Work Life Balance with Guest Siobhan Brady. Ep 11

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of two and soon to be three and a practicing physician. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura, Sarah and I are very excited to have our first guest joining us for episode eleven. We're gonna be talking work life balance with our first guests, and more on that in a little bit. But first, Sarah, what's going on with your life right now? I'm not sure this is like podcast worthy excitement, but the biggest thing that's going on in our lives is that we are moving on out of our house for several days because we are getting tented. And for those who are uninitiated to tinting, because I had actually never heard of it really until moving down here. It's when you have termites and they have to put a noxious gas in your house to kill everything inside of it. So yeah, apparently down here, you know, I could admit this on the air because there's not really a stigma to having such a thing in South Florida. It's pretty much a given that at some point every five years, ten years, whatever, it's gonna happen, just because it's part of our climate here. But it doesn't mean it's very fun. So you have to then move out they blast your house with this stuff, and then how is it then like safe to move back in. Yeah, so well you have to move all your food and cosmetic items out, so anything that would like touch your body or be ingested. So that's kind of the pain of the buck because you have to empty your fridge. I mean, it's actually kind of convenient that we just had a hurricane because because seriously, we like purpose, we're like, well, we know we're getting tented, so we're just not going to buy much, so we're pretty empty coffers to begin with. And then they do the tinting, then they ventilated, and they have some system to measure the chemicals so we'll know it's safe to go back in. And it usually takes like two to three days, so it's not the end of the world, but it has dominated our week. What about you, But it's got to be out of your house for that week, as it was at the hurricane. Now you're out with the termites. It's great, exactly. Now this is much easier, much, much, much easier. Well, what's in your life? Yeah, no, I'm excited that I just joined a choir. I sang for years and years. I sang in choir in college, and then I joined some community choruses when I lived in New York as a young person, and I stayed with one. It was called the Young New Yorker's Chorus for many years until we moved to Pennsylvania about six years ago. And then I hadn't really figured out what I would do here with it, and with lots of little kids, it was kind of hard to start anything. But then I finally realized, well, I should just join my church choir. And my church is large enough that it has a professional director and they have actually hired staff singers, so there's about eight professional singers in the choir to sort of help things along and make it not sound like your average church choir. So it's actually been a lot of fun because we're doing real intense music and I join the Chamber Singers, which is their small group that we do, you know, more challenging stuff. And Sunday we did our first Chamber Singers group singing, and so that was really cool. I like to make music and be singing fun stuff that I'm really learning from. So it's taking quite a bit of time. I mean, that is the one thing about a church choir, as you are singing every week. So we have rehearsals on Thursday nights and then we sing on Sunday mornings, and so it's easily four hours a week. It's often closer to five, which is not a small proportion of the disposable hours I have. Yeah, but I'm loving it, Like I'm really so happy to be getting back into singing, and so you know, it's I felt like the kids are getting a little bit older sometime is opening up. It was it was time to take the plunge. No, that sounds awesome. I think music is very kind of therapeutic. Josh is actually super into the ukulele right now, so like every night he's practicing songs, and I think it's I mean both of us have sort of failed. Well, I was successful for a little bit, but like getting on the meditation train. But I think both of us gravitate more towards like get lost in some other activities. So maybe for you it's singing, for him, it's playing ukulele. I think that's awesome. Maybe I need to take up the ukulele. Yeah, he would do duets with you if you did. We are so excited to have our first guest, this time on Best of Both Worlds, Sarah's friend Chavn. Sir, you want to go ahead and introduce chaven to us. Yeah, this is my really good friend, Chavonn Brady. We met as running partners in North Carolina way back in the day, and I wanted to have her as our very first guest, first of all, because I think she deserves such an honor, and second of all, because this is our first time doing any kind of three way recording session, so we wanted it to go smoothly with someone who might understand if it didn't. Chavon was picked as the guest who is least likely to have plane screwed. That's right, A really interesting and cool choice because she is a genetics professor at the UC Davis in Davis, California, near Sacramento, and she has a pretty wild and crazy job that she's going to tell us all about. She also has two boys. Tell me exactly how old they are right now. So Kieran is eight years old and Shia is four years old but almost turning five. Oh my goodness. So yeah, you are a great representative of someone who's sort of out of the baby phase completely, so that'll be new for this podcast as well. I mean, Laura's in both places and I still feel like my kids are so young, but you you have big kids, so