Postcard from San Francisco

I’ve recently ventured to an exotic land. And not just once. I’ve been back there day after day, for weeks now.

The thing is, this place is separated from my usual stomping grounds by only a narrow waterway and a small island. But despite its close proximity, it seems like worlds—light years even—apart from the life I’ve come to know.

But I’m alone in my aloneness here. Which is to say, there are throngs of people in this new realm. Hoards of humanity who exude an overwhelming sense of comfort in this still-strange-to-me environment.

There actually was a time when I was at home in this place. But it’s like looking at a lock of hair in your baby book. You can’t imagine that that curly, naturally-blond lock was ever really part of you. It seems impossible that This You and That You are the same person.

Anyway, it’s struck me as odd that in all the time that I’ve been away, these other folks have still been there. It’s like five years ago some director yelled, “CUT!” to me and moved me onto a totally different set, but all these other chumps are still in that same place, acting out that same scene.

And for them it ain’t so fresh any more. They clearly lack my new-girl sense of wonder about the place. Like, they seem un-phased by the Walk signs that on select intersections allow people to traverse the street not just from one corner across to the next, but diagonally as well. It’s pedestrian mayhem! And for some reason, it’s dorkishly delightful to me.

There are other strange, noteworthy things. For one, there are no kids around. Not a single playground, toy store, or abandoned binky on the sidewalk. And I haven’t seen any of those Koala fold-down changing tables in the bathrooms. For that matter, I haven’t wiped a single nose (other than my own, that is), and thus far no one has bellowed to me from behind a bathroom door that they need my help wiping their—well, you get the idea.

It’s all just so different.

And my beloved—nay, ONCE beloved—iPhone, trusty telephonic companion that it used to be, has utterly seized up in this new place. Its inability to work is infuriating if only because sometimes, at the least expected moments, it does decide to function. This intermittent success factor gives me desperate irrational hope that if I endeavor to use it to do something as outrageous as making a phone call, it may possibly perform that simple act. After so long hearing others disparage their iPhones and not understanding why, well, I now understand. I want to shout from the rooftops about my allegiance to them in their hatred. In fact, I’ll have to shout to them, seeing as I’m shit-out-of-luck at making phone calls.

The place I’m talking about is, of course, San Francisco. Downtown, or the Financial District as it’s known (even though that’s a somewhat alienating term to those of us who work there, but not in the finance sector). I’m there because, after a more than two-year maternal hiatus, Mama’s taken on a bit o’ freelance work.

Yep, that’s me. Bacon. Pan. Frying up. Bringing home.

After being away for so long I’m trying to play it cool, but I can’t help but feel sometimes like I just got thawed out after a cryogenic experiment. All the donut shops have been replaced by those tart yogurt franchises, and there are compost cans in office kitchens now. And while fiddling with my iPhone paperweight on the subway, I discovered the BART train now provides wi-fi. I can access the Internets while hurtling through a tunnel underground! It is a brave new age, people.

Though all the changes aren’t for the better. A new disease appears to be sweeping through offices. It’s striking young and old, and leaving otherwise productive workplaces decimated. This “Social Networking Addiction” was not considered problematic in my stay-at-home mom realm. But I’ve gotten the sense that playing multiple concurrent games of Scrabble on Facebook, or obsessively Tweeting mundane life details like “Just peed and it smelled like asparagus,” is looked down upon in the workplace.

Go figure.

The last time I worked it was personal phone calls that were discouraged at the office. As far as I can tell, in the Email Age office phones never even ring any more. (And God knows our iPhones don’t.) If the building catches fire, I’m guessing an email will be sent out to alert folks to evacuate.

I mean, I don’t want to make myself out as a total dinosaur. There’s plenty in the workin’ world that’s still familiar to me. Sparring over limited conference room space. Publicly berating meeting latecomers. The Office Manager’s frustrated reminders that the fridge will be cleaned out on Friday afternoon. And let’s not forget the mixed blessing of sitting next to the woman with the candy bowl. This is the timeless stuff of office life. There’s comfort in knowing it will never go away.

At times it’s been so natural being back in my old workaday skin, I’ve found myself talking about “data points,” “knowledge transfer,” and “taking conversations offline.” It’s gross and shameful when that language creeps up on you, but worse when you use it at home. I’ve mistakenly slipped into Work Speak with Kate and Paige recently, and they just ran past me squealing, then tore into the cupboard looking for strawberry snack bars. Like I hadn’t said a thing.

Whatever.

