"Work from home and earn 20-25 bucks an hour. No experience necessary."
You will see several ads for this on wahm.com,
...and for data entry,
...and posts about women who have their own multi-million dollar "Candle Business".
I am here to debunk the myth of the WAHM (For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it stands for "Work at Home Mom"). I personally think the term should be WOHP-Work at Home Professional. It's a much cooler term, and it doesn't bias the situation with sex.
I know several people who work at home, work in the car, work at the coffee house. They are both men and women, both moms and dads.
I work from home, and happen to be a mom too. The more the term WAHM is thrown around, the more I find myself being taken less seriously. I don't sell candles, I don't do data entry, I don't do ghost writing for Stephen King. I do exactly what I did before I had children (design). I know WAHMs that work for the Rand Corporation, that are Sociologists, etc.
One of the women in my "virtual office" was featured on the Today Show a few months back. It showed her shuffling her three kids off to school in an orderly fashion after feeding them a healthy breakfast, and "commuting 6ft. to her office". She confided in me that this was the most organized she's ever been. They were up at 4:30 to have everyone neat and tidy for the show.
What I found interesting is that they focused the show on a woman. It wasn't about work at home parents, it was about a work at home mom. The show concluded with a woman who sold "designer clothing" from her home. She summed up the show in a sales pitch about how the clothing was the "finest quality" (holding a garment for the camera to see) and how you too could join her team and sell these "fine"products. I swear I saw the camera zoom to the street and her driving away in a pink Cadillac branded with Mary Kay.
My colleague that was featured is nothing like this woman. She has skills beyond your typical Avon sales lady. She is doing what she did before she became a mom, she just happens to do it remotely. She is not kicking legos around under her desk while she works. She goes to meetings. She owns suits.
I remember going to a meeting with a banker that was going to work a loan out for a home we wanted to buy. My husband was there first, I came second with the kids. The man (granted, he was an older fellow, stuck in the stone-age) looked at me as he worked out our finances, and said "with these two, I am presuming that you stay at home". I was in the midst of putting out coloring supplies for my oldest to keep her occupied, and probably nursing the baby at the same time. So, I guess it was an honest mistake. I simply said "yes". It was true. I DO stay at home.
While he was working out the numbers, he suggested "we'll just put no income down for you". I honestly don't know where he thought we were going to get the money to buy the house we were looking at if I had no income. I think the words "back up buddy" came out of my mouth. Maybe I just stuttered "Oh no. I have a profit statement here from my business, please take a look". At this point it became apparent that I could bring home the bacon and nurse the baby at the same time.
Still that doesn't take me out of the Avon lady role. I probably could sell enough Avon to buy a house. I don't know, does Avon still exist? I know that Mr. McConnell (and Jr.) made a bundle from women going door to door, and selling products to their friends. Timing is everything. Women! You can now work! Go sell beauty products to your friends! They even "Sponsored Radical Feminist Hate for Fathers Day, featuring known lesbians, man-haters, and supporters of child sexual predation such as Rosie ODonnell, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, and Marlo Thomas. (What? Get a load of THAT link if you want a laugh).
So, the way I see it is: women were allowed to work. We gained stride... we got out of the bondage of the house. People questioned, "is it good for the kids?". Our guilt got to us. "Mr. Mom" was just not working. We decided that we could work at home. We could be professionals AND watch the kids.
Or maybe, just maybe, a little thing called "the internet" was developed an enabled more people to not have to commute. It enabled us to go to work on our couches, in our own living room office. To be at work at home. To be a professional on the toilet.
So, I guess the stigma attached with WAHM is, not so much the "Work at Home" part, but the "Mom" part. WAHM suggests that even though you work at home, you can still be responsible for the home and the kids, simply because you are a "Mom". ("WAHD" could also be an appropriate term for Dads. As in "Whad you say? I can't concentrate on anything else while I'm working". The site for WAHD's though was built by a WAHM. She decided to be a web designer too while she was at it.)
The Today Show says that this is normal, a new phenomenon. How wonderful that women can work at home so the kids aren't in day care. They actually make Supermom action figures now. I'll tell you, society better pump us up with this stuff, especially if we are going to keep our stride.
We tried to have men do their fair share at home after we hit the work force. This failed miserably in most cases. So we had a couple of choices:
1. Ditch our efforts and resolve to staying at home washing diapers
2. Continue to climb the corporate ladder, leaving our kids in daycare until as late as we can, so that we can compete with those not responsible for the kids (aka. men), all the while feeling a huge amount of societal guilt
3. Adapt by working where the kids are, thumb over the phone receiver, on conference call to London, LA, and New York, baby on the boob, laundry machine going.
4. Doing data entry and earn a WOHP-ing 20 bucks an hour.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
I have a husband, and I actually like him.
So, I guess it's been about a year since my husband and I went out. It was the last time I got pregnant. I can't even remember who watched our daughter that night. We went out with the usual babysitter to see Lou Reed, so obviously it wasn't her.
Yes, we had our first "date night" in over a year. This wasn't out of macho-mommyism, it was only out of practicality. While I was pregnant I was lucky to make it through an episode of "Friends" without passing out in the papasan chair. Once the baby arrived it was the "leave my child with a stranger? ARE you out of your MIND?" syndrome.
Unfortunately, because we can't remember who watched our oldest the night we went out, and because we started hanging out with the old baby sitter, our choices are limited to strangers. This is what happens when you rip up your roots. Not only did I rip them up, I landed in a strange little town where everybody's a "healer" or a naval gazer, and it's not shocking to call someone's answering machine to hear "Welcome to the porch, the naked porch". We actually had a tenant in our guest house request that we re-grate the driveway because it was messing with her chi.
We were more daring with our oldest. Or maybe more desperate. I remember having a sitter come to our house. She was a perfectly charming person with great referrals from our handy-man. That is, until she started talking about "the aliens". This was not a simple haphazard comment. She had the whole thing down... the "reptilians", the "blackies", etc.
My husband is a big fan of talking with people about this stuff. We started our date night an hour late because of it.
So, now you are making the connection, yes, we actually did go. We actually left our daughter with this woman for a night. I remember sitting in the car and looking at my hubby and him looking at me, "do you think it will be alright?"
We knew where the woman lived, we knew her neighbors. Where we live, it's quite common for otherwise normal people to talk of alien life, or have seen alien life, or to have been abducted and "probed" by aliens. My husband made an entire radio talk-show out of it for a while. So we drove away.
If it's not aliens, it's some other eccentricity. Our oldest's first babysitter was the wife of the son of Elizabeth Taylor (I didn't know this until much later), she simply loved babies. The second was my husbands extremely bi-polar friend and his girlfriend. The third was the alien lady. We actually used her more than once. The reason we stopped using her was that she was a general pain in the ass, complained about how difficult the VCR was to use, complained about the steps, complained about misc. other things, and finally we came home one night to find our daughter wide-awake on the bed with the woman snoozing beside her.
Is it just here? Are sitters that are sane and reliable hard to find elsewhere? What happened to the days of high school girls wanting to babysit for a buck an hour? Good wholesome girls, with no interest other than watching kids. Oh god, what am I saying. I know what happened, and I am happy for it. Go girls, get the gold... you'll end up watching kids anyhow when the time comes, AND bringing home the bacon, AND doing the laundry, AND fixing the car.
