Weekends, Revisited!

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Unger. I'm a mother of three, a 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 two hundred and forty seven, which is airing in late April of twenty twenty two. We are going to do Weekends Revisited. We have covered the topic of weekends before, as you might imagine, in nearly two hundred and fifty episodes of doing Best of Both Worlds. Weekends have come up a time or two, but it's been a while since we've done it, so we thought we would revisit the topic. How we think about our weekends, how we plan our weekends, what we like to do on our weekends. Any helpful tip we have come up with in the course of many many years of thinking through weekends because of course weekends have this oh special place in working parent life in the sense that they aren't relaxing, especially if you have young kids. And so it's always funny when you're hearing somebody talk about, oh, can't wait to relax on the weekend, it's like, well, you know that person does not have a toddler, or if they have a toddler, somebody else is dealing with their toddler, which may be possible too. On the other hand, it's the opportunity to have a lot of family time and do some fun things, and if you are going to relax, it's more likely to happen then than any other time. So we really do need to think them through. So that's what this episode is about. So, Sarah, what did you do last weekend? We are recording this in early April, by the way, Yeah, so last weekend. Our weekends come in several flavors, depending if anyone is on call, So it's like a Josh call weekend, a Sarah call weekend, a no one call weekend, or a both call weekend, so four potential combinations. This was a nobody on call weekend, which is about forty percent of the time, fifty percent of the time, something like that. And this was a lot of divide and conquer. So Cameron had a baseball game and on Saturday and I took Annabelle and Genevieve somewhere. I actually already don't remember exactly where. We might have gone swimming. Maybe we just hang out outside. We did a family bike ride in the morning because it's it's already hot here, so we're trying to get her outdoor activity done in the morning. We came home. I think I just kind of let the kids ved for a while and I did an afternoon workout while the kids were on screens. And for dinner, we went out for Annabelle's birthday, so that was kind of an intentional celebration. We let her pick the restaurant and we went to this place that has conveyor built sushi, which is better than it sounds. It just comes down the line and you grab what you want, so it's like a buffet. I guess, is that how it works kind of, but it's actually really good, And I guess because it's like circling all the time and people are taking stuff. Everything's fresh, so it hasn't like been sitting there for hours, and it's just kind of like a fun thing because as you go through you just never know what's going to come down the line, and so it has that like mysterious aspect to it, and the kids love it. It's called Blue Ginger for any soft Fluoridians. And I actually think the food is quite good. So do you just you like pay a flat fee and then no, they collect your dishes and the dishes are color coded to the price, so like you know, they'll be at the end they'll be like, oh, four reds, two blues, three greens, and then they just add that up. So yes, very clever of them. And you can also order off their menu as well, so we did kind of a combination. So that was Saturday, and then on Sunday I went running in the morning, Cameron and Josh went to go skateboarding for like seven hours. I don't think it was supposed to be for that long, but my god, they left it like nine and I don't think they came back till four. So long time. Genevieve had a plate eate to which I dragged Annabella. It felt a little bad, but I eventually gave her my phone during the playdate to watch You Too, because there's only so long a ten year old and maintain interest on a playground with a bunch of four and five year olds. And then we came home once again some screen time for everyone, I believe, I took a nap. I started reading in a New York Minute, which is a fun romance romp. And then I made dinner, which was a preptish salmon bowl with lemon sauce, grilled zucchini and couscous, which I know Laura's like, your kids ate that, but they actually really liked it. Sounds great. I would enjoy it. Yeah, my kids did not, but that's fine. Yeah. No, I mean I can look right at my time log, so I can in fact tell you what I did last weekend. The weekend before we were recording this, I was up on well, Friday night is always make your own pizza night, and in this case, nobody had anywhere they were going, so we all were there for make your own pizza night and I made brownies with Ruth afterwards, and other children as well were helping out. Saturday morning, I was up around six forty five in and out in my bed, some baby got up. I went and ran at about seven forty five and ran I think five and a half miles. Came home. I took Ruth and Alex to their karate belt graduation. Michael took Jasper to his tennis lesson. He had Henry with them. He and Henry went to the nearby library for an hour during the tennis lesson, sends me videos of him looking at all the books. That's what they tend to do. During that time the karate belt graduation, the kids were getting their new belts and showing off their stuff. And then it turned out there was a pretty cool playground that was right next to the karate belt graduation place that we decided to stop at, and so that was pretty fun. There was a zip line there, among other really cool playground things. We stopped at Huah Wah, came home lunch, we all had a little bit of downtime. I put Henry down for his nap, and miraculously, he actually went down. I used the time to do some to die my hair. As I do, it looks good, and then