Schedules

Right now, schedules are a little crazy at our house - mostly for Daryn, but it has its impact on me as well. Remember, I'm a math major and have a bit of an obsession for explaining things so this will probably be boring for most of you, but it has a huge impact on my life right now, so it's going into this 'journal' of sorts! :P

Daryn is working on finishing some classes for school. There's one class in particular that was giving him a lot of trouble as an online class (online classes are so difficult sometimes!) so after MUCH deliberation we decided that he needed to take the class in person. Well, the catch is that they (NAU distance) only offer this class in person in Phoenix!

This made it a little difficult.

First, the class was offered only on Wednesdays - at noon or 7pm. Daryn has a full time job, and to work around his schedule he would have had to drive straight to Phoenix after work on Wednesdays (praying for light/no traffic the whole way) and then drive home at night getting very little sleep before going to work the next morning. No good!

So he sent in a request to have a schedule change. This was the tricky part, because even though there are some co-workers of Daryn's who work on a 4-10's schedule, one of the bosses didn't like it and is trying to get everyone on a 5 day work week. Daryn went in and requested 4-10's, with Wednesday off, so that he could take this class. Fortunately, Wednesday is the day with the lightest workload, and Daryn's boss is quite impressed with his work, so they approved the request. :)

Daryn's schedule gets a little complicated because his company serves a lot of people outside of Arizona. Because of this, work times change with Daylight Savings. During the spring and summer, his shift starts at 6am, and in the fall and winter his shift starts at 7am. So his possible hours of being gone from home (including a 30-40 minute commute both ways) looks something like this:

Spring/Summer 8 hour shift: 5:30 am to 3:00 pm
Fall/Winter 8 hour shift: 6:30 am to 4:00 pm

Nice, right? Yes. I loved those shifts! The kids don't get up until around 7, so I don't even feel like Daryn's gone for 8 hours a day! The down side is with the early start time, he has to go to sleep relatively early, but we've managed to figure out a good bedtime routine for Rebekah and if we remember to start that routine on time, Daryn can go to bed right after that and then I stay up with Josiah until he's ready for bed.

But, then we changed to 10 hour shifts.

The 10 hour shift is something Daryn LOVES. He feels more productive with a 3rd day off every week. He had this when we were first married, and I loved it too. I might like it now if we actually got that 3rd day off together, but I don't know if we'll actually see that happen. Right now, Daryn's schedule looks like this:

Spring/Summer 10 hour shift: 5:30am to 5:00pm on M, T, R, F
Wednesdays: 10am to 10pm - Phoenix (including travel time)

Seeing as how Daryn tries to be in bed by 9pm the nights before work, and leaves before I get up in the morning, I see him for maybe 4 hours a day, on Mondays and Thursdays. Wednesdays I see him for maybe 2-3 hours in the morning, and 5 minutes at night as he comes home and goes straight to bed. Tuesdays aren't terrible; we usually stay up late after he gets home from working with the Young Men at church, so there's probably 5 or 6 hours of time together, depending on how late we're willing to stay up. Friday is the best night, unless I have Pack Meeting for Cub Scouts - which happens once a month. Sooooo.... I just don't see enough of my husband during the week! I'm sure there are others of you who feel my pain, and maybe I see mine more than some of you see yours, but this is not a lot of face time for me, seeing as how for a year he was home ALL the time! Add that to the fact that this job started up right when Josiah was born. I was barely getting a handle on taking care of one kid, now I have 2 AND I've taken over all the duties of being at home. It's been a big adjustment.

With Daryn driving to Phoenix every Wednesday, I've tried to join him now and again so as to visit my friends and not spend too much gas on drives to Phoenix on the weekends. That hasn't worked out very well, because certain events on  the weekends, and times where I or the children were sick. I had hoped to see a lot more of my friends. (Sorry ladies! :( )

And now we're suddenly down to the wire! Daryn is 2 weeks away from taking his final for this class, and he's going into it with a very good grade. I'm glad we decided to go this route, even though it's been difficult on my nerves! (Not just from being away from him too long, but also worrying any time it takes him super long to get home - hearing about wrecks on the freeway drive me crazy!)

I'm looking forward to seeing this time end. Daryn says his boss will put him back on 8 hour shifts after the class is over. I'm hoping for that to take a little bit of time, to see if 4-10s is something we'd like to have again in the future. Whatever happens, I'll be happy to increase the amount of time my hubby gets to be home!