I am actually all for my child care provider getting more than anyone else. I think they are a valuable asset and should be paid properly, but I also hate to break the bank just to get reacquainted with my husband. This is why we NEVER go see a movie when we have a sitter. I can't see spending fifty bucks to sit facing forward watching something with someone that I never get to talk to.
We are like long lost friends that see each other all the time but never connect. We make an effort to sit in my studio at night and drink a glass of wine together and talk after the kids are asleep (a couple of times a week). I value this time, but the place is not optimal. I look at the computers and have a nasty habit of asking him a question, and if he doesn't know the answer, jumping up to do a quick Google search. How annoying...
It's amazing that we conceived a second child at all. The oldest was still sleeping in our bed at the time. The baby wasn't conceived there (sick), it was on the living room floor (not sick, but not all that comfortable either). We've actually rented cheap hotel rooms for this very purpose. Where do you go when you can't be in your own bed? I suggested parking, but my husband did NOT grow up in the suburbs, where there are places for this. L.A. isn't conducive to parking, so he'd never experienced it, and really wasn't into it's cramped style (literally). So a cheap hotel it is, and I would suggest it to any married couple, however trampy it may seem (or maybe that's the appeal).
I remember one of the times my parents were in town and watching our oldest. We took a trip to a spa with wonderful outdoor tubs, then took a long drive in the woods where we saw a herd of wild horses (for real), then we ended the day in a cheap motel, in a cheap town on the way home. I will remember it forever, it was a perfect day.
The great thing about having a date with your husband is don't need to put on any kind of a front. You are not thinking about whether or not there will be a second date (or third or fourth). You can simply enjoy each other's company. When children are added to the mix, one of two things happens: 1. It breaks you up (do to several factors that are really clear to me, but for another post), or 2. It puts some time in between the quality moments and adds to rediscovery when you actually do get that precious time alone.
So, aliens, cheap hotel rooms, it's all worth it in the long run. After all, when I first met my husband, he drove me to the "premier alien abduction spot" in the middle of the desert (after I had had a few beers). This was our first date. And THAT story is for another post.
Yes, we had our first "date night" in over a year. This wasn't out of macho-mommyism, it was only out of practicality. While I was pregnant I was lucky to make it through an episode of "Friends" without passing out in the papasan chair. Once the baby arrived it was the "leave my child with a stranger? ARE you out of your MIND?" syndrome.
Unfortunately, because we can't remember who watched our oldest the night we went out, and because we started hanging out with the old baby sitter, our choices are limited to strangers. This is what happens when you rip up your roots. Not only did I rip them up, I landed in a strange little town where everybody's a "healer" or a naval gazer, and it's not shocking to call someone's answering machine to hear "Welcome to the porch, the naked porch". We actually had a tenant in our guest house request that we re-grate the driveway because it was messing with her chi.
We were more daring with our oldest. Or maybe more desperate. I remember having a sitter come to our house. She was a perfectly charming person with great referrals from our handy-man. That is, until she started talking about "the aliens". This was not a simple haphazard comment. She had the whole thing down... the "reptilians", the "blackies", etc.
My husband is a big fan of talking with people about this stuff. We started our date night an hour late because of it.
So, now you are making the connection, yes, we actually did go. We actually left our daughter with this woman for a night. I remember sitting in the car and looking at my hubby and him looking at me, "do you think it will be alright?"
We knew where the woman lived, we knew her neighbors. Where we live, it's quite common for otherwise normal people to talk of alien life, or have seen alien life, or to have been abducted and "probed" by aliens. My husband made an entire radio talk-show out of it for a while. So we drove away.
If it's not aliens, it's some other eccentricity. Our oldest's first babysitter was the wife of the son of Elizabeth Taylor (I didn't know this until much later), she simply loved babies. The second was my husbands extremely bi-polar friend and his girlfriend. The third was the alien lady. We actually used her more than once. The reason we stopped using her was that she was a general pain in the ass, complained about how difficult the VCR was to use, complained about the steps, complained about misc. other things, and finally we came home one night to find our daughter wide-awake on the bed with the woman snoozing beside her.
Is it just here? Are sitters that are sane and reliable hard to find elsewhere? What happened to the days of high school girls wanting to babysit for a buck an hour? Good wholesome girls, with no interest other than watching kids. Oh god, what am I saying. I know what happened, and I am happy for it. Go girls, get the gold... you'll end up watching kids anyhow when the time comes, AND bringing home the bacon, AND doing the laundry, AND fixing the car.
I am actually all for my child care provider getting more than anyone else. I think they are a valuable asset and should be paid properly, but I also hate to break the bank just to get reacquainted with my husband. This is why we NEVER go see a movie when we have a sitter. I can't see spending fifty bucks to sit facing forward watching something with someone that I never get to talk to.
We are like long lost friends that see each other all the time but never connect. We make an effort to sit in my studio at night and drink a glass of wine together and talk after the kids are asleep (a couple of times a week). I value this time, but the place is not optimal. I look at the computers and have a nasty habit of asking him a question, and if he doesn't know the answer, jumping up to do a quick Google search. How annoying...
It's amazing that we conceived a second child at all. The oldest was still sleeping in our bed at the time. The baby wasn't conceived there (sick), it was on the living room floor (not sick, but not all that comfortable either). We've actually rented cheap hotel rooms for this very purpose. Where do you go when you can't be in your own bed? I suggested parking, but my husband did NOT grow up in the suburbs, where there are places for this. L.A. isn't conducive to parking, so he'd never experienced it, and really wasn't into it's cramped style (literally). So a cheap hotel it is, and I would suggest it to any married couple, however trampy it may seem (or maybe that's the appeal).
I remember one of the times my parents were in town and watching our oldest. We took a trip to a spa with wonderful outdoor tubs, then took a long drive in the woods where we saw a herd of wild horses (for real), then we ended the day in a cheap motel, in a cheap town on the way home. I will remember it forever, it was a perfect day.
The great thing about having a date with your husband is don't need to put on any kind of a front. You are not thinking about whether or not there will be a second date (or third or fourth). You can simply enjoy each other's company. When children are added to the mix, one of two things happens: 1. It breaks you up (do to several factors that are really clear to me, but for another post), or 2. It puts some time in between the quality moments and adds to rediscovery when you actually do get that precious time alone.
So, aliens, cheap hotel rooms, it's all worth it in the long run. After all, when I first met my husband, he drove me to the "premier alien abduction spot" in the middle of the desert (after I had had a few beers). This was our first date. And THAT story is for another post.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Random acts of Cynicism
Cynicism (Greek: Kυνισμός) was originally the philosophy of a group of ancient Greeks called the Cynics, founded by Antisthenes. The Cynics rejected all conventions, whether of religion, manners, housing, dress, or decency, advocating the pursuit of virtue in a simple and unmaterialistic lifestyle.
Currently, the word 'cynicism' generally describes the opinions of those who maintain that self-interest is the primary motive of human behaviour, and are disinclined to rely upon sincerity, human virtue, or altruism as motivations.
