5 Years Flown By

One thing I have learned about this blog: my husband doesn't read it.

He knows about it; under duress, at work, once, he took a look. I don't know, it's not his thing.

There's no physics, no numbers, no math. (That's my theory.) It could just be, and more likely is - he's *busy* at work. Doing all kinds of smart things. With Greek numbers. And at home we're either busy with the kids, hanging out, or I am monopolizing the computer.

Well, anyway, just in case, in this one instance, if he happens to wander by:

Happy 5th Anniversary Sweetie.

K.

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Be Here Now - other people think so too :)

Sometimes, at least for me, it is so hard to overlook the work of the day to day that I forget to notice how nice it is to be with my little bunchkins. Every once in awhile, they will do something - Baby, sitting on my hip, will look at me and laugh, with twinkling eyes, or reach out to touch my face, or Little Big Girl will say something insanely cute or run to hug me when I've only been gone a half hour...and that brings me around, out of the trees to see the forest, and I just sit and hug them and love the moment. And at that moment sit and read them a book or otherwise actually BE with them.

I have to say, when Little Big Girl was even littler, like age two, she came up to me a couple times when I was sitting down, took my face in her hands, turned it toward her, and looked right into my eyes. I can't remember now exactly what she said - whether it was: I really want a bottle, or: Look at this, please. I do remember the act, and how incredibly moving it was, and how it *really* got me focused on her. She's no dummy,

Anyway, here are a couple posts from other people, on other blogs, that did the same thing for me. Really helped me to see the now. Thanks, guys.

Mary from Mom Writes. I loved this post: Happy Mommy Alert

On "Dot Moms", one of those sites that get featured in old-media mags and everything, is the other one: A Reminder To Enjoy It While You Can

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Lost in (Cacophonous) Translating

This was such a Los Alamos story, and also a mommy story, I just had to tell it.

Earlier this week, I made plans with my friend T, who for purposes of this story we will call Gretel because she is German and I can’t think of any other German names (is that German?) We were going to get together so that I could edit some books she wrote.

She is an author, in Germany. So not only is this town full of people from other countries, they are all, like, interesting and accomplished as well.

Anyway, she writes a lot of how-to books in German, including some How To Speak English books, because of course her English is flawless. (My German? Nonexistent. My Spanish? I had fifteen years of Spanish. Still nonexistent.) Little pocket books, like Business English, Idiomatic English (or, Common English Sayings), English for Traveling. You get the idea.

Anyway, she asked me to read a couple over, to make sure her phrases sounded okay, since they are releasing new editions. She asked me to do this for an earlier book she had too. Probably I picked it up at her house, and started making fun of the phrases she used. I can’t really remember, but that’s just the kind of friend I am.

Now, to be fair, some of her phrases are England-English phrases. Like calling a trunk a boot or calling the hospital just hospital (no "the". That always sounds so weird to me.) I still made fun of her.

Well, she got me, because now I’ve edited two and about to be three of her books. (And to be honest, most of the English phrases are spot on. Little joke there, that’s a British phrase. In all honesty, her phrases are mostly fine. There were just a few little edits to be had here and there.)

Anyway, we arranged it so it would be a quiet morning. With our three year olds at playschool, it would be just the two babies, ages one and one and a half. She would watch them, I would sit and quietly read her English translations. It sounded so calm and peaceful.

Then, the day before, she called and told me her friend V, who is also German, but who I can’t make up a name for because I can’t think of another German name (Hansel is strictly a guy name, I think), so we will just call her V, called and asked her to babysit her three year old. Could she bring little A? Sure, I said. And, as my friend said, with little kids, the more the merrier.

Then my friend L emails. She has a doctor’s appointment. Could I watch her baby boy R? Sure. He is easy; very pleasant; only six months or so. Plus, you know, the more the merrier thing. Besides, going to a doctor, any doctor, with a little one in tow is just so hard. So bring him on over!

So T (I just can’t really call her Gretel) arrives, with Baby W and three year old A. They mix it up with my Baby – who is now walking and thinks it is okay to take any toy they pick up away, because after all, that’s what happens to her – and I start to read the books. The kids are playing, they’re happy, but you know – kids are loud.

Then V stops by to pick up little A; her plans have changed, we have tea going . . . I’m happy to have her join us, she’s great. So while I’m editing, T and V are chatting away a mile a minute. In German.

Then Baby R gets dropped off. He can sit, he can play, he can let his feelings be known. There are four kids in total and two mothers chatting away in a foreign language.

Someone else called right about then and, hearing the background noise, asked, “What do you have going on over there?”

Oh, just a quiet little morning. A quiet little morning to sit and edit some books.

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We have Mermaid...

What’s happened at the house of Krisco’s blog, of late:

The package is here! The package is here! (To be read like Steve Martin’s: The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!)

The package containing Little Big Girl’s Halloween costume, which Little Big Girl and I sat down and ordered last week, after tens of hours of contemplation, catalogue perusal, and debate, arrived.

All that work was done, of course, by Little Big Girl. Once the Halloween catalogs started to arrive, in late August, Little Big Girl took ownership of them and began her studies, and her dreaming. She looked at them constantly. She read them on the floor, in the car, at the table. She took them to bed with her. (“Ma-ooooooommmmmm – I can’t sleeeeeeeep – I need my Disney catalog!”). The catalogs became soft, and cloth-like, from all her reading.

She asked her Daddy and me to read the blurbs to her. Over and over. Until we’d say, No, honey, you know that one. Oh yeah! she’d say, and then recite “Your little mermaid will look just swimming….”

In some ways, there wasn’t much of a debate. Mostly, she wanted to be a mermaid. But which type? The Lillian Vernon with the green sea shell top? Or the Costumes Etc with the body made of green sequins? Also, mermaid as mermaid, or mermaid turned girl?

The debate was one she carried on externally, and constantly. “I could be this mermaid and wear this costume….” Sometimes she switched concepts. With the turn of a catalog page: Mom! I want to be a princess! Reading a nursery rhyme book: Mom! I want to be Little Bo Peep! But getting tucked in at night: Mom, I want to be a mermaid.

Okay, sweetie.

Now, I have to say, when I was growing up, there was no talk of purchasing a Halloween costume. My mom was too good a seamstress, and my dad was too cheap. Costumes can be made! And found! You put them together! They are not something to be bought at a store! (Or, in our case here in store-free Los Alamos, from a catalog).

I have memories of my mom, working away at the sewing machine, making me a beautiful gypsy or genie costume. And I loved those costumes; made with beautiful material, intricate designs, fitting me perfectly. I felt sorry for those other kids in their nylon, store bought contraptions.

And here I am…and I don’t sew….and,…we have eBay.

Plus another thing I realized – little kids, in the age three range – wear their costumes a lot. Starting in, like, September. I’ve already seen little monkeys at the park, Buzz Lightyear on the playground. And once I thought about it, I realized Eleanor wore her Elmo costume from last year until, like – April. We got our money’s worth.

So might as well order the mermaid getup, and order it now.

(And a tangential point I mentioned to my husband at dinner last night – what a difference between ages two and three. Elmo; Mermaid. It’s only a year, but it’s such a huge leap.)

Little Big Girl’s final conclusion, after, I am not kidding, those tens of hours of contemplation, was: the Lillian Vernon mermaid costume, and all accoutrements from the Disney Store – crown, wig, Flounder candy bag.

And lo and behold if there wasn’t someone in this country who wanted to sell EXACTLY that combination of things, as unlikely as that sounds, in a size 3. Which is a good thing, because adding them up in the catalogs was a pretty penny, even with my non-sewing guilt. It was such an amazing find, I had to just Buy Now rather than bid.

So, after checking the door FURIOUSLY for days, starting immediately upon our last click on eBay (she sat on my lap while we ordered), and continuing every day until it arrived (“Mom, let’s see if my costume is here!”), the costume finally arrived.

And now we have a little mermaid running around our house, morning, noon and night (see the previous post), with the little sea shell top, the wig, the crown, and the Flounder bag.

And we’re all pretty dang happy about it.

I had lots of other things to report . . . but I got so wrapped up in this one, the others will just have to wait.

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An interview for Renee

I was asked to interview Renee over at Frogola, the blog.

Here are my questions for her:

1. If you could be any character on a ‘seventies sitcom, who would you be and why?

2. If you could pick three famous people to be marooned with you on a desert island, and only one of them might be a love interest, who would you pick?

3. Would you rather be a rock star, a movie star, or a supermodel?

4. What’s the one thing in your life you’d like to do over, either to repeat the experience or to do it differently?

5. What kind of car do you want to drive when you are really, really old?

It will be fun to see the answers...!

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Baby Hippos and Hundred Yr Old Turtles

I thought this article was both incredibly touching and sad. I guess now that I am a mommy, all mommy-baby stories appeal to me.

There are GREAT pics that go with this...if only I had any idea how to attach them, which I don't. Please look this up on Google (if you too didn't already get this via email), they are worth it. Sorry to be so internet-lame on that.

My Title - Baby Hippo Adopts Really Old Turtle as His Mommy

NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa, officials said.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP.

"After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added.

"The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added.

"The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years," he explained.







Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

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All the things I thought of just now

This is what happened today:

Baby sat on the floor, reached repeatedly into my purse hanging over the back of the kitchen chair, and emptied every item onto the floor.

This is why I missed my first of two dental appointments Monday morning. Because she does this everyday, in different parts of the house, and I never know where to find the parts. Like the dental appointment card.

Little Big Girl went to bed very late, again, tonight. Because her father, who has no sense of time even though he thinks he does, is in charge of putting her to bed, and he thinks she is cute. So she gets to stay up late.

I am in charge of feeding, clothing and brushing her hair in the morning, and caring for her throughout the day, all of which becomes immeasurably more difficult when she is tired. Think three. Now think three on steroids. That is a child with no sleep.

I think she is cute too. I still want her to go to bed ontime.

I ran into a new girl (woman, mom, new friend) who moved to town last weekend. Twice. She said “This town is so small!” I said, Yeah. I thought, You have no idea.

I confused an incredibly nice, sweet blond woman (mom, potential friend) from Slovenia with another nice, sweet, blond woman I’ve met who’s from Germany, and joyfully told her that our other mutual German friend is back from her three week vacation in Canada! She has never met (yet) my other German friend with the three week vacation, or her daughter, who I also told her I saw.

I then proceeded to ask my new Slovenian friend if she is teaching her daughter Slovakian. I knew this was dumb as it came out of my mouth, because of course you would speak to your child in your first language, even if you live in the happening United States. Of course, she speaks Slovenian not Slovakian. I am a dumb American.

She did, sweetly, and I am not making that part up (or any of the rest of this so far), delineate which formerly eastern-bloc country broke off and became Slovenia and which became Slovakia. That was this morning. I have since forgotten. (Yugoslavia was one.) I forgot by noon. I am a product of Geography with Mr, Smith at Southern Hills Junior High School, and we passed notes a lot. And noticed that Cameroon and Mali were on the same continent, and thought that was a good sign for Cameron and Molly, since she liked him a lot. I do remember that. I don’t think those countries exist anymore. I do not think they became Slovenia or Slovakia.

If you have just joined this blog, I live in Los Alamos. At the Music & Movement music class at the Mesa Public Library, there are thirty-two women (and babies) and approximately twenty-nine nationalities represented. Okay, I made those numbers up. But seriously it is probably like, I don’t know – I can think of five different nationalities, and I only knew five of the thirty or so women (and one man) there, so probably there was, like, ten different nationalities.

These are the people – their husbands, anyway – who are currently providing for your national defense. The research branch of it, anyway, at at least one of your national labs. They are also doing medical, space, earth, environmental and other research.

I meant to put ‘at’ in that last sentence twice.

And that’s all for now.

Other than – if you have any comments – feel free. They make my little day.

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The Opt-In Meme - too fun!

Well, I have joined an opt-in meme. (Like that name? Mangled it together myself!;) Thank you to Christa for writing my questions and thereby including me. I feel the blog love! (And frankly writing the questions looks like the clever / hard part - so thanks again). If any of you would like to join the opt-in meme, read below. I will do my blogging best to come up with bueno questionos.

