@ Home in the World

Summertime and the living is

A bit more difficult for working moms.

School ended two weeks ago the way it began - with two useless half days on a Wednesday and Thursday. Of course that means that Friday there was no school. Piper used a vacation day to cover the Wednesday half day and I swapped my work at home day for the Thursday and took the Friday off.

I really enjoy being there for the last day of school. All the parents and the students in the lower grades hang around to "cheer on" the fifth graders leaving the building for the last time. The school buses are decorated in balloons and streamers and the drivers honk their horns as they pull out. This year I noticed that they put kazoos and other noise makers on every seat and that the kids were contributing to the cacophony on the way out. God bless 'em!

My neighbor and I have a tradition of our own of taking the kids out to lunch on the last day. This year she insisted that we bring two other women along and they insisted that instead of going to Friendly's like we always do, we should go somewhere that served Margaritas. I can't remember the last time I had a drink at lunch time. Maybe never.

Now these two other women have boys in Pumpkin's class, but they also have either older children who can watch the younger ones or husbands who work alternate shifts (a cop, for instance), so even though this idea started out as a kickoff celebration for the kids, the only one that actually brought her kids was me. Add to that I was technically still on the clock at work, so I did not have as many margaritas (1) or as much fun as the other women did. But I could drive home, which proved to be important.

I spent the entire time thinking someone from work might be trying to get in touch with me - just my luck. Hardly anyone ever calls me unless there's an immediate deadline, so I don't know what I was so worried about. I wound up taking a couple of hours out of my Friday vacation day to make up the time I missed as lunch hour turned into three hours. I'm good like that.

Tigger has spent the following weeks at a nearby camp that he loves. I thought about sending Pumpkin to the same place, but ultimately felt that teenagers could not handle the wigged-out nuttiness that is my younger son when he is overtired and overstimulated. Also, a 5-year old drowned in a camp pool in this state last year and that news went straight to the deep, dark place in my heart usually reserved for paranoia about my own health.

Now, why don't I have those same fears for Tigger? The pool is the one place that he has almost always behaved himself. And he's an awesome swimmer. But yeah, I feel guilty about it.

In the meantime, the woman who so bravely babysat for my kids after school has left us.  It was only a matter of time. She has three kids of her own and after years of saying they were going to move to our town, they have pretty much decided to stay put in this housing market. It's not the end of the world. She was fabulous, her kids were around my kids' ages, but she was also doing double duty as a taxi service for my neighbor's kids who decided that it was okay to come hang out at my house when they were done with their homework. I'm more than happy to have to put an end to that practice. Not that they're not nice kids, but there were just too many people in my house when I wasn't there and inevitably the place was trashed when I got home E V E R Y  N I G H T.

P's former pre-school teacher will be taking over, but she can't start right away. So Piper and I have been juggling our schedules to try to make it work. I realize now that we are never going to have a proper vacation this year. Maybe not next year either. The number of days that Piper and I are actually home together with the boys is going to be pretty limited as well.

I wonder if this is the curse of working parenthood, or maybe just parenthood in general - that we never get the chance to feel settled. And then some days, I suppose we feel too settled.

Some days I hardly recognize that this is my life. And then yesterday a co-worker announced that she was pregnant, due in December. For the first time ever, I was irrationally excited for her.

Slappy Shoes!

Who ever said it was okay to wear flip flops in the office?

That has to be the most annoying sound to listen to in your cube. Especially when they walk by your cubical at a high rate of speed. A lot.

Slap, slap, slap, slap.......

Steam Pipe

As I've mentioned, I've been heads down in a project at work. A couple of times in the last week or so, my manager has asked me "how's your stress level?"  The first time I heard it, I think my jaw dropped because no one has ever, ever asked me such a thing before.

Long, long ago, just after I had taken a job as the assistant to a woman who then went on early maternity leave and never came back (so I was doing my job and large parts of hers' for the better part of a year), someone commented on how calm I seemed. This was during conference season when many of my colleagues were running around in small circles trying to have everything just right for the major annual conference of our industry. I chalked this up to not quite having as much at stake as the rest of my co-workers (after all my manager's job was not really mine, nor would it ever be), but it also gave me a bit of insight into how I came off to people.  Did people really not know that I was a raging drama queen?

