Hot Seat

This week we had some 80 degree days and then some almost snow days (life in New Mexico is bizarre) but the 80 degree days brought up the issue of hot cars and hotter car seats. My daughter's car seat was so hot to the touch, I couldn't put her in it after exiting the grocery store. Then I had an "aha" moment...I took a tub of ice cream and rubbed it all over her seat and voila, no burning bum for my little one.

Going from home out, use anything you can find in the freezer - frozen peas, whatever. I like using one of those cooler blocks of ice, or a gel-pack for injuries, and keeping it in the car in a cooler or cooler bag so you can use it before and after outings.

Don't drink at auctions

Last night we went to an auction.

Had a glass of wine - no bids.

Had a beer. Encouraged husband to bid on a surfboard and wetsuit package. (Silent Auction) We won.

Had another beer. Live auction begins. High bid item of the night. A power blue Vespa. Bidding begins. A little slow. My hand goes up on second price called out. (I figured I could get some action going in the room.) A minute later. I own a Vespa.

Not priceless.

Now I'm looking for a buyer. 

Nothing much beats sleep

I could post a long blog post or go to bed. If I knew anything about Good Advice, I'd have to say, honey, go to bed.

I just want to say, Obama/Edwards looks like a great idea. I loved the way they complimented Hillary. I thought it was bold for John Edwards to say Hillary is where she is on her own merits and not because of who she's married to. This is a nice, if probably untrue, thing to say. It still is nice. If it's not because of her husband, then okay but then it's because she's playing on racism and that's not much better. But I digress and I meant to be light and positive.

I'm tired because I traveled down and back to Newark yesterday. Nervous I'd miss the 4 am wake up, I woke up at every hour leading up to 4 am. Then I got home last night and couldn't really wind down to go to bed early. And again tonight, same story - not the Newark part but the winding down part. Had to finish a favor for a friend so I've been sucked into my computer and away from my millions of tiny little threads counted by small people in Indonesia for my pleasure. So, to bed I will go.

I'm liking the website www.dooce.com btw and think she's not getting a fair shake on the TV. What else is new? I'm also wondering if there's a space anywhere online where someone's not selling something - including themselves. Why is everyone wanting to get something from someone else. Is this a uniquely American phenomenon? Do you even know what I'm talking about? I must be rambling. Last night I was talking in my sleep about twittering. I guess that's when you know it's bad.

Don't want keyboard face.











xo my friends. xo.

Sex Talk!

A friend of mine who is a pediatrician recently posted this column on how/when to talk to your kids about sex. I found her advice very helpful and terrifically succinct. Here's the link, if interested:
http://www.brandywinebuzz.com/newsletters/dr-amy050408.html

This came, strangely enough, the night after my son found the head of his penis upon the water draining in the bathtub. As he has a bit of foreskin coverage, this was a foreign thing to him and due to its red nature he thought he was hurt. He called out "Mommy - penis hurt" and he was genuinely scared. The conversation that ensued involved foreskin, penis heads and pee pee... which I thought made for a rather edgy chat with my two year old!

Your World is Your Mirror

Even if your world might include friends thousands of miles away. And if it's any indication of how right on the two previous posts were in summing up the general consensus, it takes me so much time in between posts that I forget my username & password pretty much every time I go to post.

As we speak, my husband keeps asking me questions as I try to type, my 21 year old has MOMENTARILY stopped calling my name - we are struggling with a new round of separation anxiety since I went from two 6 hour days out of the home to do errands & tend to my (lack of) business, to three to four 8 hour days away and the start of daycare - and yes, life is in flux.

Sometimes "enjoying the present", despite my best efforts and earnest last post, seems like a luxury outside of the realities of day to day existence and working for a paycheck. But that's where carving out the time for yoga steps in - and padding my work days for "me time", both of which are my advice for today of leading a satisfying life when balancing work and family and self. Advice I am working hard to follow! Then of course, the guilt steps in when I think I could have spent that "me time" with my toddler, who I am missing. And who is obviously missing me. Ugh.

But I still think it's better than feeling completely like the life effort is all output, no input.

Missing you friends, feeling the relief of those who GET IT, and looking forward to the next time we are all together.

And PS - credit goes to Moonmama, c.1997-ish, for the "World is Your Mirror" title here.

Well, you said it...