Here's her questions, and my answers:

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Here are your interview questions:

1. If you could have another house in any location in the world, where would it be?

Malibu. I know it sounds trite, but man. Beautiful house (they all are), right on the beach, minutes to some of the best dining and city life in the world. Skip Italy, etc....love it, but I think I would make it to Malibu on a regular basis.

Unless you meant, of course, as a first home, and not a second home. In which case....Malibu.

2. What name did you have picked out for future children that you didn't use yet?

I have to have three more girls. Because I still love: Grace, Lily, and Marie.
I think between all my many cousins, they have named their children each of these names at least once. For this lifetime, apparently, that will have to do. :(
Oh, and for boys - I once knew a family with boys named Mathew, Nicholas and Adam. Loved the boys, love those names. I would call the middle one Nickolai.

Just realized this question was in the SINGULAR. See how I don't pay attention sometimes. Let's go with Grace.

3. Which super hero power would you most like to have and why?

I want to say Super Hearing, but that really isn't that helpful and might just bum you out. I also want to waiver right into Omnipotence - you know, save the whole world - but that really isn't a super power at all. That's just my Catholic guilt reminding me I haven't cured the world yet. Of anything. (We're doers, you know.) So I guess I would have to say - oh hell, I'm just going to go with Super Hearing. At least I could hear people's arguments way off and be prepared with some great response ahead of time. I mean, Super Strength, Super Speed - then you just have to go and do things. I'm too tired.

4. If you could be on any reality TV show, which would you choose and why?

The Apprentice. Hands down, no question. I want to go on that show in real life. I drive my husband nuts with that. I think I would do so well, and in reality I would probably just piss everybody off with my smart mouth. (But it would make good video clips.) Even when I'm trying to be helpful ("You know, you're doing that ALL WRONG."). I'd be right, though. Not that that would help me when I'm in that cab on the way home saying "Give me another chance! Next season! Really, I'll get more politic in the next couple months than I have in my whole life SO FAR! Real estate Rules, Mr. Trump!"

Oh, why - because it just looks like so much fun and I think I would kick a**. (Now read the paragraph above again.) And that would, indeed, be my dream job after I won the show. (Now read the first paragraph again.)

5. What's the one thing you miss most about working outside of your home?

Grownup conversation and the comaraderie of the office.
Wait, that's two things, so let's just go with the comaraderie. That kind of sneaks the grownup conversation in right along with it.
I really miss that.


Well, those are my answers. Don't know if that was as fun for anyone else as it was for me to be completely self-absorbed. (Not that a blog isn't that anyway...) Thanks Christa! :) : ) : )

And this to continue the meme:


Want to play?

The Official Interview Games Rules:
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying, "interview me".
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each persons will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

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Cookie Math

I just made plans to go on a hike next week.

I can eat TWO cookies for lunch today!

I got it ALL over the Cookie Monster and Count Dracula. Neither of them know how to appreciate cookies AND do math.

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Kris: New Alert Levels, stolen directly from another blog

This thing just completely cracked me up. It's from a blog called My Boyfriend Is A Twat, in Belgium. The site won a Best European Blog Award.

Zoe, from My Boyfriend Is A Twat, gave me permission to put it here. I don't totally understand her title - I suspect "Backache" is English rhyming slang for something else. Don't let that stop you:

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"Backache means Security Measures must be taken."

The views of a Brit on Britain's friendly neighbours ... Politically very incorrect!

The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings; the level has just been raised from 'miffed' to "peeved'. Soon though, the levels may be raised yet again to "irritated' or even "a bit cross". Londoners have not been a "bit cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out.

Terrorists have been re-categorised from "tiresome" to "a bloody nuisance". The last time a "bloody nuisance" warning level was issued was during the Great Fire in 1666.

Be aware that the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from RUN to HIDE. The only two higher levels in France are . . (see "More" below...) Surrender and Collaborate. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing their military capability.

It's not only the French that are on a heightened level of alert. The Italians have increased their alert level from "shout loudly and excitedly" to "elaborate military posturing". Two more levels remain, "ineffective combat operations" and "change sides".

The Germans have also increased their alert state from "disdainful arrogance" to "dress in uniform and sing marching songs". They have two higher levels, "invade a neighbour" and "lose".

Seeing this reaction in continental Europe the Americans have gone from "isolationism" to "find another oil-rich, nation in the Middle East ripe for regime change". Their remaining higher alert states are "attack the world" and "beg the British for help".

Finally here in the UK we've gone from "pretend nothing's happening" to "make another cup of tea". Our higher levels are "remain resolutely cheerful" and "win".

Cheers old boy!

Addition, from Ricardipus:

The Canadians have increased their alert level from "observe from a distance" to "extensive discussion". Two more levels remain, "deploy peacekeepers" and "save big chunks of Europe".

Addition, from Chins:

The Indians have also increased their alert levels from "The whole world is our family -'vasudev kutumbkum'" to "We are cousins".
Two more levels remain "Even if Step-sibblings, we are still brothers" and " IF you slap me on right cheek, i will offer you my left".

Addition, from Andy:

"Well, The Irish would have their security levels
Wa' they havn't taken the drink?
to The pubs not open yet,
two extra levels, The pubs open and We will open another in your country."

Addition, from The Merkin, the North Korean Alert States:

Lowest - "Get ready for attack from bourgeois capitalist Yankee devils"
Low - "Get ready for attack from bourgeois capitalist Yankee devils. Grrrrrrr, we've got nukes you know."
Medium - "Get ready for attack from bourgeois capitalist Yankee devils and their lickspittle British running dogs. No honestly, we really have got nukes. And some nasty gas."
High - "Honestly, you HAVE to get ready for attack from bourgeois capitalist Yankee devils and their lickspittle British running dogs. Don't make us use our nukes, poison gas or nasty germs"
Highest - "Hello, is that Beijing? Can we borrow some missiles?"

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Kris: We *thought* we had it made...

My Mom and I were chatting the other day, and she was saying that we are not by any stretch the first generation to go off to work, and then come home to care for children.

Mom pointed out that in WWII, the women went to work when the men went off to war. Did their jobs great, stepped up to the plate. And when the men came back (those that did), the women were let go.

Also, she said (and this one I know less about), that in the twenties a lot of women were working. And with the arrival of the Depression, the women were fired first.

Of course, who knows what level of work they were “allowed” to do. Even Sandra Day O’Connor could not get hired at a law firm when she got out of law school in the fifties.

I heard a shocking thing when I went on the realtor-recruiting trip a couple weeks ago. That in 1973 – 1973! A lot of us were alive then! They still play music from that era! – the two largest realty firms in Denver would not hire a woman agent. I thought that was shocking.

So here we are, one of the first generations of women to march through already-kicked down doors. Some of us, now, back home with the kids. (And some faring better at it than others. I have one friend who loves it (Ms Also Pregnant); the rest, like me, are more home-ec challenged than we thought we would be….but that’s a digression….anyway….)

All of us (that I know) are happy that we did whatever it is we did with our opportunities. Most of us were not even *really * aware that the opportunities we had were new; we thought this was normal – college, decent jobs, law school, medical school, b school. All normal for our compatriots.

But one of the concepts that was brought up with the NY Times article – the one about the young women planning on stepping out of their careers for children – is really weighing on me. (To read the whole article, see the post below about the Debate. I'd link to it but it doesn't work. Is it me, or is it blogger? I'm beginning to wonder.)

Basically, that those young women assume that when they are ready to go back to work after caring for children, they will be able to. And you and I know that is just not true.

I know of a few women, and read of many more, who know the reality first hand. Some can’t even get an interview when they are ready to work again. There is a *reason * why so many start their own businesses.

The funny part to me is that I think most of us have just accepted this. Just as, in my moms’ generation, the women just accepted that they couldn’t have certain “male” jobs, or were ineligible for certain awards. (For instance, Phi Beta Kappa. They excluded women in the fifties. For no other reason than they were . . . women . . . ) We assumed it was just normal that, once you go home, you can’t go back again at any level close to where you were.

That article made me realize: only part of the “battle” of the sixties and seventies – of the women’s lib generation, the women’s movement issues – has been won.

We thought we were over that, it was all behind us. I actually kind of even disliked those women, with their militancy and anti-men attitude. But it turns out we need to pick up their work where they left off. (Minus the militancy and the anti-male attitude).

We’re not like the women of previous generations who were kicked out of the workforce at a certain point. Our opportunities have, at least, advanced beyond that point.

We have the right to an education. We have the opportunity to work at whatever level we can achieve. And we have the option to leave that work to care for our children.

Now we just need the right to go back.

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Kris: Dancing on the paper door

My baby has two favorite things.

If you’ve read an earlier post, one is obviously the dishwasher.

The other is the printer.

For reasons too complicated to go into here (our floorplan sucks), the printer sits on the floor. Next to the desk. And whenever I sit at the desk, baby thinks that is the perfect time to hang with the printer.

Opens and shuts the paper door-thing. Lifts the document lid. Pats the glass. STANDS on the paper door-thing; wants to bounce, holding onto the glass top, her little baby butt out in the air, rockin’. (That thing can’t hold much, she does weigh over twenty pounds these days, I have to stop that one on contact.)

Pushes all the buttons. Programs it to fax Timbuktu, pushes the Color print button, GO!

Looks up, very proud of herself. I *sigh * and turn the power off. It’s not as much fun for her – no responsive beeping and all – but that is the point. At least it won’t be reprogrammed for life.

And by then I figure it’s about time to get these munchkins outside.

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Kris: Eye of the Wolf and not (thankfully) eye of the storm

As I may have mentioned before, Mom is a famous author.

I am relieved to point out that she got out of Houston just in time. She was on a book tour, and for some reason, she was sent to Houston on Wednesday, even though the storm was already on its way there.

It took all night standing in line, and into the morning, but she got on a plane on Thursday AM and left, to continue her book tour in Southern California. (You'd think these authors would have *people* who stand on line for them...Maybe that's the next level up...:) )

Luckily for Houston it looks like the storm has veered; unluckily for whichever new location is in its path.

And in an act of shameless familial promotion, her new book is:
Eye of the Wolf. It is the latest in her mystery series set on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, among the Arapaho people.

And in a completely unbiased opinion, they're great!

She's already made the NY Times Best Sellers list again with this book. (So I'm not the only one who thinks so. :)

(end of shameless familial promotion - for now)

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Kris: come clean about a few things

Sometimes you can tell a story about your child and unwittingly reveal more about yourself.

I was telling my friend L. in Los Angeles how cute it was to be in the kitchen and suddenly hear pat pat pat and my baby has crawled into the room to join me. She looks up at me with such a great smile.

But sometimes she doesn't want to be held, she wants to just hang. And so I'll open a cupboard, possibly one with plastic items, and she'll mess around with the things in there for awhile. Without fail I will forget her propensity for the dishwasher.

Inevitably it is open, because tsch, what else am I doing in there but loading it...and my back will be turned away and I'll hear this little clinkle clinkle clinkle. And I'll look and there she will be, standing at the dishwasher, trying out all the new flavors on the spoons and the forks in the silverware bin. And looking up at me with some giddy - aren't I cool I found this - smile. And some unsubstantiated goop sliding down her chin.

Yogurt? Sour cream? Cheese sauce? How long before she finds one with Spouse's hot sauce? Inevitably I scoop her up, say no no no no no, wrest the utensil from her laser-grip hand, and carry on cleaning the kitchen one-handed, with the baby on one hip.

I finished telling this story, and there was silence on the other end of the line. A long silence. And my friend L says: Krisco. You don't rinse your silverware!


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(And for the record, no, goddamit, I don't. I read somewhere, we'll pretend it was in the manual, that with these new modern machines, pre-rinsing is out! For the birds! Don't do it! You only insult them! So on principal and laziness I don't. And if something has to go through the dang cycle again, so what. We got more. I got spoons coming out my ears here.