My husband surely did. I would come home and rant and rave about work stuff that, in the grand scheme of the universe, was really pretty meaningless. At home, I fluctuated between relishing the victimhood of the position I was in and despairing of ever doing "great things" in my career. At work I approached the whole thing philosophically - "when this is over, it will have been a valuable experience."

There's a scene in the movie Broadcast News, several actually, where Holly Hunter's character is sitting by herself crying inconsolably and inexplicably. The way the movie is edited, the scenes seem to come out of nowhere and aren't connected to anything. Finished with her crying jag, she picks herself up each time and moves into the next scene like nothing is bothering her. My boyfriend at the time was confounded enough by those scenes to actually ask about it, but I got it right away. I've been there. It's taking pressure off a steam pipe. I'm there now.

This is the biggest project I've ever worked on. This is the biggest project that my department has ever worked on. I've never seen so many pieces and parts of a thing and so many chefs in the kitchen. And, as often happens toward the end of a project, I am not entirely happy about the finished product. I start kicking myself that it would have been so much better if I had only done _________________(fill in the blank), but it's too late now.

On top of that, some of the volunteer work I have been doing around town has gotten unnecessarily contentious. Normally, I love a good fight, but the timing here couldn't be worse.

And it's school vacation week. Never schedule a deadline for week of your school vacation. Even with babysitters lined up, something is bound to go wrong.

All right! Enough with the whining (whinging, as the British say, sounds much better)! I will get through this. Of course I will. And when it is done it will have been a valuable experience. But right now, I just want to cry.

I need a day...

The major project I have been working on pretty much since I started my new job is coming to completion at the end of this month. I have been pretty much heads down on it for weeks. When it is done I feel like I need a serious day off to do as much of the following as possible.

Get a haircut - I'm getting to the point where I need a serious change.

Go to the eye doctor/replace my eyeglasses - My current glasses are five years old and are so scratched that it's like they have a film over the lenses.

Go to the chiropractor - What does it say that I can't find the time for what is essentially a 10 minute appointment?

Find a new massage therapist.

Make some changes to my blog and The Soccer Mom Vote.

But who am I kidding? I can't take a whole day off, any vacation time has to be spent with my kids. As it is, while my neighbors are heading off to Hawaii, I'm begging the boys' grandparents to spend part of the week with them next week so I don't have to take off their school vacation week while I finish this project. This kills me. I have three weeks to ration throughout the year. I'm trying to reserve some for the summer and the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's enough to make me consider supporting a longer school year. God knows we Americans won't be getting any more vacation time in my lifetime.

On a slightly more less serious note: I never thought I'd say this, but I'm considering a makeover. I had to be videotaped for a project I'm involved in around town and when I saw the playback, well.... Man, I'm old!

The last time I saw myself on camera I was 35, and all I can say is that motherhood has the intervening years have taken their toll. I've never been the most put-together looking soul, but now I look even more tired, pale, and puffy.

I'm sure the pale, pink, shirt I was wearing didn't help. I may have an affinity for that color, but it does not have one for me. Must. Resist. Pale. Pink.  Of course, it jumps out at me every time it's in style. Every spring I get sucked in by some variation of it.

The Fairy Blogtherapist speculates that my attraction to prim, ladylike, colors and styles is a subconscious attempt to camouflage the loud, forthright, and decidely tomboyish aspects of my personality. The bolder, deeper, colors are more representative of the true me and I should stop trying to pretend otherwise. 

Anyway, I'm thinking that when this project is done, I need to find a spa or a salon and get a full workup. A colleague of mine is recommending the Aveda salon she goes to in Harvard Square, which means I'd have to do this on a long lunch.

Hmmm. Am I going to have time for this?

MAINT REQD

On the dashboard of my brand new car, there is a light that now lights up reading MAINT REQD. Since I neither live nor work anywhere near the dealership I haven’t been in to see what it’s about. Besides, I think I know. It’s looking for an oil change. Yes, that’s right, in that few months that I have owned this car, I have driven over 3000 miles. Yes, I have the commute from hell. Yes, the price of gas is killing me.

So with that little lamp staring me in the face as I commute, I start to think that its message might also apply to me.

