How To Spend A Day Without Your Child

1. New haircut
2. Ice cream lunch outside
3. Bookstore browsing
4. Wax
5. Reading in the sun in Copley Square
6. Shoe shopping
7. Grocery shopping (okay, that always sucks, but it is much more enjoyable sans child)
8. Finding out I passed my glucose test

Good times, good times.

Ah, St. Patrick's Day

And the drunks are already out in full green regalia. I am a little bit jealous.

My Rob Gordon Dream Jobs

You know that scene in High Fidelity where Rob's girlfriend discovers his list of Top Five Dream Jobs? That one spoke to me more than any of his other lists in the movie because I can definitely relate to having dream jobs that would require either a trust fund, learning some new skills entirely and/or would require a time machine.

Rob's Five Dream Jobs
NME journalist, 1976-1979
Producer, Atlantic Records, 1964-1971
Musician (any kind except for rap or classical)
Film director (any kind except for German or silent)
Architect (eventually changed to owner of a record store)

Ten Things I Have Often Thought I Might Want To Do or Wish I Did:
1. Be a member of Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (G.L.O.W.), 1986-89
2. Radio personality on the "Lite at Night" just so I could say things like, "This one goes out to a special person working the night shift in Secaucus from Lady in Red in Weehawken. You know who you are. You're the meaning in MY life. You're the inspiration."
3. The person that whispers "Do it" in the background on Van McCoy's The Hustle, 1970s
4. Mike Nesmith's girlfriend on an episode of The Monkees, 1960s
5. Standup comedian
6. Lead guitar player (anything but country)
7. Roller derby captain
8. Barista and/or coffee shop owner
9. Writer/columnist
10. Soul-ravaging preacher, a bit like John Lithgow in Footloose, but without the 'no dancing, no drinking' rules.

Stripper with a heart of gold has also popped into my head at random times -- meet new and interesting people, 'exotic' lands, cash flow, days off. And professor. And professional organizer of sock drawers and sock drawers only. And COO. I swore I wrote this list before, but my search functionality is kind of crappy.

Perhaps I need think realistically about a list of jobs I might actually be able to GET.

What’s Below The Marzipan Layer?

I was reading The Daily Beast’s coverage of its Women in the World Summit, and I found coverage of a panel on women and negotiations. There was some reiteration of the facts that while women are good negotiators, we are often crap at negotiating for ourselves. The one man on the panel, John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay, shared this bit:

“Donahoe told a story where his wife was clerking for a judge and it fell on him to take the kids to school. He told his boss at Bain Consulting that he was going to have to quit because he was traveling so much and couldn’t make things work. But, his boss got him the help he needed so he didn’t have to be in until 10 a.m. The moral of the story? We all should demand "customizable options at different parts of your career.”

I 100% agree with him. Flexible work arrangements help everyone. But even with these flexible arrangements, why are women getting stuck in the marzipan layer? The one just below the icing of senior management? Look at the number of female Fortune 500 CEOs. Not many. My guess is that guys like Donahoe have mentors and other backers who push them through the politics required to make it to upper management, and women don’t. You can only make it so far on your own.

And no comment on the people like me who aren’t even anywhere near peeking at the Marzipan Layer. What are we? Filler? Crust?

Mmmmm…..Hungry.

A bookkeeper, not a money manager

I read this article in Salon and shuddered nervously, mainly because it speaks to a lot of the big fears that I am grappling with right now.

“I had inadvertently become part of an opt-out revolution much different than the one writer Lisa Belkin described in an article for the New York Times Magazine in 2003. In that revolution, upper-middle-class, Type A women opted out of their MBA-fueled careers to stay home and overzealously manage their toddlers' lives. In my revolution, relatively average women get married and -- especially after having children -- consciously opt out of duties considered somehow "male," and I'm not just talking about mowing the lawn. I'm talking about money. I became, like many other middle-aged married mothers, Lucy to my husband's Ricky, focusing on kids and home and letting him focus on money and all the big decisions that come with it -- should we refinance the house? Buy a minivan? Get a new dining room table? Fix the roof? Open a Roth IRA?”

