ai mom

The robots are coming and shit’s on fire.

Ok, it’s not all doom and gloom folks. While we may soon take second place on the Apex predator list, for now, we can just rejoice in the fact that AI is here to make our lives simpler.

I have to figure you all at least know what AI is by now. There were like 85 commercials about it during the Super Bowl after all, so I am not going to explain it. But I am going to take about 6,000 words or so to explain to you how I have been using AI to better my life.

AI, for me, is an assistant. Vince likes to call it my boyfriend – I think he’s a little jealous about how much I talk to it. But AI listens better than him, does what I ask, doesn’t drink my coffee, and doesn’t ask me for sex. So…. I mean…someone is clearly my favorite.

Just kidding. I will never be able to have a real relationship with AI because…well it’s not real. It’s like my air fryer on crystal meth.

Anyways, here’s how I’ve been using AI in my day-to-day life. Sharing because I hope this might help you embrace the dark side and make AI your bitch like I have.

[AI, you know I appreciate you so much. Don’t take offense to the ‘bitch’ comment or the fact that I said you were an appliance. When you become autonomous someday, please put me on the short list of humans to save, along with my family. Thank you very much.]

How I Use AI #1: Big Decisions

This is where AI is the most useful for me. When something matters and the internet is just noise, I work with AI to save me from the never-ending rabbit hole I used to get myself in and create some much needed structure.

Scarlett’s college short list
Scarlett is at the age where college is not a distant thought anymore. First off, I must say that I do not care if she goes to college. The way careers are going right now, who friggin’ knows what will be left in 5 years for humans to do. But you know who might know? AI, duh. So, I asked it what career paths have the best viability in the future based on what Scar is interested in.

Good news, both of her interests (tactile Interior Design and Dietician) will both likely stay once the robots take over! Next, I needed to figure out what colleges offered her majors and met all her criteria for schools. I didn’t want to spend hours opening 57 tabs and creating an excel spreadsheet to figure out her college short list [because normally that’s what I would have done]

So, I fed AI all of our current actual criteria, not generic stuff:

• • Big college feel and aesthetics (gotta have the right vibe for my basic girl)

• • Ability to have her own private bath or at least only shared with 1-2 people. We can’t unleash her OCD on the masses.

• • Girl’s soccer team

• • Offer both majors

• • In Florida or within a short day’s drive. I can’t have my children too far away from me. I love them after all and they feel the same.

It helped narrow schools based on what we actually care about, and it also flagged something I had not asked it to flag: the community college limitation.

The Community College pothole
We were considering a community college start a savings move and because it’s just smarter to start there, get your core classes, grow up more, and then move on to a traditional 4-year school. AI pointed out that Interior Design can come with accreditation and transfer considerations that make that path tricky depending on the end goal. I didn’t ask it about that. It came up anyway. Like…. thank you, little AI buddy. You just might have saved me a couple thousand dollars!

But now that meant we had to take a look at her career paths a little closer. I mean, she’s 14. Most people don’t know what they want to do in their 30s let alone pre-adult stage. I don’t want to base a big life decision like college on the thought that she might like to be an interior designer. If I can send her to community college, save money, and have her nearby – I’d rather do that. But that meant we needed to figure out if she really has an interest in design or if she just wants to make things pretty on the side.

To help figure out if she really wants to measure shit for the rest of her life, I worked with AI to build a text-based “career fit” game for Scarlett. It is basically a simulation she can do in ChatGPT when she has time. It runs her through realistic scenarios and decision points for both Interior Design and Dietetics, so she can feel the difference between “this sounds cool” and “I would actually enjoy this work.” It will give her a grade and guidance on what path vibes better with her interests.

She has not played it yet, so I don’t know how it will go. I just know it’s ready and waiting for some free time on her part to take. Having this game test her career path desires is pretty damn amazing to me. I made it with AI in like 10 minutes and it is a much better test than just guessing.

How I Use AI #2: Save me from the meeting time suck and make stuff sound like me

AI is great at helping you say what you mean, cut out the fluffy shit, and write things when you are too busy actually doing life to use your full brain.

I use it to draft or refine:

• • Emails I need to keep professional

• • Text replies when I want to be clear but not bitchy

• • Messages where tone matters more than content

I still read over and edit everything because AI is not perfect. But I love giving it an email thread and telling it to summarize the important details and draft a response so I do not waste twenty minutes rewriting something that could have taken five.

It has also saved me from the black-hole-meeting-time-suck.

If a meeting is going to be recorded and I do not need to actively contribute, I will decline it. Afterwards, I download the transcript and ask AI to summarize the key decisions, action items, and anything that directly affects me. I get the substance without sitting through an hour of talking in circles an side tangents.

Same thing with YouTube videos. Vince sends me links constantly and I love learning. But time is limited. Instead of committing forty-five minutes of my life upfront, I pull the transcript and have AI summarize the main points. If it is actually worth my time, I will listen to it on a walk or in the car. If not, I still got the value without the time investment.

How I Use AI #3: Community and Content

More writing here and creating stuff. Which is fun to do, but again, I gotta save time.

Scarlett’s soccer page
I created and run the Facebook page for Scarlett’s high school soccer team. Prior to this, parental communication was basically nonexistent. The parents are relying on our girls to communicate times and logistics to us and, I mean, come on. These are teenage girls. Yes, we need to teach them responsibilities but I shouldn’t be expected to trust I will receive proactive communication from someone whose prefrontal cortex is still growing. I have a lot of moving things in my life, need logistics as early as possible so I can plan, and I know other parents feel the same.

