The Sister Blogs Too

As Kris's sister I am now an official blogger on her site. We come from a family that just has a lot to say, I guess. Ask us how much we actually get done...that's a different story. I'll be writing on the same theme of career mom leaves work to be home with kids and enters that unfamiliar waters of new identity, cooking (ugh ugh ugh), cleaning (enjoyable compared to cooking), a home business (which I love), and my latest adventure...homeschooling. Don't think I'm totally crazy on that last one. We saw that our daughter has some attention issues (but what kid doesn't, right?) and wanted to give her more time. I picked a program that basically sends me everything in a box and tracks everything I do online (Virtual Academy). So that whole idea of having to "figure out" what to teach is outdated... I do what the computer tells me to do.

I'll also pontificate on issues of behavioral management (my own, my children's and my husbands), marriage, self-actualization issues (huh? who has time?) and community service. I live in California with my husband of 11 years and our three children. I'm not a native of California so I'll be writing my perceptions on So. Cal as well just because, well, sometimes I have to shake my head.

Looking forward to blogging.

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House of Cards (Guest Blogger)

I asked a girlfriend of mine, from law school, about her theories. It wasn't hard to ask her, we freaking talk about this topic all the time.

This is what she emailed back. Thought it was quite Post worthy (she approved putting it in my blog):

So, I happen to be one of those women who was polled by Krisco, and I was happy to participate. I was a philosophy major in college and am ready to analyze anything at anytime. However, this question came at a really interesting time in my life. In fact, it came right after I had one of those things that Oprah is always talking about, A life changing moment. Never thought I would admit to such a thing. After all, I am the first in my family to go to college, a graduate of a top law school and a nonprofit lawyer, providing free legal services in my hometown. Very Just put on your Nikes and do it. But I had it, that moment when every thing changes in an instant.

It came one day, approximately five years after being pregnant, breast feeding, being pregnant again, and breast feeding again. Twenty minutes after I finished successfully weaning my second child, I got a phone call from one of my best friends telling me she had breast cancer. The juxtaposition of two things that can only be experienced by a woman - closing the chapter on breastfeeding and realizing your life can be threatened at any time by breast cancer . . . well, it was startling. And it hit me - up until that moment, I was a woman who had been doing everything that was expected of her. As bad as that was, what scared me, was realizing that I had two children whose approach to life was going to be largely influenced by me - was I going to continue approaching life the same way? Did I want them to do everything that was expected of them, or did I want more for them?

Yes, some might say that I am one of the lucky ones - the American Dream, a beneficiary of the woman's movement, bla, bla, bla. Remember, I am not only the first in my family to go to college, but the first to go to a top rated law school. Not only am I the only lawyer in my family, but the only person I know from my hometown who is a lawyer (or is a professional of any sort). But I can't help but wonder if I would have been better off like those women from my hometown who only worried about falling in love. Of course, being smart enough to take advantage of the hard road that was paved for someone like me, I felt obligated to take it.

Was it my Catholic upbringing that made me feel that way? Did I feel I had to focus on only my career, because falling in love would interfere with being able to succeed? Could I have been using the career thing as an excuse, not wanting to admit that I was afraid of having my heart broken? Or maybe we all just get what we wish for. Which leads to the next question, "what have we been wishing for - to be ourselves or to be someone else?"

So, I'm left feeling what I'm going to call "house of cards syndrome". (Of course, I'm hoping that calling it house of cards syndrome will be clever enough to avoid any resemblance to that New Age "listening to your inner voice" thing.) Realizing that I have been doing what was expected of me, leaves me wondering what my life has really been about. And changing one thing seems like it's going to require starting completely over. Do all women experience this? Do all people in their 40's? Is this the midlife crisis everyone has always talked about? I thought it was experienced by people who regretted not having had more fun and excitement in their youth. So, I really was not expecting this to ever happen. Why didn't anyone tell me about "house of cards syndrome"?

I guess I just can't keep wondering . . . if I hadn't spent so much time being afraid of doing things wrong, would I have done things better.

Signed, TrueNorth

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Oh and another thing

Sis also had this to say:

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I must have missed the home-ec class at my private liberal arts college. I've often felt I should go back and do a seminar for current college gals at my alma mater with the theme..."Here is the Reality of Life". It's all about choices and paths and no, you can't have it all. Ironically, we're the fortunate ones who can stay home. My heart goes out to those working moms who have to bring home the bacon, juggle the babies and do it again the next day. Unless they love their job...then I'm just envious. However, I have noticed that their kids are more street smart than mine in social interactions. Good? Bad? Well, I'll save that for another blog entry.

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And yes, this too will be in both a comment somewhere and this post until we get this "manager thing" worked out.