I’ve been back working full-time for three months now, the novelty has worn off and I’m starting to settle into a routine. It’s not however, the healthiest of routines. For starters, I’m not getting enough exercise. In my previous years of working in Boston, I spent most of my lunch hours walking around the city. For most of those years I was either in Copley Square or two blocks from the Public Garden so there were plenty of places to walk (and shop) on my lunch break. Here the office is far enough from the major square to be inconvenient. We have a cafeteria in the building, but it’s mostly reheated processed foods and a salad bar, which, much as I actually like vegetables, doesn’t appeal to me at all.

So the absence of these two healthy elements in my life is starting to bug me, Of course, I can also feel it in my waistline, which I was not ever conscious of until I lost 20 pounds while at home with my kids and had to buy a bunch of new clothes.

I need to figure out how to make this better, but I’m not sure how. I know some people who would immediately say “just get up an hour earlier and exercise/make your lunch/clean your kitchen.”  Pardon me while I laugh. It’s been three months and I still haven’t quite reconciled getting up at 5:45 AM with my night person body clock. So the obvious thing would be prepare all this stuff at night. Of course, after the kids go to bed, I’m often too exhausted to move, so keeping up with things like laundry and making lunches are often beyond me.

Add to that – my house is a mess. Actually that’s improving, but really hard to keep up with a hyped-out Pumpkin on the loose. He’s “decorating” the house as I write this. All those kids in my house when I’m not there is not helping. It doesn’t get much better when I am there.

And there’s just too much stuff. There’s too much stuff in the house, too much stuff on my plate, too much stuff going on.

I’m sure that it sounds like I’m complaining. I’m not, exactly. This is just what is. I have to figure out how to deal with it. It’s a bit like trying to handle the reins on a runaway horse. That’s without the benefit of any equestrian experience.

I don’t really make resolutions anymore but my goal this year is to restore establish some kind of order on our lives. I was under the illusion that somehow when we had kids, the house would run like clockwork; like the house of my SIL with the four kids. I have two, and clearly, my clock is broken.

So I don’t feel like I can say “get organized” as a resolution or a goal, because that would be a laugh. I’m 41 years old, that ship has sailed. Instead we need to fix a number of things that aren’t working for us – like the fact that we still have no shed in the back yard and therefore no place to put those new bikes that will be coming for spring birthdays (sshh!!). Or maybe, the fact that we have been in this house a year and I still don’t have an office space. I’m typing this at the dining room table, my “office” having been consumed by the extra TV and an exercise bike.

Have Job. Will Travel.

I have to be one of the few people who enjoys traveling for work. It may have to do with not going on any of those trips that so many of my classmates went on - the language class related trip to France or Spain in High School, the semester abroad in college. Nope. Instead I gave up my 10-year reunion to go on my first business trip - to a conference in Atlanta. I had fun, and my classmates tell me I didn't miss much more than fat ex-football players. That was the beginning of more than a year of trips to strange places I'd never been - Mobile, Alabama, Dallas, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, Akron, Ohio, and others. My mother, even more of an East Coast snob than I am, called it my white trash tour, but I had a lot of great experiences and a lot of great stories. Did you know that Mobile claims the first Mardi Gras, that there is a gay neighborhood in Dallas? Kentucky was the most beautiful state I've seen short of Alaska and Hawaii. And you can go straight for a long time in Ohio. That's about all I have to say about that.

Not that I was any kind of road warrior. The one time that I had two trips on either end of a week, the mere sight of the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant as we were landing at Logan airport brought tears to my eyes. Apparently, there's no place like home.

Now that I am working again, it looks like I will be traveling again soon. We are talking about trips to Denver (been there, that's a good story), Orlando, and well, a conference in Las Vegas. Yep, that's right, Vegas, baby.

Now I could live my whole life without going to Vegas and not feel that I have missed anything. It's just not my thing. I've never even been to Foxwoods in all these years, because I couldn't stomach the idea of pissing away money one quarter at a time, and I'm loathe to watch seniors gambling away their Social Security Checks.

So yeah, the conference is in Vegas, in the Flamingo Hotel, of all places (apparently this is Bugsy Siegal's original hotel). Now I'm always entertained by a little retro kitch, but, uhm, eww, white patent leather?  Really, I'm surprised there's no mirror on the ceiling.

