this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2008 March.

In response to this post, Angela asked, “What is your 5 or 10 yr plan…do you have one? As in “where would you like your life/family/work to be in 5 or 10 yrs?”

I have a rough plan. (Do you realize that in ten years I’ll be mother to a child then old enough to buy a six-pack? My god.) In the next five years I want:

• To be making more money;
• To be writing more of what I want to write;
• To have work finding ME instead of me finding it;
• To be working on a second book.

I feel very good about the likelihood of all of these. And I’m very curious to know what my next book might be. Really all I want to do write now is think on adoption but I imagine that won’t be true forever. What’ll it be next? I’m really curious.

Columbus Blog Directory

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for awhile and I finally did it this week since I had a bit of space in my work schedule. So if you’re in Central Ohio and you’re blogging, c’mon down!

This morning I took the kids out to the library to hook up with Tracy (for the first time and she was lovely and Madison wasn’t too grouchy but maybe just a little bit). When we set out walking there it was a beautiful winter wonderland and Madison fairly skipped her way to the library catching snowflakes on her tongue. But on the way back everything was much more difficult. It was snowing harder, the sidewalks were slipperier and the wind had picked up.

Poor Madison was tired and hungry and the snow was blowing into her face, icing up her eyelashes. It’s 3.4 miles from our house to the library (I just google-mapped it) and (Edited to add: I thought about this and decided google is wrong. I went back and checked and it is — it has the library about 2 miles away from where it is. Next time I won’t copy and paste without reading, eh?) It’s uphill coming back so there’s that, too. Plus, she’s small and that’s a long walk in the driving snow when you’re big let alone if you’re just a little girl who’s ready for her lunch.

We trudged on because, as I pointed out to her, we weren’t going to get home by standing still. Still I was cursing myself for not calling Brett from the library and having him come get us. We stopped to rest in the park for a minute, sheltered in the little kiosk at the front, and I brushed the snowflakes out of her eyes. That’s past the halfway point but still feels like a long way from home.

“C’mon,” I said as I led her back out on the sidewalk. “We are strong, courageous women! We can do this!”

She was wailing up the street, holding onto the back of my coat so I’d act as a wind-breaker.

“I don’t want to be women!” she cried. “I want to be a children!”

“Ok, I’m a strong, courageous woman and you’re my strong, courageous child and we are on our way home! We’re braving the winds!”

“You freak me out when you say womens, Mommy! I miss my Daddy! I miss my brother!”

It was really sad. I kept wishing some passing car would be a neighbor so I could have hitched a ride. But we made it! And once Madison had some lunch in her belly and was tucked up with a blanket to watch a little Thomas the Tank Engine, all was good. (I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s asleep up there right now because it was hard work getting home!)

Not much news but it’s something:

Ohio.com - Adoption decisions questioned

A state appeals court judge has expressed concern that teenage mothers are allowed to give up children for adoption in Ohio without their parents being consulted.In a decision released Wednesday in a local adoption case, 9th District Court of Appeals Judge Donna J. Carr said it’s troubling that minors are restricted from entering into other legal contracts, but not adoptions.

”We allow 16-year-olds, and those even younger, to independently decide to permanently terminate the relationship of parent and child without the advice of their own parent or perhaps the counsel of a guardian ad litem or attorney,” she wrote in a three-page addendum to the court’s decision.

For some part-time, maybe temporary work. It’d be fun work so I’d be happy to get it but it’d be a lot of hours so I’d also be happy not to. (Hey, if you’re not into interviewing? Don’t start freelancing because it never ends.)

Madison’s neck is fine and she is growing like crazy. That’s what the doctor’s visit told us. I need to find the little kid pics we have of Pennie because it’s amazing how much Madison is following in her growth/body-type footsteps. I put them somewhere safe, which means I may never find them. Drat!

This interview reminded me of the time I went in for an afternoon to do some work at a hot shot fashion company here in town just about a year ago. To ward off google-juice, I’ll only tell you that this company specializes in women’s underwear, usually makes the models wear wings at their fashion shows and used a diamond-encrusted brassiere to net some PR a few years back. Got it? Know who it is now? Ok.

Some of you who live here and are in the same field that I’m in (or something similar) have been to their offices but likely many of you haven’t and lemme tell you — it’s an experience. You walk in and there’s blazing techno coming in over the speakers. I mean, it is LOUD. It’s an impressive entry anyway with a two-story ceiling and an escalator and lots of white and pink plus enormous banners of half-naked women. When I was there most everyone was wearing form-fitting black and they all looked Very Serious about the selling of expensive underwear. (I’m a Hane’s girl myself so this is all foreign to me. Except for two decades back when I wore garter belts to go out dancing — in short skirts, natch — this particular store is not one I have much patronized.)

It’s cubicle-land there with low walls so that no one can ever feel truly alone and there are life-size cardboard cut-outs of their most famous models propped up against people’s desks. And scads of panties, bras, etc. on desks, slung over cubicle walls and pinned to bulletin boards. In the halls are more enormous pictures of half-naked women and I kept turning corners and finding myself face-to-face with some model’s navel or cleavage. Honestly, if it’d be any other company putting that stuff up there the employees would be screaming sexual harassment but it’s kosher if you’re selling the tiny triangles they’ve got covering their girly bits.

