Or a Day in the Life of A Working Mommy
7:30 Get up
7:45 wake up child
7:55 feed child oatmeal and fruit for breakfast
8:10 dress child, clean child's face, convince child that she cannot wear stained t shirt to school even if it is her favorite t-shirt in the whole world
8:15 remove t-shirt from child's hands
8:20 bring child to bus stop
8:22 attempt to convince child to wear hat in 30 degree weather
8:25 hug child and put hat on child's head
8:30 start work
10:15 break -- clean kitchen and living room
10:30 back to work
12:30 half hour lunch -- finish cleaning living room and bathroom and kitchen
1:00 back to work
3:45 break time and fetch child from bus stop time
4:00 back to work
6:00 finish work
6:30 go out to eat dinner
8:00 food shopping
9:30 come home and put groceries away
10:00 collapse in front of television
I have no idea how women who work out of the home manage to complete a day without a massive daily nervous breakdown.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Season of Birds
It may be the dead of winter right now. Indeed we’re holding our breaths for the snowstorm about to start sometime after we all go to sleep tonight.
But it is bird season right outside my kitchen window.
A few weeks ago my husband set up a backyard birdfeeder. On cue half the local birds have apparently found their way right in front of my kitchen window. At any given moment I can creep into the kitchen and spot both male and female cardinals, grackles, thrushes, mockingbirds, sparrows, finches, blue jays and what appears to be a large male woodpecker.
We play Name That Bird half a dozen times a day and rush to what my daughter has dubbed The Bird Book. My husband and I wander into the kitchen and discuss whether the bird hovering in front of us is a Tennessee Warbler or Nashville Warbler.
This delights my six year old. She stands in front of the window as if her sheer force of will could charm the birds closer. She clearly hopes they will somehow find their way not only into the yard but into the house as well.
Bird watching is a fine past time for a child. As I share in her glee I am slowly learning just how much I enjoy seeing the small creatures timidly grab at what is surely their version of a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike.
The birds hang out in the tree where we’ve set the birdfeeder. We’ve also set up a small table with various treats much closer to the window. One or two come to the table gingerly, prepared to run away at the merest hint of movement. A few get bolder and not only peck the seed but the window and siding as well.
Although they’re New Jersey birds I’m still waiting to hear one of them chirp with the alleged local accent. So far the actual sopranos have declined to mimic the fictional Sopranos.
When I grew up in Brooklyn I would look inside as I passed the large apartment houses and wonder what was going on behind each window. I would picture families laughing and crying as life went on right behind the brick and glass I saw for a single second yet did not get to see.
Now I have grown up. I am on the other side of the window. The canvas that unfurls in front of me is a bit smaller but just as fascinating, just as worthy of my attention, concentration and imagination.
But it is bird season right outside my kitchen window.
A few weeks ago my husband set up a backyard birdfeeder. On cue half the local birds have apparently found their way right in front of my kitchen window. At any given moment I can creep into the kitchen and spot both male and female cardinals, grackles, thrushes, mockingbirds, sparrows, finches, blue jays and what appears to be a large male woodpecker.
We play Name That Bird half a dozen times a day and rush to what my daughter has dubbed The Bird Book. My husband and I wander into the kitchen and discuss whether the bird hovering in front of us is a Tennessee Warbler or Nashville Warbler.
This delights my six year old. She stands in front of the window as if her sheer force of will could charm the birds closer. She clearly hopes they will somehow find their way not only into the yard but into the house as well.
Bird watching is a fine past time for a child. As I share in her glee I am slowly learning just how much I enjoy seeing the small creatures timidly grab at what is surely their version of a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike.
The birds hang out in the tree where we’ve set the birdfeeder. We’ve also set up a small table with various treats much closer to the window. One or two come to the table gingerly, prepared to run away at the merest hint of movement. A few get bolder and not only peck the seed but the window and siding as well.
Although they’re New Jersey birds I’m still waiting to hear one of them chirp with the alleged local accent. So far the actual sopranos have declined to mimic the fictional Sopranos.
When I grew up in Brooklyn I would look inside as I passed the large apartment houses and wonder what was going on behind each window. I would picture families laughing and crying as life went on right behind the brick and glass I saw for a single second yet did not get to see.
Now I have grown up. I am on the other side of the window. The canvas that unfurls in front of me is a bit smaller but just as fascinating, just as worthy of my attention, concentration and imagination.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Putting the Ladies Back in Ladies Figure Skating
I love figure skating. I can’t do it to save my life. Despite literally years and years of effort I can barely manage to wiggle my backside and skate backwards. I can just about manage a two foot spin and somehow manage not to wind up face down on the ice.