I did a sort of disastrous trip prep attempt. We were maybe this episode was running after the trips. Hopefully all went well. But I was trying to fill out the documentation and it turned out that Jasper's vaccination card would not go through the system for various reasons. Everybody else's would, but his would not because it is older. Because I was a responsible parent and vaccinated him as soon as possible. So now you're getting punished. Now I'm getting indeed, for having done the right thing. Anyway, we won't go into that too much. Anyway, we went outside at some point, you know, all playing outside, had family dinner, and then I took the big kids to go see Mama Mia at the local high school, actually at Josper's high schools. We had a lot of friends in the show. It was pretty good. I was impressed. They did a very good job for being, you know, a high school musical here. I spent some time after I came home from that looking through Jasper's novella. He's written in novella, which is great, and then went to bed. Sunday, got up, took Henry and me to church. He went to the nursery. I went to choir practice, and then had the church service. The rest of my family came just for the service. After that, came home, briefly, took Alex to a birthday party. I did some errands during that, came home, just a lot of sort of downtime while Michael went and did his gym trip. I should say he went and did his long run. Saturday afternoon, we both get to do something. I took Ruth to soccer's about five. It was really cold, but I ran during soccer. We came home, did dinner. I think Sam had a boy Scout meeting, and the sort of getting ready for the week, getting ready for bed, all that good stuff. So yeah, that was my weekend. It sounds full and good, and you managed to get in lots of the essentials, which we'll talk about in the rest of this episodes. So yeah, I think we also shared some commonalities, a little bit of kid activities, a little bit of workouts. Yeah. So, I mean one of the first things we want to talk about with this is, you know, as we're planning weekends, first, why plan a weekend? Because of course we have all encountered this concept out here that having plans for your leisure time is like missing the whole point, right that like if you have set appointments for your leisure time. Then you're not really relaxing and you must not really be happy, and you're doing it all wrong, and oh, we need to talk about how the world is overscheduled and terrible. And I'm not exaggerating. I've actually seen this in many points, because this is, you know, a common thing when people are going to complain about my work, this is one of the themes that they will take. So I've actually read a reasonable number of comments as such, why do we plan weekends? Well, you know, some of it. I'm sure this is self explanatory to many of our listeners, but if we have some newbies here, some of it's just necessity. Like I have five children, Sarah has three children. Even if each child only has one thing they are doing on the weekend, in my case, that's you know, four things if it's the older kids, and we have to figure out what we're doing with the little guy. In Sarah's case, she's got three things that she's got to do. There's stuff happening, like you have to work around that. And you know, this is what trips up a lot of people because then they do the kids stuff like they do the kid things, and then they think, oh, well, that's all there is time for. It's all you know, work and driving kids around, and then I have no time for fun or anything. But the truth is, if you think through it ahead of time, you can put in adult fun around all various kid obligations and things that they're doing as well. And so that's the reason to plan. By planning, a person who has a lot of responsibilities can in fact still have their fun too. Yes, and there is a certain I don't know, like default activity that will happen if you do not do planning, and also sometimes in my house, like a default restlessness, Like I think my kids really benefit from knowing what kind of like the fun activities might be during each day or else there's a lot of like wheel spinning, definitely a lot of whining for screens, which is the default activity that I was alluding to. And it is much more difficult for my husband and I to carve out any time for what we actually want to do without thinking about how all these complex moving parts might fit together. So I one hundred percent agree. I have a feeling a lot of the critiques of the idea of planning must come from people who either there perhaps men who don't have to do much of the child rearing, or they come from people who have kids who are out of the house or her child. Yeah, and I'm sure our weekends will look very different when we don't have young children. But since we do, and we both value doing our own things and having some downtime as well, it has to be planned out and so that we can in fact trade off with our partners too, and it explicitly agreed upon fashion so that people are you know, getting their downtime as well. We had a great episode with Molly back a few weeks ago that she talked about how she and her husband have it down to the hour, like, you know, she's on till two pm and then he's on till the seven pm or whatever it is the agreement, but you know who it is, and so the other parent can in fact truly relax and get some of that time, as opposed to having it be a constant source of tension like go ask your father, I'm trying to relax, and go ask your mother. I relax. Yeah, So it's much better to have it spelled out, and of course spelling it out means there's a plan. Oh, it all comes back to that eventually. All right, well, let's take a quick break and then talk about some of those ingredients we feel are not necessary to having a renewing and enjoyable weekend. Well, we are back talking about how to plan a good weekend. Good being