Weekends Revisited. Ep 91

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, 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 to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode ninety one, which is first airing at the end of April twenty nineteen, so for both of us, spring break is now over. So Sarah had gone on a Disney cruise, which I know we've been talking about in some previous episodes. It was a big deal, very exciting. So let's get the recap from Sarah to you understand. I guess I have to close the loop here, and you know what I got to say. I in the days of like sponsored blogging, I find that it's actually somewhat hard to find really frank and honest travel reviews because typical at the bottom, it says something like, this trip was comped, but all my opinions are my own. Yeah, right, So anyway, this trip was not comped. We paid for every penny of it and they did not. There was no no official review process or anything. So it's just my honest impressions. I don't know if it was a big deal. Actually, in some ways it was not a big deal because that was the beauty of it for us. We live, you know, thirty minutes from the port, so this didn't involve a flight like most of our trips do. It didn't involve transporting of car seats, which was awesome. We just drove to the port. We had booked this about six months in advance, and it was the idea of our really close friends who have two kids the ages of Cameron and Genevieve, and a buggets along with them too, so it works out nicely. And yeah, so we just drove there and then got on the boat. Is very simple and we had a really nice time together. People were kind of wanting to know, you know, what does that cost When you have a family with three children. You have two options. You can either do a suite, which makes it very expensive, or you can do two adjoining rooms in a sort of mid tier or lower tier room. I think we didn't go for the lowest tier, which was completely windowless. We went for the one with like a big porthole, and it worked out great. In fact, my husband said, I wouldn't have wanted a balcony because we would have been terrified about what our kids might have tried to do on it. So the total cost of the cruise was something like I think sixty five hundred including all tips, all everything, and that covered really four and a half days. I mean, in many ways five days, because when you were recovering from a cruise, you still kind of feel like that's part of the experience. I'm not sure if I we didn't get home until like, yeah, everyone was sufficiently tired out by the crew, so it sort of felt like part of the package deal anyway, So that is not a cheap vacation. I think there are also pricier vacations. And the fact that we didn't have to buy plane tickets or any kind of rental vehicle meant that spending more on the crews itself wasn't such a big deal. And you know what, for little kids, it's a very nice option, Laura. I think that you should do it while you're You should do it sooner rather than later, because I think that as they get older it's going to be maybe not as good fit for older kids. Although I think there were a lot of tweens and teens having very nice time. The kids club is very nicely done. There's a lot of supervision, there's a lot to do. Both my kids, well, Cameron like begged to go there. He probably would have spent his entire trip there if he had been allowed, and Annabel didn't mind going. It is still challenging to travel with a toddler because yes, they do have nursery childcare, you have to reserve it, but your toddler's not going to necessarily be jumping up and down to go to that. So we did do two nights without her. One of the nights we went out to the sort of fancy restaurant on the boat, which was really fun. But I got this text good way through that was like we had her name in there, a certain nickname of Viva, and it was like Viva Hunger is crying and I, oh, no, so you know, but they text you about a child crying that's a little I think they just want you to know, like it's not like you have to get your child, but you know, it's just that your kids are still going to be their ages that they're in no matter what kind of a situation that you're in. There aren't that many dedicated toddler spaces. There's a couple I would have liked more, and I highly recommend going with friends because I think that was part of the fun for us, especially with the toddler Like, you know, because there's going to be blocks of time where you're just hanging out and watching your kid run around, and if you could turn it into a little like extended play date, I think that kind of adds to it. And then finally just sort of the service and quote unquote magic aspect. Disney's really good at that, Like they're really good. They there was always like a character available just at that right moment, and kids would just be delighted by it, especially Genevieve actually, which was adorable to see, and this very kind staff who seemed like they really liked their jobs. Many of them were like working for Disney for eight years, twelve years, So I think the you know, the way they treat them must be pretty good, and they do. Actually FYI, they sort of force, not force you. They take up tips automatically, and it's a pretty sizable percentage split among the person who takes care of your room, your server, I think, like the dining room director. And you get this letter that's like you're getting fifty dollars are going to this person and blah blah blah are going to this person, and you're allowed to go to the front desk and change it by the pathway at least resistance. That's generous tips. And honestly, we had such a nice time that I've felt no reason to go against what they had suggested. So you do end up thinking them whether you say, I don't think you want to be that person going to the front desk, be like no, no, no, no, no, we're to do exactly. Don't want my style. Not my style. I mean, I would say, I guess if you had like a bad experience or someone wasn't nice to you, that might be something, But no, we had a great experience. Yeah, yeah, was