The Then World and the Now World, or whatever combination of the two it is I’m living in now, don’t need to meld seamlessly. In fact, it’s probably better that I set my expectations around the likelihood that when my client spills his coffee I’ll have a baby wipe on hand to mop it up. (Or maybe even a diaper to really do some absorbin’.) And someday while Paige is sitting on my lap as I work from home, it’s inevitable that she’ll hit Send, and her own gibberish type will go out at the end of my attempted-professional email.

As long as I don’t start having daily status meetings with the kids, or hassle them about the amount of billable hours they’ve worked, I think I’ll be okay.

Putting the Braces Back On

I used to be the Patron Saint of Interns. It was, of course, a self-appointed role. But one I took quite seriously.

The thing is, at one point in my career, or rather, the making of my career, I held quite a number of internships. Positions in TV newsrooms, hippie liberal radio stations, and various magazines where I’d earn a meager stipend, or sometimes just an appreciative thump on the back.

The hope being that the inverse ratio of earnings to hard labor would have some karmic redemptive upside.

I’ve lost count now of how many of those posts I’ve held. But suffice it to say, years into real grown-up paying work, my friend Mike and I were catching up on the phone and he asked how my internship was going. Sadly, I fear he wasn’t kidding. But that did become an evergreen joke for us when, over the following years, I’d worked my way through positions of mounting managerial responsibility and in our long coast-to-coast calls he’d ask the same question.

Good times, those.

Alas, aside from dignity-robbing name tags, epic Xeroxing tasks, and occasional demeaning-to-my-education lunch runs (I won’t even get into the pervy remarks from crusty old newsmen)—aside from all that, the biggest challenge with my Intern Era life was my short supply of cash.

Well, actually, I don’t know how much it really bothered me then. I mean, I think I attached a certain nobleness (not to be confused with the richy-sounding term “nobility”) to bushwhacking my way through a poorly-paying, romantic, writerly career path. But looking back, I can’t imagine how I did it.

I mean, I always managed to eat (and drink), God knows. And much as I worked towards self-sustainability, this Daddy’s Girl has thankfully never lacked anything of true importance. That is, even when my father’s definition of importance and mine differed. For some reason, he was maniacal about never allowing a child of his to sleep on a futon, of all things. Guess it seemed all Gypsy-like and what’d-the-neighbors-say to him.

Anyway, back then apartment-establishing jaunts to Target required first off, that I borrow a car. And once there, accumulating crap was a practice in restraint. Necessities like mops and cleaners and such went head to head against fripperies like ceramic Italian-esque pasta bowls and bright striped shower curtains. Sometimes home decor, to the extent it could be humbly called that, won out over specialty toilet bowl bleaches.

Thankfully, I never contracted any illnesses from my less-than-sterile but kinda cute living conditions.

These days Target is still the soup kitchen to my soul. But I shop with heedless abandon. Bolstered by their don’t-need-the-receipt-just-your-credit-card return policy, I toss whatever shiny thing I see into the cart.

Clothing? Well, I prefer not to buy it there (for reasons of snobbery alone), but sometimes a little cotton short catches my eye. And who knows if it’s the Small or the Medium that’ll work best. Buy both. Return one later. Candles, brooms, weird flower-shaped sprinkler attachments for kids to run through on hot summer days. A hectare of Size 4 diapers. I never leave the place without mindlessly spending, well, a lot.

The thing is, somewhere between the Intern Era came, well, the hoped-for karmic career redemption patch. Widely known as the American Dream. Or more precisely, the Internet Boom. Right here in Northern California, USA. And instead of having to desperately take an ‘Intro to the Internets’ class at The Learning Annex, I’d somehow managed to retool my media career into an internet business-type kinda job before all the hoopla kicked in.

Looked up from my laptop one day to discover I’d become a cherished ladder-climbing leader at a company where 27-year-olds made Vice President, bought homes based on the momentary health of their unvested stock, and earned bonuses their hard-working parents no doubt found obscene. I traveled non-stop, managed teams in multiple cities, and spent my days telling people twice my age how to run their companies. All that, plus shrimp cocktail and top-shelf booze at Friday afternoon office Happy Hours.

Like many folks at that time, I felt pretty damn invincible.

Unsurprisingly, my spending habits changed. I could buy one of those loft condos with Corian counter tops if I wanted! Buy last-minute tickets home to RI. Go to swank dinners with friends, order beyond the dinner salad, and not dread someone’s inevitable suggestion to “split the bill evenly between us.”

But more than the stuff I could get, what struck me most—initially, at least—was the lack of worry that my new financial sitch afforded me. More than the thrill of ownership any of the crap I bought, knowing I had what I needed to comfortably take care of myself gave me a supreme sense of contentment. A deep, proud-of-myself-for-making-it-so self-sufficiency and security.