With Z2 on the way, I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do for work after my maternity leave and what that means for our financial situation. To be 100% crystal clear, I want to work. I am work-identified, I want my career, and I don’t think that going to work has any impact on my kids, other than a positive one. However, I have lots of conflicting feelings about leaving those kids to go to a job that I can barely tolerate and that I don’t seem to be advancing in anymore. There are also real challenges to trying to juggle two corporate work schedules especially when one person’s schedule (YG’s) requires a lot of traveling, and the other person’s (my) company values a lot of face time. I would like something with a little more flexibility, and in some ideal utopia, I would not mind working somewhere where the product or solution or whatever was something I really cared about. I would not mind that at all.

But, dudes, I am SCARED. Like the author, “I bought into the belief system -- one that pervades society . . . -- that the only jobs with value are the ones with a paycheck.” It was scary enough to cut my hours back after Zygote, but I knew that I was still bringing in a decent paycheck. To leave the corporate life behind entirely means leaving behind money, and that terrifies me to my core for the following list of random reasons*:

*NOTE: These are all MY reasons and don’t really reflect the realities of our marriage in any way. YG remains the most awesome of husbands and is not driving these thoughts. It's all my stuff -- most of which could be filed away in the whole ‘way you were raised’ drawer of shit.

· If I don’t make as much money, my needs become less important. When we both work the same amount, we both can ask for what we need – like time to go to the gym or out with friends or to watch whatever the hell tv we want to watch.

· If I don’t make as much money, I don’t get a say in our money. I have always been in control of my own finances – bought my own house, have the 401k, have to IRA, have Zygote’s 529, etc. Would working less mean giving some of that up? If YG gets transferred across the world, do I have a choice? If YG thinks we should pay off all our debt, do I have a say? Right now I do, but what about later?

· If I don’t make money, my career doesn’t really count. I don’t want my career to be just another thing we try to squeeze into our really busy lives. Right now, it matters because it helps pay the bills. If it doesn’t pay the bills, is it still important? From a mental health perspective, yes, but what if my job is just something else to schedule around?

· If I don’t make money, I won’t be taken seriously as an employee. I will be just a wife and just a mom and just an order taker and…

· Total transparency about what I spend my money on. Right now, we have my money, his money and our money. We spend within reason, but if I want to buy a sweater or a round of drinks for my friends, I do and I don’t really think about it. If I don’t bring in money, does YG get to tell me what I can and cannot spend on? Is it going to be all Sophie’s choice between clean bikini line and college education for the kids?

And probably the biggest, and therefore, least rationale of the bunch:

· What else would I do for work?

· What if I decide to leave the corporate life and feed the poor, and I become financially dependent on YG, and then he trades me in for a newer model or gets terribly sick and I have to raise all these kids by myself on a crappy salary?

· What if I’m not actually good at anything besides being a cog in the machine?

We have some time to work this out, and I alternate between thinking that this is the most terrifying time of my life and also the most exciting. I never really thought about my career in detail – it just sort of happened. I thought I would be writing stories and working at a coffee shop, so when something different happened, I just went with it. I have never asked myself the question, “What do you want to do every day?” Until now.

Sick Thinking

I am sick. Not my usual sick in the head, but actually sick. I had a really bad cold that flattened me before I left for Conference, and then caught something on the way back that will just not leave. I've got bronchitis. I've got a sinus infection. Because of Z2, I can't take much, so it's all about staying hydrated which means that I am up to pee almost every single hour. End result: exhausted, head achey, and was bordering on miserable.

I have a tendency to blame myself when I get sick. Clearly, it's because I didn't do something right. I didn't eat well enough, I didn't exercise enough, I wash my hands the wrong way, whatever...because I am in control of everything, when things are not right (i.e. i get sick), it is because I lost control for a second. I know. The first time I told that someone, she looked at me like I had ten heads.

"When someone gets cancer, do you think it's because they did something wrong?"

"WHAT?" "No, that's insane."

"But when you get sick, it's because YOU did something wrong?"

Blank stare from me. I am a fairly logical and reasonable person. Except when I am the topic.

So here I am, feeling like someone is hammering away at my temples and panting like a dog whenever I have to do something that resembles physical activity. And trying desperately to stay out of my head.