This, of course, drives Spouse absolutely batty, because he is of the washscrubcleanseclean-before-you-load school of thought. Which in my mind, if you're going to do all that, just put it away afterwards. Or let the machine do it's job.)

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Kris: A thing of your own

I was talking to my sister the other day - she of the three kids - volunteer work - homeschooling - supportive wife - sometime co-blogger variety.

She was saying that, after a couple month hiatus, she wants to spend more time again on her home-based business (telling people about this company). She said that a book her husband read, (which I don’t have the title to), which is actually about men, and their life-paths and how they see the world, also talked about women (surprise! a big part of men’s lives!) and their need to “have something of their own.”

When I first heard that phrase, probably in the seventies or so, it seemed so, well, seventies-ish to me. I mean, what did that even mean? How could women not always have something of their own? It just seemed sort of silly.

But now I know that when you are doing all things for someone else – note the first four items in my sister’s list – even if they are things you want to do, you chose to do, and you do caringly, you can really end up with nothing that you do for yourself. (And can I say “do” and “you” more often in a sentence?)

Perhaps that is why there are so many “mommy bloggers.” It is something we can do, finally, for ourselves, and something we can do in the hours of the day available (minutes, here and there, often late at night), that we are not busy caring for others. It’s great.

Sometimes work can provide that for you. Not always. I’m not a pollyanna about work - I had my tribulations. But sometimes you just need to think about, and work on, and maybe even interact with other people about things and issues and ideas and topics (pick which one you like) that matter to you.

I suspect, but don’t know, that this need is also why some women, especially of older generations, get so ownership-y about certain things in their house. Their kitchen, say. Or maybe the way in which things have to be cleaned, or the way they want things to happen in their house.

It could even be, for women of any age, something like - playing tennis. When I was working, and playing on some USTA teams now and again, I noticed there would always be one or two women who were *really * into tennis. They’d arrive early, they’d have coordinating outfits, they’d talk strategy all the way to the match, and have looked up their opponents records online, and debate about what percentage win record you had to have to move up a level. Mostly, they were just so focused. Eventually, of course, they would get better than the rest of us and move up a level. At the time, I just thought, geez, get a life. It’s only tennis! I mean, I wanted to win as much as the next guy (um, gal), but I can’t claim that it was my “thing”.

Now I realize, it was just an outlet for them. They already had a life. They probably had a much more full life than I had at that time, single and childless. They were probably working their a**es off for everyone else in their family. Good for them to have tennis, something that mattered to them, that was fun, was just for them, and was a release.

(And I don't mean, in anyway, for this to be a slam on being either single or childless. I was both for a very long time, and in many ways still have a self-identity of those things. This whole marriage / baby thing is relatively new in my life. It's just, *I* had a lot of fairly solitary, self-concerning time in those days...)(That I long for a little bit now...:)

As the Irish say, I wish you love and I wish you work. I think they mean by that - something you love, something that is really important to you. (Well, I like to think so. Knowing the Irish (my proud heritage), they might have just meant – I hope you got somewhere to go during the day. So you can afford your damn Guiness tonight…)

Good luck to my sister and her re-invigorated home based business. She loves the topic – healthy homes, raising awareness of toxins in the home, helping people make better choices. I hope it all goes well and she can find (or make) the time to devote to it. At least a little bit.

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Kris: those baby hands...

Why is it babies can discover more keyboard shortcuts than I could find in a lifetime?

Without fail, Baby V finds an actual shortcut - to something - when she is pounding on the keyboard. Not that I like her to do that. But sometimes she looks so cute when she crawls over and wants to get in my lap and smiles so beguilingly, I fall for it. Then immediately she turns from me and starts pounding away.

Already I've had to reset my browser start page, reset the size of the open windows, um, I don't know...I know there were others. Then I have to go and search for the way to undo whatever it is she has done. Aaargggh.

I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and she really wants to be typing away on the laptop. She also, for the record, really wants to load the dishwasher, and will help shove wet clothes into the dryer as I set them on the open dryer door from the washing machine. That one is too cute. (Standing on the open dishwasher door - not so cute. Manages that one without me looking too...she's a climber.)

Enough contemplation of a cutie who's only been asleep and so out of my sight for a few short hours. And so talented, too.... :)

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Kris: Paying the societal revolution price

I have had a few more thoughts about the NY Times article, in which young women at elite colleges plan to get married, have kids, and maybe not work that much. (And damned if I don't have a place to put them. :)

I do think it is GOOD that these young women realize that children will affect their lives. We so did not in our day. And, children so do. And of course in a good way. But my God it is hard living out the spasms that are wrought by societal changes.

For instance, the women before us broke down the doors and demanded their rights, and some of them got them, and we reaped the benefits. My girlfriends, without thinking about it, got into med school and law school and b school, and thought that was all pretty normal.

We didn't, however, think about having kids. And lo and behold, some of us didn't, or had trouble having them, and all of us are having them "late" in life. So I think our "generation" payed a pretty high price for this whole "feminist movement" thing. Do I think it is good women can work and express themselves and earn (almost) some 75 cents on the dollar men do? Of course; that horse is out of the barn; there's no question on that. (Thank you early feminists!)

But I do think that we paid a price too. Without thinking about children, and planning for marriage and children, a lot of women my era missed that boat and that is a sad thing for them. And I really don't think it was their "fault". We were told we could "have it all." That of course we could have children, "someday". That planning for love, marriage, kids, was so "girly" - in a bad way. (My generation, after all, was the one forced to wear ugly man-ties when they first went off to work. Luckily I was in law school then and that fad was over by the time I went to work.)

I know the early feminists paid their own price in terms of sacrificing part of their lives for the goal of promoting all women. But we, unwittingly, paid our price too.

And now two waves below us (assuming most waves of people with similar beliefs and outlooks come in approximately ten year packages) is planning on having kids, and maybe not so much a career. Surely they looked at our "have it all" generation and realized - that doesn't work so good.

(I don't know what the wave in the middle did. I suppose they worked for a few years and then had kids, since a lot of my "mom" friends are about ten years younger than I am.)

Perhaps the wave after that will find a way - and I suspect with some help from us in terms of changing hiring and employement practices - to care for children, and still preserve their ability to support themselves.

But it is pretty scary to think that when, and if, you ever go back to work, they won't take you. And how far are you going to get, really, when you "start" again at 50? Or, as a number of women commenting on other sites have mentioned, when you NEED to go back to work, not for some self-fulfillment thing, but for some food-insurance-housing thing. The thought that the price you pay for staying at home is really never being able to support yourself in the way you ought to, based on your skillset and education, is....shocking, disturbing, depressing. That too is too high a price to pay, when it is unnecessary.

So how do we change these employment attitudes and practices? That is the question.

And what those young women will learn, it will be interesting to see.

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Kris: A totally random and unrelated (dating-era) story...(aka: The "S" hat)

Okay, I pulled this off my site becuase it's just, well, um...so completely unrelated to anything else I got going on here. But I have since decided to go ahead and put it back up. What the hell. All my random musings (to borrow a phrase from a great and interesting blog, see the Links section) can be here. So here it is again:

-----------------

This is another thing I’ve noticed about being a stay at home mom. Sometimes your mind wanders. Sometimes your mind wanders far. Like back to the day when you had all kinds of fun and interesting stories to tell, and they didn’t even involve Barney.

I was thinking the other day (no guarantees on fun and interesting, but definitely – okay, it was fun to me…) to a night I was invited to a new club opening in Denver. Just the thought of the words “club” and “Denver” in the same sentence is kind of a joke to me now, but at the time I didn’t know. At the time, I’d just moved back from LA, and getting invited to a club opening there would definitely be a thing. A thing with stars and money and cool drinks and I don’t even know what all, because when I lived in LA I never was invited to a club opening. And that should have told me something. I was in Denver like a week, and I got this invitation.

So, in reality, it was an invitation to the opening night of a new bar. A new, big-ish bar, but a bar nonetheless. It was still fun. (And it has since closed, what does that tell you.) So my girlfriend and I are hanging around near the (actual) bar in the middle of the first room, and nearby is this fairly drunk young man who is monitoring the door to the next room. No matter who walked by, he gave them this incredibly obnoxious once-over, and the prettiest ones he tried to chat up, before they could pass. It turned out, I would find out later, he was the president of this foofy club in Denver, the Blacksheep, which is made up of the city’s most eligible (read: society) native sons, and which was putting on this “club” opening as a charity event. (So, in fact, he really was kind of the king of the night; I just didn’t know it at the time.)

In the meantime, I eventually had enough liquor in me that I thought I should clarify the situation to this blonde guy slouched in the doorway, that not everyone was impressed with his ruling-the-roost gig. Some of us found it obnoxious.

I didn’t know what I was going to say until I got there, and then it all came falling out of my mouth. First, the hapless guy was wearing a Stanford cap. Now, I had just spent six years or so in very close proximity to a lot of Stanford-ites. And I knew a few things. As much as some of my very closest friends attended the S school, the one thing I knew is that, without fail, each of them secretly thought they should have gone to Harvard. Get ‘em drunk enough, it always came out.

So as I approach, and he has this “S” hat on, and he’s giving me the blatant once over . . . . (see "More..." below), I just went into this totally dipsy act. “Oooooh” I said, “that’s so cute! You have an S hat! Do you also have and A hat? And a B hat? And a C hat?” And with this look of complete disgust he opened his mouth to explain about the cap, and I interrupted, in my more natural tone of voice, and said, “I betcha don’t have an H cap.” And his face just kind of fell onto the floor. And I started to walk off.

And then he calls after me – Well, I went to law school there.

And this actually brought me back around. I’d graduated recently from a "top-tier" west-coast law school; I knew a few folks at Stanford in that time frame. Mostly, I knew one of the sons of one of the Justices on the Supreme Court who was there. Because I, um, dated him a few times.

So after ascertaining this young man’s time frame, I said, So, you knew Justice XYZ's son? He: Um….no. Me: But….you knew he was there? Him: Um….hm….well, yeah, sure…Me: You didn’t go to Stanford. It is not possible to go to LAW SCHOOL with the son of a SUPREME COURT JUSTICE and not know it. It is just not possible. Him: Well, hm, hah, I actually went to (decent, local) law school but I did do a summer internship there…

Ah, okay. I don’t know what the hell that means because typically law schools don’t have such things, but whatever. Then he says (the guy cannot say the right thing): The (Federal District) Judge I clerked for set it up for me. Me: Really, which Judge? Him: Judge QRS.

Now, I don’t know any judges. I didn’t clerk, I didn’t work in litigation, I knew nothing of the whole judgeship-type world. But I did know Judge QRS. And this was ONLY, and I mean ONLY, because my parents happened to be friends with him and his wife. Since, like, before time began. Totally, completely, random happenchance*. And I happened to be at their house the weekend before, and I happened to meet a couple of the Judge’s previous clerks, and I managed at that point in time to still have their names on the tip of my tongue.

So I said, Oh, so you co-clerked with Bob XYZ? No? Then with Jerry FGH? No? And he says: Well, actually, I was just an intern there too. An, you know, unpaid, volunteer kind of intern…

At this point I just waved my hands in the air at him and walked off. And I hear him call after me: Who ARE you?!

And I just was kind of shaking my head, because all I figured I was going to do was something along the lines of that “S” hat thing. (Which, by the way, I still think is pretty funny.) The poor guy just kept setting me up; I really didn’t mean to have that whole conversation.

And that’s the end of that story.

(Well, a few little addenda - as could be predicted, because both men and women are masochists, he did look into things, find out who I was, and show up outside the house where I was living and purely and only because I was completely uninterested, ask me out. A few times. And no, we did not fall in love - I really and truly could not go out with the guy.

And oh yeah – a couple years after that, I was out with the boyfriend right before my husband, and we ran into him. He came up to us, and said to Then Boyfriend: she is the most amazing woman. (or some such thing.) And I guess turn-about is fairplay, because at that point Ex says: who is that guy?

I heard later he moved to LA to be a model. He claimed he had “the look” that was all the rage at the time. I really haven't heard anything about him since. I'm sure he has a few tales to tell at LA club openings now.)