And I realized yesterday that my memory of those days, that feeling in particular, is starting to fade in my mind, alongside the Intern Era. With the Global Economic Recession lurking in the pit of everyone’s gut, and me intentionally unemployed and Living La Vida Housewife, it’s hard to remember spending freely on a credit card that someone else (someone I’m not married to, that is) pays.

Prudence seems to dictate a throttling back on spending. It’s not that a crap run to Target will have us living on the street—blessedly. It’s just that, well, used to be we had two jobs and no kids. Now we’ve got one for the four of us. I’m no math expert, but that nets out to less all around.

So I get it right? I’m able to intellectually understand all this. It’s just I’m not certain how to get there. Regroup with that little voice in my head that used to say, “You can’t afford this.”

I mean, it seems obvious, right? Just spend less. But I’m deadline driven, motivated by fear, and perform best under pressure. I know that I should ratchet back, but I’m not feeling a sting to do so.

And Mark, poor dear. His concerns in this arena should be all I need to react. But I’m not getting spurned on. I’m not kicking into thrift mode with any of the novel glee or romantic challenge of it all.

And I can’t help but think that the monumental passage of the Intern Era’s to blame.

It’s like people who wore braces as teenagers, or however old you are when you do that. Elastic bands with colors or cutesie names, nightmares about corn on the cob, fears that getting inextricably locked with a co-braces-wearer during a make-out sesh might not just be urban legend.

I, thankfully, never had them. But I have to believe that once you get your braces taken off, you put all that gnarly, miserable, clingy-food-bits trauma behind you. Close that door and MOVE ON. You just get out there and enjoy your new straight teeth life, and revel in the knowledge that you’ll never be able to fry an ant with the glare off your teeth again.

That is, until as an adult you discover that your teeth have somehow moved. Shifted when you weren’t paying them any attention. And now you need to get braces AGAIN.

Which, is kinda where I feel like I am today. Perfectly straight teeth, thankyouverymuch. But having, despite myself, to go back to that uncomfortable place of restrained spending, at Tar-jay and beyond.

Well, that, or get a job. A job, or maybe a high-class internship.

In the Know

Every once and a while Kate takes it upon herself to enumerate the things the people in our family “know a lot about.”

Here’s what she came up with at dinner last night:

Herself
* Cars
* Bunnies

Mark
* Cutting (not a la Angelina—cutting as in carving meat, cutting pizza, etc.)
* Cooking things
* Fixing things
* Blimps
* Everything
* Tools

Paige
* Babies
* Talking baby language

Me
* Babies
* Mommies
* Planting flowers

Now, I don’t mean to be petty here. I’m the first to admit that my husband is a modern day Renaissance Man, but saying he knows a lot about everything? Sure there’s cycling, linguistics, technology, music, The Simpsons, installing car seats, comic books, writing, barbecuing, gadgets, soothing crying babies, science fiction, cutlery, online communities, reading super fast, urban planning, the Civil War, and molecular gastronomy. He knows a ton about those things. But, Kate’s paternal adoration aside, isn’t saying he knows a lot about everything a bit of an exaggeration?

Well, if you were to ask him, he might not think so.

In college, Mark and his BFF, Christian, used to play an aren’t-we-so-young-and-brilliant game, its premise being that they could recite off the cuff three facts on any given topic. While drinking beer at the local watering hole, one imagines.

The Eiffel Tower? It’s in Paris. It was named after its engineer, Gustave Eiffel. It’s the tallest building in Paris.

You get the idea.

Anyway, however good Mark may be at that game, by my count three data points—even if he could produce them on virtually everything—does not, in my book, constitute knowing “a lot” about those subjects.

But really, of course, I’m just jealous. Since it saddens me to think that Kate doesn’t perceive my ken as extending beyond the maternal arts. What about all I know about yard sales? Parallel parking? Taking really hot showers? Unrelenting sarcasm? Downward dog? Or toe picking, for God’s sake? Don’t those things count for anything? Or maybe it’s just that in Kate’s mind they fall under the vague rubric she calls “Mommies.”

I really shouldn’t blame Kate entirely for my petite neurotic reaction to her dinner-time game. She’s just calling it as she sees it. Really I should be thankful she didn’t add “Bellowing, ‘Can I please just have one minute here?’” or “Putting little girls in Time Outs” to her list of things I know a lot about.

Fact is, I’ve been doing a fair amount of wondering what it is I do know a lot about, all on my own. Trying to remember what I’m good at. Something that might be applied in such a way that I can make some money from it.