one that you are enjoying as much as anyone else. That has become my goal in philosophy for weekend planning. To me, a good one is when everyone has something to look forward to, and that includes me and it includes my husband as well. The kids often have something that they would like to do as well, and I try to make that happen. I'm definitely cognizant of it. Does everyone have something that they are looking forward to? And if all of us do, then you know people are going to be as slightly happier about doing things that maybe they're not as much looking forward to. Because when you have a large household, inevitably somebody is going to have to tag along to something that wasn't their first choice for a weekend activity. But if they know that they have something that it's not just all gonna be drudgery for them, then they can have a lot more fun. I mean, you think about this too, absolutely like for a great example of our past weekend, and of all was maybe not so thrilled to be dragged along on Gennabeb's plateate, but she knew her birthday celebration was coming up, and she knew she would get to spend some screen time, which you know, sometimes that's what our kids are looking forward to, and we try to mix it up and have other things as well. But something, nothing, sometimes nothing would make Cameron, you know, happier than playing video games for three hours. We definitely have stretches of that as well, definitely as part of the weekend. So what I sort of have a template in mind of what is a good weekend, and we definitely encourage people to think about this. So in a realistic ideal week what would a good weekend look like for you? And of course the realistic ideal means that you don't you know, you still have the family you have, you still have the various obligations or responsibilities you have. You have not suddenly won the lottery or anything else. But within the realistic ideal setup, what would a weekend look like? That is something that could happen. So for me, I like to do one long run, I like to have some sort of family adventure. You could think of it like a half day kind of thing. I sing with my choir, and ideally we'd have some sort of adults only fun. There has not been as much adult only fun, but there's always some element of fun. And maybe it's not adult only, maybe it's just seeing other adults for other kids around. But that would be the ideal for me. And what's your template? You also? I just realized as you're reading that, I'm like, you also go to church, Like, I mean, that's part of your choir, but I think like from listening to you over the years, that's like a really a pillar of a lot of your weekends. So probably bears mentioning. Yeah, and that probably is part of a lot of people's realistic ideal template. If you are in any sort of religious community, you already have one anchor event for your weekend, whether that's you know, synagogue on Saturday, if it's a church on Sunday morning, or you know, Saturday evening masses some people go to. There's something built in already as an anchor, and that can be a good thing to structure a weekend around too, because right there, you know you're getting probably some of the social activity you know, obviously the upside of spiritual activity. That's something a lot of people like to incorporate as well. And maybe there is even adult only time involved in it, if your kids are involved in children oriented programming as part of your house of worship, So yeah, that's that can definitely be part of the template too. What does yours look like? So ours does not include that, which is why I wanted to bring it out for you, because I think it is it does give so much. Actually, so for us, I feel like the essential ingredients are to have some kind of social time, whether that is in the form of a play date with another family, or whether that's like maybe a double date, dinner, or some kind of social event in the evening. I like there to be two workouts for me, one each day, usually one run and then one strength. I would love it if in the future I could get to the point where my strength was like also a group activity, like going to a class of some sort, so kind of working towards figuring out what that might look like. Some reading and relaxation time, often a nap, especially on Sunday afternoons. I love when there can be a nap. Usually I love to have at least one family breakfast and one family dinner, so a lot of times we'll do pancakes or something. We don't do that kind of stuff during the week, so to our kids it's special and we'll like sit down to a nice breakfast one day, and then Sunday I almost always cook dinner, and that's kind of like our family sit down dinner. Saturday is either takeout or my husband and I are on a date. And then I will say that I like to get in enough prep for Monday that I am not panicked, and that's fairly minimal. But for me that list looks like having groceries, which I often lately just order delivery on Saturday to get delivered on Sunday morning. That's been my new rhythm these days. Having Monday's monch lunch made. However, lately that's been done by Annabel like the past few weeks, which has been amazing. She actually enjoys doing it, so wonderful. I do feel like I need to write out our week's meal plan and schedule, like who has what activities for what days and send that to both my husband and our nanny and make sure everyone's kind of on the same page, and then just getting the backpacks basically ready so that Monday we're not searching for basic items. And honestly, that doesn't take that much time. I don't have a lot of elaborate things that I'm trying to do, but if I don't do those things, I don't feel super calm getting ready for the week. So that's kind of like my minimal list. And I will say on my husband's call weekends, the only way to accomplish all of those things in a non harried manner is to do it while the kids are