Adrift is an appropriate word among the well of adjectives I could use to describe how I'm feeling these days. For those of you not intimate with this foursome, I'm one of the pregnant ones referred to below. This time of life, not necessarily the age, but the "having babies" and "making career choices" time is quite a mystifying one.

Things were pretty simple in my twenties and early thirties when I was full of ambition, adventure and freedom. I currently have a watered down version of the first, ambition, which waxes and wanes with the moon. This has alot to do with my 2 year old whom I cherish with all of my being and the fact that I know my days are numbered with this little guy. If he's anything like me - he'll hit 12 and bye bye to Mama. But how to quash the middle of the night thoughts of getting back into a power position - one that provides all kinds of reward through accomplishment and payout? I'm doing what I can to scale things with a part time job but its nevertheless an emotional tug of war.

Adventure - might as well ditch that one along with Freedom. In fact, you can't have adventure without qualities 1 and 3. Not excersizing ambition = no money, 1.5 children = no freedom. Without these two things there is little possibility for adventure. Still, I dream of the "year" we'll be able to take the tykes to Europe or somewhere outside of the country. There's just so much to see and do.

Feeling adrift can be quite unsettling for those of us Capricorns and the like who live and breath by "order" and "planning". There is nothing orderly or planned about my life at the moment. Let's see, we're having a baby in 7 weeks and are overwhelmed by thoughts of what kind of change that will bring to our lives. Add to that - we don't even know the gender! Yes, yes, by our choice, but I can't ignore the seepage of anxiety this little unknown is responsible for. Our living situation is totally up in the air as our rent which is under "favorable terms" terminates in December and we are no closer to finding a permanent abode than 6 months ago. Oh and yes, the finances - without going too far into this I'll just say that we manage fine at the moment but what kind of havoc does baby #2 wreak on that scenario. Many people say that its common to spend a couple of years in the red with a new family, but again, the Capricorn in me will have a very hard time with that. How does one spend 24 months dipping into savings just to pay the monthly expenses???? This literally blows my mind!

Which brings up inflation and the stagnation of real wage increases. How can us middle classers (whose aspirations of "upper classness" have been smooshed since leaving corporate jobs, moving to smaller cities and having babies) survive when real wages haven't increased in a decade but the cost of everything else continues to go up? I went to Whole Foods last night - because they have the best produce and organic choices around - and my bill was at least 30% more than the average of this past year. Doesn't it seem ironic that those of us who are more "green" and "support your local farmer" concious aren't the ones with the most disposable income? Because of course being green and supporting your local farmer are far more expensive than buying food products produced by Monsanto.

A quick review of the above text indicates a much needed "vent" session, which would be done in person if I lived a bit closer to my best pals. At any rate, I apologize for this. The answer to minimizing the "adriftness", of course and which was so aptly put in Yogamama's April 8th posting, is to look at your life and find the wonder and beauty in it. Of which there truly is so much. It goes without saying that life shouldnt be about material, money and ambition, but about family, laughs and friends. There are many days that my focus is squarely on the latter and I feel JUBILIANT. Today, obviously ISNT one of those days.

There is still time, however, and I'm beginning to feel better already. Thank you for that.

Not knowing what's going to happen

I think the pause in the blog is indicative of something. Two of the bloggers are pregnant and two of us are not (as far as I know). For the two who are, not only are they pregnant, they have existing children to care for, marriages to maintain, houses to run and jobs to do. Maybe in that order? For the two of us that aren't pregnant, thinking about when to get pregnant, what to do for work, how to plan it properly by money considerations, travel, work, etc. it's all very mind boggling yet so big it's actually out of our control.

This blog is a public thing and probably too open of a forum to talk about these issues here in any great detail. Our colleagues, friends and strangers read it and take away some sort of perception about who we are or what we mean. I for one know that most of what I've been thinking about lately has not exactly been good advice - how can I give any when I feel rather adrift?

Anyway, just wanted to check in. Register that life is in flux and it's as it should be. this is right for our age but bad for the blog. If any bright good-advice ideas come to me, i will be sure to post.