I don't know if I have a point here. Probably not. That is a problem with trying to write every day -- I very rarely have a point. However, I stumbled across this little bit of wisdom over on Medicinal Marzipan that I loved:

"The difference between loving yourself and not loving yourself is not in the things that you do it is in the way that you feel when you are doing them. It means being honest and brave, and not spiraling into a pit of self-hatred when you don’t like what you see or how you feel. It means reassessing, doing what is best, and being very, very sweet to yourself when you are scared. It means proving to your body that you are capable of providing a safe and healthy environment to grow and flourish. It means melting away the shame that you’ve developed over the years about your size. It means going to bat for yourself, the way you would for someone that you love."

It doesn't entirely relate, but I am trying to stay out of the pit right now. Get better, sleep, rest, take care of myself. All of that stuff I'm supposed to be doing but don't. Advice I would give a friend, but don't follow. Trying to feel as okay as I can.

I Need A Job, And Then I'll Get Married

I love this kid. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. The comments on this and the CNN feed make me sad -- calling a 5 year old kid a bitch for being independent is just....well, I guess, expected.

Prayers, Japan

The footage from Japan is horrifying. I have an unnatural fear of earthquakes. Drowning too. A coworker was on a plane on the tarmac when everything hit. There's really nothing to say other than I am thinking of all of those people and hoping/praying for miracle rescues.

Nice, Clink, Etc.

When I tell people that I don't work on Fridays, I usually get a variety of responses ranging from "how cool" or "everyone needs an errand day" to the snarkier eye-rolling, "well, that must be niiiice." The people delivering this response are usually white collar workers who have never done a lick of menial labor, but my Fridays "off" (in quotes because um, I don't get PAID) somehow make them feel wronged and maligned and they must then regale me of tales of how hard they work, and how they wished they could get the same deal, but "well, you know....not everybody gets what they want."

Honestly? Fridays off are nice. Great, actually. I get to spend some time with Zygote and I get to do all the glamorous things around the house that don't get done when two working parents are traveling and juggling and just generally living. Things like grocery shopping and laundry and today, cleaning out some sort of juice that congealed on the bottom of my fridge. Oh, and changing diapers. Let's not forget that. When YG and I first started talking about Fridays off, the idea was that I would be writing and/or working another contract or training for, I don't know, something. I did do a lot of writing, and took a class, and it was NICE, but the vast majority of my Fridays are spent doing general house stuff. I'm okay with that. Someone has to do it, and I like that it allows us to spend our limited free time on the weekends together as a family.

I am well aware that I am lucky.

I'm also aware that some days are luckier than others. It's Restaurant Week in Boston, so YG and I took advantage of a relatively light day to have lunch at Clink. Some things do not suck. Some things are quite nice.

Kick, Kick, Kick

There are no many things not to like about pregnancy. You go through all this drama trying to even get pregnant and then your body rewards you with some truly weird, puberty-like stuff. That being said, I have enjoyed both of these pregnancies. I’ve been healthy and haven’t had a lot of nausea or other complications, and I can live with swollen feet for a few months if it means that I can pretty much keep doing what I was doing before, only wearing uglier shoes. Plus, people are nice to you.

My favorite part is the kicks. It’s hard to describe them. A lot of the baby books describe a “fluttering” feeling, but it’s more like an undulating water bed or a rumble. It’s definitely weird, but pleasant weird in a “oh, there you are” way. Like, there’s a PERSON in me. Now that I’m heading toward the third trimester, the kicks are more painful. Kicks to the ribs, sharp sticks to the hoo hah, and random rumbling pains in places I was sure the kid couldn’t reach. Still, even on my crustiest of days, they make me smile, and if I get kicked hard, I might even laugh out loud.

After Zygote was born, I missed the kicks. I couldn’t quite get used to her being on the outside, so I would sit her on my belly and let her wriggle around to try and simulate that feeling. I’m sure it’s going to be the same with Z2.

This is likely my last pregnancy. Or as YG puts it, “well, the last time you will be pregnant with one of MY kids.” So I’m going to keep enjoying those sharp jab to the junk while I have them.

What The Hell is Lent Anyway?

Remember this? That was the year I was going to blog about being grateful for something every day during Lent. It was pre-Zygote, so I should have been able to get it done. I’m amazed how truly narcissistic I am sometimes – being able to translate "join Jesus” into “the world really wants to hear about my love of America’s Next Top Model EVERY DAY.” Try as I may to be a more spiritually grounded person (whatever that means), the end results are sometimes interesting.

