Pros and Cons

When you live with your parents, living on your own seems uniformly desirable. However, now that I do live on my own, there are certainly some downsides:

i.e. living with a man who coughed/snored/left the Christmas tree lights on all night, and also forgot to put the gorgeous roasted chicken that I made last night in the fridge, so that it sat out all night (Grrrr....men. On the pro side, he did put up a series of 9 pictures for me last night which I normally hang in a grid pattern and which I don't have enough spatial sense to do on my own. I kid you not. I'm moving offices next week, and I had to go down and look at it about four times, because I kept forgetting where things were and how big it was.)

(NOTE: For every one thing that the hubby does that drives me nuts, I probably do eight things to him. He just doesn't have a blog to complain about me on. So don't take this to mean that he's not great. And it's not that I'm not sympathetic that he's sick. I've just been reading this book, Anonymous Lawyer, which I'll mention more below, and his jerky writing style is rubbing off on me today. Just wait until the day that I'm reading Pride and Prejudice or something.)

i.e. having to pay for your own food/furniture/rent (we don't pay for hydro, heat, or hot water, and I already paid for my own clothes, transportation, entertainment, etc., so those are the same)

i.e. having to negotiate four family Christmases (which we've now done. We're doing one on the 16th, our own Christmas Eve & morning here at the apartment, present opening with the hubby's family in the afternoon of the 25th, and dinner at my parents' on Christmas Day with my mum's side, and Boxing Day with my dad's side. Only problem now is getting from Bloor & Jane to Mississauga on the 25th without a car, on a holiday transit schedule, without having to go all the way back to Union to get on the GOBus.)

However, there are also a lot of good things about living sans parents, and I really am appreciative of them, rather than just sounding whiny:

i.e. having our own Christmas tree & Christmas celebrations for the first time ever. We really are our own little family now (yes, I know, gag, but get over it.)

i.e. not having to have a car. Not that I don't like driving, but cars are wasteful and expensive, and I'd much rather spend my time happily reading on the bus, rather than swearing at idiot drivers

i.e. being able to decorate however I want. Love my mother, and I love her house, but her taste is not always my taste, and I'm happy to be able to do what I want. Like have anything blue in the house.

i.e. doing chores when I want to, not when Mom wants them done (which was normally Sunday morning, just when I was ready to settle down and read in my p.j.s until noon. Which is exactly what I'm planning on doing today.)

I'm sure there are lots more on both sides of the argument, but I'm too lazy to think of them right now. The pro side definitely wins, though. And it will kick the con sides' ass when a) we buy a house, b) I train the hubby not to leave food out (he was supposed to clean the kitchen, and in my world, that's an included task. Am I wrong?), c) we figure out some efficient Christmas system, which is all made the more complicated by the fact that Mom's birthday is Christmas Day. I'd love to do the rotating system, but that just seems cruel. She already gets ripped off enough, having to share her birthday with Jesus, and d) well, rent is always going to be expensive, so that's never going to change.

As for work, etc., I am still doing three people's jobs, and it's going okay, but I'm definitely still reorienting myself. I'm taking a lieu day on Monday to finish Christmas shopping and get my head in order, so that will help, and I'm definitely going to strategize about how to get a raise out of this. I'm now doing three salary's worth of work for one salary, so they can certainly afford it. Christmas shopping is nearly done; just have to finish the hubby and Hayley, and I'm set. UofT's doctoral applications are due on the 15th, and I've just got a last couple of documents to polish up and send over, and that's that. I'm feeling quite efficient overall, actually. And now it's time for more of Anonymous Lawyer, a book of snarky fake blog posts supposed to be by a hiring partner at a major U.S. law firm (really by a snarky Harvard law graduate), and our Sunday morning tradition of bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon. Oh, the life.