I admire those, unlike me, who can actually skate.
Those people are on display this weekend at the United States National Championship.
The best Americans among them are generally the ladies. Or rather the little girls. Last year’s winner was all of fourteen year old.
This year’s winner was twenty-one.
This is good and bad.
The good news is that winner Alissa Czisny is a beautiful skater. She has wonderful lines, great musicality, fabulous extensions and nicely centered and intricate spins. She skates with speed and attack.
The bad news is that she fell during her long program and then only did three completed triple jumps.
I personally think jumps are just a bit overrated in skating. Modern day skating programs have turned away from the sort of stunningly lovely balance trick that Brian Boitano pulled with his spectacular spread eagles. Instead we see jumping contests.
The best program I’ve seen in my entire life was a signature Paul Wylie program. You can view it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGhKnfRXtpM
There’s only a single jump in this program yet you barely notice because it is so well done. He draws your attention and keeps it there.
Unfortunately international judges judge the sport. They want to jump and lots of them.
I loved Czisny’s skating last night. While not quite on the level of Wylie’s it was elegant and mature.
So it is fair to give her a higher score than her competitors who did far more completed jumps than she managed?
I say yes. Czisny’s nearest competitor was a young lady named Rachael Flatt. Flatt was technically quite proficient. She did jumps and lots of them. She had spins and she did them quickly and correctly.
What she didn’t do was draw me in. She didn’t make me sit up and make me take notice of her performance. She’s a young sweet little girl with a marvelous talent. But last night she was sixteen. She skated like a sixteen year old. She was on the ice without an understanding of her music or much artistry.
If skating is really to be a sport for the ages, the kind that it promises to be where you can watch performances over and over again, it can’t be about who can do the most triple salchows or quadruple jumps. In order to fulfill the promise of the sport, the very beauty inherent in it, it has to be about something else as well.
That’s what Alissa Czisny demonstrated last night even as she fell down.
I admire those, unlike me, who can actually skate.
Those people are on display this weekend at the United States National Championship.
The best Americans among them are generally the ladies. Or rather the little girls. Last year’s winner was all of fourteen year old.
This year’s winner was twenty-one.
This is good and bad.
The good news is that winner Alissa Czisny is a beautiful skater. She has wonderful lines, great musicality, fabulous extensions and nicely centered and intricate spins. She skates with speed and attack.
The bad news is that she fell during her long program and then only did three completed triple jumps.
I personally think jumps are just a bit overrated in skating. Modern day skating programs have turned away from the sort of stunningly lovely balance trick that Brian Boitano pulled with his spectacular spread eagles. Instead we see jumping contests.
The best program I’ve seen in my entire life was a signature Paul Wylie program. You can view it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGhKnfRXtpM
There’s only a single jump in this program yet you barely notice because it is so well done. He draws your attention and keeps it there.
Unfortunately international judges judge the sport. They want to jump and lots of them.
I loved Czisny’s skating last night. While not quite on the level of Wylie’s it was elegant and mature.
So it is fair to give her a higher score than her competitors who did far more completed jumps than she managed?
I say yes. Czisny’s nearest competitor was a young lady named Rachael Flatt. Flatt was technically quite proficient. She did jumps and lots of them. She had spins and she did them quickly and correctly.
What she didn’t do was draw me in. She didn’t make me sit up and make me take notice of her performance. She’s a young sweet little girl with a marvelous talent. But last night she was sixteen. She skated like a sixteen year old. She was on the ice without an understanding of her music or much artistry.
If skating is really to be a sport for the ages, the kind that it promises to be where you can watch performances over and over again, it can’t be about who can do the most triple salchows or quadruple jumps. In order to fulfill the promise of the sport, the very beauty inherent in it, it has to be about something else as well.
That’s what Alissa Czisny demonstrated last night even as she fell down.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I Don’t Envy Him
I know some people out there like George W. Bush. After all a person doesn’t get elected twice to the presidency without a few supporters. I suppose it is possible to like just about anyone if you agree with their policies and moral worldview. I liked Bill Clinton’s laws a lot more than defending his taste in women.
Like him, love him or hate him you cannot deny he left us a grand old mess. The stats today are terrifying. Whether the Iraqi war was right or wrong is a question for a different day. What cannot be disputed is that the war is not cheap. The coffers are bare because that is where the money went. That’s where the money’s going for a generation.