there anything I mean, given that this is the unbiased review, is there anything you've warned people about or well just that your toddlers are still going to be toddlers, Like you're not going to be relaxing, because you're still going to be chasing your sixteen month around. And that may be one of the themes of this episode as well. I think it's important to think about the weather. We really lucked out. But I kept saying to Josh, like, if this was rainy and stormy, I know I wouldn't be like so happy. It happened to be gorgeous, like not too hot crystal blue skies, but that's clearly not guaranteed. I would say. The food Actually again, even though this is not sponsored, I was pleasantly surprised. I read a number of really scathing reviews of the food, and I was terrified. And I will say that Genevieve got a mysterious g I almost approximately three days after we got back. The thing is that timeline doesn't totally make sense. That's usually those bugs happen faster, exactly, and they're meticulous about making you like sanitize your hands when you go into every single dining area. And I thought the food was pretty decent. I mean I thought it was better actually, like more options than Disney World, so that's good to know, ycause, I mean the food at Disney World is not No, I'm not like it, like there are there are exceptions, got to Boma and the Tusker House, like that's pretty good, but most Disney food, Yeah, I am with you. Yeah, well, especially like the quick serve stuff. It was just no, it was definitely a step up from that. That's good to know. Yeah, we were definitely considering that for a future thing. And and it's good to know about going with another adult. I think what's going to wind up happening, and we may go in the summer, but it's just because when we have to, I mean there's no other option. You could go with family. I think I'm going to take my mother in law actually, and uh so we got to figure out how we'll how we'll do the rooms. I mean, obviously she she needs her Remnan room going to make there were times of the grandparents on the trip, so you may just need three rooms and you could get too adjoining and then one that's you know, well, actually, I'm not sure my husband is going, and I don't think. I don't know that Alex is going either. I think it may bee me. The three big kids and my mother in law. I think about Alex though, because honestly, he knowing his actually thrilled to be in there and just live there. I know this is hard, but I actually want to relax. And then I can't get like the room out of Miranda because I worry about him leaping off of it. Yeah, so, I mean, I just but he would love the kids club. The probably been there. That may be true, and it's free. It's like a you know, big benefit. I know, but if my husband doesn't wind up going, maybe I was thinking about doing a long weekend one, right, they have one Friday to Monday, and then he could be with Alex at home, you know, two of them. So uh yeah, no, we're we're but that won't be that won't be spring break. We are we actually have spring break that we're recording this before spring break. And to remind listeners, it's been sort of like, what is Laura going to do? They haven't thought of anything. Her husband's in charge of the plan, So tell us all what happened with that well in the past tense and hopefully this is going to actually happen if we record before it. We're going to Saint Lucia, which I think is how you say it. We were saying Saint Lucia and then we heard recordings of it Saint Lucia. But yeah, it turns out you can fly direct there, which is key my husband had. We had sort of determined like Caribbean Islands is probably the way to go. Wea, it's easy, and so then it was a question where can you fly direct and have like a resort that's got good kid options that we aren't going to hate. And then but the direct flight thing took us off on this whole tangent because then my husband found a resort on Nevis. Okay, what do we use the research resorts? Do you know? We just I was strongly suggesting we use We remember we had Henley Vasquez on a year and a half ago, and she runs a company called Passported, which has sort of nicer family oriented travel, I guess, which is sort of what I'm always aiming for, you know. And so she had lots of resort reviews of the Caribbean, and so I was strongly suggesting one of those. The problem it turns out I'm not a cheap vacationer. It maybe that Henley's taste is even slightly higher than mine. So so so this sent us off on this whole thing. If I think my husband did not want to pay for the Ritz Carlton, so then he was looking at villas on Nevis because there's good diving there and he wants to dive. But then it turns out you can't get to Nevs. You'd you have to fly you fly to Saint kits but then there aren't even direct flights to Saint Kitts, so we're gonna have to fly through Charlotte and then take a boat over. And then it was like no, and then we're gonna fly home. You have this route out of San Martin's. I think you have to take a boat to Sam Martans and then fly direct back from Sam Martins. I was like, you know, this is like this is just wait, okay, even in the beginning of the trip, it might be somewhat tolerable at the end with all four kids if you're like, oh, let's begin our twenty hour journey now, that we'll be thinking about it the whole time too. Yeah, and the flight in the morning. It was in the morning for I think from Sam Martins, so we'd have to take the boat at some other and I'm like, you don't. I don't think there's gonna be like a late night boat. It's going to be, you know, a middle of the afternoon, so you lose that whole day. And I don't know anyway, So he was going back and forth on a million different ways of how we can get in and out of NEVS, and I was just like, all right, stop, which is a struggle because you know, you did sort of outsources to him. And then it was sort of like, well do I intervene? It wasn't even a question of whether I intervined because he was calling me every ten minutes and it was a good thing in this case though, which it turned out