Choosing Family Over Finances Part VI- Jobs and Poo-Water

It’s been a while since I’ve published an article. These last few months have zapped my creativity. Things, however, have continued to happen so I will trudge through the murky waters of my mind and attempt to scratch out a life update. Here’s what’s going on with our family…

Our life updates can be split-up into the following categories: Baby, Jobs, and Poo-water. Let’s just jump to the most interesting one first.

Poo-Water

We moved into my parent’s basement (like you do) in Montana in mid-April. The septic tank backed up a couple of weeks later, unrelated to us moving, causing massive poo-water related damage to the floors. Since we traditionally keep most of our belongings on the floor this was less than ideal.

Most of our actual stuff didn’t get too damaged, but the floors themselves were ruined.

We spent the next couple of weeks working from morning until evening, replacing the floors and fixing the drywall. This was actually a happy coincidence as the floors were slightly dated and probably could stand an update. Having poo-water wash over them was just the kick in the pants we needed to actually make the transformation happen.

Now, our living area is a smooth LVP wood-looking-thing all the way through. We replaced the carpet in the bedrooms and living room and the tile in the entryway. This gives June a lot more room to run around and play and also we’re no longer surrounded by olive green carpet from the Bush senior administration.

It was a pretty great learning experience. We installed around a thousand square feet of new flooring during this remodel. At least once per day, I picked up a tool with the intention of throwing it through a nearby window but I never actually got around to throwing it. I did hit my own thumb with a hammer several times. I don’t know. There was some good and some bad.

Also, nobody lost any fingers during the installation process.  Mrs. Burrito Bowl helped me lay a lot of the flooring and we’re still married. So, I guess that’s the best you can hope for when doing an impromptu remodel. It was also a good opportunity to work with my dad on a large project and learn some of his tricks.

My brother-in-law repaired all the flood-cut sheetrock. We have a weird texture on our walls here and he was able to match it. Had I done the sheetrock fix it would have looked like a child’s drawing of how they thought a sheetrock repair should look. We’re really happy he spent a few days being an actual expert.

All in all the project looks really good and you should all be very impressed.

Here are a few before/after pictures just in case you think I’m making this whole part up.

I don’t know if you can tell from the photos but I actually didn’t do a whole lot of picking up before I snapped these.

Jobs

Mrs. Burrito Bowl landed a job at the local hospital where she now spends several hours per day doing nurse stuff. This is nice since we haven’t really been employed for a couple of months. It’s a real bummer to have to get back into the swing of a work schedule after not being employed for so long but it is nice to earn money again.

And actually, most of the time we’ve been in Montana our days have been filled with helping family members with projects around their various houses. Ironically we’ve worked way harder being unemployed here than we ever did being employed in Portland. Also, I came in contact with poo-water less frequently in Portland.

In the few weeks we’ve been here we’ve helped build a fence, a deck, laid a bunch of sod, dug up a septic tank, remodeled a basement, laid flooring and painted in another house, helped friends move, helped ourselves move, laid carpet, and mowed the lawn a few times. I think we’ve done a few other projects but I lose track.

It’s been busy. Somehow it feels better waking up and not having to go directly to a job, even if we end up working hard all day.

This whole experience has taught me that I’ll have little problem keeping myself occupied if we ever get around to early-retirement.

A lot of people are complaining about being bored during this pandemic but I can’t even find the time to listen to all the podcasts I want to. Don’t get me started on all the Ken Burns documentaries that are just sitting there not being watched.

Having an 18-month-old adds to the busyness I suppose. Still, I don’t think either of us would be unhappily bored if we found ourselves not employed for an extended period of time again.

Anyhow, now we’re back to the schedule of working at an actual job. Well, Mrs. Burrito Bowl is back to that schedule. I’m mostly a stay-at-home dad at the moment. So I go on walks and read books most of the day.

Like so.

I keep my stress-level up by taking on freelance writing assignments. Those also pay American dollars but it can hardly be considered a job.

