oh sweetie that last part was a joke. my fault though, rereading it seems pretty convincing.

i have four kids (!), and they are all amazing. three honor rollers (the other is too young for letter-grading :D) the oldest won state solo archery competition last year and wants a car for her birthday in december. ugh they grow fast

my wife's problem is that it's actually more of a part-time job to her. idk if she's better organized, we have a smaller house, or you have twelve kids, but she runs out of stuff to do by 9 or 10am. that leaves four or five hours until the kids start coming home. she sits there and gets bored and lonely and questions the meaning of life, talks to the cat, etc.

i voluntarily pursued a high-stress, long-hours career so that i could better provide for my family. unfortunately, i am only human, and i begin to... fizzle out (?) near the end of the workday. so i have this character flaw - after a 10-16 shift of frying my brain, i'm much less receptive to complaints of "i was bored today". it's not fair to her, because she does great things for our family and the least she deserves is a pair of ears.

so, because it's my problem, i actively took it upon myself to remedy it. one day on the way home i texted my wife, stopped at a gas station, grabbed a newspaper and coffee, and just sat for half an hour. i felt much better, i was able to appreciate my family more, and my family could appreciate me more.

now i do it pretty much every day, and possibly saved my career and my family. if wanting to save those things makes me selfish, then i guess i'm just a bad, bad person.