watching a movie or playing video games, like on Sunday afternoon. But I try to make it still, you know, a pleasant thing. I put on a podcast or some music. I kind of like lean into the fact that they're having downtime and I'm able to calmly get things done, and you know, the goal is to just feel yeah, good and ready to start the next week. I would say that I do a Sunday n My Sunday night prep is not like making lunches or anything like that, but I do set out the activity schedule for the week because some of it, like that's when we have to sign up for the karate classes, for instance, And so I send an email on Sunday night to my husband and our nanny of like where everyone's going and assign people rough if it's going to be complicated, I assign people driving. I mean usually it's not. And usually people do the same thing week to week, like everybody knows what they are responsible for. So that's something I do on Sunday night. And it does take time, like it probably takes me half an hour to get it all put together. But I try to, you know, be in a relaxed mode while while doing that. So that's that's helpful. Oh, I just wanted to add one thing because I'm like, does that sound like my weekend is just for me? And I'm not thinking anybody else, And I just want to say that, like, the reason my focus is on me getting like my nap in and getting the stuff done is because the other stuff like happens anyway by default, Like the kids generally, stuff's honestly already on the calendars scheduled in for them, whether it is baseball practice, a playdate, a birthday party, getting together with another family, going to the pool, going to a community place like Flamingo Gardens or something like That's that's like the meat of our weekend, and so I actually don't think of it as much. There are some weekends where we'll be going in and I don't have a plan, and you know, we ask the kids what they want to do, and they usually come up with some kind of destination like Frost Science Museum or Butterfly Garden or something like that. But that part is like, duh, Like that's the part that happens without having to kind of muscle it in there. It's the stuff for me and the relaxation piece that takes kind of like So, I guess I just wanted to clarify that my weekends are not like throw my kids in a quarter so I can get my work out exactly exactly. I don't think anyone thought that was the case, but all right, in case somebody was listening and it did. Sarah brings out the point of like those things like Flamingo Gardens, the butterfly house and all that, it might help to make a list of these type of things. I know, as people get into certain seasons, we're in the thick of spring sports, so maybe many of our listeners are having many moments of their weekend already spoken for. Same thing happens kind of end up September October, but that's less the case for some other weekends of the year and the bridge seasons and when things like that aren't happening. So it helps to have ideas of things you want to do as you're planning your weekend ahead of time, so you know, people can talk about it, they can look forward to it, you can get some sort of agreement if that's necessary. And so where does one get those ideas? I always do my seasonal fun lists. Those are activities that are within an hour or so of our house that we've are either proven winners, we've done them in the past, we think they would be fun to try, and some are more seasonally oriented. There are things that can only happen at certain times in the year, like strawberry picking or apple picking, or seeing flowers in bloom at the garden. It's a little harder to do that in October or November. And there are other things you can see in October and November, but you're not going to see tulips, So that's something to keep in mind. You know, look at calendars, get on lists. You know, if you're in any reasonably sized city, there's a number of cultural institutions in your area, and it might just be a good idea to be on their email lists. Because sometimes you'll hear about something that sounds pretty cool, and I would have a bias toward going ahead and trying to put it on the calendar, Like if it sounds like it is something you would enjoy, I mean, maybe you won't wind up going, maybe it won't be cool if you do go. But as you do this, you sort of start to see what your family does enjoy and what makes for good activities, and then those things can repeat year after year, and you know that it becomes easier to plan weekends because you're not thinking about what on earth can we do while you have a long list of things that your family has enjoyed in the past. My husband's really good about this, actually, like I think he's he's learned and like a lot of times it'll just pop up on my He uses Google calendar even though I don't, so it'll just pop up like, oh, he put that there's a car show in three weeks that we might want to consider going to, or something like that, And it doesn't mean that it is a firm plan, but it is nice to have that kind of option if the day does end up being open. And I do agree, the longer you've lived somewhere, you would think it would be the other way around, like if you're new to a place that you have more to explore. But actually, I think the longer you're somewhere, you kind of like know what the rhythms are and like what the annual things that come around. Being in tune with those rhythms of nature, like you're talking about the different seasonal things, you are going to have more of a social circle. So doing some of the same things you normally do but with other families can add a new twist to that. I never feel like we are having trouble thinking of things. It's usually more the other way. Yeah, like yeah, enough time, and they don't have to be huge. I mean, like I said, we tried that new playground last weekend and the kids really liked it. They've mentioned it as somewhere they'd