Because, after a glorious trip to the beach on Sunday, sandy sleepy kids piled into the car and u-turning our way out of Alameda, Mark and I stumbled into a conversation that I knew was coming eventually. The one in which we faced up to the fact that it’s time for me to get back to contributing to the family’s bottom line. Hopefully in no soul-sucking cubicle-dwelling full time capacity, but by freelancing or project work, or some utterly ideal, flexible and lucrative, creative part-time job.

So on Saturday night I went to bed, a sometimes-ashamed-to-admit-it Stay At Home Mom. And somehow by Monday I woke up feeling, well, unemployed.

What a difference a day makes.

Believe It Or Not, I Have a Closet Full of High Heels

Yesterday I had an appointment to get my hair colored. I’d decided it was getting too blonde in the front. But then–in a mode typical of how I’ve been operating lately–by the time I was sitting in the seat at the salon, I decided the color looked fabulous.

So I asked her if she could just give me a trim.

As she’s cutting she’s asking me about whether I need any more shampoo or anything and I say something about Tigi products. But instead of saying Tee-Gee, as I guess the company is pronounced, I said Tig-Ee.

This causes her to laugh and say, “It’s Tee-Gee.You’re reading kid’s books all the time so you’re all Tig-EE, like Tigger and Pooh. That’s so funny.”

Uh, excuse me? She might as well have asked me if I have “Congrats Class of 2008! Go Badgers!” written in window paint all over my mini van.

And for your information, we don’t have a mini van. (Yet.)

Mark keeps pictures of the girls on his phone so he can show them off to people at work. Since I’m always with Kate and Paige, I clearly need to put some pictures on my phone from when I was a business woman.

“Now in this shot I was signing a multi-million dollar contract with a client I brought in.”

“Here’s me at the Monday morning management meeting.”

“Oh and in this one I’m running through a spreadsheet, telling my team about our finance goals for the quarter.”

Don’t I Have a 2:00?

It’s so weird not working. Somehow I haven’t managed to purge the subconscious corporate brain activity from my psyche. So, when I’m not actively engaged in diaper changing, toddler taming, or maternal mammalian activities, I find I have this subtle nagging feeling that there’s something else that I should be doing.

Do I have a presentation to write? Employee to lambaste? Meeting that I’m somehow extremely late for?

I wrack my brain. Truly. Isn’t there something I should I be doing right now, while I have the chance with both kids sleeping? Are there voicemails from ornery clients on my cell phone that I’ve neglected to check? An issue of Ad Age I forgot to read? HR forms to fill out? For the love of God, isn’t there something other than this?

I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure I’m just coming down off of a stress addiction. And man, it sucks. I don’t feel it all the time, but it’s like the no ciggie after a meal thing. When I do remember I want it, I want it bad. I sweat and slap the inside of my elbow staggering around the house. Where’s my next hit going to come from? Certainly there’s some shit storm brewing ugly revenue-loss implications somewhere. Or an employee who is right now saying the exact wrong thing to a client?

But no. Often there’s nothing. The kids are fed, the house is tidy and often actually clean too. And I’m caught up on my People Magazine reading. Nothing is bearing down on me.

The best I get is a load of laundry I’ll find that’s lingered in the washing machine forgotten. I open the door, crouch down, and sniff to see if it’s gotten mildewy. Maybe I’ll have to re-do the load! Maybe it’ll all happen when Kate needs me to tie her shoe! Oh the challenge of it all. But, no luck. It’s just fine and I sigh and heave it into the dryer.

My heart races slightly when we’re dangerously low on milk. Only a quarter of the carton left, I think! I’ll need to get to the store quickly before we totally run out and Kate is standing forlorn–worse tantrumy–demanding “milkie” in her “new Sigg cup with the cars smiling on it.” But deep down I know that even if we’re suddenly milk-less, it won’t rock Kate’s world too extremely. Nor is it too hard to get to a store to buy some. There’s a glimmer of stress I work up around it all, but it’s hardly the hit off the pipe I’m needing, if you know what I mean.

The other day, while racking my brain for what it could be that I need to attend to, I remembered my long-neglected scrapbook project. It was something I decided to delve into when I was home with Kate as a baby. It would have been more efficient to simply sit on my front steps and burn wads of cash. But going to the scrapbook store and browsing at “papers” (all part of the “scrappers” lexicon) seemed to fill some void in me at the time.