Honestly, I just looked it up so that I would know the correct way to spell it.I first thought that I would name this post as "random acts of kindness", but I decided to talk more about my mind-frame than to gush over a recent event, but I need to also do this in order to explain my mind-frame. Here is my story:
I was in Trader Joe's today. This is simple enough... go grocery shopping. I needed to pick up "snack" for 40 kids for 2 days (for my oldest's school)-composed of 4 lbs of cheese, 8 lbs of fruit, 4 boxes of crackers, and 2 gallons of juice. Plus there's the dog food. Grocery shopping is an ordeal. When my husband goes with me, we divide and conquer. We are now a "two cart family" and the thought sickens me to a certain extent. He is not with me now though, he has a shrink appointment.
The trick is not so much the parking, but carrying my 4 year old, and the 6 month old (in carrier), and the tote bags across the parking lot. The 4 year old is "out". I try to wake her. I open her eyelids one at a time and peer into her eyes. No effect. There's no turning back. I need to go. I need to get this done. There is no other time.
So I carry 50 lbs of human beings, 5 lbs of carrier, and 6 shopping bags 200 yards to the door. A man helps me by holding the shopping cart so I can slip the 4 year old into the seat. Why these things don't have breaks is beyond me. All they need are simple breaks like the ones on strollers. I've had one of my kids "take a ride" through the parking lot before, and it's not pretty the looks that you get when you leave your child unattended in this manner.
I put the carrier with the baby in the back. This leaves me the bottom of the shopping cart to put food in, so we can't buy anything that is smaller than 4 inches in diameter or it will slip through. I put what I can down there, and decide that it's "okay" to put 4 lbs on bananas on top of the baby. She seems alright with it. Then I put another lb. of oranges on top of her. Still okay, they are off to the side. I pile on a can of tunafish. She's chewing on it. I guess this is okay. Is the label made in China, is it printed with lead ink? No turning back now. The dog food is on the bottom, so that doesn't leave much room for anything else.
It's not very apparent that there is a baby in there. I am hoping to avoid "I would never" looks from people who don't have children. We know that all the "I would nevers (take my kid to Disneyland, buy Cinderella shoes, pile groceries on top of the baby)" go out the window once you actually do have kids.
No, it's not apparent I have a baby in there, until I am in line and she starts to cry. The oldest is still zonked out. The baby is strapped into the car seat with 6 lbs of groceries on her. There is no getting her out. I will have to let her cry. The line is long. I can't leave. I am responsible for "snack". A woman gets behind me in line. I guess I have a line in my forehead that looks like someone has taken a chainsaw to it, and my mandible muscles are bulging like a bulls, so she can see that I am a bit tense.
She begins to talk to the baby. Her voice is the quintessential mothers. She's soft and soothing, and it doesn't really matter what she's saying to the baby, but she knows that I am listening too. The baby stops crying and I look at her. She tells me to do what I have to do (which is basically check out, but it feels like I am climbing Everest). She is telling the baby that "mommy" is going to take her home soon and snuggle with her and cook dinner. She says "unless mommy has something else that she needs to do (this part is specifically for me)... and if she does she's not going to do it. She's just going to take you home".
Funny, in reading back that last sentence, it sounds so presumptuous. But it wasn't. She was honestly saying it to the baby to keep her calm. And she was, as if she could understand every word the woman was saying. Her words were so carefully placed.
I manage to swipe my debit card which has almost broken in two. I keep meaning to get another, but it's way down on the list. It will become priority when I can no longer get it out of the ATM machine. I can put the bags on top of the dog food now. I am one solid package. My baby is no longer crying (until the drive home). I run to the woman and hug her. We introduce ourselves, and I know I will remember her face forever.
Before I had two children I figured "to each his own". I was the last person that needed help, ever. I would bull my way through my day with my kid, dragging her here and there. People would offer, and I would look at them as if they were nuts. It was my choice to have a child, and I can deal with this, just get out of my way. I am independent to a fault, my mother will tell you this. She admits to making me this way. She didn't want me to cry when I went to kindergarten.
I remember being 8 months pregnant. I had my oldest in tow, five bags of groceries on the curb. I started to get her into her car seat when a guy started towards my bags. "Um, excuse me, those are my groceries!" I yelled to him. What did I think he was doing with them? Stealing them? sure. He was HELPING me. He saw that I had a kid and was pregnant, and he decided to help.
That was the beginning of the end. Little did I know that having a second child would require me to accept help sometimes. The fact was cemented when the baby was 6 weeks old. My car got stuck in across both lanes of a very busy street. I jumped out frantically trying to push it, and then decided that maybe this was not the best thing to do with the two kids in the car. Two super-women and a UPS man stopped traffic, carried the kids, and pushed my car to the side of the road.I sent out a mass email trying to reach them to thank them (managing to reach the UPS driver) and had my letter published in two newspapers.
Through these few events my mind-frame changed. It went from a "to each his own" cynical view of the human race, to a much kinder, gentler space. I am malleable now, I can accept help.
As for the ancient Greeks and their view of cynicism (The Cynics rejected all conventions, whether of religion, manners, housing, dress, or decency, advocating the pursuit of virtue in a simple and unmaterialistic lifestyle). This virtue would be simple to embrace, if only one never had to be responsible for "snack".
Monday, November 19, 2007
Baby Hates Power Tools
I'm not sure there are too many moms that can say that their baby hates the sound of a jigsaw in action. I honestly hope that I am wrong about that... or am I?
Today I found out that it is impossible to multi-task while using power tools. What I mean is that it is far easier to wash the dishes and hold the baby, fold laundry and hold the baby, build a web site and hold the baby. It is quite physically impossible to hold the baby while you are using a jigsaw (that is unless you want to risk... well we won't even go there).
I was in charge of installing a new dog door. Well, I guess technically not "in charge" but if I didn't do it, then it wouldn't get done, and it really needed to get done before the dog sitter took over for the week.
There are quite a few things like this that fall onto my plate in our household: installing a new garbage disposal, fixing a leaking faucet, mounting a new toilet. It's not that I know how to do any of these things. With the toilet, I had forgotten to put one of the gaskets in place so it looked quite perfect, that is, until I flushed. A full tank of water expelled itself all over the floor and by the end I was dripping wet and topless with wrenches in both hands, screaming, and laughing (thank god that part) with a two year old looking at me wide-eyed as if mommy had lost her mind.
The one thing that I've learned while acting as handyman for our house is that I should NOT read feminist lit while doing so (The Beauty Myth comes to mind). The two in combination are deadly. The division of labor in our household is stated verbatim in stats sited in those kinds of books, but having to play handyman pushes it into tilt, and I am generally not laughing but stewing over the figures, wrench in hand.
As I said, I don't know how to do most of the things that a handyman does, but they are quite necessary, so I just do them. My husband doesn't understand the "just do it" part. Holding a wrench must cause some kind of disconnect in his brain, that makes him utterly useless in these situations. What is so frustrating is that I have to hear over and over what a brilliant man he is (being a mathematician and all). Maybe mathematicians are not required to care for themselves in our world. Maybe I am a math slave.