like to go again. So if there's ever, you know, a time where we're like, how do we fill this? You know, ninety minutes of the day, you know, and get kids out and doing something while we can just drive to that playground and that would be something now that it is sort of consciously on the list, Sarah, you were mentioning also, sometimes it helps to divide and conquer that, Yeah, that that's something you do. Oh yes, our family. I mean you have so many kids. I guess you probably divide and conquer too, especially with the two year old versus everybody else. But yeah, for us, there are some things that, like, some kids enjoy more than others. Sometimes there's like big kids stuff for Annabelle and Cameron. Sometimes there's just i don't know, reckless, stunt like stuff that is mostly just Cameron, and so we tend to I would say the most common division is actually like girls versus boys, which might not sound like a fair trade, but it works pretty well actually, because Cameron needs a lot to get his energy out. You should have seen how tired Josh was when they got back from skateboarding for seven hours. So yeah, we do a lot of that, and sports necessitate that as well. I can't stand dragging all three children to the soccer sidelines. I've done it a couple times. I've done it enough to be like, I don't want to do this. So whenever there is an activity that only one kid is participating in, that's almost like an obvious queue. If there are two parents available, that there will be two separate things going on. Yeah, and especially now that my kids are older, we've been able to leave kids home alone, right, Like, that's an option that the older boys really don't ever have to go anywhere unless we're going to be gone for a long time. And sometimes I've started leaving younger kids with them for short periods of time. With Henry, I want to make sure it's really short and someone's nearby, just because he's more needy. But certainly Alex can stay with them for an hour or two. And so because of that, you really never have to bring tons of chill turn into something else to a sporting event. So that has definitely been a nice part of older children that makes weekends slightly more doable. That was certainly not the case, you know, maybe two three years ago, when when that was not going to happen at all. So when do we plan? When do you plan your weekend? Do you want to start Sarah? Sure? I mean I was thinking about this. I feel like it happens a little bit more organically, like I think you're sitting down at a specific time for me, Like for I think because of our call weekends in particular, and because I have a couple of friends who really enjoy planning ahead, as well as physician friends who have their own call weeks to contend with, So like, the only way we're going to get together is really doing it in a calculated fashion. Like yesterday, I was at a meeting with a friend, like a work meeting and a friend who has kids, and we were like texting on the side, and we're like, let's get together, And so we made a playdate for about a month from now because that was the first time it worked, and that's already in my planner, so like when we get closer to that date, I'll be like, oh, yay, play date with these kids. This will be so fun. So sometimes it's really really in advance. I would say our date nights are also pretty far in advance. I'm often texting our date night babysitter like a month in advance because I think she likes it that way, and so that's just kind of how it works. And also some reservations up here. For certain restaurants, you have to make them a month in advance or you will not go. So there's that, but then there's other stuff like I mentioned, that can be very impromptu. This last weekend, the playdate that Genevieve had, I had gotten texted on Friday from the mom and she was like, do you want to come to playground? And I'm like, awesome, we were open, so yes, And that's one of those like spontaneous days where Cameron had baseball, so we knew he had that, but I didn't have a plan for the girls. And I was either going to either like text the neighborhood and see if anyone wanted to come to the pool, or I was going to see if they wanted to go to like one of our local standards, like I mentioned the Science Museum, et cetera. So I would say it's a mix. We usually know when the date nights are going to be, but then and social obligations, but yeah, it's a mix. It's a makes a pretty spontaneous and planned and I kind of like it like that, Yeah, that is a good mix. And I would say we have to plan a lot, but we definitely have open time and have done things last minute, and certainly, like if my older children have you know, last minute made plans with friends as sometimes happens, you know, Friday at school they talk about wanting to get together on the weekend, Like, I will make that happen one way or another. It can usually be accommodated in the weekend with the way things are set up, so I'm often coming up with stuff aways ahead of time. If it's things like concert tickets or going to see the cherry blossoms, it has to be within a certain you know, two week period or whatever. What weekend day is going to work for that. But in general it's in three rounds. So I plan my weeks on Fridays. And when I say plan the week on Friday, that generally means the next upcoming Monday to Sunday week. So that means on Friday, I am planning the weekend loosely, that is eight to nine days ahead, if that makes sense to people. So I do one round then of sort of generally, what are we planning to do that weekend? Are there any big things that need to be accommodated, Like are there huge logistical challenges, like you know, somebody needs to drive a kid up to the Pocono's at the same time two other children need to be somewhere, and then I need to either find another driver or whatever it is I have to do. So that's the broad outline of what the