A couple things for those who work and produce documents: don't email a document that's not formatted to print. always number your slides in powerpoint. be sure your font is consistent through out your whole document and save each version of your excel docs with a date or version number so you can keep track.

separately, right now my favorite obsession is to do haiku on twitter, but that's so obscure and techie, I can't see many of my mom friends getting what I'm talking about. my advice would be to join in and see what's going on on twitter. I suppose I like it because it seems like a ticker of the collective unconscious, but maybe it's all just crap. Follow me: www.twitter.com/emilybee

I have the privilege of working with a guy who (though pretty young) is quite clever and very wise.

As a tribute to his "mad" life skills and quick wit, I feel compelled to share some of his wisdom (his good advice) here on the blog.





Carter Thomas, b. 1983


Top 10 Lessons I've learned from Carter Thomas:

10 - No pun is too corny when writing a beer column.
Describing an expensive beer, "price may be hard to swallow" or blonde ales, "Rumor is true, blonde ales have more fun" - these beer articles are worth reading just to see how over the top he can go.

9 - The phrase "sick" can actually be used in complete seriousness to describe something one thinks is really great.
In context: "The big spike in the sales results we saw yesterday was sick!"

8 - When engaging in a bet, the exact meaning of the word "snow" is open for interpretation.
Just because the air outside is filled with white colored precipitation, it may not actually qualify as "snowing". There's the does-it-stick factor, the density of snowflakes in the air - many possible important variations.

7 - Facebook only has a two year cool period from initiation point, after that it's out.

6 - 80's music is cool and ironic in the way disco was for my age group.
Today it was "Gloria, I think I got your number." Tomorrow, "Mr. Roboto"?

5 - When the world's gotten on your last nerve, go throw rocks at the ocean.

4 - With respect to work bribes, nothing much tops a free sandwich.

3 - With respect to working out, nothing even comes close to trumping a push-up.

2 - Most things in life can be turned into an over/under bet.

1 - Top ten lists are sick.

Life

Choose Life
only that and always,
and at whatever risk.
To let life leak out, to let it wear away by
the mere passage of time, to withhold
giving it and spreading it
is to choose
nothing.
-Sister Helen Kelley

I wrestled with whether or not to go to yoga class this morning, given my work load, then decided I would do a short home practice as a compromise. Did a half-hour sequence, got showered & dressed prior to the time class would have been done and felt good about the choice and balanced as I started the day. Then I opened our local paper. A former colleague's 16 year old son was in a car accident on his way to a soccer game. The paper described my friend clutching her son's phone and the text messages streaming in, which she will not read, as she says they now belong to him. I sat down at my computer, and received the above quote in a weekly newsletter I receive from our local zen center.

Do I have advice today? Not sure. But I took the above as a message from my deceased father, who always stated a condensed version, which is "Life is for the living."

I include the yoga practice as part of this post because it is something I found a commitment to while I was out of work, and now that I am working again, feels threatened. I work from home and I only get paid for the hours I spend literally working. But it has become something that represents a true part of life to me - and something that shouldn't be shoved aside. I will write more on this subject another day, but the kernel of a point I am trying to make is to not shove aside our personal truths, to not give up on the things that we love, however impractical they may seem.

My advice, then, I suppose, is something that keeps coming back to me again and again in the two years since my father died. Be present. Do what you love. Be TRULY present with everyone you love. Don't wait to say the things you need to say - and to do the things you need to do. It's over in a flash - and this is both the most incredibly freeing and simultaneously terrifying truth there is.

For a mom fix

My sister sent me this link today to Postcards from Yo Momma. it was featured on the very clever Very Short List, website today.

I found myself laughing out loud to some of the posts on there and the hilarious things that moms say to their grown children. It's been a long time since I got a note from my mom, but this little site reminds me how funny and precious moms can be.

Keeping good baby records

True confession is I've not written word one in my son's baby book. I have a cute one, baby book that is. it is on a shelf with stacks of mementos I'm meaning to paste into the book. this is not unlike my honeymoon book that is packed in a box with photos and all kinds of crafty things to be pasted in someday when I take a month long vacation and don't leave home and have paid help around. ahem, like, never.

So, a scrapbooker I am not but I am a damn fast typer. So, here's the good advice of the day - and something I actually do - not just preaching here, friends.