After putting together about seven scrapbook pages chronicling Kate’s life–I barely covered events beyond the first days in the hospital–I decided the world of scrappin’ was not for me. I’d toiled and fretted so much over each page, working painfully to achieve supreme cuteness and creativity and never committing to using the permanent double-sided tape to adhere all the nostalgic crap down. When I wasn’t working on the book, I berated myself with guilt for letting life’s little and big moments pass us by without photos, collages, and puffy stickers to commemorate them. Like watching Leave it to Beaver as a child, where I internalized stress over every of the Beave’s misdeeds to near the point of bleeding ulcers, I knew this hobby was no fit for my OCD innards. It just wasn’t healthy to be cutting colored paper with scalloped scissors over and over again to make the perfect oval border to showcase Kate’s umbilical stump when I could be spending her babyhood engaging with her instead.

But now, with my anxiety level so dangerously low and my days filled with plenty to do but all of it mindless busy work, I can’t help but wonder if I could practice scrapbooking moderation.  It might just be the antidote to the What Now? Blues I’ve been having. Maybe I can control my scrapbooking–dole out just enough to myself each week to boost my blood pressure slightly and get me chewing my cuticles again?

It’s something to consider as I daydream during my next meeting with Paige’s poopy diaper.

Too Busy to Even Change My Mantra

With three weeks to go before my maternity leave started–which was also when the Christmas holiday was beginning–lots of things happened.
a) I got a new boss.
b) Three days later a client pulled out of some projects leaving a gaping hole in my P&L for next year, upwards of, well, a monetary figure with many many zeros in it.
c) We got a chance to pitch for new work.
d) My nesting mode reached bionic heights and I went on an obsessive Excel-monitored Christmas-gift shopping bonanza in all of the time that I wasn’t a) trying to make a good impression on my new boss, b) doing damage control over the significant loss of work to my team, c) writing PPTs to win a new client
e) I began to understand what being an insomniac is like, which for anyone who hasn’t experienced it should know totally sucks, but it does allow for you to run threw a lot that’s on your mental To Do list between 3 and 6AM.

Oh sure, I’ve been diligently taking my prenatal vitamins, along with a host of other supplements that will help my little inner parasite be the healthiest, smartest and most emotionally balanced being ever produced. But really, I don’t think all the other factors had a positive effect on me.

Working long hours, sitting in epic commuter traffic, subsiding on the copious amounts of holiday candy, popcorn and chocolate-covered pretzels, and trying to tap dance fast enough in front of a new boss that she doesn’t notice that the shit has hit my division’s fan–none of these things are pretty when you are waddling around nine months pregnant.

For the past month or so my internal mantra had been, “Cope, cope, cope.” When needed, I can draw on considerable reserves of energy, optimism and drive. And if I push myself hard enough, I won’t have enough time to stop and feel sorry for myself. This, plus allowing myself an occasional half-caf latte at Starbucks, can provide much of the necessary energy to light up whatever grid we’re on here out West.

Yet, aside from the lack of loving attention I’ve been focusing on this little baby-to-be, I was also dreadfully lacking the holiday spirit. Sure, I was get the family’s gift shopping done. But in the rote emotionless way an astronaut runs through a pre-take-off check list.

Then, something happened–but what was it? Oh, Neice Maia’s dance performance. Sitting watching a group of urban kids interpret the Nutcracker with everything from ballet to hip hop to break dancing, while my sister held Kate–who was enraptured–on her lap. It was just enough to make a knick in my steely outer shell of “Cope cope cope” and left me considering briefly a change to “Savor savor savor.” I got a small hit, akin to those you can get watching a grocery store commercial during the holidays when PMS makes you sentimental.

But it vanished more quickly than a spritz of fake Christmas tree scent.

Next thing you know, work was over. I was out of there. And then we were in the wind-up to Christmas. I realized that on the same day our nanny would be leaving us, it would be Kate’s last day of preschool before the holiday, our house was being cleaned for the last time pre-Xmas, and I was heading out for maternity leave. Thankfully my insomnia gave me plenty of time to process the convergence of all this the night before–while panicking about the appropriate gifts for the house cleaner, teachers and my team–all of which had been ruefully forgotten until my most awake refreshed part of the “day” over the course of the past month, which happened to come while lying in bed between 3AM and 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

And the other thing is, this baby has continued to gestate! Despite my utter emotional neglect. And while I was spending time realizing how unfocused I was on the holidays, I was even unfocuseder on how damn soon this baby will arrive.

3 weeks to be precise. And, given the holidays are past, work is behind me, and we’ve actually finally (and successfully, I may add) moved Kate into her new room and Big Girl Bed, I’m suddenly staring into a abyss of space and time in which thankfully there is one thing left I can do so I won’t feel totally bereft–realize that we are about to have another baby. That I am in fact. Out of this here body.

I never made the change from “cope cope cope” to “savor savor savor,” but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get “baby baby baby” in under the wire before I’m moaning in Labor and Delivery and it’s much too late.