weekend will look like. I probably check in then during the week if there's anything that is come up or needs to be changed, probably like Wednesday, I try to have a slightly more firm idea of what is happening. And then Friday is the last check in again if there's any other things that have come in or the final plan happens, and that is when I normally send the weekend email to Michael. The weekend email. I think I started doing this because you were doing this. I was doing it for a long time, and the irony is I have stopped doing it because I haven't. It's on our whiteboard, like the main things, and then the other things which I used to put in there, I feel like they've become so repetitive that I don't need to anymore. Yeah, well, so ours has been enough varied that I kind of do need to send it. And sometimes there's been some tension of like has my email been read? Has my email not only been read but committed like scripture to heart, like because I do not enjoy being asked at nine point thirty in the morning like hey, who needs to be where when I'm like, no, no, no. It was in the email, which we have studied and committed to memory that said, I know it sounds like I'm a bit of a task master with it, but I would say the weekend, my husband is going to get to do a long run. He is usually going to get to do it in the afternoon, which is when he wants to do it, Like he doesn't want to get up at six am to run, and he's not going to have to Like I've put this in one way or another. He wants to go to the gym, I will have put in time for him to go to the gym. Ideally he would be taking our you know, teen boys with him, but he you know, if they don't want to go, they don't have to, and so that's also his time. So he gets those things in anything else that has been sent to me like that want you know, wants to happen if we're like we've gotten together with like some of his colleagues or something, or you know or whatever else he's put in. He took some of the big kids to go see The Princess Bride. Our local orchestra was playing the score like while they were screating the movie, so he took that to that a few weeks ago and put that in those So anyway, what I'm saying is like, I manage the schedule and it has to happen as I say it, but there are going to be things that other people want to do in it, so so he had best read it. No, there's there's things like I'm thinking about it. I think our whiteboard has actually kind of like taken the place. But I used to put things as detailed as like I will run this day, you will run that day, but we've gotten it. Like for us the mornings generally, the unspoken agreement is that I will let him sleep in until like a reasonable time, like eight thirty, and then I get to go run like and it's like, it's because it's so stereotyped in the same I haven't needed to put it in an email. It might be a good idea to do the email sometimes though, because I actually feel like, if anything, he sometimes gets the shaft in terms of like having specific things planned it. I mean, he gets to sleep in and he's very happy that if there's something somebody wants to do, I've kind of given up on it, but like if it matters to someone, getting that is like its own right. You know that's so true. Like I'm not sure he's lacking anything that he wants, and he like genuinely enjoys having some video game time with our kids in the afternoon sometimes, so I feel like he gets a lot there, and that's my de Like, yeah, we've just gone to a natural rhythm. Hre. I guess we don't need it as much. But then I sort of miss it when I hear you talk. Yeah, I mean it's work to send it. I mean it's certainly not, but I mean it's how I can sort of spell out like and we have. Then it's reminding me too, Okay, well this is what happens next, and this is what happened next, And knowing that there is you know that we're all going to get to do the things that we wish to do, makes it feel a lot better. I Mean, I think in many families, one party does do more of the planning, and probably many of our listeners listening to this may be that person in their relationship. They may or may not be, but my general philosophy is that if one party is doing more of the planning, then the other party probably needs to like cheerfully comply with the plan. Now, if you both want to do the work of planning, then you can hash that all out. But if one party does not really enjoy doing that sort of work, or just doesn't feel oriented that way or whatever, then then it helps for that party to be a little bit more sort of easy going and flexible as long as they know that their particular needs are going to be met. Yes, so speaking of your needs being met, talk a little bit about like what you wrote about intentional downtime here, because I think that you know, we talked about carving out time for ourselves, but I think it does help to define specifically what that means to you. Is that exercise time, is that reading time? Is that calling a friend? Like if you find that your weekends are passing by and you don't feel like you've got to have a nice time, maybe start to get a little specific and like, well, what do you wish you had gotten to do for yourself? And see if you can check off a couple of things on that list. Yeah, I mean thinking through your downtown, not that you need to like, you know, block out every fifteen minutes, like guy, I'm going to do this now, I'm going to do this. But when you are not doing something else, what would you prefer to be doing? And a lot of people like to make sure they have a good book going into the weekend because then they will spend the downtime that they have reading that book, as opposed to sort of puttering around, resorting the mail pile, or whatever it is that you do and you haven't thought about it. Maybe it is something like a hobby, puzzles you like to do, or gardening, or you know, anything along those lines can can definitely help