that's exciting. And you and your husband have some really unusual and interesting circumstances that I think will make your situation interesting to our listeners. And we're just so excited to start having some guests so we can have other voices chime in on how they do things and make life work. And Savon's also an amazing choice because she makes it work in a very a least it appears from the outside a very happy and exciting and full way. I'm always looking at amazing pictures that she takes on her travel opportunities. But yet when I see her with her kids, it's clear that there's a bond and they enjoy their family time too, So I thought she'd be a great one to open up and tell us how she does it. I am super honored to be here. Thank you so much for thinking of me as your first guest. You're welcome. So, Okay, before I get into some of my questions, tell us a little bit about sort of the nature of your the time, nature of your work, because as a professor, I would assume that it's pretty all encompassing. So tell us a little bit abo about that, including the travel, and then also how your husband's schedule fits into things. Got it, Okay, So my schedule is super all encompassing in that I think that as a university professor, particularly in the research domain, so where you're at like a Division one university, that's where if you're a scientist, you have to run a research lab. You also have to teach, and then you also have to participate in your international in your community, both internationally nationally as well as within your campus. So you could spend every single hour a day working if you could continue to exist as a human being. But I can't, so I try to be at work actually in the university building during the working hours during the day, and so that for me usually is between eight thirty in the morning to five thirty at night. I also try a couple of days a week because that's not enough time for me to be able to finish everything I need to do. I try two days a week to come in a little bit earlier, so between seven thirty to eight o'clock, and to stay until six o'clock in the evening. That's what's required of me in terms of my physical work face to face hours, but my day starts extra early, so I try to wake up between five o'clock and five thirty. I try to work for a half an hour to an hour before I exercise, and then in the evenings I usually spend about a half an hour working, and then weekends, I usually try to work for at least two hours on Sundays and then answer emails occasionally. Do you tend to take Saturdays off? Is that your day of rest or what I tend to take Saturdays off? Yes, one hundred percent. That is my day of rest. And that's and also Friday night, and those are the I mean, I really try to never do anything work wise, because I've realized that if I do end up working those days, then I'm pretty miserable and grumpy during the week. So does your lab work because I know I hear a lot from professors and the sciences that the lab work can be pretty unpredictable. Is that something? Yes? And I am in actually the fortunate position or unfortunate, so I don't do much lab work. I mean, I got my job because of my ability to do lab work well, but I mostly spend my time these days managing You got the writing emails? Yeah, the graduate students and the postocs and undergraduates are the ones doing the work, and I am the one trying to identify research funds and to write up our research findings. Okay, that's cool. And the kids, what's kind of their schedule? With the kids' schedule is actually fairly predictable in that so the youngest wakes up around six thirty in the morning, and the oldest would happily sleep until seven fifteen, but the youngest wakes up the older one a little bit earlier, and then the oldest one goes into school, so he's in the third grade. School starts at eight twenty five in the morning, woo, and so yes, for those morning hours. Are your kids old enough now that you're actually able to just get some work done or do you Is your husband sort of in charge of them at that point? Or how do you guys manage it? I see so, Actually so Jeremy so he leaves for work anywhere between six forty five and seven fifteen in the morning early, yes, early, So it's impossible to get work done once they're awake, and I try to not. Actually, so, I feel like because during the work week there's so little time that I get to spend with them. Anytime that they're awake and I'm home, I'm just with them. So you try to get that work done. You say, to get up at like five, do some work? You fit in a workout at home? I guess because they're still there, Yes, at home, or I go to the gym. Yeah, I got it. And then as soon as you get home, Jeremy's usually off. It's like that kind of Jeremy is usually off. Yep, exactly, okay, yes, And then so along the way, over the last couple of years, actually, inspired by you, Sarah, so we finally decided to get a babysitter to come in and help me along the way in those mornings, so that instead of me just like rushing everybody along their way and feeling completely panicked and anxiety ridden by the time that I would leave the house, she just she's kind of like a mother's helper, so she helps me, you know, like we do everything together so collectively. You know, like one person will get the kids dressed, one person will be unloading the dishwasher, you know, and then you know, the person who's onloading the dishwasher is also helping make breakfast for the kids. And then you know, and then I'm getting my lunch ready and you know, I'm getting changed, and then she's making sure that they eat, and then we do homework together. And then I try, I really really try hard to have at least like