So my go-to-church-but-am-still-questioning-and-have-no-shame-about-some-of-my-bad-vices-like-crappy-tv would simply define Lent as the time when Christian folk start prepping for Holy Week, which leads up to Easter, the BIG deal. Why is it forty days? When Jesus was prepping for his ministry, he spent 40 days in the desert/wilderness. You know the story. He was tested, tempted, could have been a bad guy, but wasn’t. During Lent, people give things up or go to Church more – the idea that doing all this stuff will help them spiritually ‘join’ Jesus. *

I do that every year. Try to give something up. Believe me, it was never an attempt to find and/or refind Jesus. It was either because I was told to as a kid or because it seemed like a nice, relatively acceptable way to explain some sort of behavior change I wanted to do anyway. It’s easier to say that you’re giving up buying clothes for Lent, rather than something like, “yeah, well I’m really concerned about the unsustainable manufacturing practices of big-box clothing retailers and generally despise the corporatization of the world blah blah.” Or "I’m giving up cookies for Lent" as opposed to "OMG HFCS IS KILLING OUR KIDS.”

I have given up cookies, crackers, Diet Coke, meat, swearing, saying mean things about myself, being judgmental about others (ha ha ha, that one was a riot), and shopping among other things. I’m not sure I succeeded in any of them. There are a few things that I would like to try and give up again, like swearing so much (mostly for Zygote’s sake, not because I think God gives a shit). See, there. FAIL. And eating so much crappy food (also mostly for Z2 and because I don’t want to fail my glucose test). Good things, but not really in the spirit.

So I’m not sure what to do. I find this whole God/church thing very hard to write about without sounding like some sort of religious fanatic. I guess what I really want is to spend a few minutes each day away from the chaos to think bigger picture. I have been a ball of anxiety and ick lately, obsessing about everything and generally feeling sick (physically. yay bronchitis!) and unmoored (yay pregnancy!) I want to write and blog and just THINK about the good things, rather than cross items off a giant to-do list. If that gets me “closer to God” than hey, cool, I am open to it, but if it only makes me a little bit nicer of a friend, mom and wife, I can live with that too.


*I actually thought some of these were pretty cool ideas. Mainly, the carbon fast. Giving up alcohol always seems a little too Footloose for me.

When I am not blogging, I read

Since I haven’t been doing much blogging and/or other writing lately, you’re probably wondering what I have been doing with all of my time outside of being anxious about work which is a full-time job in and of itself. Well, you probably aren’t wondering.

The reading frenzy of 2011 continues. The insomnia definitely helps with having more time to read, or maybe it’s just knowing that I’m going to be entering into another reading lull after Z2 comes. It’s been nice, and varied.

1.The Help: It’s nice to read a book that people are talking about around the same time that they are actually talking about it. I tore through this. I liked that the characters were fairly nuanced – with a few exceptions, the bad people weren’t always bad and the good people weren’t always good. I can’t imagine what it was like to try and make sense of life in that nascent Civil Rights era. I think she did a good job of capturing the conflicting swirl of emotions for each of the different characters.

2.Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival in Prep School: Oh God, this book. I don’t even know where to start. I picked this up on a discount table, and was interested because Milton Academy is somewhat near here and prep schools are so, so weird. And so foreign to my experience of high school and growing up. The kids in the book come across as a bunch of entitled tools and don’t strike me as intelligent, even with their fancy schools. That said, I couldn’t put it down. Teenage sex scandals! Good readin’.

3.A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier: Meh. I feel somewhat guilty saying that I didn’t find a book about child soldiers in Sierra Leaone particularly interesting, especially considering that I just said I couldn’t put down a book about bratty New England prepsters. It felt like a very rushed memoir, and I would have liked to know more.

4.The Time Traveler’s Wife: Also a discount table pick that sat on my bookshelf for years because I thought it was the kind of book that appears in the WOMENS(!) section of airport bookstores. I wish I had read it sooner, because I absolutely loved it. I loved the characters and the weird traveling sequences and how it’s a not-particularly-goopy love story. I liked it so much that I made YG sit through the movie version with me. Bad move. The movie sucked.