Maybe there is just a difference in how we were brought up. I am an overly stoic New Englander (I say this as a fault). I grew up in the woods. He is a non-practicing Jew from LA. City boy. I only bring up the Jewish part because of the utterly tasteless joke about "How many Jews does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" (there are several punchlines to this, most along the lines of "One to call the cleaning lady and two to feel guilty about it"---the sick ones about Auschwitz are completely irrelevant). The joke is age old, so much that there is an environmental movement centered around it involving installing energy-efficient lights in their homes for the celebration of lights.
The joke is stereotypical, and racist, of course. It's an over-generalization, but in our household there are 7 light bulbs that are out, and someone complaining very loudly that it's too dark. So, I have to laugh at the joke.
I am proud of the fact that I have done all of these things, yes, but given an hour of spare time, I don't think that I would put it into doing them (especially the toilet). I had a daylight fantasy of becoming a handy-woman for a living today. The dream quickly degraded into who my clientele might be. On the plus side, maybe little old ladies would want to hire me, because I would be safer than having a man come into the house. On the downside, I'd get men hiring me to look at my ass while I screwed in a light bulb. Maybe this is just an over-exageration. Maybe not. Why do I even need to think of this?
The real question is, if I did not own a jigsaw, who would install the dog door? Would I have to hire a handyman to do it? How long would it be left undone? So, it is utterly necessary.
So getting back to my feelings about whether or not more women should use jigsaws. Truth is, I don't know too many couples where both partners have a set of power tools (or ones that they share). Maybe I am hanging with the wrong set. Growing up, my father did all of the handyman work. He built our house. He introduced me to sawsalls, hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers. I helped. I learned a little... I learned that if you take something apart, you can put it back together again with new parts (you better have damn well been paying attention when you took it apart). I learned that if there is information written about how to do something (such as instructions), eventually you can figure it out.
I watched my oldest daughter help "poppop" take apart her crib when she was about two and a half. She held the screwdriver, and he actually showed her how to use it. He loosened the screws enough, so she could feel a sense of accomplishment when it finally came loose. She was ecstatic to help.
She came home from school today, and looked at the tools scattered all over the floor, and very proudly said "Mommy. You DID it!". When everybody was settled in, I put the tools away, and started to wash the dishes and cook dinner. She went upstairs to put her "jammies" on. When she came down, my little princess was wearing blue pajamas with wrenches, and hammers, and saws on them. She never wears these (think PRINCESS), but tonight, I guess she was inspired. I bought them for her a couple of years back (she's finally grown into them).
Her father was sitting at the table and she looked at him and said "Look Dada, I have tool jammies on"
"Oh yeah, where did you get those?"
"Pop-pop bought them for me"
I think she's on the right track.
Today I found out that it is impossible to multi-task while using power tools. What I mean is that it is far easier to wash the dishes and hold the baby, fold laundry and hold the baby, build a web site and hold the baby. It is quite physically impossible to hold the baby while you are using a jigsaw (that is unless you want to risk... well we won't even go there).
I was in charge of installing a new dog door. Well, I guess technically not "in charge" but if I didn't do it, then it wouldn't get done, and it really needed to get done before the dog sitter took over for the week.
There are quite a few things like this that fall onto my plate in our household: installing a new garbage disposal, fixing a leaking faucet, mounting a new toilet. It's not that I know how to do any of these things. With the toilet, I had forgotten to put one of the gaskets in place so it looked quite perfect, that is, until I flushed. A full tank of water expelled itself all over the floor and by the end I was dripping wet and topless with wrenches in both hands, screaming, and laughing (thank god that part) with a two year old looking at me wide-eyed as if mommy had lost her mind.
The one thing that I've learned while acting as handyman for our house is that I should NOT read feminist lit while doing so (The Beauty Myth comes to mind). The two in combination are deadly. The division of labor in our household is stated verbatim in stats sited in those kinds of books, but having to play handyman pushes it into tilt, and I am generally not laughing but stewing over the figures, wrench in hand.
As I said, I don't know how to do most of the things that a handyman does, but they are quite necessary, so I just do them. My husband doesn't understand the "just do it" part. Holding a wrench must cause some kind of disconnect in his brain, that makes him utterly useless in these situations. What is so frustrating is that I have to hear over and over what a brilliant man he is (being a mathematician and all). Maybe mathematicians are not required to care for themselves in our world. Maybe I am a math slave.
Maybe there is just a difference in how we were brought up. I am an overly stoic New Englander (I say this as a fault). I grew up in the woods. He is a non-practicing Jew from LA. City boy. I only bring up the Jewish part because of the utterly tasteless joke about "How many Jews does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" (there are several punchlines to this, most along the lines of "One to call the cleaning lady and two to feel guilty about it"---the sick ones about Auschwitz are completely irrelevant). The joke is age old, so much that there is an environmental movement centered around it involving installing energy-efficient lights in their homes for the celebration of lights.
The joke is stereotypical, and racist, of course. It's an over-generalization, but in our household there are 7 light bulbs that are out, and someone complaining very loudly that it's too dark. So, I have to laugh at the joke.
I am proud of the fact that I have done all of these things, yes, but given an hour of spare time, I don't think that I would put it into doing them (especially the toilet). I had a daylight fantasy of becoming a handy-woman for a living today. The dream quickly degraded into who my clientele might be. On the plus side, maybe little old ladies would want to hire me, because I would be safer than having a man come into the house. On the downside, I'd get men hiring me to look at my ass while I screwed in a light bulb. Maybe this is just an over-exageration. Maybe not. Why do I even need to think of this?
The real question is, if I did not own a jigsaw, who would install the dog door? Would I have to hire a handyman to do it? How long would it be left undone? So, it is utterly necessary.
So getting back to my feelings about whether or not more women should use jigsaws. Truth is, I don't know too many couples where both partners have a set of power tools (or ones that they share). Maybe I am hanging with the wrong set. Growing up, my father did all of the handyman work. He built our house. He introduced me to sawsalls, hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers. I helped. I learned a little... I learned that if you take something apart, you can put it back together again with new parts (you better have damn well been paying attention when you took it apart). I learned that if there is information written about how to do something (such as instructions), eventually you can figure it out.
I watched my oldest daughter help "poppop" take apart her crib when she was about two and a half. She held the screwdriver, and he actually showed her how to use it. He loosened the screws enough, so she could feel a sense of accomplishment when it finally came loose. She was ecstatic to help.
She came home from school today, and looked at the tools scattered all over the floor, and very proudly said "Mommy. You DID it!". When everybody was settled in, I put the tools away, and started to wash the dishes and cook dinner. She went upstairs to put her "jammies" on. When she came down, my little princess was wearing blue pajamas with wrenches, and hammers, and saws on them. She never wears these (think PRINCESS), but tonight, I guess she was inspired. I bought them for her a couple of years back (she's finally grown into them).
Her father was sitting at the table and she looked at him and said "Look Dada, I have tool jammies on"
"Oh yeah, where did you get those?"
"Pop-pop bought them for me"
I think she's on the right track.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Groundhog Day
I was nursing the baby to sleep tonight and I happened to glance over at the clock, which displays the wrong time and the wrong date. We use it as a sound machine to cover up my husband's snoring. It doesn't work. I slept in the hallway the other night (after ripping the comforter off of my husband and grabbing one of the five pillows he was using). I shut the door. peace. no. I turned on the dryer, the laundry room was right next to me head, there was change in it. Cachink, cachink, cachink... ah peace. All until I almost gave myself hypothermia because of sleeping on a cold tile floor. By this time the baby was next to me, kicking... she was probably trying to tell me that she was getting hypothermia too.
