Carpooling

For the last week or so, my husband and I have been carpooling every day to work. Both of our cars suffered hail damage back in February, and I finally got around to scheduling an appointment to have mine fixed. Lucky me, they want my car for 2 or maybe 3 weeks to fix several thousand $'s worth of damage. Had I gotten things arrange soon enough in the summer, I could have had use of my inlaw's car while they were on an extended vacation to Europe, but I procrastinated too long.

I have to say that things could be a lot worse. We work fairly close together, so it's not like one of us has to drive across town every day. We are both dropping Charlotte at daycare, which is probably causing more separation anxiety for her--she seems a tad worse about being left when we're both there. Then I drop my husband at his office and drive the 7-minute stretch to mine--probably about 2-4 miles. In the evenings we reverse the procedure, and aren't putting too many more miles on the car than my husband would in a normal week.

The biggest issue for me is timing. I'm used to heading out the door to arrive at my office around 8. Lately we're lucky if the 3 of us are in the car and moving by 8. My hours at work are somewhat flexible, so I generally put in 8.5-9 hours most days, and then leave a little early on Fridays or the last day of the pay period. But since I'm not arriving at work till closer to 8:45, and we have to pick Charlotte up by 6, I'm barely squeezing an 8 hour day in (with lunch at my desk) in time to turn around and leave. That means no bonus time for me--I usually take my precious 2 or 3 hour block and go shopping (by myself! where I can meander without distraction!) or go home and sew or get an early workout in or something.

In all of this, I'm still getting up at my normal time, so I end up doing more of the morning getting-ready routine with Charlotte that is normally husband's job, while he sleeps in to his normal time (some days almost an hour after I get up). And, I'm short on alone time. And then there was yesterday when I gave my husband fair warning of what time I was coming to pick him up, and ended up sitting in the car for an extra 20-25 minutes because he was in a conversation that he chose not to leave right away. Best of all, once my car is done, my husband's will need repairs. His estimate was half of mine, so I would hope his car wouldn't take as long to complete.

On the upside, we're saving nearly $500 in car rental fees (maybe more). I just hope that the savings seems worthwhile once we're back to a 2-car family again.