At home unemployment has crept up. I’ve read that one in six people is behind on their mortgage right now. Three companies near me have fallen into bankruptcy in the last few months. Their windows are an ugly reminder of just what other dominoes could so easily fall. Houses around here are worth about 100K less than they were in October of 2007.
Eight years of Bush have let the air out of my personal patriotism tires just a bit. The cynicism has crept into my bones and settled there. I want to salute the flag and wipe a tear from my eye when I hear the Star Spangled Banner. I want to desperately believe in the America I was taught to admire in seventh grade social studies class.
But then I think of people who redefined patriotism as something belonging solely to those who would vote against gay marriage amendments or for creationism in public schools.
Then I cringe.
Obama wasn’t my first choice. He wasn’t my second choice. He wasn’t even my third choice. I wanted Edwards. I wanted a man who cheated on his wife while she was in the middle of breast cancer treatment. Then I wanted Hillary so I could tell my daughter that the glass ceiling had not been merely touched but shattered.
What I got was someone who ran the best political campaign in half a century. He ran hard and he ran smart. Most of all he finally ran to win.
Election day is about held breath and (if you’re lucky) cheering like mad.
Inauguration day is about what you do when the race is over, the diploma earned, the honeymoon finished, the day after birth. The real triumph begins when you don’t just put the medals in your draw or the diploma on the wall. The real victory begins when you demonstrate you were paying attention along the way.
I have no idea if Obama will be another FDR or merely Jimmy Carter redux. But I sit here holding my breath on this historic day. This man with the funny name and the win I never expected made me cry. I expect he will again. This man who is half Chicago political machine and half the very finest of American Dreams. I listened to his acceptance speech the day he won the election and I bawled long and loudly.
So today begins the day some of us have waited for for a very long time. My cynic still buried under eight years of Bush thinks this can’t possibly matter. The part of me that sat there on the couch two months ago openly weeping thinks nothing could possibly matter more.
My personal prayers tend to be in the Hebrew my grandmother knew or said softly to myself before I go to bed. But I will make this one public.
Strip the layer of cynicism from our hearts, Mr. Obama. Make the America we were promised real again. Give us the place we saw during your election, the one that made us think of the part of the constitution that really does make seventh graders go wide with awe.
We’ll be waiting and watching. Most of all, for the first time in a very long time, we’ll be filled with hope.
Like him, love him or hate him you cannot deny he left us a grand old mess. The stats today are terrifying. Whether the Iraqi war was right or wrong is a question for a different day. What cannot be disputed is that the war is not cheap. The coffers are bare because that is where the money went. That’s where the money’s going for a generation.
At home unemployment has crept up. I’ve read that one in six people is behind on their mortgage right now. Three companies near me have fallen into bankruptcy in the last few months. Their windows are an ugly reminder of just what other dominoes could so easily fall. Houses around here are worth about 100K less than they were in October of 2007.
Eight years of Bush have let the air out of my personal patriotism tires just a bit. The cynicism has crept into my bones and settled there. I want to salute the flag and wipe a tear from my eye when I hear the Star Spangled Banner. I want to desperately believe in the America I was taught to admire in seventh grade social studies class.
But then I think of people who redefined patriotism as something belonging solely to those who would vote against gay marriage amendments or for creationism in public schools.
Then I cringe.
Obama wasn’t my first choice. He wasn’t my second choice. He wasn’t even my third choice. I wanted Edwards. I wanted a man who cheated on his wife while she was in the middle of breast cancer treatment. Then I wanted Hillary so I could tell my daughter that the glass ceiling had not been merely touched but shattered.
What I got was someone who ran the best political campaign in half a century. He ran hard and he ran smart. Most of all he finally ran to win.
Election day is about held breath and (if you’re lucky) cheering like mad.
Inauguration day is about what you do when the race is over, the diploma earned, the honeymoon finished, the day after birth. The real triumph begins when you don’t just put the medals in your draw or the diploma on the wall. The real victory begins when you demonstrate you were paying attention along the way.
I have no idea if Obama will be another FDR or merely Jimmy Carter redux. But I sit here holding my breath on this historic day. This man with the funny name and the win I never expected made me cry. I expect he will again. This man who is half Chicago political machine and half the very finest of American Dreams. I listened to his acceptance speech the day he won the election and I bawled long and loudly.
So today begins the day some of us have waited for for a very long time. My cynic still buried under eight years of Bush thinks this can’t possibly matter. The part of me that sat there on the couch two months ago openly weeping thinks nothing could possibly matter more.
My personal prayers tend to be in the Hebrew my grandmother knew or said softly to myself before I go to bed. But I will make this one public.
