Prior to going on vacation, I saw a deal for some HexClad cookware while I was at Costco. As the person who does the vast majority of the cooking in my household, HC stuff has been interesting to me, and I admit that there’s a bit of bait that I bit as far as its immense target marketing that they tend to do, but all the same, I am interested in the product, but the ridiculous price points on their products always kept me away.
But Costco was selling something like a seven-piece set, which would have allowed me to replace my existing pan set, as well as give me a wok, something that I’ve felt might make some of my cooking life easy at times, and it was for a fairly reasonable $379 or around that. I found the price to be appealing, but seeing as how I was about to go on a vacation with the family, I felt that I should hold off and see how much damage we would do before dropping $400 bones on something that I didn’t technically need.
After the trip, sure, we did some damage and naturally spent more than I would have hoped to have spent, but I still wanted the pans. If they worked as advertised, I felt that there was a lot of potential to be had, and might make me more enthusiastic about cooking in the future. I knew that the promotion was going to go until 6/23, so I figured I had a little bit of time to pull the trigger, and the reality is that the biggest challenge about ending a vacation for kids, is the adaptation back to the daily routine, which proved to be a little challenging, seeing as how the kids spent five straight nights in five different beds, watched a ton of television on the iPad on the long car hauls, and were a little bit rowdy once they were expected to fall back to the normal daily routine.
I finally was able to get to Costco, on June 23rd, and lo and behold, the HexClad endcap was gone without a trace, and it turns out that when they said until 6/23, it really meant that 6/22 was the final day in which the deal was live.
I had missed out on something that I had wanted, because I’d put something for me at the back of the line in order to be a parent first, and a member of the team, and prioritize vacation expenses over something for myself.
Another thing that has held my interest for a while now, in light of me always looking for ways to optimize my physical status, is a MaxiClimber cardio machine. Yes, like the HexClad pans, they do seem a little bit gimmicky, but I like the science behind it. I’m not swayed by LeBron James, Lady Gaga or any Kardashians that back it, but the science behind the machine is interesting, and it’s definitely I’d love to try before committing to it, but I don’t know of any gyms that have these not to mention I barely like working out among people at my tiny work gym much less seeking one of these out.
I got some targeted ad about how they’re on overstock from the company themselves, and that they’re selling for $149. I’ve definitely dropped $149+ on things less productive than a piece of exercise equipment, and frankly $149 is probably cheaper than some of the family meals I had to cover while on vacation. Needless to say, I was very interested in pulling the trigger, but then there was one question that stood in the way: where would I put this thing?
The sunroom, where my treadmill is, is too full of all of my wife’s things to be able to support another piece of equipement, despite it being the most logical place for it to go. There’s no room in the family room because it’s been completely taken over by the kids’ toys, books and other belongings. The dining room we don’t use is also overflowing with tons of shit that I wish we could make disappear, and the only place where something like a MaxiClimber could possibly finagle its way into is the garage, except for the fact that it’s the middle of a Georgia summer and every single day is 95F+.
So that means no-go on the MaxiClimber too, because there’s simply no space in my house to support it.
And this is where a lot of my general daily frustrations lie, in the fact that I have basically sacrificed everything, to the point where I can’t seemingly ever get anything for myself, regardless of if it’s attainable or not.
There’s no space in my own fucking house for anything I’d want, I’ve given up my office so that we can have our live-in au pair, but it comes at the expense of having nowhere in my own home for me to shut a door and be completely alone, and all of my personal belongings that bring me happiness are all stored in boxes and crates in the garage or a closet.
I barely have my own car, since it’s the most optimal for child taxi-ing, and much like my house, I’m paying a monthly note on something where I’m apparently the lowest user, and am typically using the third car of the household which is fine in its own right, but it’s still not my car.
And of course, there’s never any time for me to capitalize on things for myself, and I find myself in a position where I always feel like I’m being taken for granted by everyone in my life, and that I’m always last in line.
“But practice self-care,” faceless people on the internet love to preach; let me say something about that, self-care is entitlement, self-care is privilege – self-care if bullshit. People recommending to others to practice self-care probably don’t have young kids, or they simply have more support than I do.
The amount of randomly targeted algorithm content that is spoon fed to me that seem to be made from random burnt-out moms on the internet that I see, I find myself being able to relate to a staggering amount of them. A lot of frustrations will organically quell as my kids get older, and I don’t have to always worry about them running off, and I’ll feel like I’ll have more freedom to do things with them outside the house, but that involves waiting, and like some random stranger said on the internet, if you’re always waiting for some condition, you’ll just find more future conditions waiting for you when you check off current ones.
I’d like to live more of life now in the present, but as the way things are, such a simple sounding want doesn’t come very easy. So I guess all I can continue to do is just dream and fantasize of being rich to where I could live out hypothetical realities where I could have things such as time and space for myself every now and then, because those things don’t really exist in my reality, as sad as it sounds.