Get your child his/her own email address. Advantages:
a) get a good email name before the next kid with your kid's name snatches it up
b) you can charm grandma and grandpa with emails from your kid to them. even though everyone knows you beloved child can't type or spell yet, it warms their hearts to see their grandchild's name in their "from" list
c) you can freak your husband/baby-daddy out when you send him an email from your child's email address. (note: key to the surprise, don't tell him you're setting up the email address.)
c) as you think of things you'd want to tell him someday, you can just send an email to him and it will be there someday when he can actually read. it will already be chronological and it will capture the tone of how you actually would tell the story.

Caveat - occasionally you will have to do some maintenance on the inbox to purge the pervy spam mail you won't want her to see

Thinking of traveling with a toddler without your partner?

My advice is – don’t do it! Ok, my current situation has the added dimensions of my being 6 months pregnant and my toddler having just hit the psychological stage requiring him to say no to everything asked. I must admit that these two things greatly influence my recommendation above. And it is a hard recommendation, indeed, as I take pride in my independence and adventure and do not like the idea of my being homebound unless another adult assists with travel. In fact, my son and I have traveled multiple times by car and plane without the assistance of “daddy” and up to this stage its been fairly well managed.

So, the three of us get to the airport one bright shiny morning to find very long lines for check in. My son is not too keen on staying in his stroller as that is what we would like him to do, so A (my husband) decides to wait with us until we pass through security. We endure the lines of both check-in and security which requires one to keep line placement and the other to run after the toddler. Once arriving at the place where non-travelers are no longer welcomed, my husband and I switch baggage, i.e. things in my hand for wiggly toddler in his and say goodbye. Despite the long wait, things are going well until I need to put all of my items, many as they are, into the bins for x-ray. This requires getting my son out of the stroller and convincing him to take off his shoes. He is not happy about removing his shoes and proceeds to fight me on it while impatient on-lookers behind me await my success. At this very moment, amid the struggle and our personal items making their way to the x-ray machine, I realize that I’m missing my very essential bag – you know, the one with our TICKETS, my wallet and the all-important travel toys!! During the hand-off, “A” must have taken it. Sweat breaks out, panic takes hold and a quick mental deduction tells me that we will in fact be missing our plane scheduled to depart in 45 minutes. The two sympathetic men behind me (obviously fathers) calmly instruct me to leave the stroller by the wall and “RUN” to find my husband. I swoop up my son (who is ornery and crying at this point because he doesn’t want to take off his shoes) and bolt down the narrow terminal hallway cramped with security line passengers. Thankfully within seconds I see my husband running with lightening speed towards me. I grab the bag, a quick reassuring hug, a laugh and turn with everything in arms, including my son for security. We make it through and to our gate in time and I am relieved but very tired and a bit rattled.

We wanted to watch the planes take off for as long as possible and so decide to board last. Once on board, I realize one of our seats is filled. I let the attendant know this and within moments I hear over the intercom that the plane is overbooked and would anyone like to step off for a free plane ticket. Meanwhile, I stand next to the bathroom monitoring “the boy” as he runs up the aisles, deciding whether to laugh or cry. Of course by this time I think my husband is long gone in the car. I decide to laugh at the comedy of it all and luckily a nice man gets up and we are saved.

After some rearranging we take our seats and I am so relieved to sit down as both the weight of my son and my “in utero” 25 week old have taken their toll. All I want is a warm cup of coffee – but there is MUCH to do before that big payoff. We need to get ample toys out, have a chat about seatbelts and why one needs to stay in their seat for take-off, change a diaper in an airplane bathroom (toddler standing on toilet technique) and relieve myself while my son jumps around the 1 x 2 ft space in front of the toilet.

The coffee arrives and I am in heaven. It even tastes good – a benefit I was willing to forego. My son is happily playing with his cars in his window seat. I’ve got him boxed in, of course, in an effort to minimize the bother to the UPenn, extremely hungover, college student directly to my right. Ahhhhh the coffee is good and I am happy. But OH – all of the sudden my son has some sort of hormone surge and needs a hug immediately! He jumps up and leaps towards me screaming “hug, hug, hug”… I grab him as to comfort and his left foot comes swinging around, hits the coffee cup and the content flies all over my right arm and yes, you guessed it – the sleeping college student. Not good.

Now I could go on for a while but these are the funnier, in retrospect, events of our flight down to see Grandma. I’m not really recommending that you not travel with your two year old but I am saying that it’ll help to be psychologically prepared for the event. In the end it was truly worth it and a great time on the beach with family…...