Money

Speaking of American dollars, I earn around a thousand dollars per month doing freelance writing. This is better than the zero dollars per month this website earns me. However, in order to earn that cold hard grand per month, I have to spend much of my free time writing for that website instead of this website.

This is really a mental suck because it’s very hard to set aside time to write for this website for free because anytime I have the ability to write I feel like I should be earning money by writing for the other site.

I enjoy writing for this website more, but it’s hard to pass up a thousand dollars. This is especially true since Mrs. Burrito Bowl earns …Pause for dramatic effect… $17/hr less in Montana than she did in Portland. Yikes. Her job here is closer to 40 hours per week wherein Portland she worked closer to 30 hours per week, so our overall take-home difference isn’t as stark.

But she has to work an entire additional day each week and still ends up with less than she made in Portland. But this series wouldn’t be called Choosing Family Over Finances if there were no financial sacrifices.

My Burrito Bowl posting has gone off a cliff since I started freelance writing. I’m in a continual internal battle as to whether freelance writing is worth it. I’m also in a continual internal battle as to whether I should split this site into two, maybe three, separate sites.

Financially we’re fine though. We’ve set aside enough money in investments that we can take our foot off the gas and coast to FI. Our expenses are lower in Montana and had we stayed in Portland we would have had to move to a larger house anyway, so our expenses would have gone up even more.

Tradition

As I mentioned earlier we’re continuing the family tradition of having at least one kid constantly moving back in with my parents. They’re pretty lucky to have such loyal children.

We’ll live with them until we can find somewhere to buy. In Portland, renting made a lot more sense. In Montana it’s looking like buying will be our best option. Now that Mrs. Burrito Bowl has a job it gives us a better idea of where to look.

June has been able to spend a lot of time with cousins, aunts, uncles, and especially grandma and grandpa. Being here is definitely a financial hit but we won’t ever get this time back and she won’t be a hilarious drunk toddler forever.

Time is our most valuable resource and here we’re able to spend more of that time with the people we love.

Speaking of people we love…

June is now one and a half years old. As of this writing, she is 555 days old. So, somewhere in there her 500th day of life passed with little to no fanfare. The above photo was taken on her 498th day of life.

I think it’s weird which occasions we choose to hone in on. I mean, your 500th day of life seems like a pretty big deal. Turns out it was April 30th.

I'm 12,384 days old, in case anyone was wondering. Which, honestly I'm kinda bummed I missed my 12,345 days old birthday. It only happens once in a lifetime. Missed it by 39 days. May 16th, 2020. The day that never was. Anyway.

She spends her days running all over the place and giggling and reading. She’s the cutest thing of all-time. She refuses to say real words still, which apparently she should be, but whatever. She talks all the time, it just doesn’t make any sense.

She’s incredibly dexterous though. She’ll sit there with her tiny little pudgy fingers and turn paper pages when we read books to her. She doesn’t skip any pages and knows when we’re done with a page. We think she’s great.

Also, we recently really started trying to get back on the sign language train. She’s really good at the “More” sign and does it anytime she wants us to read to her more.

She also has started peeing on the potty as soon as she sits down instead of waiting ten minutes to pee. She still wants to sit there for ten minutes and read books, but at least she’s making the connection that when you sit on the pot it’s time to pee.

She’s just a real happy baby and we feel pretty lucky.

This next section is about poop. Fair warning.

Almost all of her poops are on the pot. That’s partially due to our constant attempts to take her to the potty whenever she looks concerned about life and partially due to the fact that her poops are giant and take a few minutes to push out, so we have lots of time. I mean, they are giant. It would be like if I just pooped out a cat. We’re trying to get her to drink more water and are feeding her more berries. It is super nice to not ever have to clean up poop-laden diapers.

I’m not sure if that’s the type of information that should be put into a blog. Poo-water and baby poop. Anyway. That’s a small life update from us.

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