Strip the layer of cynicism from our hearts, Mr. Obama. Make the America we were promised real again. Give us the place we saw during your election, the one that made us think of the part of the constitution that really does make seventh graders go wide with awe.
We’ll be waiting and watching. Most of all, for the first time in a very long time, we’ll be filled with hope.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
In Defense of New Jersey
Yeah I know. You’ve seen the state. You’ve looked the windows at Newark airport. You went to Ellis Island or Wildwood when you were six. You set foot in your Aunt Edna’s house in West Plainfield or your cousin Jeff’s house in Hackensack.
You’ve been to New Jersey.
Only you really haven’t.
The state isn’t a drive through Newark or a trip in front of a tollbooth. It isn’t the place you saw outside your windows on the way to somewhere else. It isn’t where Tony Soprano really lives or the smoke stacks off the turnpike.
What New Jersey is really is is the triumph of middle class liberalism. This is what a society would look like if run by those of us who voted for Bill Clinton a few times.
This society mostly works.
The schools mostly work. The interstates work. Even the economy works. Our industries are pharmaceuticals, education, health care professions and law and not the toxic waste plants you might think. We have the highest per capita income in the entire country. We have acres of public parks. We have clean beaches. We even have Cape May, a kaleidoscope collection of Victorian houses that may lay claim to being the prettiest town in America.
We’re mostly a collection of extremely pleasant middle class towns. Sometimes you’ll get places that evoke the East Village like downtown Montclair. Sometimes you’ll the sort of place where a future George W. Bush might grow up like Princeton or Chatham.
But mostly we’re just a series of nice smallish towns with decent places to eat and play surrounded by woods and then interstates. Maybe this isn’t your idea of heaven. Sometimes (especially when I’ve heard my neighbor’s leaf blower on a Sunday morning and imagined exactly where I’d like to put said leaf blower) it isn’t even mine.
More often I see the goldfinches in my backyard. I taste a fresh apple in an actual apple orchard about half an hour from my house. I get emails from daughter’s kindergarten class where there are sixteen kids in her class. I walk to the clean, neat library where the children’s librarian knows my daughter’s name and asks about her academic progress. On the way home I grab the perfect loaf of bread in our town’s local food store and then pop into the Italian place around the corner for fresh mozzarella and good tomato sauce.
Our car was broken into five times in three years when I lived in Brooklyn.
New Jersey is not perfect. I’ve read that my little corner of it is one of most segregated parts of the country. My property taxes alone would probably be most people’s idea of a mortgage although they’ve barely risen in seven years if you count statewide rebates. East Orange and Irvington are not a credit to any nation that aspires to be something other than say Zimbabwe.
In the last few years we’ve had the secretly gay governor who had to resign because he was blackmailed. The present governor was nearly turned into fifteen pieces primarily because he was speeding and not wearing his seatbelt. You start to think the New Jersey Governorship is the real world equivalent of Defense of Dark Arts Teacher position at Hogwarts.
But you know what? This is not the sort of the state where we say we’re grateful for Mississippi because otherwise we’d really be at the very, very bottom. We’re not even grateful for West Virginia. We’re grateful to be what we are and mostly grateful even to be where we are.
One of these days we’ll get it completely right and then you can come live here if you can afford it. Just don't tell the joke about the exit and we'll get alone just fine.
You’ve been to New Jersey.
Only you really haven’t.
The state isn’t a drive through Newark or a trip in front of a tollbooth. It isn’t the place you saw outside your windows on the way to somewhere else. It isn’t where Tony Soprano really lives or the smoke stacks off the turnpike.
What New Jersey is really is is the triumph of middle class liberalism. This is what a society would look like if run by those of us who voted for Bill Clinton a few times.
This society mostly works.
The schools mostly work. The interstates work. Even the economy works. Our industries are pharmaceuticals, education, health care professions and law and not the toxic waste plants you might think. We have the highest per capita income in the entire country. We have acres of public parks. We have clean beaches. We even have Cape May, a kaleidoscope collection of Victorian houses that may lay claim to being the prettiest town in America.
We’re mostly a collection of extremely pleasant middle class towns. Sometimes you’ll get places that evoke the East Village like downtown Montclair. Sometimes you’ll the sort of place where a future George W. Bush might grow up like Princeton or Chatham.
But mostly we’re just a series of nice smallish towns with decent places to eat and play surrounded by woods and then interstates. Maybe this isn’t your idea of heaven. Sometimes (especially when I’ve heard my neighbor’s leaf blower on a Sunday morning and imagined exactly where I’d like to put said leaf blower) it isn’t even mine.
