Crib Ceiling Explained

Welcome to our blog!

We are three professional women - well, really, my sister and cousin and I, and I call us the Girlees - who either fell, jumped or were pushed off the career track (or all of the above) by that large, omnipresent and yet *never mentioned in our youth* event known as parenthood.

(Update: Those jokers blew me off. They still read Crib Ceiling regularly. But posting? It's like once a year for them. I don't know - something about their kids or their job or something. Never fear. I make up for the lot of them.)

This is about the struggles and weirdnesses and shifting realities of going from professionalhoodness (see, when I used to work, I would never make up a word like that. Of course, I also used to be able to think of the words I actually wanted back then) to, well, motherhood. In all its varied guises. Stay at home, work full time, stay at home and try to work full time (ha!). It's all up for our obsessive analysis, bewilderment and exasperation.

(This part is still true. It's just that you only get my version of it here. Works for me.)

As soon as I decided to start this blog - one week after reading my first blog - I talked my sister and cousin into joining in. I can be a bit of what used to be known (in the dotcom era) as "a Promoter" (which didn't end well for those people). Nonetheless, I get people into my schemes.

(Yes. We all know how it ended for those Promoter type people. Ahem.)

We were already discussing, debating, laughing at and generally analyzing the work/home thing and all our various choices - or lack thereof - all along - as well as every other topic in our lives.

(Also still true.)

So, of course, this will be about more than just the "life paths" (God, how new-agey!) of women - there's plenty more we have theories on. And besides, we're women - everything is connected to everything else and if you don't see how, we will tell you.

(A year later: boy-howdy.)

So there you have it. Welcome to our blog.

(And for the record, in the writing of the above, the Baby woke up three times. At ten months she knows a few things with absolute certainty. The first is that she cannot possibly sleep, in any position or conveyance, unless she is in constant contact with me. When she wakes up and finds I am not there - she will let you know in no uncertain terms that things are amiss. Is she sweet, endearing, amazing and wonderful? Yes. Is she absolutely demanding and completely exhausting? (Have you ever picked up the kitchen with one hand while holding seventeen pounds with the other? Day after day after day, five times a day?) Um....yes. And there it is.)

(And . . . still true. Baby is now almost two, but she still thinks I should be if not in constant physical contact than at least at her beck and call. And I suppose it's time to update her name: Toddler? Tiny Little Person? And introduce the real rest of the cast of characters: Spousal, genius scientist husband extraordinaire, who has dragged us to a tiny little town at the top of a mountain at the end of the road, full of geniuses and foreigners and no Target in site (a constant source of irritation) and Little Big Girl, sweet and precocious first child who precipitated this whole stay-at-home thing to begin with. Which was lovely. Especially now that I'm back at work.

Welcome to Crib Ceiling, version 2.0)