to be like it's like, well, maybe I could charter a plane since there's six of us. So I'm like, well, then let's don't pay for the y for a private jet, like I know, this is no it was those like tiny little planes. Like that's terrifying now I know. So and then I was like, okay, let's let's back up from the NEVIS idea. Is there a second option that also has good diving in the Caribbean And and so then he found this resort that was highly rated on like a parents dot com article or something, which who knows, I mean maybe that they took out ads in the magazine, not saying that maybe Parents has a higher editorial standard than that. But anyway, this was something that was not as pricey as the Ritz Carlton, but that we could then also fly direct from JFK. So we are going to drive to JFK, We are going to fly direct, spend a couple of days Saint Lucia return also flying direct, and everyone's happy. So there's not a lot of Caribbean flights out of Philadelphia, h There there are, but again, you know, we're booking this for six people ten days before the flight, so it's you know a lot of stuff was booked and we're having trouble finding six seats. And anyway, it's as listeners know, we're pro planning, but this works out. Yeah, we're pro. This is gonna be great. I'm happy, I'm amazing. Yeah. No, So future review coming of that, yeah later. Also non spawn not non sponsored exactly, but just cheaper than the red All right, Well, so this sort of segue is into we were going to we want to do an episode on weekends. We'd also been talking about doing an episode on Toddler's We realize that the two are somewhat related in the sense of if you have a toddler, your weekends are very different. And I would extend toddler to around almost three to four, Like I was thinking in my mind, like where where does that moment stop, And it's somewhere. I think it probably depends on the kid, somewhere around four or three and a half when you don't feel like you have to like physically hover over them to prevent bodily harm, essentially every minute that they're awake, every minute that they're awake. And the thing is, I sometimes I think what leads to people feeling a bit crazed and harried on weekends is that sometimes this hovering is not equitably split. And I think that having a good conversation about how that hovering can be equity rely split is key to having a good weekend, because, unfortunately, if one party serves more of a primary parenting role, party B may assume that Party A wishes to continue this role or just not think about it right because they're not used to serving that role during the week, and this can lead to a lot of resentment, let's say, from Party A, who feels like he or she has done this all week and would really like to pass this over to Party B for a reasonable chunk of time. I can imagine that this is probably perhaps even a more difficult issue in families with only one working parent. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree, And sometimes some families are very good about it. I have definitely talked to a number of families where, you know, it's maybe a more traditional split, like you know, mom stays home with the kids and Saturday is sort of understood to be daddy day, right that go do her stuff. You know, she doesn't have to ask, she doesn't have to. It's just understood that Saturday is daddy day. And that's great. That can be an awesome, awesome split, you know, or reverse genders or same genders whatever like you know, but if one party is doing the bulk of the childcare during the week, it might make sense to designate one day during the weekend to be the other parent in charge. But you know, when when both parties sort of work as well and equally, and then then it you know, sometimes gets you know, but it's good to have these conversations, because that is kind of leads into the idea of thinking through your weekends in general. And when you do think through it and you talk through it, you are allowing yourself to figure out, like, what do you really want to get out of it? And that doesn't even necessarily require an equitable split. In fact, there may be time that the family can be all together, and that works great too. There just has to be a thoughtful split so that each party can get what they want if possible, and in some cases that may require hiring outside help, and in some cases it won't. I've certainly had happy weekends either way. But I think that the mistake a lot of people make is to, as we've talked about, kind of going and saying, oh, I don't need a plan, I need to be free wheeling and spontaneous, and that ends up backfiring because you've just kind of sentenced yourself to hovering over a toddler for sixty straight hours. Yes, which we love our toddlers. I love my toddler, but yeah, but this is you know, this is one of these things with time management where you know, we've complained about productivity and time management books that are basically like men Man's plain time management to me. But you can tell if somebody is not the primary parent of their young children, weekends are relaxing. And if you are, and I know that advice where it's like use your weekends for rejuven you know, it's like and all you will just relax and work is stressful and weekends are not. It's like, Okay, clearly somebody else is watching your children or you know, you don't have any, and you know, and that's fine, you know, but let's acknowledge that as being the case. Now Sarah, you are still very much in the little kid year. Yeah, And I think as we created our notes, we realized that this that's why this episode did serve such a you know, like a little bit of that toddler topic was addressed because our weekends are now kind of different because I am like in it, I am still in it. And as a reminder, so my children are six almost sixteen oh today, sixteen months, yeah, five and seven, and I know that if I just have the five and seven year olds, things would probably look extremely different than they do now. But I have my beautiful little toddler who really does bring a lot of joy to our family and my