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Sister says

My sister is having some technical difficulties becoming a co-blogger on this blog. She's got three kids, one in diapers (last I checked), lots of kid activities they're signed up for, spousal social obligations, a home-based business, and she homeschools (although I think that is on summer hiatus).

She does have plenty to say and sent this in as a comment, but it's worth a real post:

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Got an email from a new MOMs club mom I chatted with at the park, gave encouragement to, etc. She emailed with a thanks and said that despite training as a pediatrician this whole mommy thing has thrown her for a complete loop. Pediatrician?? You would never know it...at our meeting she was just one of the moms, a greeny at that just barely making it out of the house by 10:30 a.m. This motherhood thing is really the great equalizer somewhat akin to Australia's tall poppy syndrome (pull down yar mates that are gettin too far ahead). Perhaps that's really our struggle...we were getting ahead and now nobody even asks what you did before babies. -- elsey, the sister
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So yes, the above is now in a comment AND a post! Oh, and the technical difficulty she is having - she can't find the email inviting her to be a co-blogger, sent last week. Trust me, been there.

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Mother's Little Helper

Well, ok, it's not *that* kind of Mother's Little Helper. But since a lot of moms do not have enough time for (gasp) shopping - here's some help. I found this via their blog and it seems like a great idea - a website to get a wide variety of catalogues, and coupons for them:

http://joanandjackie.blogspot.com/
and catalogs.com

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Polling my neighbors

I am fascinated by this topic, and I mean that literally. I ask everyone their opinion about it - my friends, my OB, my kids' pediatrician, the woman who runs the local playgroup - and surprisingly (well, I'm getting used to it) EVERY woman I've talked to has an opinion about the way their life has gone versus what they were somewhat expecting. (It's like we're all theorizing and analyzing our lives - but when? 3 AM?)

As one of them said to me "I was always told YOU WERE MEANT FOR BETTER THAN THIS. For big things. Go conquer the world." And then she had kids. And that whole conquer thing got kind of hard. Are we absolutely thrilled and grateful and happy we had children? Of course, absolutely (fast becoming my favorite word).

That's the point. It's just that, there is this generation of women and I, obviously, think I am smack dab in the middle of it, that came along after that whole civil rights/women's lib thing, and everyone was so excited to tell us walls were down and we could go do what we wanted! Woohoo! It's just that nobody mentioned - oh, and by the way, there is this whole other little ittybitty thing we might have forgotten to mention that might kind of sort of greatly (and rightly so) affect that...

And you don't have to drop completely out of work to have it affect you. My good friend at a big foreign car company, MBA, important job, etc...we were just talking about how odd it feels that she shys away from promotions because it will mean more (foreign) travel and with two little kids at home she's not interested. So is this it? This is where her career goes? We remember working with people like that when we were in our twenties - why aren't they more aggresive? Why are they happy just stopping there? Some even seemed to be stuck in a little way station in their career. (And not that my girlfriend is in a little way station - God, these blogs can be tricky! She made it a hell of a lot further than I did to a perfectly admirable place to stay; it's just that, she obviously has the chance to go further *if she wanted it*. Huh. That whole dilemma thing. (Note to self for next life: stick to one career . . . )

Certainly men do this sometimes too; it's not just a girl thing. Men sometimes stop gunning for the big advancement because they like to see their kids too. What am I saying? That I just didn't realize you really can't have it all? Just regular run-of-the-mill hit 40 and realize you really won't be a rockstar, is that it? Nah. (Well, maybe). But I think there's more to it...the next stage of the whole (God, I even hate this terminology) "lib" thing (please God we need a new name) - recognizing women (and men) have a ton to contribute after their kids are raised and maybe we should let them back on the fast track/rat race if they want. I know, pipe dreams, pipe dreams. (Huh. Now that I'm older (maybe more observant, being younger would make more sense) it just suddenly occurred to me where that phrase probably came from. Huh, that's kind of funny! "Pipe dreams".)

PS As I sit, Little Big Girl is at playschool and Baby was asleep. Then Baby woke up; due to some rain I don't feel guilty about not taking her outside. I use the rain as an excuse not to do something interactive with her inside as well - instead she sits on my lap while I finish the last paragraph. Sits on my lap and empties out every drawer in the desk (yes, leaning over at times). Envelopes, stationary, stamps, checkbooks, (open) boxes of new checks, mail I don't know what to do with, papers with notes I am supposed to keep track of, (other people's) business cards, floppy disks, little plastic things that mark file folders, their paper labels, a lifetime collection of pens. All in a big circle around me. Just one more little household tasky for me and I brought this one on myself.

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For the record

My cousin and my sister are going to join in soon. I swear.

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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)

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