twenty minutes of like playtime or reading time together. Oh that's awfo we head off. I feel like you've hired out what, you know, if your husband didn't have to leave so so early, what he would normally be doing. So that totally makes sense, beautiful, What what hours does she work? That's that's kind of cool because I think a lot of ours it depends on my workout schedule. So usually I like to work out between like I like to be done between six forty five and seven, So she comes around six forty five, so she kind of like starts getting everything in place so that when I arrive, we can just start. Oh that's perfect, speaking of word, it's very structured. How So a little background for everyone. Fun and I met when we were in the throes of like marathon mania. Neither of us had kids, we had you know, jobs, but we wanted something really exciting and fun on the side, So we did a lot of distance running. We got really like nerdy into it. We actually met, I love it fun on this side with distance running, like let's just all pass like it's like eighteen mile runs in Duke Forest with a group like that kind of a thing. And then we eventually became running partners. But both of us, well at least I have definitely had to slow down in the past couple of years since having kids. I still run quite a bit, but not nearly of that intensity. So what are you like how Like this is a little bit of a segue, but tell us a little bit about what kind of workouts you do now and how you fit that in and also how you handle it when you're on the road. So workouts, okay. So one thing that I know and that Sarah knows, is like I absolutely need to exercise in order to keep my sanity. I used to be super into distance running, and I loved running marathons, and I loved training and getting faster. But the amount of time input that it takes to train for a marathon is just not really conducive with my schedule. And I realized that kind of pretty much as soon as I had my first son. I would still like to run another marathon one day, but I think it's good because we're going to do one together eventually. Yeah, yes, we're going to run one together. So what do I do in the meantime. So I've actually really transformed my workout routines over the last two years, in part because I also had a bad accident. So I fell off my bike in a very slow, non graceful motion and tore my acl and broke my tibia, and then I broke my ankle a few months later, and then I had to have reconstructive surgery. I cannot run as much as I used to, so I try to run a couple of days a week anywhere from three to five miles. And then I have really started to embrace spinning and cycling, and so I try to go to spin class two days a week. I've also started doing a little bit more long distance cycling. So I'm going to run, I'm gonna ride my first century, and then I throw in yoga once a week, and and then my husband and I with two of our other friends, we actually go to a personal trainer as like our fun date night date to day once a week and then we work out together. That is awesome. That is so how do you handle all that when you're traveling. I've seen you do some beautiful runs in different locales. Yes, So when I travel, I find that the like the easiest thing to do is to run, because you can, you know, you just have to put your running shoes. I always pack my running shoes. I never don't pack my running shoes, and so I always try to Whenever I get to whatever destination I get to, I usually have a few hours before I end up having to do anything, and those are the times that I always immediately go and run for at least a half hour, and I find that that really adapts my clock to the environment that I'll be in. And then you know, I usually try to run every other day when I'm away at work, or I do yoga, So I subscribe to Yoga Glow, and so I do online practice in the mornings, and then I always try to do some sort of like hike or walk or something during my trips away. Do you have to sort of scout that out beforehand and so that you make sure you're not staying in some like I don't know, horrible strip moment. Yeah, there's no light. And there are times where like like for instance, so especially when I go to foreign countries, like so I was in Brazil and once and I did not look properly and I started running and I clearly ran into a neighborhood where like I started to feel really unsafe. So I usually I usually tried to map out my runs ahead of time, and so I just go online and I figure out where my hotel is and where the nearest you know, kind of park is, and then I look online for runners who post their runs in the nearby areas and I make sure that it's it's it's kind of safe. And then I also ask as soon as I arrive at whatever hotel I'm staying at, I go over my routes with them to make sure that it's safe. That sounds very smart, yes, yeah, And then there are some places where I can't run, right, like in Ethiopia. Like I can't run in Ethiopia, so you know, So then I always try to pick a hotel that has a gym if it's clear that there aren't any areas outside where I can run. So tell us a little more about So you do tons of travel for work, how do you manage or maybe you do, maybe you don't. It looks to me like some you managed to fit in fun during those times. How do you do that, like without the guilt factor when you know, like you know, the whole thing could be work, But it seems like you're able to kind of find a balance there, right, So I have. I think I'm lucky in that I work really really well on planes. So if I'm if I'm flying during the day or during like daylight hours, because I don't have like the kids around, I can just like plug in my headphones and I can just like work nonstoff and not be