| A Day: Wake up at 5 AM. Wake wife up with a kiss. Bottle the milk for the youngest kids then shove them into the shower half asleep. Wife preps school lunch. Take a shower, pray, carry disabled mother in law into wheelchair. Shove kids into car. Enjoy the sunrise. Drive MIL to dialysis. Send kids to school. Sometimes grab a nice meal out with wife and toddler. Sometimes cook eggs and bread at home, or a smoothie. Get in about 1-2 hours of work done or review PRs. At 11 AM, pick up MIL from dialysis. Reach home office around 1145, in time for daily stand up. Lift weights during stand up instead of multitasking on browsers. Grab a lettuce for lunch and a navel orange for sugar. Wife picks up kids at 3 PM. Code stuff until 5 PM or so at home office. Enter house. Kids tackle me. Pry them off. Ask kids if they've done their homework (answer is usually no, but then they get off me). Carry MIL to wheelchair for shower. Younger kids usually shower with her. Cook dinner or answer work messages. Carry MIL from shower to bed. Chase kids around who usually refuse to put on clothes. Sometimes we eat at a restaurant. Have dinner. Kids are sleepy and fight. Grab a shower while they fight. Wife sleeps in a separate bed because the large one gives her back pain. Kids want the big bed. Kids refuse to sleep with each other but also refuse to sleep in own bed. Sometimes they sleep on the floor. Handle random requests from kids at night (milk, late night snack, watching stars, favorite book, etc). Kids are usually asleep by 10 PM. I play idle games on my phone or browse social media until the kid on my arm has fallen asleep. Then finish up some work to make up for lost time in the morning. Sometimes do a little freelancing. Sometimes read a book or play a game. Sleep by 1 AM, preferably 12. If I'm still up late at night, it's a good time for prayer. Week: Weekdays are similar to the above. Saturday mornings involve bringing kids for classes, MIL for dialysis. Then later in the day, either I freelance or we go grocery shopping. Sundays we do random things. Sometimes bring the whole family out for food and a walk at the mall. Sometimes the parks. Or bird parks. Butterfly parks. Libraries. Or a movie. Or just sit at home and play some game together. Or I freelance. Or at times we drive in a random direction and visit a town we've never visited before. There's a really nice view at the local dam, and also at the airport as planes touch down. Beauty is not just in nature. Split all freelance income with wife, 50-50. Year: Take a week off every quarter. I enjoy coding until morning with coffee, mountain dew, ramen, and Metallica. Which leads to burnout easily and so the week off helps me keep out of an unproductive spiral of working long hours to make up for unproductive work that leads to long hours. Usually spend the week off meeting old classmates, either mine or my wife's. Sometimes family, especially on holidays and birthdays. Generally vacations are wherever my wife's best friends can afford to bring their entire family. So we don't actually spend too much or feel like we need that much more money. |