More often I see the goldfinches in my backyard. I taste a fresh apple in an actual apple orchard about half an hour from my house. I get emails from daughter’s kindergarten class where there are sixteen kids in her class. I walk to the clean, neat library where the children’s librarian knows my daughter’s name and asks about her academic progress. On the way home I grab the perfect loaf of bread in our town’s local food store and then pop into the Italian place around the corner for fresh mozzarella and good tomato sauce.
Our car was broken into five times in three years when I lived in Brooklyn.
New Jersey is not perfect. I’ve read that my little corner of it is one of most segregated parts of the country. My property taxes alone would probably be most people’s idea of a mortgage although they’ve barely risen in seven years if you count statewide rebates. East Orange and Irvington are not a credit to any nation that aspires to be something other than say Zimbabwe.
In the last few years we’ve had the secretly gay governor who had to resign because he was blackmailed. The present governor was nearly turned into fifteen pieces primarily because he was speeding and not wearing his seatbelt. You start to think the New Jersey Governorship is the real world equivalent of Defense of Dark Arts Teacher position at Hogwarts.
But you know what? This is not the sort of the state where we say we’re grateful for Mississippi because otherwise we’d really be at the very, very bottom. We’re not even grateful for West Virginia. We’re grateful to be what we are and mostly grateful even to be where we are.
One of these days we’ll get it completely right and then you can come live here if you can afford it. Just don't tell the joke about the exit and we'll get alone just fine.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Two Climate Family
I’m writing this while wearing a hat, a thinsulate vest, two pairs of pants, a turtleneck, a thick knitted sweater, a scarf, a pair of socks and a pair of boots. I am sitting inside. It is snowing outside.
This makes my husband laugh.
He sleeps with a thin sheet while I huddle next to him stuffed like sausage under my down comforter. He does not care that the car is ice cold. He believes a snowstorm an invitation for a walk. My December born daughter goes outside with him. Seven seconds later she takes off her scarf and then her hat. Seven minutes after that the two of them are outside happily de-gloved and nearly de-coated.
Seven months from now it will be July. I will go outside again. I will wear no shoes. I will let the mud in the backyard fill in the spaces in between my toes. I will put on my bathing suit, my sunscreen and nothing else. I will feel the warm sun on my face and admire the shiny blue pool I like to keep meticulously free of leaves and dust.
The two of them will be inside the house then huddled around the air conditioning, drinking cold drinks and pleading for November to show up again. I will try very hard not to laugh when I come back inside the house.
We have two cats. The longhair loves the cold. At the first hint of snow she demands to be let out. The shorthaired cat waits until spring and then joins me in the mud welcoming.
Once in a while I try to embrace my inner winter. I venture outside when the snow gets swirly as it was today in my ear. I pull my hair from the back of my neck and let the cold wind touch it. Then I run back inside as every single skin cell chides me for this act of temporary insanity.
I may want to step outside with my family as my daughter makes a snowman or my husband tromps through the backyard even as the windchill falls. But until the weather gods figure out a way to make snow warm I’m afraid you’ll find me where I am now: under five layers of clothing dreaming of April.
This makes my husband laugh.
He sleeps with a thin sheet while I huddle next to him stuffed like sausage under my down comforter. He does not care that the car is ice cold. He believes a snowstorm an invitation for a walk. My December born daughter goes outside with him. Seven seconds later she takes off her scarf and then her hat. Seven minutes after that the two of them are outside happily de-gloved and nearly de-coated.
Seven months from now it will be July. I will go outside again. I will wear no shoes. I will let the mud in the backyard fill in the spaces in between my toes. I will put on my bathing suit, my sunscreen and nothing else. I will feel the warm sun on my face and admire the shiny blue pool I like to keep meticulously free of leaves and dust.
The two of them will be inside the house then huddled around the air conditioning, drinking cold drinks and pleading for November to show up again. I will try very hard not to laugh when I come back inside the house.
We have two cats. The longhair loves the cold. At the first hint of snow she demands to be let out. The shorthaired cat waits until spring and then joins me in the mud welcoming.
Once in a while I try to embrace my inner winter. I venture outside when the snow gets swirly as it was today in my ear. I pull my hair from the back of my neck and let the cold wind touch it. Then I run back inside as every single skin cell chides me for this act of temporary insanity.
I may want to step outside with my family as my daughter makes a snowman or my husband tromps through the backyard even as the windchill falls. But until the weather gods figure out a way to make snow warm I’m afraid you’ll find me where I am now: under five layers of clothing dreaming of April.
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