One of my coworkers is trying to find a way to go with me, and that would be more fun. What's the use of going all the way to Vegas if there is no one to listen to my rambling snark. Yes, I know that's partly what the blog is for, but really. Anyway, she's all excited about the prospect of going to some of the restaurants. Having seen this more than a couple of times (yeah, sorry, all kitch and no food, but trust me, there was some, and apparently it was good), I'm thinking that she might have to make a case to our manager. Not that such stuff would be within expense report limits. But, oh, crap, what would I wear?

One Step Forward, One Step Back

It's a good day when the phone doesn't ring.

When I return to my desk and there are no messages on my cell phone, I breathe a sigh of relief. I've been here three weeks and already I've gotten....

This is __________ Elementary School, I know it's 15 minutes before school gets out, but your (younger) son has a fever and someone needs to pick him up and take him home (I got that message 20 minutes later, they sent him home on the bus).

This is __________ Elementary School, your (younger) son is having trouble staying awake, is there anyone who can take him home for a nap for a little while? (Uh, no.)

This is __________ Elementary School, your (older) son missed the bus, someone needs to come pick him up (The babysitter came and got him).

This is __________ Elementary School, your (younger) son is not behaving on the bus. We need to have a little talk (Uh, yeah, we need to have a loooong talk about Pumpkin).

It's gotten so that I dread seeing that number pop up on the screen. This is the tough part about working. I'm an hour away from home. It's a brand new job. I just can't take off, and without family in the area, it is very hard to secure backup.

In a couple of months, I will be able to work at home more and I will be more available to the school and the kids. Because this is a permanent job rather than a contract position, I have less immediate flexibility, but more time to build up credibility as a reliable employee. I may be all over the place, but the work gets done. The good news is that there are also a number of women here who are in higher positions and they are also parents. I can remember working in publishing 10 years ago where all the high-level women were divorced.

On Monday afternoon, the phone rang and the school's number was on the screen. It was Pumpkin's teacher. She just wanted to call and tell me that Pumpkin had had a fabulous day at school and she wanted to let me know. She didn't want all the calls I got to be negative. Bless her, she's wonderful.

At home Monday night, the phone rang, and the school's number came up (yes people, teachers work longer hours than your kid is in school). This time it was Tigger's teacher (also wonderful). He'd had a really tough day and was there something going on at home?

Sigh. The pattern continues. This happens with Tigger every year after the novelty wears off. We'll work through it.

There's Nothing Like Starting Out with a Bang

This morning on my way to my third day at the new job, I was in a four-car accident on the highway. Fortunately, we weren't going all that fast and no one was hurt. Nobody's airbags even went off. My car might be totaled. It might not. I can't tell which one would be worse.

On the one hand, as much as I loved the Subaru, It really wasn't working for us. I bought it as a commuting car, but it is also the primary car for me and the kids. When I bought the thing I envisioned happy and cozy road trips to New Hampshire and Maine, a Thule capsule clamped to the roof. I completely spaced that Tigger is utterly incapable of keeping his hands to himself. And on those rare occasions when his hands are on his lap and his feet are in front of him, his mouth is going with little words or noises designed specifically to torment the Pumpkin until he is thrashing in his carseat with hands and feet flying. This happens any time we are in the car for more than ten minutes. There's not enough space between them, we are in desparate need of a third-row seat. I keep thinking they are going to cause me to get in an accident.

They are not to blame in this one. I was alone in the car, no talking on the phone, no putting on makeup, or playing with the radio. The two cars in front of me stopped short, I swerved to avoid them, but was rear-ended myself. When all the crashing and banging stopped, I called the police, my husband, and my brand. new. boss.

Of course, everyone was very understanding, but man, how embarrassing! 

I still managed to get towed, get a rental (an even smaller Subaru), and get into the office by 10. I was thinking that getting rear-ended had aggravated my usual hip and shoulder strain (back problems run in my family), but I'm fine now. I noticed driving home that I'm a bit jittery on the road, and that worries me more than anything.

Something that makes me look less-than-reliable always happens when I start a new job. Also, on this, my first week of work, my younger son has come down with a fever and cannot go to school tomorrow. Thankfully, Piper has saved up copious amounts of vacation time for just such an occasion and he will be taking Pumpkin to the doctor tomorrow.