it. But just knowing what you would like to do with your downtime and encourage you to start doing that when downtime appears, as opposed to like la la la, what do I want to do? I don't know what do I want to do? And then next thing you know, you have to drive somebody of soccer and the time is gone and you haven't really spent it in a way that you find particularly rejuvenating. I think, you know, when when we are kind of when we have as many responsibilities as we do have and have as much going on, you do need to be intentional about that time because it does exist, Like there's always going to be downtime the busiest weekends I ever have, there's always always, always downtime. But it's a question of whether you use it in a way that makes you notice it and feel like it was intentional and rejuvenating, or whether it just kind of slips through your fingers like sands through the hourglass or TikTok scrolls through the up into the other. Yes, exactly that can that can happen too. And also with that, if you have chores you need to do or work you need to do, I think it helps to be intentional about that too. It's kind of hard when you know you have something you have to get done and you are like trying to do it like a mid kid doing everything else. I mean, really, that's the kind of thing. Like you know you need ninety minutes to work, you probably are better off either hiring a sitter or having a conversation with your partner about an explicit trade off, like you know, I need this ninety minutes to work, you need to take the kids, I will trade off with something else you know that either you need or want to do, and having that time blocked off so it's not seeping into everything over the whole weekend. And the same with choice. I think it helps to have a chore block, like you know, if you are, for instance, cleaning your house, we would obviously encourage our listeners if it is possible to sort of outsource some of that. But if you are needing to clean the house, for instance, having an hour where everyone does it and does certain things and if it didn't fit in that hour, maybe it wasn't that important can keep it from always being an option. Yes, yes, tours can bleed to any to fill any crack if you let them, but if you corral them, you can get a lot done and a pretty fine I'm actually always incredibly impressed when my kids are motivated, how the three of them can take the entire first floor of our house and turn it from absolute wreckage to like completely fine in like ten minutes. If they're actually properly motivated, which usually means we are not letting you watch X y Z until this is entirely cleaned up. So yeah, sometimes just having a time limit will actually make the work go faster anyway. Yeah, yeah, no, it can. And if you are, you know, in the mindset of wanting to sort of limit children's screen time, I mean that can obviously be the default at any point when they aren't doing something else, and I know that that tends to be the case around here. We've just been trying to sort of have other things happening, like, oh, okay, lots of everyone's going to go outside now, and then you see what happens when everyone is outside. There was quite the fencing war with bamboo from that was picked up from various places in the yard, and everybody was in on it, like you know, five kids fencing with different things at different points. It was. It was something it was not again. And everyone still has their eyes. Everyone still has their eyes. That's good, amazing. Well, we did a screen free month and I would recommend it if you're looking for a hard reset. And now we're kind of back to our time limited screen use, so they know not to ask for it before a certain point, and that's worked well for us. It gets easier. The weather's getting nice around here. Of course, the weather's getting worse for Sarah, but she's getting the kids out in the morning and that can help to All right, Well, that's you know, just how we plan our weekends. Lots of things to think about, and I hope people will send us your ideas of how you you know, what your template is of a realistic, ideal weekend. We'd love to hear that. If you get any ideas from this episode, please let us know about that too. So the question for this week, shall I read it? Or did you? Yes? Go for it? You're the good summer summarize edit down quickly. So this listener had been listening to this podcast for a while and had read Off the Clock, which is relevant for the question in just a minute. She's her early forties, married with two children, been in the same career thirteen years, has been contemplating some changes. Something she has drawn to is writing and has been thinking about launching a blog and eventually writing a book. So in Off the Clock, I talk about how Sarah went down to an eighty percent work schedule. This was a couple of years ago for our listeners to make time for blogging. In the podcast, she says that sounds amazing. I was thinking of looking into working four days a week, which she could swing financially and not lose the benefits and have one day off for blogging or whatever else I want to do. However, she notes that if she hangs in for another three more years, they would have their mortgage paid off, at which point she might potentially have more flexibility, So she's not sure what to do. She has a very back and forth relationship with her current career, loves the people, sometimes the work, working with a career coach to figure it out, and if we recommend going to four days a week, any advice for approaching the employer about that. So, Sarah this plan makes me kind of nervous the way she talks about her maybe blog situation, because I wonder if she's I don't know. I can't tell what she means by that, or whether this is like a work thing or just a passion project. And if it's a work thing, it doesn't sound like a viable work thing to me, to be completely