interrupted. So I usually end up having my plane rides be so productive that I am able to schedule some time in during whatever conference I'm in to do something fun. And I love traveling like I've always loved traveling. I think my family thinks that I have something wrong with me in terms of how much I love traveling. I feel like give them an idea of scale. Here, like lists the last five places you've been. Okay, so the last here, I have to look okay, So the last five places. So I was in Chile last week, and then I didn't travel for a while, except for in the beginning of August, I was in Vermont, and then I had another UH and then I went to Toronto to pick up my kids. And then I was in New York, and then I was in Hawaii, and then I was in Saint Louis, Missouri, and then I was in Belgium. Okay, and all there you go. All that work related. For the most part, all was work related. All is work related, except for picking up my kids in Toronto, and except for and then my husband and I went to Hawaii. How did you pull off the Hawaii as a work destination? So the Hawaii we actually had an editorial board meeting in Hawaii. My son, my oldest son, he has started going to a camp in Ontario for it's like a four week long sleep away camp, which he absolutely adores. And then my youngest son for four weeks during the summer when I'm in the middle of all of my work travel, children go to Canada. So our family is from Canada, and so the oldest son goes to a sleep away camp, to a Jewish sleepway camp, and then the youngest one stays with his grandparents and goes to a day camp. This overlaps completely with an editorial board meeting that I had in Hawaii. So I went to the editorial board meeting. My husband dropped the kids off in Toronto and then he flew directly to Hawaii. So we had three nights in Hawaii. That sounds really awesome. It was really nice. Sounds amazing, and we were kind of lame and we mostly just like slept in very comfortable beds. As the therapeutic in its own, right, I mean, sometimes that's all you need. It was really really nice here, so intense the rest of the time, right right, exactly. Yeah, So going back to your husband, since we went on that big travel tangent. We kind of went through the beginning of your day. At the end of the day, do you have the same babysitter come back? And what time does Jeremy get back or does he stay away for is he flying every day or does he stay away for like four days at a time. So I'll start off with when I come back, I arrive home sometime between five thirty and six, And then with the babysitter, we figure out who is so we figure out who is going to pick up or drop off Keran. So the most of our babysitters have so we've been really really lucky. We had one for a long time who was basically like part of our family, and she traveled us with us when we went to the Netherlands. She handled both morning and evenings. She actually identified a new babysitter for us who's part of her program, and she is amazing, but she does she has a class eight o'clock in the morning. So now we have like a different babysitter in the morning from the one in the evening, which like schedule wise, is not what I wanted, but the one in the evening is like, she's so amazing that I wanted to make it work, and she's really really she's like, she's really really good with my youngest son. So she and I work it out so that like some days, so I tried two days a week to pick up my youngest son from school by bicycle because he likes to ride to school by bicycle. And then she picks up the younger one from his daycare and we come home, and then she helps prepare dinner, and we kind of all prepare dinner together and then work through my son's homework, the oldest son's homework. The youngest son, you know, also needs like a lot of attention during that time. And then we go ahead and then we all eat dinner together. When my husband comes home anywhere between six forty five to seven fifteen. Oh, so he comes home every night. Now that's le So he comes home every night except for the well, he comes home every night most of the time. Some days he doesn't. So he actually flies to work on yeah, which sounds a little bit crazy. He has a friend who flies to Palo Alto because if he drives, it's like literally a three and a half hour drive each way. So for two years he stayed away from Monday to Thursday, which was really really really really hard. And so now he either flies or he drives, and so he probably if you were to like average it out, about seventy five percent of the time he flies and then the other twenty five percent of the time he drives, which is really just horrible for him because it's like a seven hour commute. No that's total. That's awful. I mean three and a half hours in one way as a commute. That's awful. But you guys have chosen to live closer to Davis than Yes, and so this was like our big compromise. So we're like a two career couple. I was really really lucky that he followed me around during my post graduate training and then he you know, got this job opportunity at Apple, which was like really the opportunity of his dreams, and so we just we had to figure out how to make it work. Like we chose to live in Davis because Davis is a great community to raise children in and it's closer for me to work, and I'm close to an airport for travel if I need. And the thing that kind of suffers is that some days he has to drive. But the most important thing is is that he's home every single night, which was really really hard for those two years when he was away from Monday to Thursday. I can imagine that would be really hard, especially because that was when your kids were little. Yeah, exactly, and then I, you know, like and then I