Tag Archives: compromise

a division of labour

Posted in everyday kimli, relationship drama by

I try not to have any gaping holes in my How to Life database, but there is one area in which I am particularly weak: car stuff.

I don’t know anything about the inner workings of cars. I can make car go, I can get car juice, I know how to check fluids and what to do if they’re low. Beyond that is a vast foggy grey area of I dunno, and although I am somewhat ashamed to admit it, I don’t really WANT to know. I’m not a car person. I’m okay with that. I cannot be everywhere at once, people. I’m in dire need of assistance. (rise up!)

The Minibator was long overdue for service, and Ed decided some months ago that as the car is mine, I am responsible for maintenance and upkeep. This is fair. I get it. On the other hand, this toads the wet sprocket and I am petulantly stomping my foot (which hurts because my bones are all fucked down there): I don’t WANT to be responsible for my car. I’m dumb at car. They’re going to charge me for blinker fluid and a replacement 710 cover and an emergency flux capacitor dilation.

I KNOW that I should woman the fuck up and learn about this stuff so I’m not ignorant about the health and well-being of my car. It’s pathetic and downright insulting to play into the “stupid woman doesn’t know cars” stereotype and want someone else to deal with it on my behalf: willful ignorance is hideous on everyone, no matter the topic. I am not doing myself any favours by not knowing the difference between the air filter and damper valves. Suck it up, buttercup, and earn that “self-rescuing princess” shirt.

Except .. at what age are you finally allowed to say “you know what? I don’t have enough spoons to deal with this”? When can you acknowledge your privilege and let someone else deal with it for you? I know this isn’t an option everyone has, but I do have it – is it so bad to use it?

My counterargument is thus: while I am not a car person, Ed very much is. I recognize that the Mini is mine and I should concern myself with the upkeep, but I also know that there are a thousand other things that I deal with so Ed doesn’t have to: managing the household budget, ensuring all debts are paid (Lannister style), arranging all travel (even for trips I’m not going on), deciding our weekly menu, most of the cooking, laundry, gift-giving, our social calendar, and more. Given all that I manage in our lives on a daily basis, I would like to be able to hand all vehicle maintenance off to Ed and let HIM deal with it. He speaks their language. He has a way better idea of what is an actual concern vs what just sounds super alarming to someone who doesn’t know any better, and if a particular suggested service is really an upsell tactic vs a needed procedure to keep me from careening into fluffy baby ducks if I corner too fast.

The raging feminist in me wants to take my car by the horns (cars have horns, right?) and own the fuck out of it, but the realist in me knows that I have no time for or interest in car .. stuff. In exchange for making our lives run smoothly and be captured for data mining via the cloud-enabled products sprinkled throughout our house, I ask that he be in charge of cat poop and car poop. This seems fair to me, and outside my own qualms about the “you go girl” quotient of my request, I’d be a lot happier about the overall idea of car knowing I was just a particularly adorable onlooker (and as an added bonus, it won’t take 6 months of bugging me to get the oil change scheduled already).

Rising up is good. Rising up and delegating to someone else has to at least count for partial credit, right?

In other news, five years ago today I was in the hospital discovering that my heart was a lazy fucking slacker only working at 20% capacity. I’m much better now, I think! What do get your heart for a 5-year anniversary of still working? Is it chocolate? Please say it’s chocolate.

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$9.00 per day!

more waffles than waffle house

Posted in adventure, angst, everyday kimli, international kimli by

I have had more metaphorical waffles in the last three days than I’ve ever had in my life. Here are some of the things I am waffling between like it’s a goddamn sport:

  • I’m totally fine with being at home!
  • No wait, I am filled with angst and sadness!
  • Let’s go to Vegas for a few days to keep ourselves entertained!
  • Vegas is not Japan and I don’t gamble or drink so wtf why Vegas!
  • We can rebook the trip for next month!
  • It’ll be a rushed, truncated version of our original trip and that will not be as satisfying!
  • New York?
  • New York!
  • But I would have had New York ANYWAY, so I’m still missing out!
  • Did we make the right decision in cancelling?
  • Everyone else is going ahead with their Japan plans!
  • The pictures of all the flooding look awful, and a lot of infrastructure is still shut down
  • But I am so miserable being at home!