*I know it’s not a word, but I like it.

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Kris: The debate goes on

See, this is the thing about caring for small children. Or is it due to living in a non-coastal, non-metropolitan area? The thing is this: I used to know what was going on; I used to be aware of the curve (I hate to claim be ahead, but okay, in my day, I was ahead of the curve…on things like, which neighborhoods were going to pop, which cultural trend was going to sweep the country, which big idea was going to take hold), I used to freaking be over things before everyone else even heard of them.

Well, that was the day. And sadly, that is so no longer the case.

Here I am, thinking I am the first one to notice – hey! You can’t have it all! We were told you could have it all. We were told we WOULD have it all. We were told we could DO it all. And you can’t! You just can’t. My most successful friends don’t have kids. Many haven’t even gotten married. The ones that did, and had kids, have drastically changed career paths. Turns out there’s this whole biology-thing, maternity-thing, staying-on-the-same-career-path-thing (or face the consequences)….that everyone forgot to mention.

And now I find out - other people have noticed this phenomena before me. WAY before me. Man, what have I been doing – caring for small children or something?

Anyway, the latest rage-inducing article is in the NY Times: Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood . I’ll put the text of it after “the jump” so you can read it all. In short, thank goodness, women at elite colleges are planning on having kids. Great! And planning on having it affect their careers. Duh!

And somehow, other people find this outrageous. I understand the whole women’s movement thing has a big stake in this, but at some point the women’s movement has to be about women, as they are, with wombs and maternal instincts and everything, and not about making us into weak little men.

I think these girls are just facing reality. And good for them because God knows I ridiculed the women in college (well, at the girl’s school nearby, nobody at our school!) who thought raising a family was a worthwhile objective. It certainly was never on my radar screen as far as a “career goal.” (And yet, so far, it’s my best career gig yet.)

Here’s a blog where the article is discussed: Dotmoms from Sept. 21, 2005

And here’s a link to one of the earlier debates (the ones I missed completely). These are cited in the first blog, but just in case you don’t read it all: The Opt-out Revolution. (This is from 2003!!! What was I doing then? Oh yeah – caring for an under-one year old. Translation: not sleeping, not reading, not aware of anything beyond caring for the sweet little bambina.)

And here’s where they were even discussing it in a comment on a blog, in which the post had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE ARTICLE! I thought that one was pretty funny. Opinionistas (see the Comments under the post: Out of Commission.)

Welcome to the late, late party with me.


(To see the text of that NY Times article, click on the "Read more (sometimes)" link below, and scroll towards the bottom. After a repeat of everything you've just read, there it'll be):



The New York Times article:

Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood

By LOUISE STORY

Published: September 20, 2005


Cynthia Liu is precisely the kind of high achiever Yale wants: smart (1510 SAT), disciplined (4.0 grade point average), competitive (finalist in Texas oratory competition), musical (pianist), athletic (runner) and altruistic (hospital volunteer). And at the start of her sophomore year at Yale, Ms. Liu is full of ambition, planning to go to law school.

Forum: Contemporary Education


So will she join the long tradition of famous Ivy League graduates? Not likely. By the time she is 30, this accomplished 19-year-old expects to be a stay-at-home mom.

"My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time," Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. "You always have to choose one over the other."

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work force to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children.

"At the height of the women's movement and shortly thereafter, women were much more firm in their expectation that they could somehow combine full-time work with child rearing," said Cynthia E. Russett, a professor of American history who has taught at Yale since 1967. "The women today are, in effect, turning realistic."

Dr. Russett is among more than a dozen faculty members and administrators at the most exclusive institutions who have been on campus for decades and who said in interviews that they had noticed the changing attitude.

Many students say staying home is not a shocking idea among their friends. Shannon Flynn, an 18-year-old from Guilford, Conn., who is a freshman at Harvard, says many of her girlfriends do not want to work full time.

"Most probably do feel like me, maybe even tending toward wanting to not work at all," said Ms. Flynn, who plans to work part time after having children, though she is torn because she has worked so hard in school.

"Men really aren't put in that position," she said.

Uzezi Abugo, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who hopes to become a lawyer, says she, too, wants to be home with her children at least until they are in school.

"I've seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay at home and kids who didn't, and it's kind of like an obvious difference when you look at it," said Ms. Abugo, whose mother, a nurse, stayed home until Ms. Abugo was in first grade.

While the changing attitudes are difficult to quantify, the shift emerges repeatedly in interviews with Ivy League students, including 138 freshman and senior females at Yale who replied to e-mail questions sent to members of two residential colleges over the last school year.

The interviews found that 85 of the students, or roughly 60 percent, said that when they had children, they planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely. About half of those women said they planned to work part time, and about half wanted to stop work for at least a few years.

Two of the women interviewed said they expected their husbands to stay home with the children while they pursued their careers. Two others said either they or their husbands would stay home, depending on whose career was furthest along.

The women said that pursuing a rigorous college education was worth the time and money because it would help position them to work in meaningful part-time jobs when their children are young or to attain good jobs when their children leave home.

In recent years, elite colleges have emphasized the important roles they expect their alumni - both men and women - to play in society.

For example, earlier this month, Shirley M. Tilghman, the president of Princeton University, welcomed new freshmen, saying: "The goal of a Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up positions of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word 'leadership' conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.'s, but I want to stress that my idea of a leader is much broader than that."

She listed education, medicine and engineering as other areas where students could become leaders.

In an e-mail response to a question, Dr. Tilghman added: "There is nothing inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a powerful impact on their communities."

Yet the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of high-powered careers presents a conundrum.

"It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed. The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic necessity.

It is less than clear what universities should, or could, do about it. For one, a person's expectations at age 18 are less than perfect predictors of their life choices 10 years later. And in any case, admissions officers are not likely to ask applicants whether they plan to become stay-at-home moms.

University officials said that success meant different things to different people and that universities were trying to broaden students' minds, not simply prepare them for jobs.

"What does concern me," said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, "is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles."

There is, of course, nothing new about women being more likely than men to stay home to rear children.

According to a 2000 survey of Yale alumni from the classes of 1979, 1984, 1989 and 1994, conducted by the Yale Office of Institutional Research, more men from each of those classes than women said that work was their primary activity - a gap that was small among alumni in their 20's but widened as women moved into their prime child-rearing years. Among the alumni surveyed who had reached their 40's, only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men.

A 2005 study of comparable Yale alumni classes found that the pattern had not changed. Among the alumni who had reached their early 40's, just over half said work was their primary activity, compared with 90 percent of the men. Among the women who had reached their late 40's, some said they had returned to work, but the percentage of women working was still far behind the percentage of men.

A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part time in their 30's and 40's.

What seems new is that while many of their mothers expected to have hard-charging careers, then scaled back their professional plans only after having children, the women of this generation expect their careers to take second place to child rearing.

"It never occurred to me," Rebecca W. Bushnell, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, said about working versus raising children. "Thirty years ago when I was heading out, I guess I was just taking it one step at a time."

Dr. Bushnell said young women today, in contrast, are thinking and talking about part-time or flexible work options for when they have children. "People have a heightened awareness of trying to get the right balance between work and family."

Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American Family class last fall approved of women's plans to stay home with their children.

"A lot of the guys were like, 'I think that's really great,' " Ms. Currie said. "One of the guys was like, 'I think that's sexy.' Staying at home with your children isn't as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is for women who are in their 30's now."

For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took several years off or worked only part time.

"My stepmom's very proud of my choice because it makes her feel more valuable," said Kellie Zesch, a Texan who graduated from the University of North Carolina two years ago and who said that once she had children, she intended to stay home for at least five years and then consider working part time. "It justified it to her, that I don't look down on her for not having a career."

Similarly, students who are committed to full-time careers, without breaks, also cited their mothers as influences. Laura Sullivan, a sophomore at Yale who wants to be a lawyer, called her mother's choice to work full time the "greatest gift."

"She showed me what it meant to be an amazing mother and maintain a career," Ms. Sullivan said.

Some of these women's mothers, who said they did not think about these issues so early in their lives, said they were surprised to hear that their college-age daughters had already formed their plans.

Emily Lechner, one of Ms. Liu's roommates, hopes to stay home a few years, then work part time as a lawyer once her children are in school.

Her mother, Carol, who once thought she would have a full-time career but gave it up when her children were born, was pleasantly surprised to hear that. "I do have this bias that the parents can do it best," she said. "I see a lot of women in their 30's who have full-time nannies, and I just question if their kids are getting the best."

For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation's top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.

"They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."

Angie Ku, another of Ms. Liu's roommates who had a stay-at-home mom, talks nonchalantly about attending law or business school, having perhaps a 10-year career and then staying home with her children.

"Parents have such an influence on their children," Ms. Ku said. "I want to have that influence. Me!"

She said she did not mind if that limited her career potential.

"I'll have a career until I have two kids," she said. "It doesn't necessarily matter how far you get. It's kind of like the experience: I have tried what I wanted to do."

Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids.

"I accept things how they are," she said. "I don't mind the status quo. I don't see why I have to go against it."

After all, she added, those roles got her where she is.

"It worked so well for me," she said, "and I don't see in my life why it wouldn't work."

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Kris: Sprung at last

I am thrilled to announce that, after seven days and nights of caring for my children alone because my husband was on a work trip, he is taking full responsibility for the girls for the evening.

My girlfriends are coming over. And we are going to watch Sex in the City and eat popcorn and drink soda until our heads explode.

Okay, throw a little ice cream and wine into the mix, and you got the evening.

I know it may sound boring to some, but at this point, I am ecstatic. You go (mommy) girlfriends!

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Kris: I have a little car

My car sits in the driveway and doesn’t move.

It’s the car I used to drive, the one I bought with my own real money with my first real job. And by real I mean, one I was planning to stay at and make a career with, and did. It has two doors, it’s a sedan but sporty, it was used when I bought it, and I loved it.

As a disclaimer I have to say: I am not a big car person. In fact, I am a HUGE public transportation person. If there is one thing I have been passionate about (at the social-consciousness level), it’s public transportation. If there’s anything more dumb than thinking it’s normal that every human over sixteen in an entire country takes their own one or two ton box of steel and highly processed plastic, powered by an internal combustion engine, burning a non-renewable, finite source of fuel that spews noxious gases into the air, in order to propel JUST THEMSELVES to work or school, and that this is in any way a sustainable situation, I don’t know what it is.

(For the record, my big bus routes when I lived in the Denver area were: the B, the L, the S, also the F, 10, 87, 283, the DIA Ride, and in Boulder the 303, 302 and 304, before they renamed parts of them the Skip, the Hop and the Jump. Lest you think I am a hypocrite, I logged a lot of bus time in my day.)

The current three-dollar-a-gallon situation is suddenly making me look a lot less like a crank and a lot more like someone who has some, albeit obvious, good ideas. (Public transit, anyone?)

(I remember going to a reunion party in Boulder a few years ago. One of my old-time best girlfriends has a husband who consults to the petroleum industry. I overhead a conversation where someone else was giving her a hard time, and she said: Did you drive here? Harasser: Mumble mumble. Girlfriend: Did you drive here? Okay then.

And I interrupted (and this was so rude because, well, she IS my friend. But, as most of them know, being my friend won’t necessarily save you from me . . . ) and, I said: No, I took the light rail to this part of town, got off and took the local circular bus to this neighborhood, and then walked a few short blocks to here. Silence. All around. A few people even started to say – you … ? I guess thinking about whether there was a convenient lightrail around they just didn’t know about. Of course, eventually I had to end the silence and clear up my sarcasm by saying: Look, if there aren’t any other options, I don’t think driving here is proof that I love either driving or the petroleum industry.)

Of course, once we had kids, the bus got ruled out. Schlepping a car seat on and off . . . and then doing what with it I don’t know . . . while attempting to run errands on foot, none of the destinations in walking distance to each other, in a desert-hot and then freezing-cold town, all while dealing with a small child or two - it all became a little too burdensome.