life. But she does add a layer of complexity, and I guess just work that wouldn't have been there otherwise. And I think that because I have such a space between that the you know, the three, and I did get a tiny taste of freedom. Cameron was almost four when she was born, and I think he was right at that point. Yeah, I really notice it was it was there and then it was gone. I knew that, and I planned it and I chose it. But of course, yes, of course, very happy to have our beautiful little children, but they do keep your weekends from being relaxing. So understanding that you are still in the toddler years, what makes a good weekend a happy weekend for you? Yeah, so I had this sort of ingredient list, and you know, one of the main keys before I even get into what I like to do, is to make a strategy to use nap time well, because other than when she goes to bed, that's the only others of guaranteed downtime during the day, and sometimes that's not possible. Like we have made the choice to allow our two biggest to continue taking piano in Miami Beach and a lot of times we go together so that we can then spend time with family or friends. The downside to that is a nap is always completely messed up, like she'll falls deep in the car, she falls in sleep in the way back, it's a forty minute drive whatever. So if we do that, we are going to go to lengths to protect the nap on the next day, because that's the only time other than when we're covering for each other, which also can happen, that we are guaranteed sometimes. So not protection. It's not for her health, it's not for her sleep. It's fully for my own sanity and enjoyment of life, and I will own that. Okay. So that said, my ingredients for a happy weekend are I love to get in a workout both days. I try to work out five to six days a week, and I often will miss a day or two during the week, so hopefully I can get something in on the weekends. They don't have to be involved things. It could be a run with a stroller one day, so that that is, you know, Genevieve time and giving Josh some non Genevieve time and kind of kill a couple of birds with one stone. So that's good. I often like to do a date night. We didn't used to feel like we needed to go out every week that we were not on call. And then somehow, after Genevieve and both of us becoming maybe a little bit more busy with work, even we really do like it, or maybe I like it and he tolerates it. Even if we do something very low key, like just like go to a gastropub and have a beer, it just doesn't seem like we get that much other quality time during the week. So just like a little protected once weekly window is really helpful for us. I know, I know you guys do Friday nights, but that's usually a late work night for him, so it doesn't work. And that said, my Friday night is usually total wine down time. I am not usually up for doing much, so this actually works out really well. Also on my list, I have accepted and enjoy that we are often going to eat out. I think I used to feel like, oh, I'm somehow feeling if I'm not putting together these meals. And I do still occasionally for fun, like to put together a Sunday dinner, but that's only if it makes sense for the day, and a lot of times it doesn't, and so I just embrace it. We try fun restaurants. We try to find restaurants that are family friendly. This coming weekend, we actually had a date night planned and our big well actually didn't. I hadn't really reserved the babysitter completely. I sort of assumed she could do it, and because it wasn't any like big deal thing and she can't make it. So I made a reservation for all of us at the same place that we were going to go, just at five thirty pm, and we'll just see how that goes and it'll be okay. We don't do a lot of how if there's something that really is essential that has to be done, I'll try to do it during her nap, But because that's kind of that only downtime, that's not usually what I do. Again, I know this is a very lucky thing, but a lot of this has to do with the fact that I can outsource what I would consider kind of the big two household tasks, which are maybe maybe you could buy them into three laundry, groceries, and meal prep. I know that a lot of people spend their weekends doing this. We have made the choice not to and invest in having somebody else do these things. That's part of why we're going to continue having full nanny coverage even when Genevieve starts into school in August. For us, it's worth it. It's one hundred percent buying ourselves time for ourselves, times with the kids. And again, I recognize that we're lucky to be able to make that choice, but that's what we've done. And then finally Sunday afternoons, I still, you know, I don't have a terrible feeling of dread because I like my job and sometimes, you know, again being completely honest, I'm happy to have my child oh care return on Monday. But I do enjoy Sunday play dates sometimes as just a way to kind of not feeling the weekends totally over until I have something planned and special. And it does seem like there are a lot of birthday parties in Sunday afternoons as well, so that's often an ingredient. Yeah, no, that sounds that sounds good. And agree that the idea that you'd be dreading Monday is again maybe for people who don't have intense family responsibilities over the weekend. I think I've felt it when I was pumped, if you know, I think it also just has to do with your feelings about your job, Like when I was pumping and very stressed and didn't feel like I could get my work done, and I probably had some dread. But right now I'm like, oh, I have patients like, oh, I have jammy stuff, like I have podcasts, like I like what I do. So I don't really feel dread. Yeah, no, same here, I don't. I don't think I've ever felt Sunday night dread. But people ask me about it a lot, like it turns out to be a topic of convert you know, articles, and I get asked to weigh in on this a lot first, so I guess you know it must be common, So there you go. Yeah, I think weekends definitely are matter a lot. I mean, if you have a full time job, this is when