Since my last post, my life has turned upside down. Staring down the barrel of selling the house to survive, my wife opted to seek work, and was employed within about 2 weeks by her former employer before we had our second child. I took on all of her housewife duties, which involved all meals, most housework, and childcare.
This threw out all of my planning so far, as there was no way at all I could continue working on my Android app whilst being engaged full time in childcare, indeed to develop any kind of skills that weren't related to house-husbandry was next to impossible. My exercise program went out the window too. I'd say I'm amazed at how much time childcare takes, and how exhausting it is, if I'd ever not accepted that it's substantial. But what I am amazed at is how tiring I found it. It's easy to think that work which is mostly easy is not tiring, if you don't account for the unrelenting nature of it.
I am not complaining, though. It made financial sense, and I think it was a very good thing for her to do, to take control of her life to a greater extent than housewivery without income allows. Also, for me, it was a welcome chance to actually do some things I've long been meaning to and have not found a good excuse to spend the time on. In particular, my cooking repertoire has finally moved beyond the frying pan and BBQ, my attention to household management has moved beyond knowing what food I like to eat myself, and I've spent a great deal more time with my children. My youngest, who was not yet in kindergarden, got my undivided attention for a good four months, and together we knocked a shockingly out of shape garden into some good order, and had numerous outings to libraries, malls, swimming pools, beaches, parks, gardening centers. When the elder son got home from school, we all played together. This has been very good for my soul.
I can't, however, fully embrace this role, for two reasons. Firstly, the novelty is wearing off, and the youngest, turning 3 years old and becoming eligible for 20 free ECE hours, could now be put into kindergarden without crippling our finances. This gave me more time to consider my future. Secondly, despite our income being average for the nation, it does not cover the bills. We do not live an extravagant lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination, so cutting back costs hasn't been able to put us into well-balanced books. This can't continue indefinitely. I decided, for better or worse, to engage a bit of formal re-education, and enrolled in a BSc at the University of Auckland.
I am not entirely committed to gaining a BSc, actually. The degree itself is hardly of more value than the Graduate Diploma in Computer Science (and a number of post-graduate CompSci papers) that I already have, and could easily take me 5 years to complete part-time. But you need to write something down when you justify why you want to do undergraduate papers, and the subjects that I'm most interested in are generally taught in the sciences. In particularly, my maths, which was a major strength at school, is something that I felt really needed to be lifted. At the moment, it's all I'm studying.
Why? I don't have a good answer. General education? A feeling of something missing, of a lost opportunity? To expand my horizons? To freshen up my thinking?
Why pay for education? Again, no particularly sound answer, other than that solitary training is something that I've been unable to really do for the last few years. Perhaps I just need people around me, and a change of physical working environment? I was certainly royally sick of my home-office.
I'm writing now in the mid-semester break, the first time I've been able to even think about doing any serious writing. The boys are at school and kindy, the slow-cooker has dinner on the way, the breadmaker is working on a fresh loaf for after-school and dinner sides. The washing is hung out, the house tidied, the dishes done, the lawns mowed, the network fixed, bills paid. Phew! Ooops washing machine beeping, better pop those on the line, then I'll come back to reflect on what the first half-semester has been like.
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