this woman’s work

My dad: I mentioned yesterday that my dad gave me a pep talk, which was just what I needed. My dad is a financial planner (here’s his linkedin) and he cut his teeth as a door-to-door insurance salesman. He knows from hustling and working on commission and not letting the bad days stop you cold. He knows a lot about marketing and networking and all the things I’m trying to learn. A pep talk from him includes stellar advice and encouragement.

(As some of my longertime readers know, my dad and I have had our issues. One of the latent consequences of Brett losing his job and me going out on my own this past year and a half has been to help me build a positive, nurturing and loving relationship with him. Thanks corporate lay-offs!)

My mom: I can always count on my mom to boost me up and cheer me on. She’s my biggest fan. Just knowing I can call her anytime is enough to make me not need to call her, you know? Unconditional love that I can take for granted — well, I know that’s made me the woman/mother/writer I am. PLUS! She has this fantastic elliptical machine that’s gym-quality that I’ve been nagging her to loan me for years. (She used to use it a lot but doesn’t so much these days.) I nag her out of habit now because she always rolls her eyes at me. But guess what! You guessed it! She’s loaning it to me ’til she retires (a couple years away) and that means: ENDORPHINS! Yes, my friends, a steady workout is in my future! Our own elliptical trainer is getting noisier and lumpier every time I use it, which precludes using it. Can’t get on when the kids are occupied watching tv because it’s too loud for them to hear the television. Can’t do it while they’re sleeping in the morning or after they’re in bed because it’s loud enough to wake them up (it’s just below their rooms). I get it this Sunday and I am already full of joy just thinking of it!

Brett’s parents: They’ve offered to take the kids whenever I need it and whenever their schedules allow (they’re very busy retirees). I hate to ask because I’m like that but today they called and asked — asked! — to take the kids fishing. As if I’d refuse. This is incredibly fortunate because I have a lot of work and the kids are driving each other nuts so I can’t leave them to kinda play together since I’m breaking up a lot of fights that go like this, “You’re a potato.” “Mommy! Noah called me a potato!” “Rudikins tattletale!” “Mommy! Noah called me a rudikins tattletale!” Then poking/tickling ensues or the dreaded looking in each other’s direction without being invited to look. “He’s looking at me!” “What — I can look!” “AHHH!” “Rudikines potato!” “Mommy!” etc etc etc. Clearly not a day for work.

And this is why the grandparents are at the top of “my god, you are awesome people” list. This is why we’re in Ohio and not in the beautiful Pacific Northwest!!

Thank you all for the flying/hair advice! First I have to tell you that I accidentally gave myself a mullet yesterday. Oops. Brett sorta fixed it and then my hair is pretty curly so now it just looks like a housewife haircut.

Then — in a stunning example of “can you believe it?” — my favorite hairdresser called late last night to say she could squeeze me in next week. I told her that I no longer needed a cut — just repair — but could do with some color help.

Let that be a lesson to me next time I decide that I can work magic with my scissors. (The thing is though that generally I just cut my hair in a bob and then mess with it a little more and it’s so curly that it looks fine if not finished. However this time I got a little too excited about getting rid of that color and cut a bit shorter than was wise.)

But now here’s where I need more advice (and since I rarely ask for advice here is your chance to inundate me!). I’m going to buy lots of little toys and I’m going to wrap them. And I’m going to pack snacks and the Hyland’s tablets (thanks Paige!!) and I’m not going to sweat it if Madison is a handful on the plane (thanks hmbalison!!). Now I need some practical info.

How in the hell does one get a baby, a heavy carseat (Britax marathon — it weighs a ton), a diaper bag and the black drag-along suitcase, (which I will not be checking) off the plane and to the next plane during an hour layover without dropping the baby, missing the plane, or falling apart and going stark raving mad in the middle of the airport? (We’re taking a later flight on the way there — the plane takes off at 7pm so that Madison will sleep at least some of it but the flight back is right smack-dab in the middle of the afternoon.)