the bulk of your potential leisure time and your family time can happen, and so it's really important not to treat it as an afterthought. Even that whole idea of Wednesday being the hump day of the week, it's said, well, that implies it's five real days and two tacked on, and that's just not the way life really is. And so I like to think of Thursday as the midpoint of the week because that's more reality. Yeah, you have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays and the middle and you have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and those are two equal sides and they take just as much time, and so it's important to treat them as such. And I know that a lot of people sort of have this built in resistance to the idea of planning a weekend and the idea of planning leisure time in general. And that can work if you're you know, twenty five and don't have any responsibilities whatsoever. But if you do have children, you know what winds up happening is if if you're not planning, you are going to wind up hovering over the toddler the whole time, or just you know, doing chores and sort of getting through the weekend and feel like you have no relaxation time. And then people throughout the idea of like, oh, well, when you're a parent, you can never have fun. It's like, well, no, it's not true. It's just you have to plan ahead. And so if you can get your head around that idea, then you can I enjoy the best of both worlds? So you know important, I think, I think there's also something to be said. You know, you just made me flashback to when I was twenty five, and I guess I was in med school and I planned my weekends then too. Okay, well, there's just the personality. That's totally personality thing. But it's also to be a benefit, I guess, because if you know you have something stressful to do, but then you know it's like earmarked for like two to five on Sunday, then you could at least again, this is my personality, but you may just want to experiment with this. You may feel freer on Saturday knowing that you kind of put that in its place and that it's not sort of hanging over your head. I'm not necessarily the kind of person who like gets everything done super early, but I feel so much more comfortable kind of knowing when I'm going to do that. And you know what that's Yeah, that's gone back many many years, even before children. And also putting some of these strategies into practice before you are into parenthood isn't a crazy idea either. Yeah, well I like that idea. I mean, especially you know, if you do chores and errands on a weekend, for instance, I think it's very helpful to designate a window. Right. You might say, like, you know, nine to eleven on Saturday morning is when I do chores and errands or nine to noon if you need that amount of time or whatever. But then you know, you know there's a time for it, and that frees you up the rest of the time, Like you don't have to say, oh, the rest of that I should be doing this, or you know, say it's maybe Sunday afternoon or something that you're going to do it. But then you know say, oh, should I be doing my chores now? Well, no, there's time for that, and now is not that time, so I can I can relax and enjoy myself instead of thinking this is always an option or if you have a work project you need to do or studying or something like that. Yeah, designating a window, I do admit it as a person because I also just had a flashback to somebody who once read my blog and said, like all of my planners just made her like want to throw up, and in the kindest way, and she explained her way of thinking through things, and it was like so opposite, and it was very fluid and she was comfortable with it. So if that's your thing, then great, But that's your thing, that's feeling, that's more rare. I think. I think that. I think that people who can have no stress and no structure are not common. Yeah, I mean, and if that's you, that's great. So you should let us know, tell us, tell us your secrets. We'd love to hear about it. Yeah. Well, it was your ideal ingredient weekend, my ideal ingredient weekend. So I was thinking about this. I like to do a date night, I like to do a long run, and have some sort of adventure. So between the three of those, you know, some weekends we do better than others. I would say we haven't had necessarily a ton of adventures per se, but I do try to plan something so you know, when we're recording this a couple the past. The last two weekends of March had all these elements. So my husband and I went out to some nice restaurants both Friday nights. So that was cool because that's when we have childcare built in, so it's it's not a big deal to be able to sort of even spontaneously make plans, although both of these places he kind of made spans. Yeah, okay, well you know what I mean, Like, I know, we didn't have to we didn't have to book a restaurant in advance, but these were two places that we wanted to go, so we needed to. And then the long run, you know, it tends to be that I do with a friend or something, but because that nudges me to run a little further. But I certainly could do my own like last week, and I too, because then you're doing workout in social time. Yeah, social time too. I uh. The week the adventures, you know, we went to the cherry blossoms in Washington, d C. One day a couple of weekends ago. The weekend before that, we went to the last sort of day of skiing that was possible at Blue Ridge, Blue Mountain. I sat at the bottom and watched the kids ski, and then we all went out to dinner together. So that was kind of a family adventure. You know. What we're always what limits the sort of adventures is that we have activities. I mean we have now we're into spring sports. We've got baseball, we've got soccer, you know, it's still have karate and swim, so it's it's a little harder to do these sort of longer adventures around the structure of that. I also sing in my church choir, and so I am generally committed to be there on the morning Sunday morning, which you know I enjoy. So it's I guess I would put that in a in a weekend too. And I particularly like when we're singing really nice music, or when my chamber choir is singing, because that's a really good group with a lot of tight harmony, very enjoyable to to sing with. So yeah, that those are the ingredients, you know. I'm actually I know, I know you guys aren't aren't particularly religious other than than sort of family observed family stuff. You haven't chosen to make it like a you know, ritual, So you're not going to synagogue every Saturday. No. No, the I mean, you know, the interest the upside of it is its structured activity for kids, that good for their nices, that that they're teaching good lessons and that kind of a thing. I guess our equivalent of them is we go to piano. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, just you know, I know some people are like, well, I'm religious, but I don't go to church, and well, you kind of the benefits all in the going to the house of worship. I mean, whatever you believe is between you know, you and God. But the actual, like cool part of building a community is in the yeah, somewhere enjoining the organization. And so we've enjoyed that. I like to see my middle schooler go to things that he did a lock in a couple of weeks ago, and you know, they play with their friends there, and even Alex has Sunday school and so he gets very excited about it. Think it's to play with blocks and do his religious training. So okay, yeah, no, it's a good way to keep the kids occupied on Sunday. It sounds very nice. Plus it's a family activity with like levels for it. I mean, there aren't that many things that are like that, where now go somewhere as a family and each person as kind of their own thing that they can enjoy at their level. Yeah, so you know, I think there's some upsides of that of finding a place that's oriented toward children. If you are remotely interested in that sort of part of your life. You know, let's see what else. So I come it. I think about my weekend ahead of time. I plan my weeks on Friday afternoons, but that usually includes looking at the next weekend, so it gives me a last chance to look at the upcoming weekend. So if we haven't thought that through, we can think about that. But then I'm also taking a preliminary glance at the next weekend and seeing what needs to happen for that and what we could fit in and what we might wish to do. And sometimes if I know there's a weekend coming up where there's going to be a ton of stuff, I start thinking about that even further ahead of time. We have a particular May weekend that involves a choir concert, a cub Scout camping trip, the broad Street ten miler birthday party, like just Ton, that's a lot end. I'm going to New York Sunday night to be there for Monday morning. So yeah, there's just a lot of stuff. So we had to sort that one out a month ahead of time. So that makes sense. Yeah, I kind of holistically, I mean I don't have like a specific time and I think through weekends. I try to basically just have our babysitter every time that we're not on call. I didn't for this particular weekend, but usually and then I don't know, somehow, it seems like the calendar just fills itself up. I think we're just in that stage where all the kids are having birthday parties and there's school stuff and family stuff, and someone's always having a birthday, you know, not even the kids birthday parties, but like somebody else. It's almost like I don't have to look for things. And then the few things that I do that are on weekends, like our parentsing book club, like the few remaining weekends get filled up. And then because my husband I like to go to concerts and plays, if we see something that catches our eye and we can go, we book that. So it's like it just happens. They get filled and I love that. Yeah, well I feel lucky. Feel lucky for that. So it's good to have a robust social life. Yeah, I gotta say, weekends have changed so much for me in the last year. And this is this is really just I mean, we have to we do a little bit less sort of planning and talking about who's covering what now because our weekends have changed now that the youngest kid is four, and you know, I'm not saying he doesn't get in trouble, but he doesn't have to be hovered over in that same way. You could even like sleep in a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's it's he but he'll go watch YouTube for an hour in the morning. You can keep sleeping, and so far hasn't shown any inclination to get into trouble while he's watching YouTube. So I'm like, yeah, go YouTube. You know who knows what he's watching. But he can operate the mouse, so he's kind of you go, he's okay. I'm sure he's fine, but yeah, I can actually like so last week and I took the big kids over to the Elmwood Park Zoo and Sam and Ruth did this, like ropes course, slight strategic miscalculation because Jasper was too big to do the little kids one, so he would have had to do the adult one. But then I couldn't He couldn't go by himself. He needed an adult over sixteen, but I couldn't go with him and leave the other two somewhere. Another adult, Yeah, I needed another one. You probably figured that he could do the kids one. I figured he could do the kids one. Yeah he's like taller than me, so yeah, yeah, that didn't quite work, so you know, but unfortunately he was a very good sport about it. But anyway, I came home and you know, my husband and Alex had gotten home from Sac around the same time, and Michael and I just sat on the back porch kind of talking through the vacation stuff and looking at the flowers, and the kids were inside, I think, watching TV. You know, maybe better parents would have forced them to go outside and play or do something with it, but we're just like I could just sit on the porch and could be out there for like an hour and nothing went wrong, and it was amazing. It's just amazing. That's like living the dream. I'm not even kidding it is the dream. I mean, this has not been this way for twelve years. I have not had the ability to do this in twelve years, and now I suddenly have some aspect of it. And so I can read on the weekend, I