Alaska Girls and Work

I've been seriously considering taking a full-time job with Alaska Airlines to keep my sanity in this tiny, frozen town. Ben is really supportive, but I have my concerns about selling out. I think that the money and flight benefits would be great, but I think it would come at the price of Kaia's development and quality family time.

I am glad that I have the opportunity to stay at home with my baby, and recognize that Ben works long hours to make that possible. The least I can do is manage the money in a way that provides the best standard of living for our circumstances. We agreed together that part of that includes taking care of some household chores so that we can have positive family time together when we finally do get time together.

I am certain that if I chose to take the job, we would be able to go to cool places if we ever got the same days off, and we would be able to save up for a house a lot sooner. But there would be a lot less time together over all, and Kaia would be raised by a stranger. As far as the chores go, the delegation of responsibilities would be different, but I just don’t know if there would be enough time for what is important.

Right now I can focus most of my energy on doing what is most important to me, I get to teach my baby, love her and squeeze her. I get to train for my race, and with all of that, I don’t mind taking an hour or two out of my day to organize and make our house a home.

This is just the way that Ben and I have worked it out, and so far, it is working pretty well. I think a big part of that is the fact that we found a way for both of our needs to be met. I am so glad that he is good enough to communicate and cooperate. I don’t think that we would make it if he took the stereotypical man route.

On a side note, here is a funny story about that stereotypical man mentality and the way that Alaska women respond:

Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had assigned their wives duties. The first man married a Woman from California and told his wife that she was going to keep the house in order. It took a couple days, but on the third day he came home to a clean and organized house.

The second man married a woman from Utah. He had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, and cooking. The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from Alaska. He told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry done and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, enough to fix himself a bite to eat and load the dishwasher.