didn't have so I didn't have a babysitter for a while, And so when I say it was hard, I would say it was probably the hardest time of my life because I just I was trying to do it all without any help and to be like a super mother, and I thought that I was, you know, many times that I was going to break, Like it was too much stress for like one person to have to deal with, and so just having somebody else to help now it turns out, has made things like a lot easier. And it was probably hard on the relationship too. I mean, I can certainly sympathize that if one's partner was gone from Monday to Thursday, that your interactions with him from Friday to Sunday may not have been the most loving constantly both It's like you were both working, but you felt like you were doing all the home stuff, so you'd kind of want it you'd be like, Okay, now it's your turn, but he'd be like, but I was working, you know exactly, and she was hired too. Yeah, and then and then your time is spent, you know, trying to be like one hundred percent present for the kids. But then there's there's no downtime, right, and so so we really really worked on it. Right, Like we have date nights once a week, and you know, we we we try to carve out like the time that we have with the children. We tried to make it very you know, when both of us are present as well as just when I'm present. We try to make it like very full on just the kids without any other distractions. And then the time for work is the time for work. And then we also now carve out very specifically time for the two of us. That is awesome. Well, I had one last question, which has to do with kind of how things have evolved. Now there's in your case, there's a lot of variables because things have changed, but you have also kind of graduated from little kidland to big kid land, which, as I talked about, Laura and I, you know, haven't really made that transition yet because she still has a two year old and I still have a almost four year old, but being pregnant kind of mess all that up. So I want to hear what it's like on the other side and whether what you find harder what you find easier. You know. One thing that we've gotten some reader you know, feedback on was sort of people saying thank you for admitting that, like, the toddler years are really really difficult. And something that I kind of winset sometimes is people are like bigger kids, bigger problems, blah blah, and I'm like, yeah, but you're not following them around to make sure they don't die. So I was just I was just curious on your perspective on how things have changed and what you're enjoying more or what you miss and what it's like. The toddler years are so hard. There is like it's exhausting because the time that you spend with them, you're they aren't moving logically irrationally yes, and you're always trying, like you said, to make sure that they survive. My oldest was so much easier. Always the youngest. I gleaned that the youngest from the age which is like three and a half to four and a half. He just developmentally like he was. He doesn't like change. He requires like a you know, a huge amount of interaction. He's you know, like the oldest one is very extroverted. The youngest one is very introverted. And so it's really taken time and the development of a lot of patience for me to figure it out. But I feel like now with so the youngest one, he's he's going to be five in a month, and he it's so much easier. It's so much easier because I can like talk with him and we can work things out together. I can figure out when he's upset, and I can ask him why he's upset, and we can kind of work it out a little bit more. And then the older one. Actually, the one thing that I would say that's the hardest for the older one right now is that when he has free time, he doesn't necessarily want to spend that free time with me. He wants to spend his free time with his friends. That is hard. That is that is like so hard, right and so and so he even says, like the other day he said to me, like he was like, oh, I want to go see my friend. I want to go see my friend next door. I see he's outside, and I was like, oh, but but I just came home. And then he goes, oh, I don't want to disappoint you, and I was like, oh, it's okay, You're not disappointing me. This is important. You go and you see your friend, and then we're just going to make sure that we have like quality time. So we try to work in like quality time. Yeah. The other really exciting thing that we can do now is we can have like just one on one time with each child, which was always harder because the youngest really just like you know, monopolized a huge amount of our attention. But now because he's you know, growing a little bit in maturity, you know, we can have just like mommy and Shya days or Daddy and Shya days, and mommy and Kuran days and Daddy and Kuran days. So that's actually something that's really really nice that we're able to do, and that for me at least, feels like very enriching and that I think I really love. I totally get that because I'm there with my older one who actually has been here this whole time, and it's been like silent and good, and yet my younger one like like, forget it, it's not really fun yet. It will be probably right around that five mark, the four to five that development will switch, that goes off. So okay, that's one wonderful And then and then the other thing that has also become so much easier now too, is like dinnertime. So dinner time used to be uh this, this is the way to perfectly describe dinnertime. You know, you come home, you spend a huge amount of time cooking a meal that is healthy, you know, that has everything separated into like their little categories