can you know, sit outside. I can actually get out late on a date night without knowing that like it's you know, six thirty a m someone's going to like, well, he will be will be up at six thirty. But I don't have to let you go back to SI. That's cool. So that's yeah, No, I mean, the little kid years are hard, and we say that we'll stay said, let's say that twenty eight hundred more times. Yeah, little years are hard. And it's not that the teen years aren't hard. And there's definitely, you know, various emotional storms and you know, homework forgetting and whatever else that that happens as kids get older. But and I can see how things can start to feel higher stakes with academics steaks. Yes, like you're you know, toddler needing a diaper change is very straightforward problem. Whereas you know, a kid who doesn't care about math. Let's say, this is not it's not specific case per se, but you know that that is harder to deal with, and especially as the stakes get higher. If that child is you know, sixteen seventeen years old, what do you do about it? But that said, you don't necessarily logistics over the sixteen year old to make sure that she does not sick a fork in her eye. So that's like, so I run around with a penciling in their mouth and scribbling on things or you know, climb in the dryer or whatever else. Oh my gosh, there's just a million things that they can do. And it's true, it's infinite, and you never even think of what it is like this. I mean, although I would say that I'm sure teenagers get into all sorts of stuff that I haven't even thought to worry about too. So that's a future episode. That's a future episode of all right, I think we should get to the question. Yeah, all right, let's do it. Okay, I'm going to want to be all ready because like your answer alive, Okay, all right, sort of, all right, wrighten up a little bit. Yeah, I'll summarize, all right. I just came back for work after maternity leave. Already, in my first month back, we've dealt with some illnesses. I was told to work from home, which I was able, and that I could make up my time that weekend for the first fever. For the second fever, I was told that I needed to take PTO or unpaid time. My manager was afraid of setting a precedent. That happened because the other employees on my team are not allowed to work from home. She works in a company where some are allowed to work from home, but others are not. Depending on the team and manager in the handbook, there's a lot of gray area. Her job is in the marketing department, and she feels like she could do about seventy five percent of it from home, but because of the manager she has, she's not allowed. She calls him old school. She states, I'm a stellar employee. I been with this company for almost five years, but I need some more flexibility for the months to come. What do you think I should do? Look at some other job options? Are there other time management solutions that will happen? By the way, job options are abundant. Some new moms that built relationships frequently work in marketing at other companies. The more I write, the more I feel like time to make a chance. Sorry, I read a lot, but I kind of like she was solving her own problem. Solving her own problem. She was writing this letter exactly all right. So Laura and I both found this a pretty good question and one that we felt pretty strongly at the answer. So go ahead. Yeah, No, Unfortunately, there are a lot of old school people still in corporate management. And who knows? I mean in this case, it's it's a man but there are probably women who are old school too and believe that if I don't see my employees working, they will be watching soap operas and other such things, or that old feeling of oh, well I did it, so you need to do it too. Well, maybe they didn't have zoom back then, so you know exactly, or just you know. In this case, I think you know. Her thought is the manager's worried about setting a precedent, then everyone will want to work from home, and I'm sort of okay, great, like they could save on real estate costs. That sounds awesome, like win win for everybody. But you know, perhaps he does not see it that way. So the first thing we talked about is if his concern is precedent, then you can work with him to set up a program where you could work from home when you need to. And yet not established that there is a broad precedent of everyone can work from home whenever he or she wants. So, for instance, one option is that people who are highly rated are allowed to work from home on occasion as needed, But anyone who is in a more you know, like having challenges kind of rating bucket can't, right, So this is a privilege that has been earned by high ratings, then she gets it great. Or maybe it's that you have to have worked at the company for three or four years, so that you have presumably gained your manager's trust. Again, she fits in that category. Other people who perhaps you know, haven't been there as long, haven't earned that trust yet wouldn't be in that bucket. Again, I don't think these are great ideas because I don't worry about the president, but if he does, this is what you can do. Or Sarah suggested, sorry, I'm bumping into your having the president. Yeah, I know that he could say, you know, you're limited to working from home, let's say fifteen days a year and that way. Again, it's also not a precedent of everyone's going to be at home every day and nothing will ever happen, right, So that would be an option too, and presumably she could get through, you know, if she has a partner as well, which she didn't mention, but you know, between the two of them, they could probably make it work if she got say like fifteen days that she could work from home. Yeah, it's like two of them. That's like you know one, well it's one most month and yeah, with a partner that should you could get through a lot of it. That said, in the meantime, though, you never have more leverage than when you're considering leaving. And if you are considering leaving, you've already put it out there that you are. You know this matters to you