Anyhow, the date on the clock said 2-02. Groundhog's day. I never notice the time or date on this clock, but somehow this struck me as ironic. Why exactly, I'm unsure. Maybe it was the fact that I know what rocking a "pack and play" sounds like, whish, whish. I have been doing it for four years now.
I'm not thinking of the holiday necessarily, but the movie. The one where he wakes up over and over to the same day. I guess we all do it to a certain extent. This happened to me while I was pregnant for the second time. Every time I turned around, it was Wednesday. There's no distinct marker to Wednesday necessarily in my life, but it stood out more than the other days. Not sure why. Hump day, huh, that's what got me in my predicament in the first place.
I thought of naming the baby Wednesday, but due to the Adam's family rugrat, I thought it might be a bad idea. "Adam's Family Values" was on the other night. I never watch TV, but it was background noise for some sewing that I was TRYING to do (I don't sew, but thought that I could at the moment).
I caught the part of Morticia in labor. Peaceful, happily grim, not moving an inch. Way different than me on all fours in the shower yelling at my husband to stop asking if I was okay and to tell me that I was doing great. Morticia, the ultimate Macho mom in labor. No epidural. She should have had a home birth.
I just met with one of my "mommy" friends in the park the other day. Her second is about a month old. She had a home birth. And she had a retained placenta. And a nice little trip to the hospital. And 4 units of blood (we only have 5 in our bodies). She had Smurf hallucinations because they shot her up with PCP for the pain.
I am all for "back to nature", I harvest edible wild plants, get my produce from a co-op farm. Why women would give birth at home though is beyond me. Just think of the mess. Who's going to clean that up?
My oldest asked me today, in view of the hospital, if that's where all babies are born. I listed at least a half-dozen babies that had not been born there, but born at home. Granted, we live in a hoodoo town where naval-gazing is the norm. Healers run amok selling their stuff, whatever that might be. I actually had a neighbor admit to me that he was on hallucinogens and lighting fires at the top of our hill behind our house. He said it proudly. He was having a "very powerful ceremony" up there. a huh...
What I am wondering is, do we do these things to get out of the norm of everyday life? Nine to five is definitely not our nature anymore, and we need to prove it to the world. We are better than that. We can give birth at home, who needs those doctors anyhow? We fill our kids with alternative medicine until their eardrums burst because they have an infection that we thought we could treat ourselves. Everyone is a medicine man.
Are our lives so filled with the mundane that we feel we need to take chances to get closer to nature? I can understand why we don't trust our "medicine men" anymore. I can understand that our insurance/health care system is corrupt. But this is not about the masses, it's about the educated and relatively wealthy. You don't see welfare moms giving birth at home, at least not on purpose.
Well to each his own and I am not making any judgments. I simply think that women have enough burden on them in our society without raising the bar even more. Life choices that bring us back to nature shouldn't happen for just the intense moments, but for the simple ones too. Everyday we do our thing. Over and over we do it. It's this over and over that matters in the long run. It's the small choices that we make that add up and in the long run bring us back to nature.
Nature will take care of us. That is until we need a trip to the hospital.
Anyhow, the date on the clock said 2-02. Groundhog's day. I never notice the time or date on this clock, but somehow this struck me as ironic. Why exactly, I'm unsure. Maybe it was the fact that I know what rocking a "pack and play" sounds like, whish, whish. I have been doing it for four years now.
I'm not thinking of the holiday necessarily, but the movie. The one where he wakes up over and over to the same day. I guess we all do it to a certain extent. This happened to me while I was pregnant for the second time. Every time I turned around, it was Wednesday. There's no distinct marker to Wednesday necessarily in my life, but it stood out more than the other days. Not sure why. Hump day, huh, that's what got me in my predicament in the first place.
I thought of naming the baby Wednesday, but due to the Adam's family rugrat, I thought it might be a bad idea. "Adam's Family Values" was on the other night. I never watch TV, but it was background noise for some sewing that I was TRYING to do (I don't sew, but thought that I could at the moment).
I caught the part of Morticia in labor. Peaceful, happily grim, not moving an inch. Way different than me on all fours in the shower yelling at my husband to stop asking if I was okay and to tell me that I was doing great. Morticia, the ultimate Macho mom in labor. No epidural. She should have had a home birth.
I just met with one of my "mommy" friends in the park the other day. Her second is about a month old. She had a home birth. And she had a retained placenta. And a nice little trip to the hospital. And 4 units of blood (we only have 5 in our bodies). She had Smurf hallucinations because they shot her up with PCP for the pain.
I am all for "back to nature", I harvest edible wild plants, get my produce from a co-op farm. Why women would give birth at home though is beyond me. Just think of the mess. Who's going to clean that up?
My oldest asked me today, in view of the hospital, if that's where all babies are born. I listed at least a half-dozen babies that had not been born there, but born at home. Granted, we live in a hoodoo town where naval-gazing is the norm. Healers run amok selling their stuff, whatever that might be. I actually had a neighbor admit to me that he was on hallucinogens and lighting fires at the top of our hill behind our house. He said it proudly. He was having a "very powerful ceremony" up there. a huh...
What I am wondering is, do we do these things to get out of the norm of everyday life? Nine to five is definitely not our nature anymore, and we need to prove it to the world. We are better than that. We can give birth at home, who needs those doctors anyhow? We fill our kids with alternative medicine until their eardrums burst because they have an infection that we thought we could treat ourselves. Everyone is a medicine man.
Are our lives so filled with the mundane that we feel we need to take chances to get closer to nature? I can understand why we don't trust our "medicine men" anymore. I can understand that our insurance/health care system is corrupt. But this is not about the masses, it's about the educated and relatively wealthy. You don't see welfare moms giving birth at home, at least not on purpose.
Well to each his own and I am not making any judgments. I simply think that women have enough burden on them in our society without raising the bar even more. Life choices that bring us back to nature shouldn't happen for just the intense moments, but for the simple ones too. Everyday we do our thing. Over and over we do it. It's this over and over that matters in the long run. It's the small choices that we make that add up and in the long run bring us back to nature.
Nature will take care of us. That is until we need a trip to the hospital.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Daylight Save-me
"Tonight we turn the clocks back! That's an extra hour of sleep!", my husband joyfully proclaimed tonight at the dinner table, while my oldest screamed that she needed to color AND eat, and the baby cried holding both spoons (one intended for me to feed her with, the other to hold).
WHAT? Is he out of his mind?
I calmly rebutted "not, if you have kids" and he looked like I had slapped him. Don't worry honey, I won't ask you to wake up with them tomorrow. After all, you don't have breasts, or at least ones that work.
The ticking time-bomb, uh, I mean time-clock of my kids bodies doesn't relate to the time change in the least. Could it be that they don't know how to tell time yet? Or is it that they just wake up to each day with joyful wonder and excitement? Maybe both.