With the arrival of our second baby, we upgraded cars this year. From my single-gal two-door small-ish sedan to the family station wagon. (Maybe “upgrade” is not so much the right word as “enlarge.”) And my old car still sits in the driveway.

We talked about selling it on the “lemon lot” here in town (Me: We could keep it. It’s not costing us anything (unspoken thought: so long as it keeps running). Him: We’re not going to keep it as your pet.)

I think my husband hasn’t done anything about selling it yet because he’s been busy, and maybe he thinks it’s my responsibility. I haven’t done anything about selling it yet because I’ve been busy, and maybe part of me (a big part) really does not want to see it – the outward indicia of who I used to be - go away.

It’s true I didn’t drive it all the time. I drove it a lot to and from bus stations and bus stops and park-n-rides. And on really long car trips. And then around Santa Fe with my first adorable baby.

But it still reminds me of the self I used to be; the self that had time to get all worked up about things like public transportation.

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Kris: the feng shue improves

He likes it! Hey Mikey!

And who would not. It is delectable in here. Well, maybe not delectable. But certainly more feng shue - ish.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, read the last post wherein I change around the whole house on my husband who hates change while he is out of town. For his own good.

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Kris: just some "minor" modifications...

My husband is “on travel” right now. (I still think that’s the goofiest phrase ever. I suppose every organization has it’s own lexicon, it’s just that the lab is so prevalent here, it’s takes over the town).

Anyway, he has been gone a week, and I used this opportunity to rearrange all the furniture in our house.

Well, not the whole house. Just the room we live in, the large room off the kitchen that looks onto the forest. (There’s really mostly only two good things about this house, and those are the two.) Before, the way things were arranged, there were toys and children’s detritus from one end of the room to the other, and especially anywhere we needed to walk. (From the kitchen to the table, from the table to the couch…) It drove both my husband and I crazy. Do I pick it up constantly? Yes. But that can hardly stem the flow of toys rolling out of the closet to be scattered by two young children. They have more energy than I do.

Anyway, I think Husband will be shocked. First, because he hates change. Well, this is the internet – I’ll just say he’s not that big on change. Second because some of our furniture in this room is heavy, like my oak desk from my grandfather, or the Spanish-style couch from Husband’s parents. But hey, I was single a really long time, and I have my ways of getting furniture moved (and no, they do not (anymore) involve strapping young neighbor-men.)

But this is the deal. If I waited and we rearranged the room together, it would be so painful. Because we just work differently. I start moving things with only a bare outline of a plan. He wants to know exactly where everything is going to go beforehand. Possibly ask me to put it on paper first. Have every move and final placement choreographed before we even start. (Ha!)

Instead, I move something over here. And then over there. And then ooch it around a little. And then start on another area because that will make the first area seem more clear to me. I work my way through it. And once it’s done, it’s great. But if you’re not willing to work through the flow, well, it is painful for you. (And for me. It’s like asking me for the answer before I get to work on the problem).

Anyway, now the room is bifurcated – all things children on one side (play kitchen, coloring table, bins of toys), boring grownup things on the other side (kitchen table, couch, tv, desk). Hopefully this will contain the toys somewhat. It’s worked so far this week.

I hope he likes it.

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Kris: one some girl noticed the parens - I meant "some"! some!

Prior to my (recent) blogging career, I was kind of -over- the internet. I would use Google once in awhile to find something specific, to look up the location of the summer concerts here in town, say, or possibly an airline schedule . . . but not any real cruising for entertainment value.

And then I found these blogs, and they are like email on steroids. The kind of email you always wanted to get - actual thoughts and feelings and observations, descriptions of someone's day to day life...only they're not from your friends, they're from people you've never met. But reading them makes them seem familiar to you; I guess in the same way celebrities do. They shouldn't, but they do.

And on an only partially-related note...I have been ridiculed on someone else's blog. And I've only been doing this for, like, two weeks!

Okay, to be fair, it's been almost eight weeks. And, it was definitely a good natured ribbing, and I totally deserve it. It's for writing in paranthesis all the time. But this is the deal with the paranthesis. They aren't going away anytime soon; they're just how I think. (And look, until this one, there hasn't even been one yet!)(Oh wait, there is one up there already. Doh.)

Also to be fair, she also put a quote up from Crib Ceiling.. So I thought that was pretty cool.

You can check out her whole site at one some girl's blog. (Thanks one some girl.:)

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Correction!!! That's SOME girl, not one girl! Doh! That's what I get for doing this blog deal in the middle of the night. Yes, the timestamp says mid-afternoon, but don't let that fool you. That's only when I started it and was rudely interrupted the rest of the day. It didn't really post til the middle of the night. Okay, anyway. SOME girl. SOME girl.

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Kris: My own little dichotomy (and yours)

And for those of you having your own little dichotomy weirdness from this site - first a post about the morality of building a bomb with your own hands (not me, someone who used to live here, see the post two below...), then a total-mommy-blog post about adorable children . . . I am having the same vertigo.

Guess that's just life for a stay at home mom. In Los Alamos.

Or maybe - let's be honest - for most of us in this day and age. How hard is it not to think about Katrina all the time - or for that matter Iraq or Afghanistan - and yet we just can't. We also have to get on with the day to day in our own lives, if we are lucky enough to do so. (And that's exactly what this administration wants...oh wait a minute, I just went way political...)

I'm just saying, I notice this dichotomy. I feel this dichotomy. And it's probably not going to go away. Okay.

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Kris: The dichotomy of being three

First of all, Little Big Girl is ALWAYS hot. (Apparently she gets this from her dad’s side, because I am always cold. Sitting here now in a fleece coat, it’s 73 degrees.) When we walk in the house, the first thing she does is sit down and take off her shoes. And then her clothes. She is a complete hallway hazard when you come in after her carrying a baby, a diaper bag and a purse. Guarantee it you cannot see her sitting there, working fastidiously to undo the buckles on her shoes.

(And she always says: Maamaaa! Don’t walk into me!!! as I’m tripping down the hall trying not to drop the baby . . . )

Today it was a little cool. Fall is finally coming. (Shouldn’t say that or winter will hit with a vengeance. I noticed in Santa Fe (we lived there 6 seasons) there was no spring or fall; only winter. Then summer. Then winter. Then summer. Maybe one day between each transition was fall-ish, and then spring-ish. . . . . Okay - again, I digress.)

Anyway, it was cool. And to connive Little Big Girl to join me in the family room / kitchen, she wanted promises of not only breakfast (of course) but warm clothes to wear (of course).

Here’s the funny part. (Funny-dichotomy, not so much funny-haha). Little khaki pants don’t count. They are not *warm enough *. Only soft, fuzzy, sweat-like leggings will do for her.

This from the girl who can hardly stand clothes.

I thought it was cute, and funny.

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Kris: Too much reality

So, the ‘secret’ we found out about our house in Los Alamos - the man who lived here before us was one of the twelve or thirteen men who built, themselves, with their own hands, the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.

It’s funny, because I wanted to live in an original house from the “townsite”; I thought if we were going to live here, it would in some way be more “authentic”. I wasn’t ready for that much realism.

It was our neighbor across the street, who'd been friends with the old couple that lived here before us, that told us. It was their going away party, and we stayed until the end, sorry we hadn’t gotten to know our cool, Italian neighbors before they left. I’ll call the man Guiseppi’s Dad.

GD: you know who used to live in your house, right?
Us: uh, no…well, we know their name, if we can think of it…
GD: well, you know what he did, right?
Us: um, no…

GD actually seemed to think it was pretty cool. I had considerably more mixed feelings. He even had an old picture of our neighbor, at that point some 19 or 20 years old, sitting astride the (huge) bomb casing. And kind of smiling.

He even had a story. Apparently at the time they were building the bomb, the generals kept pressuring them to hurry. Finally, one of the men building the bomb offered the higher-up a screw driver, and said, Here. The only way it will get built any faster is if you build it. That obviously brought an end to that.

I couldn’t help but ask, since Guiseppi’s Dad knew the man when he was in his eighties or later, Did he have any qualms about it? Any moral misgivings? Any, you know, problems with it at all?

No! answered GD. He was proud, he was proud. He was very proud of what they did.

And I guess this is true for so many of the people at the time. It was a different era, and we had different, serious worries.

Still. I know other people mostly think “atomic bomb” when they think of Los Alamos. But I don’t. I know there is all kinds of other work going on here now; studies of the environment, and of space, and of how to know what sketchy things other countries are up to, and all kinds of medical research, including AIDs work.

But that little conversation, and now my own house, are a real reminder of why our country started this funky little town to begin with.

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Kris: New rules to live by

I have a little set of Rules I started for being a stay at home mom. (Really. I put it in a notebook and everything.) The first one is:

1. Leave the house everyday.

This seems to be the absolute key one. Otherwise, the kids go crazy, I go crazy, and the house is a mess. More of a mess, I should say.

But some days are tempting. It’s the morning, the kids are playing nicely, I get to read the paper . . . And then I think, I’ll just throw in a little laundry, and maybe pay these bills, those girls are playing so nicely, and also write that thank you note and finish picking up the kitchen…No no no. Do not fall in that trip! That little lull time needs to be used for one thing, and one thing only, and that is TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE.

Because inevitably it takes awhile. The three year old has to be cajoled, colluded, bribed and tricked to get ready. The baby has to be carried, changed, dressed and nursed. And then there is that whole diaper bag refresh / snack bag packing / car loading business to attend to, often while carrying the baby and cajoling Little Big Girl.

But sometimes I get fooled. They’re so happy . . . we’ll just hang out here all day! I’ll get so much done! It will be great! They’ll be happy ALL DAY.

And of course, about the time we ought to be leaving the house, things go to h-e-l-you-know-where in a handbasket before you know it. Baby is bored out of her mind and fussing for no apparent reason. (Boredom?) Little Big Girl has energy to spare and is using it to destroy the house. (I can play with this game! (dump) And this game! (spill) And these cards! (toss) And play with all mommy’s pens! And papers! And neat stacks on her desk! (grab, shove, obliterate) Time to go to the bathroom, fill the sink, and empty the kleenex box into it one at a time! All while luring Baby into the bathroom too and hoping she’ll stand on this wet, slippery, sharp-cornered step stool with me! Mooomeeeeee! Baby’s getting me wee-eeeeeee---eeet! ) And I’m running around the house trying to stem the flow.

It just does not work.

Plus, if you get them out of the house, and preferably outdoors, they get tuckered out. And they go to bed so nicely at the end of day. So I have all kinds of other boring numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5, (and more!). (For instance, the current #2 is: Start a load of laundry before you leave the house. For laundry maintenance, this is another absolute essential. It’s the only way to fit in that one-load-of-laundry-a-day minimum around lunch, naptime, and making dinner, and still get it dried by the end of the day. I still haven't figured out when to fold or actually disperse the dried ingredients around the house - because I'm sick of housework by the end of the day, but that is another story, one involving stacks and stacks of clean laundry in my kitchen where I used to keep fruit...)

So after thinking about how nice it is to have them both asleep in the evening, I should really just make room for a new #2

2. Get them tuckered out.

The sounds of sleeping silence. It can be beautiful. I’ll revise that list in the morning. And then get the hell out of the house.

(Oh, and for the record - I still can't believe I could write a whole post about rules for staying at home. And have half or at least some of it be about laundry. There were days when I was working when no way would I believe I would think about such things, let alone write about them. Let's be honest, when I was working, I had my own cleaning lady and SHE DID ALL MY LAUNDRY. I was married for two years before I ever did my own load again.

I don't know what that goes to show you, but probably something.)

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Kris: Housing by the Group

(Now that I’ve come clean about where we live, I can tell ALL KINDs of stories about this little town. I was going to tell some very LA-ish info about this house, but got a little sidetracked describing some things about this town in general. So here is that post anyway…)

It’s funny, when we bought our house in Los Alamos, I really wanted to get one of the original ones, or close to it. I thought if we were going to live in this historic town (and not long-ago historic, but storied in recent history none-the-less), I thought we should really live it.

