Everyone knows that I wouldn’t be the person I am or have the family and home I do without HH. He’s my support system and my partner in crime. I have the vision; he brings it to life. I think it’s high time HH had a voice on House*Tweaking, don’t you? HH has graciously agreed to field one ‘Ask Handy Hubby’ question a month. You can ask him about anything from DIY to what it’s like living with me. {Surprise! I’m not always easy to live with.}
The idea for ‘Ask HH’ actually came to me through a reader’s email. Shortly after Mabrey was born, I received this email from Jennifer:
Hi,
I read your blog and LOVE it. I know you hear that all the time. But it is actually true.
I have a question. Let me start with..CONGRATS on Mabrey. How exciting!! I have two boys and am expecting my little girl in September. With that, here is my question. One of your most recent posts was about the evolution of H*T and how you were a working mom and now are a SAHM. You said it would great to get paid to do what you love. With the Underdog you guys can make the change for you to stay at home and still be able to afford life and pay off the house quickly. OK, OK…*HERE* is the question: Does HH love his job?
I know this is personal but I am asking simply because I want to be able to stay at home with my babies but don’t know if we can. I just wanted another opinion (albeit I don’t know you, it is nice to know you were in the same shoes). He works longer hours? He has sacrifices that are hard to deal with, no? How do you handle those? Does HH get home later now?
My husband is being offered a job that has potential to help me become a SAHM but I am figuring out how to handle all the changes that will create.
Anywho…I was just wondering how you handle his being gone, coming home late, and anything else. And if HH loves his job and that helps HIM deal with those changes also.
Thanks for the inspiration!!
Jennifer
Since the question was about HH’s feelings towards his job, I felt it would make sense for HH to reply. Here is HH’s response:
Congratulations, Jennifer, on the new family addition! I can tell you from experience having a little girl CHANGES EVERYTHING! Not just because of the switch from 2 to 3, which is pretty crazy…but having Mabrey has changed our whole family dynamic. I feel like she’s balanced things out a bit. It’s not just transformers, fat lips and boogers. Now there are little flowery socks, wide-eyed open-mouth smiles, and even more boogers. It’s all great. I’m very happy for you and your family.
Now, to answer your question…
“Does HH love his job?”
Love is a strong word. A really strong word. I love Dana. I love my boys. I love Mabrey. Do I “love” my job? Probably not.
Do I enjoy my job most of the time? Absolutely. I work with some terrific people. We have fun. We encourage and help each other. We commiserate together. We’ve even formed a workout group that high-jacked a section of our building for lunch time crossfit! As Dana mentioned, I took a new role last year as well. It involves more responsibility but also a new level of satisfaction. And I get to help develop some really cool products. These are the reasons I enjoy my job.
I’m not going to lie. The transition so far has not been an easy one. In the beginning, I was completely overwhelmed and felt in over my head. I got stressed out. My amount of travel has increased dramatically over a short period of time. I do work much longer hours and tend to get home late now. Those are the parts of the job that can be trying.
As far as sacrifices go though, mine pale in comparison to Dana’s. I need only watch the kids for a few hours to remind me how difficult a job being a SAHM is.
I’m going to give you a little background on my career path now. Not because I like inflicting pain on H*T readers but because I think it will help illustrate a few things. I chose to study engineering for very practical reasons – much like what led Dana to pharmacy. I was pretty good at math. I enjoyed figuring out how things worked and liked the feel of a TI-85 in my hands (nerd joke), yada yada yada. I worked hard, got hired on with a great company and proceeded to settle into a comfortable path. I want to emphasize the word “comfortable.” This path would have been just fine and I would have most likely stayed right on it if it hadn’t been for Dana.
We were living in Illinois and had been for 6 years. Layne was 3. Everett was on the way and we had been away from family for a very long time. We decided that if we were ever going to move back closer to family that it had better be now…and Dana helped me make that decision. You see, I’m pretty conservative in a lot of regards. I take WEEKS to buy a pair of shoes. Dana, on the other hand, is the risk taker. Not like a running-with-scissors kind of risk taker but a live-without-regrets kind of risk taker. So we decided to leave a city and house we loved and two great careers to move to Ohio. In what seemed like a matter of a week, we bought a house in Ohio and I accepted another job. In the process I took a sizeable pay cut, forfeited all my vacation, slashed by benefits, and lost any chance of relocation help. But we both believed that this move was what was most important for our family, so no biggie. Well, I mustered up the courage to tell my boss at the time I was leaving. I didn’t want to leave but some things are more important. Two days later I was being offered a job at one of my company’s joint ventures located 45 minutes from our new house. In a 48-hr period, I was now getting a promotion, keeping my benefits and seniority, getting full relocation, AND working in a new industry that I knew nothing about but learned to enjoy WAY more than what I’d done in the past. High fives and chest bumps all around! Talk about being humbled.
Fast forward 5 years to the present. We now have THREE!!! kids. Dana’s staying at home and following her passion. I have a new position. We’re both enjoying “tweaking” the underdog. Wow.
What’s the moral of this story, you might wonder?
My…our experience has been that when we focus on what’s best for our family’s future, those decisions have turned out well. That’s not to say they were easy. Most were downright terrifying (see “selling really nice big house, buying small crappy house”). Dana and I have spent many long nights discussing these big family decisions. We ran numbers (I ran numbers). We weighed pros and cons. We got REAL honest with each other. We argued. All of that. But in the end we made a collaborative decision with the best intentions and then we were “all-in”.
So there you have it. A really long, somewhat philosophical answer to a relatively simple question. I hope that was helpful. I’m exhausted. I’m sure you are to.
Good luck,
HH
Do you have a question for HH? HH has asked for his emails to be sent to my inbox and I’ll forward them onto him. Contact me at danarmiller {at} hotmail {dot} com. Due to time constraints, HH won’t be able to reply to every question but hopefully he’ll hit up the most common inquiries.
image: Dana Miller for House*Tweaking
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