justifiable Homicide. Our disagreements have been loud and sometimes long on a pretty regular basis since we first got together. Sex has been fine, but it sure isn't like soft-focus movies or the torrid XXX passion. I've never slept around, and so far as I know neither has Natalie. I know her and she knows me more deeply and intimately than any other person ... and often that ain't pretty, but so what.

Given all of that, I'm a big fan of the institution of marriage. Two people in a long-term intimate relationship are "whole", while those who never form such relationships often seem to never quite adjust to the world. As individuals we accumulate things and knowledge, but it is in the end all dross. What is the point to being wealthy, famous, or powerful if you are alone, and no one truly knows you? The poorest family is may be infinitely richer than someone like Howard Hughs, or Michael Jackson.

Far better to have a spouse and children close around you to love and be loved by. The single parent is faced with terrible problems and painful choices. How does such a parent budget pennies when the costs of child rearing are measured in hundreds of dollars. Who is to care for the child when their parent must be off somewhere working to provide sustenance, shelter, and clothing. Of course, there are many situations where single parenthood is the only reasonable option, but it is almost always a tragic option. Children having children, ouch! Men shirking their responsibility, for shame. Violent drunken sadists who take their own inadequacies out on their spouse and children, criminals who should be horsewhipped and jailed. Those sort of relationships must be avoided, but they are I think the exception. Most of us can, and do, find partners who we can live with for through our old age.

It is not necessary to have a great romantic passion for a people to have love. Arranged marriages, negotiated marriages, and marriages formed from advertisements or on the web work out satisfactorily as often as those that began with a lightning bolt. The success an degree of satisfaction that results is far more dependant upon the character of the parties than it is from the emotional fireworks they generate. It is necessary to choose wisely. A woman should select a man who has good character, who works at a steady job that earns enough to support children, and who has the capacity for love and understanding.

Those who decide to be a full-time homemaker are not slaves, parasites, or less important than a wage earner. Making a happy, comfortable home is a hard task, and one that requires great ability, foresight, and patience. Homemade dinners are far, far better and more enjoyable than prepared foods, or entree's in all but the very best restaurants. Organized, clean and tidy rooms are conducive to living quality lives. Making the revenues fit the expenses is something that takes dedication and careful planning by the homemaker. No one, and I mean NO ONE, can take as good care of children half so well as their parents. And no one should be deprived of the joy of watching the little fellers grow and learn about the world.

As a child I followed my grandfather around the ranch learning what work was, and how a man ought to be. My sisters learned household management, and we all shared the chores needed to keep the whole establishment running. We learned responsibility, the dignity of labor, and how love and caring for one another made us as a family stronger. I pity my grandson who only sees his Dad go off in the morning and return exhausted in the evening. Our daughter in law has always been a full-time homemaker. There was a time we thought that it would be good for her to go to work and make some cash to supplement the pitiful wages we pay our soldiers. They decided otherwise, and they were right. Chiyon has been a central factor in properly raising the grandchildren. We were afraid that she might not be able to adequately homeschool the children when the civilian schools were not an option. Despite their mother's ESL difficulties, our grandchildren were tested far above grade level when they returned to the public schools ... and they have continued to prosper and excel. Chiyon is the one who has really reaped the rewards, while our son merely gets to enjoy family life when the Army doesn't demand his full attention.

This notion that women, or men, who are full-time homemakers have somehow failed to live up to their potential is BS.

I wasn't aware that Littlek has a history of forming bad relationships. However the answer isn't to avoid forming new ones, but to be more selective in those she chooses. The country is full of good and steady men with high standards who will honor their wives. I believe that men should have even less trouble finding a suitable wife.

Love isn't violin strings so much as it is the product of many years of shared experience, patience and the development of our own potential for caring.