So here we are in this 1947 “Officer’s House.” This is such an interesting town – the government built (or had built) all the housing during the war, obviously, and for a long time afterward. And there were floorplans, and all the houses in a given area – a street, or even a whole neighborhood - would all have the exact same floorplan. (This is the government, why be original?) So for instance, you could buy a “Group 11” house, or a “Group 18” house. If you go to the county and want to see the plans filed for your house – there aren’t any. There are floorplans filed for your TYPE of house. This really is a strange little town.

Over time, of course, a lot of the houses got remodeled. (And that’s a whole other story I assure you I will complain about sometime…ok what the hell, why not right now . . . a lot of these “remodels” are otherwise known as “handyman’s specials.” At first I thought this was because scientists are just so damn cheap (notoriously, stereotypically, to paint with a broad brush). But it seems there is more to the story – it can be just incredibly hard and really, really expensive to get anyone to come up this hill and do remodeling work. Or you can get in the very long line for work to be done by the couple of builders that are already up here…

So consequently you can find some of the goofiest remodels you can ever imagine. (Doors in weird places, crooked ceilings, really bad ideas for places for rooms….) When we first moved up here I was watching a lot of the Remodel reality shows. And my husband kept saying, how do we sign up for that? How do we get THIS WHOLE TOWN signed up for that?)

(It’s even difficult to get any work done at all. When we first moved in, we had a huge leak under our kitchen (great idea! get an original house!) and we had to wait *six weeks* for a plumber to come out…six weeks of washing our dishes in the bathroom sink. While unpacking. When the plumber scheduled the date, I remember saying, oh you must have misspoke. You said November. It’s only October now. And he said – pause, oh no, I meant November – pause - you must be new up here. Grreeeaaaaat.)

Anyway, when you look at a street now, say, ours – although all the houses were originally the same, now they all look different. So if you know, and you look closely, you can see – oh yeah, they all * do* have two windows and a fireplace in the same place, but everything else is different! How strange is that!

Wait, this post was supposed to be going in a completely different direction, about some interesting info we found out this summer about the previous occupants of our original house . . . some news that is a little too Los Alamos-y for me. Guess it will have to wait until next time.

(And, as you can see, yes I am completely enthralled by real estate stories. I can’t even tell the story I want to for risk of lapsing into Group 11 stories. Well I promise to keep them to a minimum because I realize not *everyone * thinks the history of neighborhoods is just riveting, as I do . . . )

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Kris: Lost - Almost

There is just no talking about this life without, eventually, admitting to where it is taking place.

As a preface, let me say, I grew up in Boulder. I voted Democratic since I came out of my Reagon Youth faze. I don't even like small towns.

Technically, there are only some ten thousand people here. The "townsite" is built on the top of a mountain at the end of a highway. Unless you are specifically coming here or possibly passing through to fish at a new national park in the middle of the volcano behind us, pretty much, you're not coming here.

Though smalll, thankfully we have our own little United Nations here. Every one I meet is from a foreign country. And not just your average foreign country - Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia. Also Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Russia, India, Israel. Of course, from all over the U.S. But there's also a surprising number of locals. Surprising because this place only started a couple generations ago; as a community created from whole cloth, it seems odd to think of it as having locals and second- and third- generations, but it does.

Half of the population, at least, seem to be certified geniuses. (Or possibly certifiable). They sit at the local Starbucks and do quadratic equations. They grap napkins and do math problems with letters in them - Greek letters. The high school students give recitals of Shoshtakovich and Grieg in the summer, all summer. At the playschools, not surprisingly, there are translations taped to the refrigerators for words in Russian, Korean, German and Hebrew.

This is not really very New Mexico-ish. As someone who lived in Taos once said to me, "Don't live there! It's like living in Indiana!" I don't know much about Indiana, but I doubt it's much like here, other than to say the housing was all built after 1943, and not much of it is adobe.

Yes, obvious to any student of war or history, we live in "the other LA", "the Atomic City" or as it's commonly known, Los Alamos. As we call it here (in our house), "Lost - Almost."

Although I complain about it, there is a lot I like about living here. We have a national park just behind our back yard. The wild flowers I see on the hill are beautiful. It is easy to get around and very kid-friendly. And there are lots of other stay at home moms. (As I once described it to someone who had visited, and we were afterwards comparing notes, it's like a sci-fi Mayberry. I didn't say "high tech" because that doesn't come close to the kind of work it seems like they do here.)

It's also true we have no Target, and no Whole Foods. I guess that's part of its charm, but we do have to go down a mountain to go anywhere close to normal.

My husband likes his work. He is on the environmental-side of the house. Meaning, roughly, some of the people support nuclear and other weaponary, and the rest do AIDs research, other medical research, and all kinds of environmental research that let us know more about the world, more about how to monitor it, and more about what is going on in it.

For now, here we are. In Lost, Almost.

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Kris: 3:45 AM ain't so bad...

Here’s a sick thing about that trip to Denver. (See a couple posts below. I would hyperlink but I seem to be unaccountably hyperdumb about a supposedly hypereasy thing to do, so I’m not even going to try this time.)

We left at 4:30 in the morning. I got up sometime around 3:45.

(We flew out of Albuquerque, two hours away. (another hint!!))

And I felt GREAT! I had better sleep than most nights! That’s what sleep deprivation can do to you. If I get one complete REM cycle, I am PSYCHED.

I arranged it so that I had about five hours of sleep, and fortunately I was only awoken once to nurse.

My compatriots on the trip no doubt found it highly annoying that I was in a pretty dang good mood, feeling perfectly well-slept.

That, my friends - that is pretty sick.

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Kris: A new baby!

I am happy to announce that Cousin, who claims to be a co-blogger on this site, has had another baby. Yea! Good job Cousin! We are so proud of you! And welcome to the world to your new little sweet one. Hang in there, the first few days can be rough.

And good dang job helping to replenish the population, we are proud of you indeed.

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Kris: Hang in there baby

Last Friday, I was in the kitchen talking on the phone to a girlfriend in the Bay area, from college, who I just love but rarely get to catch up with. The girls were playing nicely (as far as I knew) in Little Big Girl’s room when I started hearing muttering.

I mean, just muttering. Kind of a low, but consistent, insistent - muttering.

Maybe it was mother's intuition, maybe it just seemed weird. I don't know. Pre-mommyhood I doubt I would have noticed it. Instead. I took my walkaroundphone and wandered into my daughter's room.

Whereupon I dropped my phone and went running. Little Big Girl was hanging by her fingernails to the top shelf in her closet, feet dangling and kicking, finding no purchase, and calming and almost meditatively muttering: Help, help, I could use some help here. Help here. I think I need a little help here. Please help me. A little help here please.

It would have only been about a six foot drop. Possibly onto her old nursing chair, or onto the metal track below, or onto her wood table nearby. Yikes!

After I got her down and gave her a big hug (and laughed a little; since she was safe, the muttering * was * kind of funny, in retrospect), I said: Honey, the next time you need some help from Mommy, please just yell out loud ‘Help! Help!’ Ok? 'Help! Help!' That way I’ll know I need to get in here right away. (pause) I can’t always really hear you muttering.
Okay, Mommy, she said

I picked up the phone. My girlfriend was still there, and I wandered back to the kitchen, explaining things. A minute or two later, I hear: Help! Help!
This time quite clear. I dropped the phone (again) and ran.

And there she was, hanging from the closet. Again.
Me: Honey, let’s not do this again, ok? Even if you know to yell help now.
LBG: Okay, mommy. But can you get me the yellow thing at the back?
Me: What yellow thing?
LBG: That yellow thing.

I get the yellow thing. It is just some yellow thing. (A box that used to hold kids books? A piece of paper? An old bath toy? It was some yellow thing, I can't even remember now, once she had it she didn't want it either...)

Eventually, I briefly call my girlfriend back. Me: Well, now I've taught her to say Help! Help! So I better pretty much respond if she does.

She could only agree.

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Kris: Mommy's great day away

Well, the trip was great. I was invited to fly to Denver for the day. I told my inviter that I really can't work for, like, another year. She was gracious enough to take me on the recruiting trip anyway. It was nice to get back to the girls and the husband this evening. All this is in preparation for a possible other career . . . maybe I can even work part time, starting some time next year. We shall see. The trip was fun and it was nice to be with adults for a whole day and feed myself without simulatenously feeding someone else and excortiating (did I make that word up?) yet a third person to put food in her mouth.

Possible other career? Real estate. Sounds so cliche - stay at home mom turns to real estate. But considering I've been helping friends find houses (and before that apartments) for years for FUN because I like it...hm, seems like a fit. Also, saves my husband the fear that I will try to move us (again) and/or run us deeply into debt just because I want to buy every available property I see...(which is a lot, since I go to open houses for fun too, I am really a dork...)

Of course, I still have one or two books up my sleeve I really want to write. Not to mention my save-the-world home based business. (hooking people up with healthy home products...) Oh, and these two little darling children who need most of my time...

It was a great trip nonetheless.

And thank you thank you thank you again to my two wonderful friends and husband who watched my babies so that I could go have my day with the grownups. Wow. You are wonderful.

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Kris: Yippee yi aye!

I get to go out of town tomorrow - for the whole day, to another city - for a recruiting trip!

I am fortunate to have friends and husband who are rearranging their schedules to support this. Thank you thank you one and all!!!
Kris

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Kris: How not to raise hoodlums

My grandmother left work to raise three children, a girl and two boys. To hear the girl (my mother) tell it, she spent her youth reading and sewing. The boys, however, were another story. They never pretended to be quiet and calm. Although successful and even respectable men now, the stories they told from high school were fun: crazy, adventurous, risky.

(Once, a cousin even overheard some of their stories, unvarnished. After listening secretly for awhile, she finally popped her head over the couch where she was and said to her (serious, successful, authoritarian) father: Dad! You were a hood!) So I have to think, as small children, they were just preparing for their later careers.

Now I don’t know that I believe that my mother was all that calm as a small child, either. So that’s three kids, plus at that time they lived in a part of Denver – northwest Denver, on a hill overloooking downtown, at the time predominantly Irish – where a lot of their extended family lived too. So they had lots of cousins running through their house as well.

I can only imagine what that must have been like. Recently, I heard a story about my grandmother from that era, and it gave me a little insight, and I loved it.

Apparently, once a week, my grandmother had a babysitter come to the house for the afternoon. When the sitter got there, my grandmother walked out the door, down the street, and got on the bus for ten minutes to downtown Denver. Once she got downtown, she went to the Daniels and Fisher Department store, which at that time was the nicest department store in town.

When she got to the store, she went upstairs to the Ladies Lounge. In those days, the ladies room was not a cold tiled room with a row of stalls. Instead, there was an antechamber – a room with beautiful rugs and wallpaper, and lovely couches and settees and beautiful lighting. She would go there. And she would just sit.

I asked, didn’t she bring a book, or a magazine? No, they didn’t think so. In that quiet, lovely, hushed room, she would just - sit.

I love this story because it tells me so many things. First, you can’t leave your kids for even one afternoon a week or they will become hoods. No wait, that isn’t the lesson. (And besides, they were successful eventually.)

The lesson is - raising kids has always been a challenge. I think of my grandmother and the women of her generation, and for the most part, they weren’t expected to have their own work, or something else that mattered to them. They were expected to raise children. So I thought this was different for them. Easier.

That’s why it struck me so much. Of course it was the same for them - it had to be trying at times.

And another lesson - that the smart women know to take a break once in awhile. In fact, regularly. They get out of the house, and they go to a beautiful place, and they sit. They just - sit.

I love the image of my grandmother leaving the house once a week, in the afternoon, and walking down the tree-lined street in northwest Denver to go get on that bus.

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Kris: And a cute one about my older girl

I signed my older (three year old) daughter up for swim lessons. Meets twice a week for four or five weeks.

I guess there were a few things I forgot to tell my little girl about swim lessons. It's amazing what you don't realize they don't know.

So we went on Wednesday, and she had a good time. Today, when I told her it was time to get ready to go to swim class, she said "Again???! We already went." Pause. Then, "Yea! I get to go again!"