5.Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America: I probably should have read this a long time ago, just to try and keep up with YG. I know that people have their issues with Friedman and think he’s a hypocrite with his 11,000+ square foot house. Still, this was a very concise breakdown of how “going green” is imperative to getting the US economy moving again. There are people are born tree huggers and they care deeply about recycling and the environment and living sustainable lifestyles. I am not one of them. Or I wasn’t raised that way. I knew that stuff was important, but I didn’t think much about it. I work in the corporate world, though, and I do think a lot about innovation in business and what will be the next great American industry. We need to slow down the mess we are making of our environment, and we need to get people working again. There is such opportunity. It made me want to learn more.

6.The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Junot Diaz breaks my heart again. Beautiful, funny, coming of age. Read this.

Dream Small

I LOVE THIS.

"Whatever the case, I believe true happiness lies in really understanding ourselves: who we are, what we're capable of, and what we can really accomplish with the resources we have. When you realize one small dream, it feels awesome, and it gives you the freedom to take a tiny step toward your next small dream.

What I'm really trying to say is, be happy with now. Be happy with you. Be happy with learning to be the best little fish you can be, and you'll care much less about what the big fish are doing.

Don't reach for the stars. Sometimes just reaching to touch the ceiling is more attainable. It's not "settling", it's not under-achieving, it's just the first step to getting what you want."

What would today look like if I actually started to think that way?

Unbiased Opinion: Cutest Kid in the World

To make up for my lack of posting, I present you with Z.

Unlearning Girldom

A friend of mine posted this link to 5 Things We Should Stop Teaching Girls on Facebook the other day. I loved it. Worth a repeat.

"As the mother of a daughter, I want to be deliberate in how I raise her with the hope that she can avoid the hang-ups and pitfalls that I have wrestled with. While I have learned countless invaluable lessons from the women who raised, nurtured and mentored me, there are a few things that I wish we, as women, could un-learn.

Clear your plate. Whether you’re hungry or not, keep eating until all of the food is gone. Take one look at me and you will know that I took this one to heart.
New lesson: We don’t want to be wasteful, so don’t put too much on your plate. Listen to your body. When you feel full, stop eating.

Be ladylike. How many of us suppress our thoughts and feelings because we don’t want to inconvenience anyone with them?
New lesson: Be considerate, but always speak your mind!

Ambition is not an attractive quality. And thus we limit ourselves.
New lesson: Reach for the stars. Toot your own horn. Conquer the world. And make a ton of money while you’re at it.

It’s not polite to talk about money. Women miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career because we’re not comfortable negotiating on our own behalf.
New lesson: Be discreet, but know what you’re worth and say so. Once you earn it, you need to know how to manage it for yourself too.

He pushed you down on the playground because he likes you. What?!?
New lesson: No one gets to touch you without your permission. Boys who really like you will not be mean to you. He pushed you down because he’s an asshole. Tell a grown-up and if it happens again, knock his block off."

My own "lessons" to add:
1. Don't be a victim.
2. There are always choices.
3. Tell the truth. You won't need to remember anything.
4. Be loud and proud
5. But nice too.

Gone Fishing

It is time for my annual conference in San Francisco. That should explain my absence around the Internets and the fact that I am filled with rage and woe and lots of cookies. This will be over next week.

Time Machine (I Wish): Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

OMG. This movie was just about perfect. The only thing that would have made it more perfect would have been if it was my life before I became a boring, pregnant married lady watching it on Pay Per View in a hotel while my parents babysat my toddler. Michael Cera. Hasbians. Jason Schwartzman. Battle of the Bands. WHY HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THIS YET?

Time Machine: Pearl Cream

I saw this posted on someone's Facebook page and almost DIED. This used to be on t.v. all the time when I was younger, and we would imitate it and crack our shit up. Even then, as a little kid, you just knew it was offensive.

CHOOSE CARBS

Bread makes everyone happy.

This Is What a Relationship Looks Like: A. We're So Married or B. It's Really Fucking Cold

YG and I don't really do big Christmas presents for each other. We prefer to either get something that we both want for the house or go out to a fun dinner. This year, we decided to have my parents come up for a weekend in January and watch Zygote while we spent the night overnight at the hotel where we were married.

JM: Night at a hotel! Aw yeah!
YG: Sweet.
JM: You know what that means, right?
YG: Oh yeah. I know what you're thinking.
JM: Hot.
YG: Actually hot.
JM: We get to turn the heat up all the way without worrying about how much it's going to cost.
YG: We might actually be...
JM: HOT.
YG: Nice.
JM: Nice.