.. and so on, and so forth. No new developments on the Refund Saga, but a thousand piecemeal suggestions have come and gone in the last three days. I keep changing my mind. Yesterday, I wanted to go to Vegas. Later that evening, Operation New York was a go. This morning, I wanted to make late November work for a shorter Japan trip. After doing the dishes, I decided on requesting a compromise for travel in 2020. I’d like to say my last (excellent) suggestion is the best one and will definitely be what we do going forward, but I’d said that at least half a dozen times in the last 72 hours. I no longer know what the fuck, because the fuck keeps changing. I am a soggy, gluten-free waffle made out of quinoa and squash. I am a poor approximation of food.

We do have plans to go to New York in early November. It was going to be a working trip – fly in, work during the day, then explore at night like Tourist Batman. One suggestion I had early on was to instead take time off while we’re in NY, making it a real trip instead of one where we work out of someone else’s house for a few days so we don’t use up vacation time. This is actually a really good idea, and one we’re probably going to go ahead with. New York is a fun city, we’d get to have some daytime adventures and food, and it’s ultimately less time off work than Japan would have been (I don’t have paid vacation, so everything I do is carefully balanced with “how much is this going to cost me”). Win win, right?

Mostly, yes. I’m still a little angsty, because I would have had New York (albeit on a lesser scale) ANYWAY, so I’m still out the whole of a vacation to Japan. I thought on this a little bit while jamming forks into the dishwasher, and realized I could maybe use the situation to my advantage. See, our trip to Japan was to have been 10 days. This never really sat right with me, because it seems like a really long way to go for less than 2 weeks, but Ed uncharacteristically put his foot down and insisted we take a slightly shorter trip than I like. I agreed at the time, because let’s face it, Japan was international trip #4 of 6 in 2019 alone so sure, I could give up a few days. I want a longer trip though, so I suggested another compromise on top of the other 50 compromises we’ve both made over the weekend: I will stop attempting to cram a do-over Japan trip into our rapidly dwindling 2019 and be satisfied with upgrading New York from Working Trip to Actual Vacation, in exchange for a minimum of two full weeks in Japan in 2020.

This was agreed to. We hugged on it. It’s the plan at the moment and I like it, but it will probably change 7 more times before we get anything resolved with the airline regarding our unused tickets for last week.

I am so good at compromise, you guys!

I’ve been slowly unpacking my suitcase, and it is very sad times. I’ve been hitting the pumpkin pie a little harder than usual to help me get through it. Thank god for whipped cream.

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taking lsd before crossing the brooklyn bridge: check

the grownup thing

Posted in everyday kimli by

I am totally okay with my decision, but I’m still going to whine about scheduling conflicts and the sensible but less fun things we do:

Astronautalis and his band of merry men (aka my three favourite musical boys in tight pants) are on tour and playing a show in Seattle next Tuesday. Being the fan girl that I am, I immediately booked time off work and arranged for a mini Mini road trip to see them play. I didn’t want to drive back to Seattle on Tuesday night for work the next day, so I thought to make An Event out of it: I booked a night in a Fancy Hotel, and made plans to have an excellent day and a half all by my lonesome (because no one else is hardcore enough to use vacation time to enable man crush swooning).

Then today happened: my favourite Marketing Manager asked if I was available next Wednesday to attend a conference with her on stuff that directly applies to what I do (neuroscience, rocket biosynthesis, that sort of thing). It’s a one-day conference only in Vancouver on the exact day I planned to be out of town to wander around Seattle in a delicious carefree daze. The company would send someone else, but I’d been specifically called out by the Uber Boss as someone they want there .. what’s a girl to do?

The only logical thing, really: I cancelled my hotel stay and unbooked the days off so I could attend the conference instead. I was worried about the hotel booking because it was a Groupon and the fine print specifically says NO RESCHEDULING NO TRANSFERRING NO ANYTHING AT ALL, but I was able to cancel the thing and get a refund. I’m sad about missing the Astronautalis show, but I have faith that they’ll play in an accessible area again soon and I’ll go to more shows (aka the opposite of what history has shown me to be true). I’m looking forward to the conference. It looks interesting, I get to spend a (paid) day off site hanging out with my favourite Marketing Manager and favourite Sam, and the brownie points earned for cancelling my plans for the sake of my job couldn’t hurt. It’s the Grown Up Thing to do. I am rocking this “adult” thing.

I still have my ticket to the show, though .. and I’ve done the drive down and back in the same day before. Perhaps being an adult doesn’t mean having less fun, it just means less sleep: I could still go to the show. Yes. This can happen. This WILL happen. I need a good dose of loud much more than I need a couple extra hours of sleep. Compromise! It keeps you fun!

wet cold canadian winter