Making it work

 So here we are. A year into a pandemic, a half year since A flew for an airline, a quarter year since his airline ceased operation. And we're still going. A fell into a gig that he is trying to make work. A local, long time friend of his bought up a part 135 charter operation in 2020 and A has been flying through that and is planned for moving up into a Chief Pilot position. It's still a small operation with irregular flying for A, but we're hoping that will change as the business continues to grow. A really enjoys being mostly home and not having the stress of commuting to base via plane. But, not surprisingly, he still gets stressed out the night before a flight. It's a different type of work he has to do now, contacting FBO's and filing paperwork, but it still is imperative flight related work. Hopefully at some point the company will have someone to make these kind of arrangements for the trips. And as much as I try and get him to keep his work in an 8-5 schedule and not doing work during family time, it still never works out. His phone is still going off constantly.  I had hoped that the end of union work meant the end of that, but no. And for as much as he talks about loving being home so much, he still talks about trying to get hired by a major. And I can't say I was unhappy when he had a 4 day trip come up once... My own work, hospital based, was steady and then decreased. So now I'm balancing a part time job and two on-call jobs, never feeling like I'm bringing in enough money. We have target goals for when I feel like I can cut back working through. As he flies more I can decrease. But it's been a year of feeling pissed that the part time working was stolen away from me and I still never feel like I can balance all the things our household needs with my work schedule.

We do have one bright spot this year- we finally adopted a dog. The 10yo has been asking for one for years and I've always said no. Now that A is home more, it's a realistic to handle one. The 10yo has been volunteering weekly at the local Humane Society since the new year. He reads to the pets to socialize them (which usually devolves into playing with the cats...) and helps calm them in their kennels. Every week he asks to bring a pet home and I defer. But when we met Archie, I knew we had to bring him home. So now we have an 18 month old black lab mix who is missing a back leg. Our sweet, gentle boy had been shot in the leg prior to coming to the Humane Society and they had to remove the leg altogether. But don't be fooled- although he can't jump, he can play chase and fetch for hours. The 10yo has been taking great responsibility so far, even though it's hard to drag ourselves out of bed at 7am on Saturday for a walk in the rain. The little ones were excited yet nervous at first but they have really come around. And thankfully our boy tolerates the daily vet check-ups and space shuttle landings on his back just fine.

Although 2020 really went awry in a horrible way for us we are managing. There is a lot of doing without and making due, but hopefully this year we will stabilize and again begin to grow.