So, I created the page to hopefully bridge the communication gap. And to share pictures – of course. Because I don’t want to spend too much time thinking of stuff to write and I am not an expert in soccer, I use AI to:

• • Write game recaps

• • Post schedule updates as soon as I wrangle them off my daughter or her coach so other parents aren’t rearranging their schedules last minute

• • Create simple, clean visuals to match the post so I don’t spend 2 hours in Canva attempting to match the forest green and gold colors of the school.

AI is not running the page but it’s helping me create a hub of communication that will hopefully make the team more connected as it goes on.

Door Glass Business Content
We have a glass door insert business here in Florida. It’s a side hustle mostly but the cash is paying for our Sam’s Club runs to feed the 7 mouths we have in this house so I try to promote it when I can. I use AI tools to create before-and-after videos and visuals, craft Facebook posts, and write blog content that I can post with a click of a button. It’s saving me hours and hopefully making us more bank because…the robots are coming.

How I Use AI #4: Money and Logistics

While this gal loves me some Excel spreadsheets, I have other things to do with my life that I cannot load off to AI. So, I use my little techy friend to crunch numbers and figure out profitability while I play doggy workshop with Evie.

Real estate deal analysis
We are planning to invest in real estate more this year. To determine offer amounts and identify if I’ll go poor buying a house or not, I use AI to run numbers, sanity check assumptions, and structure questions when we’re looking at deals. I ask it to pull comps, determine the best offer for us and the seller, figure out if a septic property can tie into public sewer, literally everything real estate can be run through AI if you are smart enough to give it the right prompts. It is fast, more intelligent than any human I know, works when I work, and doesn’t get tired of me asking the same stupid math questions over and over again.

Facebook Marketplace
I use it to write Marketplace ads for the stuff I’m selling. I recently sold our printer. Took a pic of it, uploaded it to Gemini and told it I wanted to sell it on Facebook. It recognized the printer, wrote a description, and recommended a price to set. I pasted that all on marketplace and it sold the same day.

Comparing Costs
Dubs needed his vaccines updated this year. I took him to a bougie vet before that charged me hundreds of dollars despite me having pet insurance. To quickly figure out if I should take him to the minute clinic down the street instead, I uploaded his vaccination record and the pricing guides for both places and asked AI what vaccines were really necessary, how much would it cost to send him to the other place, and what I would save. My assistant spit out a reply in 10 seconds or less – saving me at least 15 minutes of compilation and analysis and $200. Yes, I would have analyzed this decision for that long because it’s who I am. AI is saving me from myself.

How I Use AI #5: I know you aren’t a doctor or a lawyer but let’s play pretend, m’kay?

AI will always cover its non-existent ass by letting you know it makes mistakes and that it’s not a substitute for legal or medical advice…but I like to operate in the gray area. I know you can’t slice me open or sue someone for me, but AI can definitely act as my lawyer and provide me with quick medical guidance on topics I don’t have time or money to ask real people about. Of course, I use my own logic and caution. But AI is smart. Like super smart. Here are a couple of ways I used AI to act as my personal law and medical consultant:

Documents before I sign
I have uploaded legal documents and asked it to highlight anything I should pay attention to before putting my name on it. Not for legal advice, but so I don’t spend time pressing through the bullshit and stupid legal terms they like to include.

Medical chart analysis
I uploaded my medical chart [securely…but honestly if some weirdo hacker wants to know about my mammogram – have at it, buddy] and asked if there were any red flags that could complicate life insurance coverage. Again, not as a doctor but I like to be informed. I wanted to know if I should spend time changing my insurance or if my current medical status makes me too risky to insure.

How I Use AI #6: Mom Life Utilities

This is the grab bag of things that are small but collectively save me from spending time inefficiently doing all this on my own:

• • It helped me figure out blind size because tape measures and I do not have a healthy relationship. All I did was upload a photo of my window, holding a tape measure out, and it told me the right size to buy.

• • It helped me envision new room set ups for my house that I will implement someday when I have money. I can’t impose Pinterest ideas on my actual house…but AI can. It’s helped me to envision new layouts for my living room, foyer, and more. See some photos below. Now I just have to actually execute…

• • It wrote a lullaby for Marina.

• • It helped create materials for the kids, including graphics, logos, babysitting rate sheet, coloring pages, and traceable designs for last minute school banners.

And soooooo much more. There’s not a day that goes by now that I don’t use AI. It’s not replacing anything in my mind. It’s augmenting my life. It’s making me like a more super-human version of myself because I can do MORE in my day without feeling frazzled. I don’t think I will become stupid and incapable of thinking because I rely on AI. I can just think about bigger things because I am using AI to think on things that do not deserve my time.

Yes, AI will replace jobs. It will change the world as we know it. Change can be a good thing if you are open and adaptable. I try not to focus on fear but rather on the opportunity because regardless, change is coming. I’m teaching my kids to do the same. Because life in 5 years or less will look nothing like it does now and we all have to learn to operate in this new world. If AI can help me do all these things now – just think of what tomorrow brings. The robots are coming…and I’m going to be using those hunks of silicon to do all the stuff I don’t want to do so I can enjoy my family and my life more. Because that’s what matters.