already, and you've got your protein and you've got your fiber and you've got your carbs, and you know, it's like colorful. And then they sit down and then you know, next ensues five minutes of I don't like this, Why I don't want to eat this. I just want macaroni and cheese. And then you know, and then you're exhausted and you're tired, and you know, I really think that family dinners are super important, but then you just sometimes just like leave your family dinner just feeling exhausted and totally drained. Right, But now lately we've actually started having conversations Like last night we asked, you know, what what the kids thought marriage was and what they thought love was. And this was like the first time in like so like that I can even really remember where we had this like really lovely conversation with them, So so that makes it a lot easier. That is so so cool. They become really like eventually they do become real people, right and then like you know, like I miss the baby stage. I miss like holding and cuddling them, and then you know kind of like they're like watching them learn how to you know, kind of take on the world. But then there is that yeah, like when they're discovering things for the first time, it's beautiful, but it's it's exhausting. And then and then accompanying that with just also like the guilt of like I'm exhausted, but like I haven't seen them, right, and so now I feel like we're all used to our schedule and we're happy with what we with what we have in the time that we have, and so there's like there's there's less guilt involved. So that's a good thing. Definitely a good thing. Oh my gosh, Well, our listeners I think are gonna love hearing this. If you have questions for Chavon, you can you can direct them to me or to Laura, either through social media or on Laura's blog or my blog. But I am thrilled to have gotten to share her with everyone and stay tuned because I don't think we plan on a guest every week, but certainly every other or at least every few episodes will be having new and exciting voices on this podcast. So thank you so much, Chevon for being the very first. Wait wait, chaven has agreed to stick around to give her Love of the week too, so before we let put up very I'm very intrigued about her love. I heard a little taste of it first. My love of the week is time Trackers, which sounds so ridiculous, but like, I really, but why do you? Why don't you explain why you love them so? Time Trackers because I feel like I have only a certain number of hours in a day to do things, and I want to make sure that each time I do one of those things that I give them my full attention, and I want to make sure that I can maximize my productivity and efficiency so that I can spend the time that I need to with my family, and so I've been I've been doing this program lately, which it's like this National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and they have this writing timer which is part of their program. And I have learned in the meantime that there's this whole suite of other timers that you can have to actually go through your day and to figure out how much of your time you're spending on specific topics. So, for instance, I like to time the amount of time that I write for work. I like to time the amount of time that I spend for exercise. I like to time the amount of time that I spend on looking at email or Facebook or sadly, celebrity gossip curiosity. How much time does the celebrity gossip get in your time track. I'm trying so hard to reduce it. So I think I'm down to like twenty minutes, but I can tell you that it used to be a whole lot more. I'm working on I'm working on it. I figure it's like, you know, everybody's got to have like their little you know habit. Right, it's not smoking cigarettes, it's celebrity gossip. Yeah, And if it makes you happy and you're intentionally doing it and you're cool with twenty minutes, then that's perfect. Ye. Yeah. I think the big thing is that I'm trying to like spend the time that I spend doing the day in intentionally yes, you awareness, with absolute purpose, Yes, because that is I felt, like, you know, several years ago, I was just rushing from task to task to task and just thinking like where is time going? And so you actual act of just recording my time every day and then getting all these numbers in a spreadsheet and looking to see how much time I spend on each of these tasks has been really revealing. That is so cool. Do you have a specific is there an app that you use that you want to share with everyone? So there is this app called time Logger and time Tracker. You can find it on Google. And then there's and then there's another app that I'm using as part of as part of the program, the program. Okay, cool, Well I love that level of the week. We'll keep you captive while we share ours really quick, because I thought you might like you might, I think you know about mine. But my love of the week this week is bar workouts b A R R. Not like going to a bar, which I feel like confuses everybody when I'm like, I'm going to a bar and they're like, what, you're really pregnant. But bar has been the only way that I don't hate strength training, and I want to not hate strength training because I think it's like such a huge bang for your buck in terms of like vanity, and that's what matters right now. I'm just kidding, but seriously, I mean, I feel like I could run as many miles as I used to, and it's you get so much, you know, just more like vitality and just the physical kind of results. And I'm thinking about like bouncing back from the baby and all that with strength. But I hate, like actually lifting weights in a gym. Bar to me is like the only compromise