No one seemed to be having a good time there. Again, they take selling underwear Very Seriously as evidenced by the way my underwear jokes fell flat. But c’mon — they were paying me (honest to goodness) to research the difference between “tap pants” and “side-cut shorts.” I spent quite a long time hanging out on web sites that are banned at other companies staring at yet more pictures of half-naked women and carefully cataloging the results of my search.

I have a friend who got his start in fashion PR at this company and he recalls one hectic day when he was there long after-hours (getting ready for a huge marketing push) that somehow ended up with him dancing down the cubicle aisles wearing the diamond underwear on his head. That is until one of his co-workers said, “You know [name of model] was just on Leno wearing those panties under very hot lights. And it’s not machine-washable.” My chastened friend promptly removed them.

1. Last night at writers group, my friend Sarah told me that she was thinking on this post (the one where I out myself as a former slut) and she was wondering why the thinking felt familiar to her then she realized, I’m a Calvinist! Except for the being Jewish part. Now I don’t know much about Calvinism or any other brand of Christianity (my friend Sarah is a savvy Christian and is patient about explaining denominational differences to me) but the way she explained it is that Calvinists preach that no one is better than anyone else and so there’s no “holier than thou” teaching there. Now don’t start arguing with me about Calvinism because I don’t know a darn thing anyway but we all thought it was funny, me being a Calvinistic Jew.
2. Then after writers group we strolled out of the restaurant and stood on the sidewalk chatting last minute when several police cars whizzed down the road. We were in downtown Worthington (we met at Le Chatelaine). If you don’t live here I’ll explain that downtown Worthington is like Main Street, America. Kitschy little shops, a few adorable-type restaurants and a village green that has Sunday night concerts. But the main drag cuts through all of Columbus, which is what keeps Worthington from being quite a sleepy little suburb. Anyway, the police cars go by with lights and sirens and then the street was totally silent. Suddenly another car comes shooting down and slams into a streetlight, shedding it’s bumper and several other important-looking parts; bounces off the streetlight; fishtails down the block (knocking into at least one other car, maybe two); skids into the Graeter’s parking lot; whips around and roars down New England Avenue. We stood there stunned and then a million point one police cars suddenly careen into view from both directions, arriving at the intersection where the car left and then scatter leaving two of them to literally pick up the pieces. I have no idea where the guy was coming from, why he was running and whether or not they caught him. It was crazy and I was shaking hard for quite awhile after the street was clear again.
3. Madison is going to the doctor today because yesterday she still seemed to be carrying herself differently from her non-fall on the couch. Today she seems fine (it’s always that way — like the day you’re supposed to get your hair cut it looks good for the first time in days). We’re going anyway. Noah is going rollerskating so he can wrench his neck.
4. I can’t believe the primaries are dragging on. My heart can’t take it and it’s not even anywhere near November yet. You know, I always felt like Hillary was paving the way for a woman president by her stint in the White House as first lady; I never thought that first president would be her. I’m wondering if she took Ohio because Republicans could also vote in the Democratic primary. (You can vote in whichever you want — you just tell the folks at the table which primary you want to have a say in.) I think Obama is a better match for McCain and maybe they do, too. But I tell you — I love Michelle Obama.
5. Speaking of Obama, the other day Madison pointed to some talking head on television and asked if that was Obama. I said, no, Obama had brown skin and then showed her a picture. She said, “Oh like ME!” And yeah, that made me want to vote for him a little bit more. I don’t want to get into a pissing contest about race versus gender but if I was only voting on the “who should go first?” ticket (and I’m not), it’d be race. I’m having a hard time articulating why this is but it’s not where I would have been pre-Madison. That’s something I need to meditate on for awhile.

I voted today before lunch but that hasn’t stopped the politicos (and their recorded doppelgangers) from calling. Just now “Hillary” called me (for the third time) on my work phone while “Obama” left a message on our phone upstairs. I’d say between the two of them I’ve gotten maybe seven or eight calls.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about a primary EVER.

He lost a bunch of virtual stuff he bought with birthday money. He’s a mess.

I feel bad for him but also my parental self is thinking this is a good lesson about living in an internet age. It just sucks when life lessons are so damn painful (and expensive) to learn.

We took the kids over to the school to vote. Madison marched in and announced, “Mommy is here to vote for Obama!”

The other day Brett took Madison on a walk and she was pushing her stroller with one of her zillions of dolls inside. A mom pushing her own stroller came by and said, “Oh, are you taking your baby on a walk?”

“Yes,” said Madison then added, “She just came out of my uterus.”

I’m tired on behalf of my friends who are getting slapped when they’re up and kicked when they’re down. I’m tired of the world not being fair.

Good lord, people! Be nice to each other!

(Note: I believe all readers of this blog are generally nice people. I hope that all the other people you deal with — virtual and otherwise — will be nice, too.)

And as of this entry, 204 survey responses.