I'm trying not to beat myself up over this, but it's hard. I work at leaving that Dilbert DOOM cloud behind, but it found me this week. It's up there raining "can you handle this? can you handle this? can you handle this?" all over my parade. Nah, what it's really telling me is that I have no right to be so damn happy about this job. 

I am really, really pissed that I feel guilty about working already. I like this job, I may even love it.  I waited a long time for it and I feel for the first time as if I'm at the level I'm supposed to be. I'm pissed at society for saying that I'm supposed to sacrifice all that; that I'm only supposed to work if I "have to;" that enjoying my work and wanting to live in something bigger than a six room Cape is "selfish."

Shut up, already! 

This is not how I wanted to end my 40th year, which, overall, has been a pretty good one. Tomorrow (Thursday) is my 41st birthday. I probably won't post, because with any luck, I'll be shopping for a new car.   

Dawn

I used to fantasize about this day each year before the start of school. The last weeks of August would find me looking ahead to that first day of waking in the grey light of morning, listening to the cry of the seagulls mourning the end of summer.  There would be a chill in the air as I rose to dress, but not enough to close the window, to shut out the salt air and the sound of the waves.

Downstairs, I'd suffer through whatever breakfast was being offered while listening to the ringing of the halyards against aluminum masts in the harbor. As September progressed, there would be fewer boats out there rocking and ringing, until they were all gone, wintering over in some marina, or sailed to Florida with the migrating birds.

Shouldering my backpack filled with new notebooks and pens, I would head for the bus, on time and calm, instead of the usual running and struggling. And all the while I'd be thinking, "Maybe this will be the year..."

Of course, back then it was all about finally having a boyfriend, or seriously getting my act together with my schoolwork, or finding a way to break free from the overprotective cage I lived in throughout high school and really start having a life. None of those things ever really happened, and in the 20 years since, I have come to understand more about why (Hint: they are all related). And though those years were full of disappointment and adolescent, end-of-the-world drama, there's not much I would change.  Every year at the end of August, I still look forward to the crisp newness of September. I still dream about the possibilities.

This year, those possibilities are wrapped up in a new job. I start today.

It's telling that once the agonizing about boyfriends was resolved, the haphazard journal entries of my late 20s and early 30s were consumed with the uncertainty of my so-called career, searching for a satisfactory definition of life's work, agonizing over job jumps that didn't work out well. Though most of my jobs have been good ones with good experiences and good people, some of them have been real disasters.

Having children has necessarily changed my ideas about life's work, but so has travel and now writing.

But I still seek what is possible.

T minus 6

The countdown has begun in earnest. Next Monday, I will wake before my kids, hop in the shower right away and don business clothes. If I'm lucky, I will have time to make a travel mug of tea, and grab something portable to eat. If not, I will try out the coffee shop between the parking garage and the office after at least an hour commute. The earlier I leave, the shorter the drive time. 

This is a novel idea now, but soon it will become routine. Hair left to air dry in the car ride down, no matter what the weather, minimal makeup applied on that last stretch of Route 1, at a standstill at the merge. NPR for company.

For the first time in four years, I will be going into an office, regularly. Every day, five days a week until I've been there long enough for my new employers to make flextime arrangements with me. I'm excited, I love working, I love being part of a team, but I'm nervous, because I have been out of the game for so long.

It's the big things - like the babysitter situation, and the little things like the propect of shoving my normally Teva-clad feet into real shoes every day that I think about when I contemplate how this is going to change us.

When Tigger came home and unexpected factors led me to not return after my maternity leave, I told myself I would take a year off and figure out what I wanted to do next. Well, one child turned into two and one year turned into four and though I've explored a few other things, I've returned to doing pretty much what I was doing when I put my career on hold. There will be more interesting projects and more responsibility, but the career has not changed.

Who knows what will happen, but at the moment, I am thinking of this as my last full-time job. I'd like to be there for a while, do well, get promoted, and reacquire that level of expertise I had at my last job (the technology's moved on since then), but whenever I leave there, whether it be in five years or ten, I want to do something else - teach, write, travel - combination of both.

I'm pretty sure I made the right decision here, now we have to make it work.