Like going once is her whole swim lesson.

It was so cute I just had to hug her. And then explain a few things about swim class and going again. And again and again and again.

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Kris: Baby is now One

My Baby turned one today. It's official, I don't have a baby-baby anymore. She's even toddling now. Well, five or six steps at a time. But still, there's some forward momentum on two feet in a bipedular fashion. I think this means...my baby is a toddler now.

Her birthday party is tomorrow. Very small. I'm not quite going with the German "have the number of friends that is their age" thing (meaning, one friend at the first birthday, two at the second...) but we're not much beyond that. Just a couple friends.

Frankly, I'm a little wistful.

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Kris: Girls Night Out and the Belgiuminians

I just got back from a girls night out. Well, “just” is a relative term in mommyland. When I got home, the Hubs was watching tennis, baby was crawling all around him, and when she heard me come in, the three year old got up.

The kids were safe, clean, and still in the house. So that part’s good. Nothing was picked up in the kitchen, or the rest of the house, for that matter. (Laundry: still not folded. I would faint if it were otherwise...)

So it took a little while to get the kids in bed, hang with the husband some, then get the kitchen picked up and the appliances going. And yes, even though I was going out to dinner, I did have to make dinner for everybody else before I left. But hey, I got out.

And it was fun. Six women, at least three different countries represented. Some day (soon) I’ll just come clean about this *highly unusual* (yet more hints!) little town I live in. (Attheendofthehighwayatthetopofthemountain). Australia (via England and Japan), two from Germany (via probably somewhere before here), and three boring-old-Americans representing at least Washington (via Alaska), Colorado (via California) and, I believe, California. Two of the above highly pregnant.

It was great to be out and have a little vino and talk about something else for a change. Of course, as with any momgroup, there is always some discussion and mutual advice about the kids. I don’t know what we would do without that sort of thing from our friends.

Mostly, though, lots of good laughter. Eventually the conversation turned from the kiddos to other subjects. In our case we got on the topic of cultural differences; several instances of the English and Germans queuing, the Americans running around, and the French trying to push their way to the front of the line.

In my case, I told the story of a work trip to Stockholm from pre-kid-world. There was a buffet (the smorgasbord!) along two walls and the center island for breakfast in the hotel dining room in the mornings. Like a typical American I went randomly around the room, picking up what I wanted. (It wasn't easy - there were a lot of cured meats and hard cheeses and hard crackers. And pickled fish in sauce. That’s all fine - but for breakfast?)

It was only after the THIRD DAY of this that I shared a table with some other people (the town was packed for an MTV Music Awards), from Belgium. They pointed out how they envied me my American ability to ignore the line gently snaking it’s way through the entire room and just cut in and get what I wanted.

I was completely flabbergasted. A line? Those slow moving people were in a line? And I had done this for THREE DAYS? Apparently all the other hotel guests were well aware of my behavior. Even when you don’t want to be the ugly American, you are.

(And it occurs to me, *now* , that perhaps those Belgians (Belgiumese? Belgiumiens?) did not envy me my American ways at all. Perhaps this was just their super-polite way of telling me I was being an ass. Here’s a hint - really, do not be super-polite with me. I will not get the true meaning of your polite talk. Or at least not for four years and am writing a blog about it.)

But back to the girls night out - as we left, we all promised to do it again, soon, even regularly.

I hope we do. I can count on one hand – well, maybe one hand and one additional little finger – the number of times I have been out with girlfriends since my oldest was born three years ago. It was a great break. Even if it did take me to midnight to pick up the house.

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Our little blurb

Thought I'd take this off of the front page...I think it's a little redundant. Of course, I am so damn wedded to my own words, I have to put it somewhere!! (When I worked, I remember saying all the time, "now, I'm not wedded to these words..." Of course, at the time, it was things like "Release 5.2 Features to include..." Nothing as sparkling as what's below: )

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Careers, kids, no kids, spouses. The trials and tribulations of the post-feminist generation - we were told we could have it all. But do we want it? And is that a big fat lie? Why aren't my kids as subservient as my subservients? Who's expected to do the laundry around here anyway? And are these tears of laughter or absolute exhaustion? Explore all - we have no answers only questions - here.

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Kris: The blog mania

(Katrina question: Houston contact? Please see Lynne Helps Katrina Victims, below . . .)


I have a friend from Poland. That’s the kind of town this is; we don’t have a Target, but I have a friend from Poland.

Anyway, she did some kind of work on the internet when she was in Poland; I haven’t exactly figured out what yet, perhaps building websites. (Huh! Maybe SHE could help me with my blog coding!! Ah, the things you think of when you write…)

Anyway, I asked her if she read any blogs. She was funny. She clearly knew all about them. And said something like, “No, I can’t.” (Imagine Polish accent here, kind of like Russian from the movies – Naoooo, I caaaaan’t) And she looked at me kind of out of the corner of her eyes, as if to see if I knew what she was talking about, and she said, “No, no. They are like an obsession. I just can’t.”

Having found any number of great sites I find fascinating – other lawyers who now stay at home, other moms dealing with the same things I am, grandmothers and other older women chatting about their life paths, women working and bitching but mostly sharing about their lives; having set myself a time limit (midnight) after which I just *have* to quit, and never do; having finally found a place where I can write something - my favorite thing - and someone might actually read it *the next day* - let’s just say I knew exactly what she meant.

All I could say was “yeah.” And that was the end of the conversation - for now. With my little guilty self I could not confess to it all. But someday, no doubt, she will know.

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Kris: Lynne working to help Katrina victims

I have friend. We'll call her "Lynne" (her real name). She called me tonight and asked if I knew anyone in Houston.

I do know some people in Houston, but only because my husband is from Texas and - ok, it's a huge state - but he has family there.

Lynne is organizing buses in Texas, paid for by people in Georgia, to drive evacuees who are in the Houston Astrodome to Atlanta if they so chose, in order that they might stay instead in the actual homes of people they actually know. (Since, as we've all heard on the news, many of the survivors of Katrina weren't given a choice as to which evacuation point they would be taken. Some would rather be somewhere else.) Lynne is organizing all this with her cell phone, in a third state.

Someone in Houston (she doesn't even know who) put up a sign in the Astrodome saying, roughly - if you want to go to Atlanta, call Lynne (ph number). And she is getting those calls.

However, she needs someone "on the ground" to help organize in Houston. For instance, to pick a street corner for the buses to pick up the people. And to make sure ahead of time that the buses will be full. And to let people know when. And to pick up the food she is also trying to organize for the long bus ride to Atlanta.

I love Lynne for this, and for so many other reasons. Problem in the world? Doesn't just ingest the news obsessively (as I do). She goes out and darn well does SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE to help fix it. Which is so great and so amazing.

And so I did my lame little part, calling my brother-in-law, who will call around and hopefully get a lead on someone who can help in Houston. Also Lynne and I talked about some other ways to find someone - the universities there, Craigslist...the internet...

And so if YOU know anyone in Houston who could possibly help in this little scheme (big scheme for those it helps), please email (cribceiling at yahoo dot com) and I will pass it along to Lynne ASAP. Thanks so much.

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Kris: It's sadly only the beginning

As the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana said on the news today, the tragedy is just beginning there in New Orleans. And we haven't really heard much yet about the other places devastated by Katrina. So although we are back to our usual frippary here (and sometimes thoughtful thoughts), I think it is worth noting that Louisiana and Mississippi and all the people affected by the storm are still very much on our minds.

I also saw today that Bush *personally* would be overseeing the investigation into what went wrong with the recovery effort. At the risk of offending any W fans reading this (unless Rove made them all up), and not that we want to get too political here (because we don't...) ... but isn't that like Nixon investigating the Watergate break-in? Or (equal-opportunity annoying), like Clinton saying he has the perfect intern for the job of investigating shenanigans?

Also, I find it so odd that the survivors (as Oprah called them), or evacuees (as some news organizations started to call them), or displaced citizens (as I just called them) or however they are called, were in some instances put on planes without any choice as to where they were going. Denver. DC. Wherever. Considering that they will likely be in their new destination for a long time, and may even permanently make a life there, shouldn't they get some choice? Maybe they even have family or friends in certain destinations. Or would prefer one part of the country over the other. That just seemed a little cold and (not particularly) efficient to me.

I am sure there will be more on Louisiana and Mississippi to come. Sadly . . . lots and lots more.

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Lisa: Getting Organized

This organization thing is a constant struggle. The worst is the paperwork that piles on the desk. It all seems to need my attention or a discussion with hubby or for me to make a phone call before I can find a final resting place for each piece. The really funny thing is that somehow I've managed to create THREE desk spaces for myself and ALL THREE are usually a disaster! There's the phone desk where all the mail, the kids misc. small toys, photos, calendars/schedules, magazines, bills, invitations, etc. all congregate. There's the computer desk in the corner off the kitchen where my home business stuff collects, my writing projects I don't have time for, stuff I print off the internet, personal emails, etc. And then, there's the school desk which is probably the best of all because I'm forced to deal with it every day. There are days I walk into my kitchen area and all three desks are just shameful. We had a really neat, tidy house growing up (good job, Mom because it's *really* hard to do) and I just wonder sometimes if it was just a different era -- not so much paper or information demanding our response?

For those of you with kids in school, my sympathies (remember, I'm the not-so-crazy-gal-who-homeschools). When my daughter was in school I felt inundated by the amount of paperwork they sent home for me to read, go through, respond, write a check for, schedule, volunteer for, register for, etc. Yikes!

I interned one summer in college at a national seminar company (with many seminars on professional development). Here's the one thing I remember: Clear your desk every night. It's so simple and somehow it eludes me. Of course when I do it I remember how nicely that works...it stays so much cleaner the next day, I can see the papers I need to deal with immediately, the phone numbers are accessible, etc. Basically, it saves time and I become more efficient. What a concept...

My girlfriend with the same little problem suggested flylady.com but she also said I would get a ton of emails from the site and you know what? I just can't handle any more emails! So, I can't get the help I need for the emails I'm already getting because I can't handle any more emails. That's funny. Who has advice on categorizing and sorting emails, by the way? I get so many, I never erase them because I'm afraid of losing any information. It's kind of like the paper piling on my desks. I have a Treo organizer where I can stash all my addresses and it actually links to my computer so you'd think I'd be so organized.

Oh ya, I think to actually BE ORGANIZED it takes time to actually GET ORGANIZED. If I were more organized, I'd make some time for that. Well moms. I hope you're all better in this area than I am. Don't even get me started on those photo albums because I've completely blocked out how much getting-organized-time I need to do on them!

Lisa (Kris' sister)

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Kris: Phone splat dot com

Mom has a good point.

First, although she didn't say this, my husband has pointed out on many an occasion that *sometimes* I *do* mumble.

I find this incredibly odd, because in EVERY one of my report cards as a child, the teacher wrote in the "Other Comments" section, "Her voice carries." (Yes, I had many a friend point out, at the time, that they had never seen anything written in those sections before either. So if you never noticed this section of your report card as a child, well - that's not unusual. It was there.) This, by the way, is 1970s teacher-speak for "This little girl is LOUD." So I don't know what happened in between. I was perhaps too loud then or am perhaps too quiet now.

Also - and Mom didn't technically point this out, either, but I will - my parents have two of the WORST PHONES ON EARTH. And they are not even old phones. They are new phones. This is the problem. If the phones were old my parents could just get rid of the things. But they are new, and so my parents feel obligated to use them (I am speculating here) until the things just wear out. So based on the average length of time before new gadgets wear out (approximately right before they are completely obsolete) we got about two more years of these phones.

(Staying at their house is like going to this time-warp zone of no-phoneness. You can see the phone. If you listen really, really, carefully, you can hear a dial tone way down in there. But actually using the phone - another story. It's like you're going deaf very prematurely, and incredibly frustrating. I just use my cell phone when I'm there. A typical conversation if I get a call while there: "Hang on. I can't hear you either. I'll call you right back on my cell." And if there's someone on the other extension - forget it. "Is the caller still there? Do you hear anyone? Hello? Are we still having a conversation? You hang up. No, really, hang up. Forget it. CALLER, IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I AM CALLING YOU BACK ON MY CELL.")