When exactly does it happen? Is it in High School, where given an extra hour of snooze time, we quickly jump to the opportunity? Is it sooner than that? What switch goes off in our human existence? Maybe it's when we stop believing in Santa Claus.
My rebellion: I put the kids to bed an hour earlier tonight. This could mean one of two things. They will be getting up pre-dawn, or I've tricked them into getting that extra hour anyhow. I think the former will probably preside.
I will find myself using that extra hour, over and over and over tomorrow. Maybe I am using it now. Personally I think that it should come to us by surprise. We should all get phone calls at a particular hour proclaiming that we have just been given another hour, maybe Monday morning when we're getting ready for work. At least then the extra hour wouldn't be absorbed into our day, but would allow us to do the things that we really cared about, like wash dishes, or watch Cinderella III.
I've heard that it came late this year, later than was marked on the Calendars. SOMEONE decided this was a good idea. This all leaves me wondering, "who exactly is in charge of this anyhow?". Obviously the government is, right? Is there a division for this? How much are these people paid? who is on the committee? How do I contact them?
How much time is wasted actually resetting all these clocks? How long will I spend with the wrong time on my car stereo before I remember which button to hold down for three seconds?
Anyway, back to children. I used to work with a woman that had two children (5 now, poor thing). This was back in my 20s, when the word "snooze" was well worn on my alarm clock. She said that she didn't have an alarm clock, she didn't need one. This was so out of reach of my comprehension that I still think about it today. Now, I know what she means... it's unnecessary.
SOMEONE will wake you up, and more than likely it will be sooner than you want to wake up.
Now I am just trying to figure out whether the sound of an alarm (which noise is uncannily like a school bus backing up), or the sounds of children screaming is more pleasant to wake up to.
One thing's for sure, I don't have the excuse anymore of the alarm not going off.
((Here's a good link. I guess I can relate my kids to the cows that need milking no matter what time we all say it is.
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200504010806.asp))
WHAT? Is he out of his mind?
I calmly rebutted "not, if you have kids" and he looked like I had slapped him. Don't worry honey, I won't ask you to wake up with them tomorrow. After all, you don't have breasts, or at least ones that work.
The ticking time-bomb, uh, I mean time-clock of my kids bodies doesn't relate to the time change in the least. Could it be that they don't know how to tell time yet? Or is it that they just wake up to each day with joyful wonder and excitement? Maybe both.
When exactly does it happen? Is it in High School, where given an extra hour of snooze time, we quickly jump to the opportunity? Is it sooner than that? What switch goes off in our human existence? Maybe it's when we stop believing in Santa Claus.
My rebellion: I put the kids to bed an hour earlier tonight. This could mean one of two things. They will be getting up pre-dawn, or I've tricked them into getting that extra hour anyhow. I think the former will probably preside.
I will find myself using that extra hour, over and over and over tomorrow. Maybe I am using it now. Personally I think that it should come to us by surprise. We should all get phone calls at a particular hour proclaiming that we have just been given another hour, maybe Monday morning when we're getting ready for work. At least then the extra hour wouldn't be absorbed into our day, but would allow us to do the things that we really cared about, like wash dishes, or watch Cinderella III.
I've heard that it came late this year, later than was marked on the Calendars. SOMEONE decided this was a good idea. This all leaves me wondering, "who exactly is in charge of this anyhow?". Obviously the government is, right? Is there a division for this? How much are these people paid? who is on the committee? How do I contact them?
How much time is wasted actually resetting all these clocks? How long will I spend with the wrong time on my car stereo before I remember which button to hold down for three seconds?
Anyway, back to children. I used to work with a woman that had two children (5 now, poor thing). This was back in my 20s, when the word "snooze" was well worn on my alarm clock. She said that she didn't have an alarm clock, she didn't need one. This was so out of reach of my comprehension that I still think about it today. Now, I know what she means... it's unnecessary.
SOMEONE will wake you up, and more than likely it will be sooner than you want to wake up.
Now I am just trying to figure out whether the sound of an alarm (which noise is uncannily like a school bus backing up), or the sounds of children screaming is more pleasant to wake up to.
One thing's for sure, I don't have the excuse anymore of the alarm not going off.
((Here's a good link. I guess I can relate my kids to the cows that need milking no matter what time we all say it is.
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200504010806.asp))
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The difference between Home and Hell
My daughter came home from a play date naked. The mom she was with got out of her car, and quickly gave me the disclaimer, "I don't usually bring kids home from play dates naked, but you've got to see them". I laughed, said it was okay (was it?) and hussled to the car. Not only were the two kids naked, strapped tightly in their car seats, but they were covered in feathers.
"They glued them on to see if they could fly", the disclaimer continued.
They weren't smiling, they were both sitting there as stoic as someone could be that just realized that feathers don't necessarily make your aerodynamic. I always imagine corrupt politicians tar and feathered, and it was quite a contrast to these innocent wide eyes and little bodies with haphazard color stuck in random places. I could picture them flapping around, jumping, trying their darndest to take off. Luckily we live in a place where most of the houses are one-story (all except mine, which is 4). I don't think that they tried to jump out of a window or anything, and I remembered the story of the little boy that jumped to his death in New York with a Superman costume. That was when I was a kid, and my parents must have given me some lecture on it for me to remember it so clearly. Maybe I was just older than I think, and my parents gave me less credit than they should have.
As I unstrapped my daughter from the seat and grabbed her bag of clothes from the mom, thanking her, a moment of doubt came over me. This is quite silly, but I wondered why the kids didn't do something like this at my house. Did they not feel free enough to have this much fun (or at least conduct this experiment-fun or not)? Is my environment stifling?
We're in the process of selling our house. I'm afraid that I've become a little OCD with "a place for everything and everything in it's place".
When I first met my husband I fell in love with him because his socks never matched, he was eccentric. He had 2 feet of garbage filling a two car garage... all the way across. There were mice living in old suitcases, the dogs had eaten a hole in the wall, there were 3 month old poroge's sitting in the oven. When his pots and pans had ripened in the sink for enough time, he wouldn't wash them, he would throw them off of his balcony into the woods below.
I guess I am the kind of person that goes for hard projects. I looked around the other day, his office was clean, his shirt didn't look like he had pulled it out of a pile of old laundry, and
his socks matched. What had I done?
More importantly, why was I doing it? When you're selling your house you're trying to sell someone on the dream that if they just lived there, then life would be easier, cleaner, more-inspiring. I know because I've fallen for it myself. Our house in on the market because we've found another that promises all these things.
We have magazines that pound us with images of whitewashed hallway tables donning a single flower in a crystal vase with keys hanging neatly on a hook. Only woman buy these rags. You wouldn't find the most metrosexual male standing in line at whole foods with a copy of Real Simple.
All of the ads for cleaning products still display women using them. I recently did an ad for Van de Kamp's fish, they instructed my to write "Moms!" on there, then list the reasons it was a good choice. I almost refused, but really I need the cash to buy more magazine's and cleaning products.
The truth of the matter is though, if you have children, the whitewashed table has probably been written on, and the keys lost. The wonderful part is that the flower is probably a "weed" from the yard stuck in a glass. There are probably feathers stuck to the side of the tub. There's probably a tired little girl, tucked into her bed, not caring about cleaning fluids, or if she left her crayons out. She's just happy to be "Home" after trying to fly.