Sleepless in Oakland

Somewhere between drinking too many glasses of zin at dinner with the Politos and waking up at 7AM to attend a work event I lied awake in bed and fretted about Kate. Well, more about me really. And this whole work thing.

It’s super unusual for it to happen, but this weekend there is a big work thing going on that means I have to work Saturday and Sunday all day. Sure I’ll get to take two comp days some other time, but last night as I was in bed it seemed like being away from Kate for the weekend was almost unbearable.

Of course, the more I realized how desperately I needed to sleep off the wine and stow away some energy for two long days on my feet–the more wide awake I was. And sure my brain grazed several neurotic topics (and some of a practical nature), but it seemed to cling most fervently to this idea of Kate and my need to be with her.

Somewhere into my second hour of awakedness my thoughts of Kate made me miss her so much I wanted nothing more than to go into her room and be with her. And then, the baby who always sleeps (knock wood) from 7PM to 7AM with nary a peep, woke up and said, “Mama! Mama!”

I swear there is some crazy bond thing between us.

I’d never been so happy to get out of bed in the middle of the night. I’m sure Mark wondered why I was heading towards her room after the first seconds of her peeping. In general if this had happened she’d doze off again in a matter of seconds.

Anyway, I got her out of her crib and she clearly was bewildered by the suddent burst of attention she didn’t realize she was able to so easily summon. The moment I was holding her she pointed down to the mattress and said, “Night night!” So I put her down and satisfied myself with our brief visit.

Not long after that when I crawled back into bed I seemed to finally doze off. But today my thoughts of my work/Mama balancing act linger. Perhaps they’ll pass once this work weekend is over and we’re back to our normal routine. But if not I don’t want to sweep them under the carpet. If 4 days a week is too much, is 3 days perfect? Or is this a grass is always greener thing?

At any rate, secure in knowing I’m not going to let go of these middle-of-the-night thoughts, I’ll hopefully sleep better tonight. And in the light of day at some point I can spend some time thinking about what–if anything–I want to do to address them.

Macro Management 101

It’s so damn boring to bemoan the plight of the working mother. Despite its triteness, I can’t help but feel a bit of the “not doing either job well enough” thing.

Though, when I really think about it, I am doing right by Kate. It’s just my job seems to be able to fill up whatever space it is given, like some B-movie blob invasion. And the fact is, I’m allowing it to take up more space than I probably should.

Which brings me back to the other age-old question: “Is there really such thing as a part-time job?” Or, as I prefer to ponder: “Is there really such thing as a part-time job that doesn’t require a hairnet?” Sure, there are plenty of part-time jobs out there, I just don’t want to be on my feet all day wearing a name tag and earning minimum wage to fill one of them.

The thing is, I’m pretty lucky to have this job. It’s a great company, great position, and given my level of responsibility, pretty cool that I’m able to do it (allegedly) part-time. I just need to exercise a bit more restraint around not working when I’m not supposed to not be working. But the Email Temptress is just to strong a siren for a communication junky like myself. And add to that my control freakishness, and God help those poor employees if I don’t have a hawkish eye on them at all times.

So, the alternative is to let go a bit. But when I consider that option, I tend to envision letting go altogether–just stepping aside while briskly slapping my hands together, and watching from the sidelines what happens when I don’t interject myself into all the scenarios I’m certain will result in angry clients and confused aimless employees without my guidance.

Maybe Letting Go won’t be half as bad as I think it will be. Or maybe it will be catastrophic, but fun to watch. Maybe my boss won’t even mind, and will say, “That sure was a good show, Kristen! I can see why you wanted to test the laws of entropy!” Or maybe—most likely—the results will be uneven and I’ll realize there are places where I can ease off and others where I need to wrestle with the details like some leather-faced Floridian alligator wrangler.

For some reason I’m struggling with figuring out how to let go a bit–even though I know that I need to in order to make this job a marathon, and not collapse in three more months after a sprint. (It seems so cool to try to use sports analogies. How’d I do?) There’s got to be some workable middle ground between Madame Micro Manager and All Hell Breaking Loose. And for starters I think part of that middle ground should include me not working on my days off.

What’s funny is, I wonder whether all that it is that I think I’m doing to get things on the right path are even the right things to do. I’m not sure why I’m so convinced much of the time that my ideas are better. Today for instance, I had this moment while walking into the bathroom (my two minutes of reflection all day until now) in which I wondered whether the client will even be happy with the proposal we are pulling together, or if I am on crack.

But that was weird. Mostly I’m convinced that I’m at least making a smart decision based on some past experience. Have I been raised to embrace an unhealthy and unrealistic self esteem? Am I not a team player? Or maybe have I just been around the block at this point in my career and I do know a thing or two? Whatever it is, I just hope I’m not obnoxious.

Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to go with another person’s idea at work even when I’m fearful it’s not the best approach. Maybe I need to let go of the “how will this reflect on me” stress and just let some of the chips fall where they proverbially may.

All this said, I need to go print out some documents and outline how I think we need to handle a proposal we’re putting together tomorrow. Of course, I’ll be wide open to hearing how the other folks I’m working with want to tackle it, but I want to have my ideas on paper just in case…

Okay, so I need to work more on letting others fly (or flop). But I do intend to take both Thursday and Friday off this week while my Dad is in town, and only check email once those days.

I will control the blob, some day. I know I will!

Pop Tart Psychology

A few years ago when we were in Connecticut visiting Mark’s sister and hubby they had Pop Tarts in the house, and in the course of the visit we had them for brekkie. So when we got home Mark got some at the grocery store–two packs since they were a BOGO item, i.e. “Buy One Get One” free. (This is what you learn from having a grocery store client for as long as I have.) I lamented that we shouldn’t eat those. They were a special “when we were at someone else’s house or up in Tahoe” treat. (For some reason when you go to Tahoe you’re allowed to eat like a 12-year-old latch child.) Then I polished off both boxes before I think Mark even got one.

We went for a spell without getting them. I put my (much fatter) foot down and managed to convince Mark that cinnamon toast was just as sugary.

Well I looked in the cupboard a couple days ago and what do I see but two gargantuan boxes of Pop Tarts. Brown sugar–not even my flavor. I prefer blueberry. Though that didn’t stop me from snarfing them up in the past, nor did it this time.

And so I’m sitting here with a cup of Earl Grey decaf and now my second Pop Tart and thinking this gastronomic decline just makes perfect sense right now. Everything else in my world seems to be coming a bit more unglued than I’d like–though I did check in with Mark recently to see if I was just being dramatic and/or hormonal. He kinda didn’t answer….

Yesterday morning we finally had our pitch. A response to an RFP to keep an existing client. Their bean counters (I assume) have all vendors bid or re-bid as it were for the work every several years to make sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck. And while I don’t blame them, bidding to keep work you already have is the worst. Losing hurts more than losing to a client you never had. And winning really just gets you back to where you were before you devoted weeks of stress, extra work, and new gray hairs to it all.

That said, pitching at a publishing company does beat pitching at an agency. I mean, this wasn’t a 25-person roller coaster ride from hell that involved experts pulled in from offices in other time zones and executives who two days before the pitch determine all the work that’s been done is in the totally wrong direction, and ‘y’all should probably execute against this strategy now.’

Weirdly, I was the exec in this pitch. Not that I haven’t been a Big Girl on these things in the past, but at least then I was one in a team. And now it’s just kinda me and other people who don’t seem to have tons of experience pitching who intermittently seem to get it, then suddenly do something leaving me fretting that they don’t get it at all.

Self-imposed stress can be the worst of it all. As long as someone else more senior than you tells you what you’re doing sucks, you’re confident in that assessment. But when it’s you telling you, you can’t help but wonder if maybe what you’ve been slaving over is really okay, or even kinda good, and you’re just being hard on yourself. Then, moments later, you are utterly convinced of its suckingness.

At any rate, there were no endlessly long late nights. Nor excessive weekends of work. But my brain was totally co-opted by thoughts of this so even Kate Time occasionally felt slightly tainted by work thoughts. Which is not The Plan. The Plan is to have the job that I do when I do it and not obsess over it and have it affect my sleep, and make me snap at the people working with me since I wish they had more experience pitching, and decide to go into the office on my work-from-home day, so not be able to drive Kate and the nanny to Gymboree and then feel guilty that my work is seeping into places that are not in The Plan.

For all this I had to be in LA overnight. Kate did a great job of making me feel even worse about it all by getting a cold and being especially sad and Mommy-clingy. And it was all about me just getting home after the pitch and then I’d have the rest of the week and weekend with her, but my bag got lost and I ended up sitting in the airport fuming and waiting for the next plane to land. An hour spent waiting for your bag to turn up sucks in any scenario, but one in which you are desperate to get back to the baby you’ve been fearing you’re been short-shrifting, makes it intolerable.

At one point, with only 20 more minutes to wait, I considered getting in my car and driving home to see Kate, and just getting the bag another day.

Of course, while waiting I had umpteen work calls and several of them indicated I might need to do some work the next day (my day off). This sent me into the stress stratosphere.