honest, because I've only been writing a blog for seventeen years and it still does not pay any bills. Really, So I guess I don't know. I think this person, I think the career coaching sounds great because she can delineate specifically what she is looking to achieve with building this hobby. I mean, if she is trying to go down to eighty percent merely because she wants more space in her life and to have more fun on her days off and that she feels like that's enough for her from a work perspective, I think that's completely valid. I get a little nervous about, like I think I might do a blog, and like maybe that they're not realistic ideas as to what that might bring to her with one day a week off to play with and starting something new from scratch at this juncture. Yeah, I would say that you should start the blog now, because if you're not going to maintain the blog, even if you're working five days a week, you won't magically do it at four either. It's a habit in its own right, and it has to be something that you truly want to do and we'll get on the schedule of doing and that you sort of feel intrinsically motivated to do, because if you don't like, you just won't stick with it. Like there's you know, people start blogs all the time thinking like either it's going to make the money or get them a million readers every night, neither of which is going to happen in the vast majority of cases. But this is something you can totally do around everything else in your life. And if you do it while working five days a week and it's great and it's going wonderfully and you know what's you know, this is like the most exciting part of your life, Well, then you can start thinking about it, Like then, you know, maybe it does make sense to do an eighty percent schedule, But given how flexible blogging is, I think it would be better to establish the habit first and then make sure that this is something you want to do, and then you can talk about actually creating more of the space for doing it. Yeah. I'm worried too. I see a lot of people like I want to quit my job and write like you do, like it's still a job. Yeah, it's still a job still, and you have to I guess you, yeah you have. Yeah, this person just needs a little more thought. I see nothing wrong with going on to eighty percent just to go to eighty pars. That's what you want to want, the space in your life you want Fridays to hang out in the playground with your kids, Like, if that's what you want, Like, that's completely valid. But the eighty percent to nebulously start a blog, that part is the part. Yeah, now, I'm because I can see it just I mean partly, like blogging needs to happen a couple times a week anyway, so unless she's like I got this schedule where she's doing all her posts for the week on Friday, like it just doesn't have to be done like on the on the one day a week thing. And I think your reasons for going to eighty percent were not just the blog and the podcast either. Now, no, no, I think it was actually I was eighty percent before the podcast. I mean because you were pregnant with Genevieve and you were sort of anticipating even you know, with the I just wanted more space in my life. I felt that there was a little bit of I don't know, like it was feeling too mundane to do the same thing every day, and I wanted a little more time with family, a little more time for myself, and I felt it was financially feasible to do so and wouldn't be a bad problematic from a career perspective, and so I did it. So that was more my reasoning. It certainly wasn't the blog. I mean again, I've been there's nothing that's changed that much about my blogging habits since two thousand and four, and I've been full time either in school a residency, you're working for most of that time. So it certainly wasn't for that specifically. Yeah, like, if you want to work eighty percent, then work eighty percent. If that's you know, yes, one exactly, all right. So love of the week mine is we have some woods near the house that I've been doing daily walks in as my intent to get more sort of physical activity in the afternoon when I often need a little pick me up. And it's really fun when you do walk in sort of the same place every day to see the seasonal changes, to see as the kind of carpet of greens starts creeping up, as the mist of green takes over the trees, and it's just going anywhere sort of daily in the natural world and seeing the changes. It just really makes you appreciate sort of the wonder of the seasons, which is, you know, something in a place with four seasons that I really do appreciate. Winter is hard, but it does make up for some of the rest of the year. So my episode with kristin the frug Girl has not aired yet as we're recording this, but I have to laugh because your Love the Week is like exactly what her love of the Week was, So that was awesome. But yeah, I get it. It is beautiful. Mine is totally different, but it is what the phenomenon where you pre order a book because you're excited about it and then you completely forget about it and then it just arrives and you're like, oh my god, I forgot about this. So I got Emily Saint John Mendel's Sea of Tranquility in the mail yesterday and I had completely gone off my radar. So it was just such a fun surprise that I had from past you to future you exactly. Hey, if anyone wants to order pre order Tranquility by Tuesday, it will magically show up in October and you can. You could order them both. They both have the word facility. It's a good word. It's a good word. And yeah, I always like to have one novel and one nonfiction, so I think that would be an excellent pairing. All right, well, this has been best in both worlds. We've been talking about how to plan weekends, how to think about in the question, thinking about whether to go to an eighty percent schedule to make time for us, the things. We will 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.