that is actually fun for me that I've found. Yoga's kind of but I don't feel like it's quite like burney enough to quite provide that effects. So this is more probably like your personal training. And specifically I've gone to some studio classes which are great, but they take a lot of time. I do BAR three online and again non sponsored, but it's a monthly thing where you could do as many as you want it's awesome for travel. You can do ones that have like small weights. There's even ones that don't use weight, some of the US resistance bands, and they are my only non hated strength training. So that's my love of the week. I love bar two. It is awesome. I should do more strength. I have not been doing anything I really should. But my love of the week is something my kids are doing active. I have two of my kids are in karate, and the really cool thing about the studio we go to is they have about six classes per week for each of the sort of age group and ability levels, and you don't have to commit to which one or two you want to go to. So I love that flexibility. So if one week we want to bring them to Monday and Thursday, that's fine. If the next week we're at Tuesday and Friday, or Wednesday and Saturday, or Monday and Tuesday, it's okay. And they don't force you to commit to any particular schedule. And that has been awesome for our family because we have so many other things going on too that if there's can you even put multiple in the same class, Sometimes well they're far enough apart in age that they can't because I mean, you just wouldn't have like the ten year old sparring with a five year old and stuff. But it's probably a bad idea in general, but you know, because of that, it's much more parent friendly than if you have to declare like we are in the Tuesday and Thursday class and then you know, go through the rigamarole of doing a makeup if you don't go to that particular one. And so you know, there's a lot of kid activity places where I think they could do that they just don't and if they would consider doing it, they might find a lot of very happy parents. So please kid activity places, think flexibility. I find sometimes like you could spend as much time signing up a kid for a class as you can for trying to figure out how to do all the makeup classes. That exactly. I think that's an awesome idea. Awesome. Well again, thank you so much. We'll have future guests in you know, someday and if you have suggestions for a guest by the way, listeners, or if you want to be a guest. We've certainly had some volunteers already, but we are thrilled to add multiple people. We want diverse backgrounds and careers. We want women who are enjoying their jobs and their families just let us know. Thank you so much. So today's listener question is from someone who listened to our childcare episode a few episodes back and wanted to ask a follow up question about that. So here's the edited version of it. She says, my son started kindergarten this year, and here's the thing. Daycare was easy. Daycare was open six thirty am to six thirty pm, and although we didn't use it that entire time, there was some flexibility in it. Now, her son started school this year and this particular school has an aftercare program, but it only goes until five pm, and there's some chance he might not be able to go to that school next year. So then they've got another problem with that. So she says, potentially next year at our local public school, he's not a lot to arrive before eight, and then we'll have to figure out what to do during the week. From two twenty five until five, she says, I think our only option will be a babysitter of some kind. I don't really love that option because who is realistically available reliably every day From two fifteen to five fifteen. I'm wondering how other parents cope with this. You mentioned nanny's in the childcare episode, but we don't have multiple children, nor do we have the need for someone more than about fifteen hours a week. I thought the school years would be easier from a childcare perspective, and so far they're cheaper than full time daycare. But it's the exact opposite in terms of logistics. And you know, we hear that from people a lot. So you know, if you've got like two working parents, you've been doing the daycare option, you've gotten used to the fact that it's it's open for a long period of time and open reliably every day, and then we start thinking, hey, school years, it'll be easier. But then you got to deal with the afternoon and in the morning if you have, you know, an early work start time. And I've definitely gotten a lot of emails from people asking me about this, like do you just hire an after school sitter? And who wants to work for you know, two hours, five days a week, And it's sort of a harder market to find. So, I mean, Sarah, we were thinking, I wonder if she had any sort of flexibility or ways we could think about outside the box, right, Yeah, so both of us took some time to brainstorm and I'll share my thoughts. Okay. So one kind of outside the box option would be to see if there are any other families in the neighborhood that do have a full time nanny where she could piggyback onto it for share of costs, because if she only has the one school age kid, honestly, if anything, that kid would probably make it easier on that nanny, you know, by entertaining the other kids or being an extra set of hands, rather than making it harder. So she might be surprised to find that another caregiver would be thrilled, and then it might reduce the costs for another family. So that was one outside the box option. Yeah, that was great. We also thought, you know, if they had any flexibility, if she and her partner had