Tomorrow her mommy won't care if Martha Stewart herself is coming over to view the house. Let them see it how it is, for what it is - a home.
"They glued them on to see if they could fly", the disclaimer continued.
They weren't smiling, they were both sitting there as stoic as someone could be that just realized that feathers don't necessarily make your aerodynamic. I always imagine corrupt politicians tar and feathered, and it was quite a contrast to these innocent wide eyes and little bodies with haphazard color stuck in random places. I could picture them flapping around, jumping, trying their darndest to take off. Luckily we live in a place where most of the houses are one-story (all except mine, which is 4). I don't think that they tried to jump out of a window or anything, and I remembered the story of the little boy that jumped to his death in New York with a Superman costume. That was when I was a kid, and my parents must have given me some lecture on it for me to remember it so clearly. Maybe I was just older than I think, and my parents gave me less credit than they should have.
As I unstrapped my daughter from the seat and grabbed her bag of clothes from the mom, thanking her, a moment of doubt came over me. This is quite silly, but I wondered why the kids didn't do something like this at my house. Did they not feel free enough to have this much fun (or at least conduct this experiment-fun or not)? Is my environment stifling?
We're in the process of selling our house. I'm afraid that I've become a little OCD with "a place for everything and everything in it's place".
When I first met my husband I fell in love with him because his socks never matched, he was eccentric. He had 2 feet of garbage filling a two car garage... all the way across. There were mice living in old suitcases, the dogs had eaten a hole in the wall, there were 3 month old poroge's sitting in the oven. When his pots and pans had ripened in the sink for enough time, he wouldn't wash them, he would throw them off of his balcony into the woods below.
I guess I am the kind of person that goes for hard projects. I looked around the other day, his office was clean, his shirt didn't look like he had pulled it out of a pile of old laundry, and
his socks matched. What had I done?
More importantly, why was I doing it? When you're selling your house you're trying to sell someone on the dream that if they just lived there, then life would be easier, cleaner, more-inspiring. I know because I've fallen for it myself. Our house in on the market because we've found another that promises all these things.
We have magazines that pound us with images of whitewashed hallway tables donning a single flower in a crystal vase with keys hanging neatly on a hook. Only woman buy these rags. You wouldn't find the most metrosexual male standing in line at whole foods with a copy of Real Simple.
All of the ads for cleaning products still display women using them. I recently did an ad for Van de Kamp's fish, they instructed my to write "Moms!" on there, then list the reasons it was a good choice. I almost refused, but really I need the cash to buy more magazine's and cleaning products.
The truth of the matter is though, if you have children, the whitewashed table has probably been written on, and the keys lost. The wonderful part is that the flower is probably a "weed" from the yard stuck in a glass. There are probably feathers stuck to the side of the tub. There's probably a tired little girl, tucked into her bed, not caring about cleaning fluids, or if she left her crayons out. She's just happy to be "Home" after trying to fly.
Tomorrow her mommy won't care if Martha Stewart herself is coming over to view the house. Let them see it how it is, for what it is - a home.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Media
It's naptime and the dogs are barking, so let's hope this lasts.
Apparently it was the contractor picking up the last little bit of retribution that I had against him. It was a ladder. We had someone pick up the rest of the "garbage" that he left. He also left unfinished cabinets, and sinks, and whatever else, so I thought I would keep the ladder, oh well. He drove off fast.
So the contractor has his ladder, the dogs've had their bark, and now the baby's got her boob.
Where was I?
Oh yes, so, I'm not very good at this blogging thing. I can't even remember my own username. I typed it as "mediamom". Which is somewhat Freudian in that that's what I do. I design media.
In the last post I wrote that I was "retouching a photo..." in my rant about Twitter. It dawned on me that possibly someone might think that I was one of those "super moms" that retouches photos of her kids to create superhuman well designed scrapbooks to hand to her kids upon High School graduation.
No. I create Vlasic Pickle ads.
I retouch anti-bush propaganda into them. Not really, but I wish that I did. I don't have the guts. Naomi Wolf, now she has the guts. She's not afraid to be "on the list". Then again, she's a writer, and I am not. Her children are obviously old enough that she's gotten out of the brain fog of mommy-dom. I am sure she doesn't start a sentence and stop in search for the perfect adjective, and finally after a good 20 second red-faced pause decide that she'll settle on "cool".
She's got a head start on me I guess. My father is not a poet, he had an automotive shop. My mother had a beauty salon. I AM middle America--here's to fast cars and beautiful women. Or, bring it down a notch, we've got a running car, and there's no dirt under our nails, and every darn sent is going to send you to art school (so you can get dirt under your nails).
It does seem like there's a certain disconnect there, doesn't it? My parents lived under a certain rule: you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, until you retire, all the while stockpiling canned good from Costco to save a buck.
So, I guess I convinced them that I needed to go to, not just any art school, but a very expensive private art school. I went to RISD, where learned how to draw, and paint, and how to drop an egg off a 10 story building without it breaking. I learned to be an art-snob, to be trendy and cool. All the working class values seemed not to apply to me. I am arteest! watch me paint.
I towed that line for a pretty long time. I married a mathematician, writer, and musician, a "brilliant man" (albeit that he can't find the hamper, or thinks that a multi-vitamin will satisfy a hungry child). We named our first child "Nico", from the Velvet Underground. I printed out a bullseye with the word "Terrorist" across it and ironed it onto her onesie when she was three weeks old. We waited in line for 3 hours so that Michael Moore could hold her and I could get a picture. I'd have her in "the sling" and slip behind a Hummers with "terrorist" stickers, slapping them on.
Then something changed, my husband lost his job as an Associate Professor (no fault of his own, and that story is for another post), but suddenly he found himself stuck and snoring in my office during the day. It was my job to step up to the plate, making the mortgage, the bills.
I leaned on what I knew how to do--design. Things were tight for a while there. I spent many a night on five hours sleep, tapping away at one project or another. I remember sitting on the ground under the swing, pushing it with one hand while working on the laptop with the other grateful that we were the only ones there. This just goes beyond the catty world of the "good mom/bad mom" wars, and the ringing in my ears may have deafened me.
I worked so Nico could eat, I worked so we could have a house, I worked so we could pay the contractor to finish the addition so that Nico wouldn't have to sleep on a crib mattress next to our bed.
Things are straightened out now in regards to his job. My job is still the same. I'm still tapping away with one hand, holding a baby to the boob with the other. I got through the madness, it changed me deeply. My rebellion and arteest-ness is more mild now. I am not willing to risk too much, or risk it as loudly as I once did and I've learned one valuable lesson through it all:
you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, and you support the people that make a difference (like buying Naomi Wolf's book), until you get out of the fog...
then the Hummers are fair game.
Apparently it was the contractor picking up the last little bit of retribution that I had against him. It was a ladder. We had someone pick up the rest of the "garbage" that he left. He also left unfinished cabinets, and sinks, and whatever else, so I thought I would keep the ladder, oh well. He drove off fast.
So the contractor has his ladder, the dogs've had their bark, and now the baby's got her boob.
Where was I?