Anyway, I bring all this up to say that, in all likelihood, there is indeed a good chance that there were OTHER FACTORS - indeed, a great many other factors - or, at least, two really likely factors - which played a part in the "the address is
cribceiling dot blagsplat dot com conversation that I had with my Mom. I thought that conversation was pretty funny, and blaming it on a generation-technology-difference thing seemed, well, kind of funny to me, too, and not completely out of the realm. But now that I think about it, I guess it is also true that there were at least a couple other factors that may have been more significant at play here.

Now, Mom wasn't *that* offended. But she was a little hurt. So, Sorry Mom. Really. I didn't mean to tease you, least of all in public. Especially when it was, really, pretty unfair, when I think about it. Frankly, Mom works on a computer all day (Mom’s a famous author!) and probably knows more about technology these days than I do.

For the record - I don't really feel like taking back anything I said about their phones. (At least not yet!) Really, I mean it - get some new phones. (Or you might not be that excited about your next birthday presents.)

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Kris: That was some vacation

This is the post I wrote in my head on the drive home: One car, two kids, five hours each way. Enough said.

But now that I am home, and things are getting back to "normal", and I can reflect . . . it was a lovely little vacation. Perhaps I will write more about it later (beautiful mountains in southern Colorado; yes, we live in the beautiful mountains of northern New Mexico, and yet still it was nice to 'get away'. (Even though staying in a little tiny cabin only compresses the mother's workload to a smaller square foot area.))

Well I had a few more words to say on that, but I just can't bear rewriting them. You will realize what happened with the following question: in case anyone out there is also a "blogger", does the Firefox browser ever eat your posts? As soon as I switched to that browser, text started disappearing. I don't mean in the sense of, maybe I forgot what I wrote and I never really *did* write that pithy little comment I had in my head. I mean in the sense that I am typing along writing some (obviously brilliant or possibly erudite) post, I hit some key, like the "n" key with my right hand, and *poof* the entire text is gone. I got so frustrated just now - this is not the first time - that I slammed my hand on the desk a few times (and my husband putting our three year old to bed in the next room yelled "What??! What's wrong? Are you okay?") Suffice it to say, I think this new browser has a FEW bugs. (So now you know why obviously brilliant and erudite comments are so rare around here...)

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A tiny bit more about me

For now, I am putting this additional info about me (if anyone is so intersted) here. It used to be in the Profile, back when my sister and cousin also had their profiles here. I had to move it out when....well, it's a long, sad html story (in short, I can't do html) that also has to do with flickr and pictures and too much text on the front page, blah blah, so suffice it to say it is now here.

BTW, when we first started this blog, my sister and cousin were all hopped up to join me. Sadly, their idea of posting is about once a year or so. So if they ever notice they have been taken off this thing as managers, I'll deal with it then. : ) (They are ALWAYS welcome to post. Just send it via email and it goes up, girlfriends! :)

So here's the long drawn-out description of myself I used to have up, with minor edits:

Dragged my sister and cousin into this just so we could analyze / bitch / laugh and discuss everything we were already obsessing on in a whole new medium. (We still do this; I just haven't managed to get them blogging about it yet.)

We live out West in a tiny little town, on the top of a mountain at the end of a highway, full of geniuses and foreigners and without even a Target to speak of. (I eventually fessed up; it's Los Alamos, NM.)(And the "we" in this instance is my Spousal, kids and me. The sister and cousin are bright enough to live other places.)

I was raised in Colorado (Boulder - its own weird little place but not nearly so little) but rushed off to California for college. Stayed out there for law school. Worked in The Law but eventually found my way to software, which I loved.

Am now at home, probably going to try for a different career when I do go back to work; I really love staying home with the girls but I think it is the housewifery that drives me insane. (And THIS is probably the most pertinent point about the blog : )

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Kris: The response is just shameful

All I have to say is, the response to the tragedy in New Orleans, and elsewhere in that part of the country, by this nation, is shameful.

And I do not mean by that the amount of donations or volunteers. I am sure, based on the generosity of the people of this country in the face of other tragedies here and around the world, that individual donations and help wil be overwhelming and inspiring.

What I do mean is the literal, organized - send in the troops and the transporters and the buses, helicopters and boats, the water bottles, dry clothes, medicine and cliff bars, and get those people out - kind of help. It is a disgrace. A national disgrace.

Also - the news. We hear what a mess it is, and what is not happening. But I have yet to hear WHO is deemed to be responsible for organizing such things and why they are doing such a horrible job. And if no one is responsible for coordinating the response, we should know that too. I just want to know who's in charge down there.

Is it the federal government, in the form of FEMA? Or is it really and truly up to the mayor and the governor and the city council of whatever locales are affected? I read in an editorial copied in our local paper from a Washington state paper, and written by that state's head of emergency management, that the gulf states are now paying for a decision by this administration to take FEMA off the natural disaster beat. Moved under the Homeland Security umbrella, it's original mission of coordinating aid in such events has been eliminated; now they just help the local governments who need to lead the charge. (And otherwise FEMA's focus is on terrorism.) (I will look for a link to that article, but I'm not so good with links, so no promises on that.)

Is this true? Then why isn't this blasted ALL OVER THE NEWS???!!!! Why did I have to read it in an *editorial*, long after the fact, and only now that the consequences of that decision are bearing fruit (or not bearing fruit, to twist the analogy the right way). (And not that, obviously, anyone in government has ever listened to me if I did hear about it beforehand and disagreed. It's just that, well - it would have been nice to know. And maybe if enough somebodies thought that was a ridiculous idea, it might not have happened.)

It is shameful and a literal human tragedy that days after the fact, in this nation of great wealth and resources and project management ability, so many people are suffering and dying.

(As witness to the generosity of this country, every other blog in the blogosphere has a link to a place to donate, so I will not do that here too. (Plus, you know, I'm not so good with links.))

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Kris: 3108 day (yesterday. doh.)

Alright. I wrote this post ON TIME. Really. Which would mean yesterday. (It's a time-related piece.) But then I got all confused about what day it was. Hey, I'm a stay at home mom. Dates are so irrelevant. Is it playschool day or swim class day? Those are the questions. Anyway, I am posting this anyway. Pretend it's yesterday:

In trying to be good member of the blogosphere, or at least a participating member, I understand that today is “Blog day”. And in honor of blog day, bloggers are asked to list five other sites for their readers to check out, preferably international ones.

I have to confess to not really reading any international sites. I saw one once; if I can find the link again I’ll include it.

Ah - almost forgot - today is Blog day because “31/08” (the date the way the rest the world writes it) looks like the word BLOG. Get it? 3108. BLOG. 3108. BLOG. Well, almost.

Anyway, here are five other blogs, a little explanation and possibly even the reason wny I’m including them:

dooce.com Because many of my five or six readers are new to blogs entirely, I thought I’d include one of the heavy hitters. One of the most popular blogs, she became world famous as the first person to be fired for her blog. (Yes, she was bitching about co-workers and even supervisors.) Now she is a stay at home mom, but so explicit in her descriptions, and so honest (and a good writer) that she is still a big hit.

http://rconversation.blogs.com/ Brilliant, interesting, successful woman studying the internet and blogs and the international media as a fellow at Harvard. Opens my world to new vistas. Also where I heard about this “3108” thing so I have to include her.

http://nellysdiary.blogspot.com/ A quientessential example of what has become known as a “mommy blog.” Just us women going crazy, writing about our lives to try to stay sane. She’s not famous. But I figure if her three readers and my five or six combine, we might have nine once in awhile!

http://users.pandora.be/quarsan/zoe/ (aka “My Boyfriend is a Twat”) I forgot - I DO read an international blog, assuming Belgium counts. This is a displaced Englishwoman, raised in Asia (as I recall), living in Belgium, writing about her life. One of the most popular European Blogs. Yes, the “t” word means there what it does here, but in her case (she told me in email), it’s British slang for “idiot”. Phew.

http://www.robbiesqp.blogspot.com/ Do not ask me how I found this site, because I now have no idea. However, he seems to be a junior high-ish boy, writing about his life. The reason I include him is because he lives in New Orleans, and was blogging about Hurricane Katrina and when they would evacuate. He understandably hasn’t posted since they did evacuate, but I figure when he finally gets online again, it will be an incredible boys-eye-view of living through such a thing. Let’s hope he and his family are alright.


Well, that’s all. Happy 3108 day!

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Lisa: Last Two Blogs Mine

The last two Blogs are mine. I'm supposed to type my name before the title and well, I forgot again. I'm Kris' sister in California.

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Lisa: Homeschool Update (Why I'm Not Crazy)

Kicked off my second year homeschooling. It's the first year with two kids (second and kinder). My 2 1/2 year old also started a two-day "playschool" from 7:30-12:30 on Tues/Thurs. So this is it, I'm really doing this again. Last year was really tough. Some good days, yes, but some days I wanted to scream (oh ya, I DID scream, scratch that "wanted to" part). I also called all the schools in the area enquiring about enrollements in mid-February while my daughter cried, "don't send me to school..." Anyway... at the end of the year we were amazed with her progress and sense of pride so we signed up to do it again.

The Week (my favorite magazine because it's all the news of the world in bite-size portions perfect for moms with bite-size bits of time to keep up with the world)....had an article in its most recent edition (9/2-9/9, page 13) on the homeschooling trend in the US.

As many as 2 milliion children are now being taught at home in the US and homeschooled kids totally measure up on the testing (higher on both the SAT and ACT) and also tend to spend more time in outside activities and group settings than public school kids. PLEASE DON'T ASK A HOMESCHOOLER about socialization...ask them about all their kids' activities (dance, singing, TaeKwonDo, etc.) because they tend to do so much more fun stuff as there's no homework at the end of the day!

I'm right there with 49% that say their primary motivation is "giving a child a better education at home." For us it's not a comment about our schools per se but it is about the class size and our own childrens' need for more individualized learning. (Even one-on-one my little artistic daydreamer will say, 'Huh? I don't get it." She's sincere and about the fifth time I'm ready to scream -- again. It really tries the patience. But what would she get in school? It would be one long confusing day full of stomach aches from stress (which she had even in public kinder). Good book on this type of creative kid: Upside Down Brilliance by Silverman). But I digress....

I recommend our program -- the k12 curriculum www.k12.com. We are enrolled through a charter school in CA so it's all free and all I have to do is facilitate their work everyday -- I don't have to "figure out" what to teach. I just follow the program put together by curriculum and education experts and I get creative in ways that help my own children learn best. I also take time off whenever and work more on days they (or I ) can handle pushing it.

So I'm not totally crazy (well, sort of). I do it one year at a time and hope someday they will want to go to school. I didn't in gradeschool (I played sick most of 1st and 2nd to stay home with mom) ...so I'm not holding much hope until the early teen years. I'll have to show this article to my mom before she visits next month and says, "Honey, this is so much work. Just put them in school." Ugh. Support a homeschooler even if you think they're nuts!

Oh, and I've met a few really truly nutty homeschoolers -- but that's another blog.

Lisa (Kris' sister)

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Lisa: A long slow bike ride

Took my three out for a bike ride today. The youngest is 2 1/2 and he can ride on his own with training wheels. I rigged a little system to pull him along when he's tired. Of course today we get around the block and he decides not to ride, not to pull and not to walk. He wants to sit and cry. The older two are riding ahead. I'm worried but I trust at least that they have the sense to slow down and come back (which they did). Our neighborhood is safe but still its that "how do I take care of him and watch them?" dilemma. I suppose situations like these are when kids grow up a little -- venturing out, exploring on their own, realizing they did it and survived! Suddenly they did realize that mom was not with them, they didn't see me, they rode back together, found mom and their crying baby brother on the sidewalk and asked, "Could you *be* a little slower?"

Oh, I see. They weren't worried. They were just annoyed. Maybe it was me who had to let go a little today.

Lisa

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