Do you think I’ll be able to strap the carseat onto the drag-along suitcase? And I’m planning on bringing the zolowear sling since it’s a little easier to get her in and out than the ellaroo even though the ellaroo would be a HELL of a lot more comfortable. (I’ve been trying to get her on my back with the ellaroo but she’s too fidgety to let me get a handle on that.)

J will be flying with us but I’m not sure what all she’ll be taking so she may be able to help, say, with the diaper bag but I’m not sure.

I know it’s possible and that better women than I do it every damn day with an infant, a preschooler and more luggage but I’m feeling just a tad bit overwhelmed.

My brother said that he would look into maybe coming up that weekend, too, so he could see Madison (and one assumes, me). I would love that so, so much! My sister-in-law made noise about it, too, and my inlaws (who are in Portland right now helping out with the new baby there) also said they were available. But frankly, when it comes right down to it, I’d rather have my brother there. Why, you ask?

–Brother is incredibly charming having inherited that gene from my father. People love him! He’ll make me look good.

–Brother is funny and I will appreciate having someone cracking jokes at me.

–I’ll feel like I have someone on my side even though intellectually I know that there are no sides.

–Brett will feel better than, too, because he’s worried about me out there all by my lonesome.

P.S. that picture is Madison — wasn’t she such a round-headed bean?

My decision to be home with Noah was less about whether or not I wanted to work and more about I didn’t want to put him in daycare. Because I used to work in daycare, I have very strong opinions about what constitutes quality care and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever find a situation where I would happily put my children. (This doesn’t mean that I have anything against daycare in theory — just in practice — or that I think other people should feel the same way I do. I get angry about it because I think that working parents need better and more affordable child care options. I don’t know what the answer is to that.)

Another selfish reason that I wanted to be home was that the thought of someone else caring for Noah made me really jealous. I wanted to care for him. I wanted to work, too, so for the first six months I took Noah to work with me and worked my other hours when Brett was home with him. Eventually when Noah got bigger my boss said that he couldn’t come anymore so I quit.

Having me at home was financially disastrous. For the first year, Brett was making $19,500 although he did get a second weekend job after awhile. Even when he got a job with better pay, we were still making less than we needed and so we sunk deeper into debt. It isn’t until now when I’m making enough money to start paying off that debt that I face how deep a financial hole we created.
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And she says it best:

I turned off the VCR, and CNN came on. I was still thinking about Annie Sullivan yelling at Helen Keller’s parents, who were satisfied to have a daughter who dressed herself and ate with utensils instead of her fingers. She said that Helen was only housebroken, and that wasn’t enough, that obedience wasn’t worth anything without understanding, that their daughter was entitled to language, to a means of understanding, and expressing what she understood. And on the television were pictures of tanks — it looked like miles of them, rolling up a dirt road. And soldiers shrouded in so much equipment that it called for more imagination than I’ve got to picture a human being in there. Sort of a masculine burka, giving off an air of invulnerability, instead of creepy inviolability. And to be honest, the image simply scared me. I’ll debate the reasons for this war all you like, but that mechanical and monstrous image, so devoid of humanity, so incapable of human emotion, stood for something ugly in my mind. Does this represent my country — this monster? It may be unfair — it is unfair, impressions always are — but the war seemed to me at that moment to be a massive, hard, and ugly creature, rolling mindlessly along, without a human face, too mechanized to feel, or even really experience, anything. And if I were a different person, with a different cast of mind, I might scream at somebody, “Can’t you see what this war is? It’s all there, in that picture.” Instead I turned off the television.

Maybe my reading of the image had something to do with the fact that I saw it after a day of witnessing quiet courage — not just my daughter’s: child after child got up, made mistakes, and kept going — and I was still wrapped in a old movie’s faith in a vulnerable person’s courage, in that strangely out-dated belief that full, expressive humanity matters, and obedience is for dogs. If I’d watched it after a football game, or had been immersed in those images all day, or day after day, maybe I would have gotten a different message: We’re big, we’re bad, we’re the best.

Her entire blog is shattering. she’s detailing the looting in Iraq right now.
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