Oh yes, so, I'm not very good at this blogging thing. I can't even remember my own username. I typed it as "mediamom". Which is somewhat Freudian in that that's what I do. I design media.
In the last post I wrote that I was "retouching a photo..." in my rant about Twitter. It dawned on me that possibly someone might think that I was one of those "super moms" that retouches photos of her kids to create superhuman well designed scrapbooks to hand to her kids upon High School graduation.
No. I create Vlasic Pickle ads.
I retouch anti-bush propaganda into them. Not really, but I wish that I did. I don't have the guts. Naomi Wolf, now she has the guts. She's not afraid to be "on the list". Then again, she's a writer, and I am not. Her children are obviously old enough that she's gotten out of the brain fog of mommy-dom. I am sure she doesn't start a sentence and stop in search for the perfect adjective, and finally after a good 20 second red-faced pause decide that she'll settle on "cool".
She's got a head start on me I guess. My father is not a poet, he had an automotive shop. My mother had a beauty salon. I AM middle America--here's to fast cars and beautiful women. Or, bring it down a notch, we've got a running car, and there's no dirt under our nails, and every darn sent is going to send you to art school (so you can get dirt under your nails).
It does seem like there's a certain disconnect there, doesn't it? My parents lived under a certain rule: you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, until you retire, all the while stockpiling canned good from Costco to save a buck.
So, I guess I convinced them that I needed to go to, not just any art school, but a very expensive private art school. I went to RISD, where learned how to draw, and paint, and how to drop an egg off a 10 story building without it breaking. I learned to be an art-snob, to be trendy and cool. All the working class values seemed not to apply to me. I am arteest! watch me paint.
I towed that line for a pretty long time. I married a mathematician, writer, and musician, a "brilliant man" (albeit that he can't find the hamper, or thinks that a multi-vitamin will satisfy a hungry child). We named our first child "Nico", from the Velvet Underground. I printed out a bullseye with the word "Terrorist" across it and ironed it onto her onesie when she was three weeks old. We waited in line for 3 hours so that Michael Moore could hold her and I could get a picture. I'd have her in "the sling" and slip behind a Hummers with "terrorist" stickers, slapping them on.
Then something changed, my husband lost his job as an Associate Professor (no fault of his own, and that story is for another post), but suddenly he found himself stuck and snoring in my office during the day. It was my job to step up to the plate, making the mortgage, the bills.
I leaned on what I knew how to do--design. Things were tight for a while there. I spent many a night on five hours sleep, tapping away at one project or another. I remember sitting on the ground under the swing, pushing it with one hand while working on the laptop with the other grateful that we were the only ones there. This just goes beyond the catty world of the "good mom/bad mom" wars, and the ringing in my ears may have deafened me.
I worked so Nico could eat, I worked so we could have a house, I worked so we could pay the contractor to finish the addition so that Nico wouldn't have to sleep on a crib mattress next to our bed.
Things are straightened out now in regards to his job. My job is still the same. I'm still tapping away with one hand, holding a baby to the boob with the other. I got through the madness, it changed me deeply. My rebellion and arteest-ness is more mild now. I am not willing to risk too much, or risk it as loudly as I once did and I've learned one valuable lesson through it all:
you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, and you support the people that make a difference (like buying Naomi Wolf's book), until you get out of the fog...
then the Hummers are fair game.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Starting
I started a blog four years ago...
I've been through several topics, edited, revisited, written, and re-written --- in my head.
What happened was that the baby started crying.
As a matter a fact she started crying after I typed that first sentence (or half of it). It's a completely new baby now, the four year old won't settle from a boob in her mouth anymore, but at least she's tucked in bed, and the new one will settle with the aforementioned pacification after a few minutes or so. So, it's late, and everyone is down, and I'm going to attempt this, after four years.
What I'd like to write about is my life. Go figure, everyone decides that their life is worthy of posting on the internet. We all have dreams and delusions about connecting with others through this electronic means. What really happens is our words get sucked into the void of information, random keystrokes picked up by search engine spiders.
(oops baby's crying again. She must be teathing).
And, I'm back. Talk about "connecting"... more boob in the mouth and we're good to go. If only I could type horizontal.
Back to the blog. I tried Twitter, which I wouldn't call a blog, but more of a place for people with OCD mixed with a little ADD to type what they are doing. "What are you doing?" it asks me, and I have to laugh. I tried to actually type what I was doing in there but I used up too many keystrokes. Most of the posts were along the lines of "Nursing the baby, retouching a photograph, thinking about what we're going to have for dinner, yelling at the dogs to stop barking, and getting a fedex". My posts were mixed in with my "friends" posts of "Thinking in sound today", "coding" and my all time favorite of "16 hours of sleep can't be good for you" - different demographic I guess.
The only time I could relate to someone on there was when he wrote "falling asleep while watching Friends" (however now that I think about it, I think he meant "friends" on Twitter, and I meant reruns of Friends on TV while 9 months pregnant).
I'm sure there is a community out there for me. A place where everybody is doing 5 things at once, holding it all together, making it all happen in and outside of the computer screen. But, hell, I've landed here, and I figure I'll stay here for my own peace of mind. There is no time to go searching through iVillage or whatever else. Google pointed here for "free and blog" and I figure at least it's a place to put my thoughts. At least I've started...
The baby's crying.
I've been through several topics, edited, revisited, written, and re-written --- in my head.
What happened was that the baby started crying.
As a matter a fact she started crying after I typed that first sentence (or half of it). It's a completely new baby now, the four year old won't settle from a boob in her mouth anymore, but at least she's tucked in bed, and the new one will settle with the aforementioned pacification after a few minutes or so. So, it's late, and everyone is down, and I'm going to attempt this, after four years.
What I'd like to write about is my life. Go figure, everyone decides that their life is worthy of posting on the internet. We all have dreams and delusions about connecting with others through this electronic means. What really happens is our words get sucked into the void of information, random keystrokes picked up by search engine spiders.
(oops baby's crying again. She must be teathing).
And, I'm back. Talk about "connecting"... more boob in the mouth and we're good to go. If only I could type horizontal.
Back to the blog. I tried Twitter, which I wouldn't call a blog, but more of a place for people with OCD mixed with a little ADD to type what they are doing. "What are you doing?" it asks me, and I have to laugh. I tried to actually type what I was doing in there but I used up too many keystrokes. Most of the posts were along the lines of "Nursing the baby, retouching a photograph, thinking about what we're going to have for dinner, yelling at the dogs to stop barking, and getting a fedex". My posts were mixed in with my "friends" posts of "Thinking in sound today", "coding" and my all time favorite of "16 hours of sleep can't be good for you" - different demographic I guess.
The only time I could relate to someone on there was when he wrote "falling asleep while watching Friends" (however now that I think about it, I think he meant "friends" on Twitter, and I meant reruns of Friends on TV while 9 months pregnant).
I'm sure there is a community out there for me. A place where everybody is doing 5 things at once, holding it all together, making it all happen in and outside of the computer screen. But, hell, I've landed here, and I figure I'll stay here for my own peace of mind. There is no time to go searching through iVillage or whatever else. Google pointed here for "free and blog" and I figure at least it's a place to put my thoughts. At least I've started...
The baby's crying.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)