any flexibility in their jobs, they might be able to rethink what the work hours would be required on the part of a sitter, because yeah, I agree, it's not a great job to have to commute somewhere and then only get two or three hours per day, so it might be harder to find someone. But what if you did, like three days a week from two to eight, and then they could work late those days and come home at two o'clock on the other days, if they did have some flexibility with their jobs, or one of them could come home at two o'clock, you know, one day week. So what they'd basically be asking their managers for is one day a week, I could come home at two, I could work till eight, like two days a week, you know, be available to that. That's not really a bad trade off on the part of a manager, So that might be a way to make the hours more appealing for a caregiver. We also thought you could also rethink what you were looking for in a caregiver. If you wanted to maybe outsource some of the housekeeping tasks, one option might be to give people more hours. Have them come at like noon, right and work noon to five or something and do the housework during that time, or like yeah, noon to six or even like one to six would be that's twenty five hours a week. So yes, it's ten hours extra, but if that meant the difference between finding somebody and not and if you could think of some things that I bet if you dug deep you could think of things that you'd really not like to be doing there in that time. It might actually improve your quality of life more than you ever, it's not possible. Yeah, and it's also sort of I mean, when we're talking about hours paid, you know, this is also a question of what people are looking to earn and a certain amount of time to make it worthwhile. So obviously, if you pay above market rates for three hours, you'll have an easier time getting someone willing to work three hours. Then if you're trying to sort of get the flat, you know, amount of what you think you could you could pay for that, So that's something. So we either think about a nanny share with another family to tack on some hours to if you have some flexibility with your work hours in order to get kind of different hours for a potential caregiver, adding on the housekeeping option to get more hours, or just you know, thinking of paying a little bit more than you might have normally thought because it's probably still cheaper than full time daycare, right, Yes, I would think that it would be absolutely when you're used to paying that. So yeah, absolutely, Although that was interesting that you know, Chabon had mentioned Shavon had mentioned earlier about you know that one time she did have a caregiver who was willing to work in the morning and in the afternoon after school. I mean, I guess you never really know. It could be that there's somebody who's like starting her own business, for instance, and is okay with having flexibility on what hours she's working and then having the day free. I mean that that students, yeah, or college student might be usually their classes are mostly daytimes and don't usually even start that early, so it double's split bullshift. The person who submitted this question, it doesn't sound like they live in a college town, so that that probably wouldn't work for them. But if we have other listeners who are listening to this, then that could totally work. And I'm gonna throw my last thing in which you know, I've never had an O pair, but I do think it sounds pretty sweet, and this might be one of the situations in which that would be something to consider to have somebody. Now, that might be problematic if there's a lot of driving that's needed and we don't necessarily have an O pair that can safely drive your children around. But if not, and you're able to get the driving done in some other fashion. Then that's a very flexible option for sort of the before and after. And when you have a school age child, you know, the nice thing is that child can kind of tell you what's going on, like you know, you're of course, you need to have a very high level of trust in somebody, no matter how old your child is. But I guess I'd be less nervous if I had a five or six year old they would tell me if their O pair was always on the phone, you know, versus a on year old who wouldn't be able to tell you that. So and some of parents can do driving too, I mean, if they have a license, they learn to drive with American driving laws. I mean that's you know, it should be that could that could work just fun. So lots of options you do have. I agree, though it is it is a transition. If parents have been doing daycare for five years, then suddenly you're dealing with the school schedule. It's a whole different game. And I know many people do think that automatically it would have been would be easy because hey, now my kids in school, like I've got all this time accounted for, but it's not as many hours as you're working at school is one hundred and eighty days a year usually and it's only for about six hours, whereas if you're working it's more like, you know, two hundred and forty days a year and for eight hours, so different schedules, and that's kind of unfortunate in many ways. And there's another evidence that not all of the universe is designed to be working parent friendly, in case anyone needed more evidence of that, but it is something that parents have to deal with, so we welcome your suggestions on Feel free to email us. I'm at elvandercamat yahoo dot com. Feel free to reach out to Sarah through her blog and through social media. This has been best of both worlds and we look forward to joining again next time. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.