quite a bit. So I think there's nothing wrong with looking for another job. She said, She's got a lot of contacts at other companies, like, why not look see what's there? Have these interviews, Go talk to people regardless. It's always good to make sure that you are working your network, seeing what your value is, what options are available. Maybe she will find a wonderful flexible position somewhere else with a manager who only cares that the work gets done, and that would be great, and maybe she'd decide to take it. Or she goes to her own manager and says, hey, guess what, I have this option elsewhere. I am looking at it seriously, and here is why. You can either offer me the ability to work flexibly when I need it, or you cannot right take it or leave it. And he may get religion and take it, or he may not. That could happen. But then you go work for somewhere that values you, and your manager is stuck training someone new who is not nearly as good as you, and he is going to learn his lesson the hard way, and you have helped out the rest of the company for the future. So there you go. Love it. I even said, maybe while you're doing that looking for that other job, ar you for perhaps a very short trial basis caause it would be harder to say no to Oh, could we try you know, two days per month for two months or something like that, and see how it goes and discuss after and if you're not completely blown away and that way during your job search period, you'd be covered. Yeah, exactly, exactly, all right. Love of the Week is feed Lee. So this is kind of you know, it's some things you use so much that you feel like it's obvious. So then I you know, you don't tell others about them, but maybe they don't know if you do read blogs. There's two ways to do it. You could just like have well there's a few ways you have bookmarks that you click on, or you could just randomly go to a site when you feel the urge, or you could use a feed reader where they're all collected for you, and you can go in when you want and see all the new ones at once and read them or mark them to save or whatever. And Feedley has been around for a long time. It's owned by Google now. I don't think it initially wasn't guessing Google bought them out at some point, and yeah, previously was called Google Reader, I think, But anyway, it's Feedley now. It's an app, it's on the computer. It's super convenient, and if you do read blogs that way, it's just a nice way that you don't have to like go and check if there's a new post. I will say, as someone who's currently trying to still work through, you know what's going on with my own blogs traffics. Sometimes it's nice to click through because if you read on feed Ley, the person who's blog you're reading doesn't get any quote unquote credit for it in terms of like paid for use if they're that post. That's not so every once in a while click through, but I think I think it's I think it's still okay to use those things. I think it's great. I'm not technologically advanced. I just go look at the shoe box and see if there's a post so maybe we are driving out the traffic you can. I'm like, oh, let's see if Sarah has a post today. Yeah, just check every hour. That's good for Maya. Actually, I think so now they're looking more users. It used to be that they would look at page views. So if you look at it ten times, I think I get the same credit as if you looked at it once. Whereas about day they cared how many page views. I don't even know who they even really powerful day of blog steps, So what is your love of the week? Also technological No, Well, I know you're taking an Instagram break, but I am not. I can the screen view stats will back up that I have not taken an Instagram bank. I'm kind of enjoying it. But we had this funny, funny thing happened a little bringing people together. So I am reading through Instagram and I see a photo of a friend of mine posing with a familiar looking woman. I look and it's Carmen Dy from What Not to Wear. And people who are long term listeners to best of both worlds know that we have talked about who doesn't love Karmendy? Who doesn't love Krmedy? Right? Yeah, I'll try and try and find track her down. But yeah, so anyway, this this picture is of my friend and Carmody, and I you know, post some quote and some comment on Instagram of like, oh total fangirl moment you met Carmen Dy How awesome. So then my friend shoots me an email like an hour later and says, hey, do you want to go to Carmody's birthday party? And so apparently she had. She had met Carmandy at this event where everyone who'd been interviewed as part of a series were all there, and so my friend and Carmody had both been in this video series. They they got to tap talking and whatever. And so anyway, I went with my friend to like as a guest, I guess to Carmeny's birthday party, and it actually worked out great. I had to be in New York the next morning for something, so like we'll come in the night before and go to the birthday party. And so while I'm there like beating Carmody at the bar and who was standing next to her at Stacy London also from whatnot? But they're still friends and to those birthday parties. That is amazing. I'm like having a fangirl moment because you saw them. I mean, that's like two degrees of separation. Although I did see Clinton Kelly once at a Miami Beach restaurant. Yeah cool, Well there you go. So I was there. I did not know Clinton Kelly was not sure. I don't know. I didn't see him at the party. Just saw saw Stacy and Carmedy. But we can get them. So sometimes leaving a comment on Instagram like brings you in all sorts of adventures, all sorts of joy, all sorts of joy exactly. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've mostly been talking weekends with the sub topic of weekends with toddlers, and then asking answering the question from a listener who wants to work from home occasionally when she needs to stay with a sick kid, and whose manager is old school on it what she can do. So we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. 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.