Thankfully by Friday morning it became apparent that the meeting I thought I might need to have wasn’t going to happen. I might get my day off after all. And the clouds–like those white fluffy ones in the opening sequence of The Simpsons–seemed to part and some rays of sun made their way down to me and my self pity. I resolved that next week I’d take my work-from-home day from home, and to take my day off off.

And if that wasn’t good enough, when I did check work email later that day (despite my best intentions—clearly I am part of the problem), I discovered that something I’d been working on for weeks that had been caught up in corporate red tape had suddenly slipped past the goalie and my mission was accomplished. It was one of those things that I was resolved to get up my dukes over and suddenly and anti-climactically the problem vanished. Poof!

It’s so weird when you are in a mental groove and then you’re spit out the other end of it. It was like my psyche was still crunched up in a grumpy stress ball and was having trouble shaking it off and going to the light.

I can have work-life balance. I can spend time with Kate and Mark and still have a satisfying career. I’d still be getting this new crop of gray hair even if I was home being fed peeled grapes. If I keep chanting it, it will all be true, right?

Perhaps I’m approaching the recent appearance of Pop Tarts with the totally wrong attitude. Maybe I should behold them as a celebratory indulgence that’s suddenly there for the takin’, not the specter of poor nutrition that’s symptomatic of temporary poor life management.

Either way, they sure do toast up nice.

Tomorrow’s a Brand New Day, Right?

Oy vey. This week has just got to be better than last week. If not, someone please send me a cookie bouquet or something. Sheesh.

So the job seems like it will be good. Smart and funny folks. And everyone is crazy friendly. At times I’ve felt like I’m back in the groove–asking the right questions, making insightful observations in meetings, and even looking natty in my new work clothes. At other times I’ve sputtered out the totally wrong word (voicemail introducing myself to client saying “See you at the lay-off meeting” instead of the “layout meeting.” D’oh!) And then sometimes I get in that kinda sleepy, slap happy mode of being too familiar and jocular with people who instead of having fun with me seem to be mildly freaked out that I’m their new boss and I suddenly realize I should cinch my personality girdle in a bit tighter.

The nanny. We’ve clashed once already when I called to say I was stuck in traffic and would be 5 minutes late and she told me in a not so friendly manner that she just couldn’t stay. She had things to do and somewhere to be. I mean, I appreciate her life and respect her time but it was the second day with a new commute and I was still trying to figure out how long it would all take.

So, in a panic I called four local friends getting voicemails all around and leaving desperate pleas could they please call me if they got this and maybe go to the house and sit with Kate for a few minutes until I screeched into the driveway clutching the steering wheel with sweaty palms and a throbbing headache? No one was home. No one called back. I called the nanny again and really what ensued is too annoying to even go into but suffice it to say I wasn’t left with the warm fuzzies for how she and I will relate under duress.

But thankfully it was a three-day work week since Mark’s cousin Dan was getting hitched in Louisville (pronounced Loo-vul), Kentucky. So Thursday morning with the new-work-and-new-nanny part of the week behind me my alarm clock went off at 4:15AM and I greeted the day by dragging excessive luggage to the car, waking up a sleeping baby and schlepping to the airport in the icy dark morning. Once there I was making a bee-line for the gate since it was boarding time, but looked at my seat number (17A) instead of the gate number (3), so ran the length of the terminal with baby on hip, stroller loaded with large carry-on and carseat strapped to back chanting internally “one foot, the other foot, making progress, I can do it” only to arrive at last at destination, exhale with exhaustion, realize my error and turn around, sweat trickling down my chest, to run back to gate 3 twice as fast since I was really late then. (The argument with the gate attendant about why I couldn’t take the carseat onto the plane for Kate, even though there were free seats, was just gilding the lily.)

In Houston we met Mark. And boy was I crazy happy to see him in that misery loves company or at least loves to complain a lot to someone you really love way. In our second flight he unburdened me of baby, luggage, and most importantly the daunting feeling of doing it all alone (hail to you, single parents!). He really stepped up for much of the weekend too.

And Kentucky was fun at times. The Miller clan is always a hoot to hang out with, and many of Aunt Terry’s Lexington posse we’ve come to know a bit. And Kate had some babies to play with, and grandparents to adore her. Three nights of parties (BBQ, rehearsal dinner, wedding) were all fabulous and social, but really I would have been well-served to sit at home with greasy hair blankly staring at the TV and feeding myself Dove Bars. Since that wasn’t in the cards I did a sort of body cleansing by inbibing excessive amounts of bourbon. Not what I needed to feel rested and geared up for Week Number 2 of New Job, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Time to sleep since I’m already cutting into my much-needed 8 hours. And I know it’s all going to get so much better, if I can just wake up for it.