'Work'

I seem to keep saying. I just don't know what is happening with work. I work. Full-time, Monday to Friday, but it seems be dwindling. I work in education so many, many, many of the librarians I know there would NOT have Monday to Friday jobs. We just don't allocate time that way based on our schools, at all.

But everywhere I am seeing it. Jobs downsizing. I would like to change my job but I have serious fears that if I do it will just be subsumed. I have seen this friends go on mat leave and when they come back no job, as if their contributions did not matter. Others choose to take reduced hours -- say between -- two mat leaves... then when the time comes, maybe you want to buy a house there is no full time work to help you afford it.

Are we feeling it? Is the economy gonna nibble away at every job, including the ones we work around as Moms. When we are ready to return full time will there be such a thing?

I have lots of people who tell me how much they love being part time or how they will never work full time but this baffles me. Am I an alien that I expect employers to offer a solid basis of full time positions for people in their operations? I hate when people act like full time is TOO MUCH. It isn't for me (well it is really) and it shouldn't be for anyone. If it is there is something kind outta whack with 'work' there?? I mean I feel grateful I don't work two jobs or 14 hours like many immigrant families. Basic full time being eroded is something to think about. What is the future?

Who does she think she is?

Does anyone know what my 52 reasons campaign was? It was because I was not going to be... A. WORKING. MOTHER. (Or was i? A temp maybe..?) Working motherhood. I am NOT. A. BELIEVER. (Or am i?)

Blog killing disbelief.

What is it? Am I embarrassed to blog, from my desk. Who does that? You blog at naptimes. You don't blog when you have lost your whole sense of place in the parents blogosphere. We barely even nap anymore? What am I doing? Seriously, there is something that made me think this was a 'baby blog' and as the kids were no longer babies .. 'done and done'. But tell me then.. why is it called MotherWoman...? I know, and you know, it is all about me me me!

What can I tell you? There are really three reasons I stopped writing to you.
1. I was never writing TO you in the first place anyway?
2. I was sucking so hard, considering, on the writing quality. (enough already with the lyricism and intellect bon, clara, l., nora. You're killing me over here!)
3. I was in triage. My kids needed me IRL and blog x work, bye bye blog.

... but I spent 5 years of my total 6.25 years of parenting -- in here so much, part of my kids are in here. Can I really do well ... on. my. own? Without my diary? This diary that I am thinking will cap out at a tidy 800 posts, 36 posts from now.

But call this one of my patented half-posts.. and read this right now!

Ps. This blog post title is not to be confused with the excellent film of the same name

I've never been to me.

If there is one song from my youth I did not like it had to be, Never Been to Me. Idiot damsel trying to look fierce...degrading self, problem-women. Discuss.

It cluttered up the 2nd 3rd of my Rock '82 by KTEL cassette real bad. And we know don't we.. There was no such thing as 'skip' then. Codex hell. I heard it over and over despite myself, tapes, dances, the tyranny of LG73. Oh, woe was me. And woe is me now.

It has, my friends, been a tough few months. Tough like my mother's swiss steak. And at this end I see that my lil' blog has been about -- despite myself -- my 'never been to me' status. My concerns about being Mother and Woman. My uncertainty about knitting up the internal, bloody, messy, human making mother-person with the... womanly everything else. My own wordy variation on a scale of justice ... a place to mix a metaphor as frothy as Cactus Club Bellinis on a Friday night of yore.

A year ago I dialed that discussion down. Respectable after 5 years and in light of new media to be sure. There were good reasons particularly the working mo' issue. I know people say that when you go back to work it is 'too much' how can you handle all the work and your family. But that is not the case, entirely. You make it work. Your work gets done. Your family responsibilities met. What goes is the EVERYTHING ELSE. The extended family bliss, the wide area networks of friends.. including you my friends. The filing of paperwork, the turning over of seasonal clothing, the garden, maybe handmade Christmas cards.

But after this year I realize there are dark reasons I might not have spoken. That it wasn't just the volume of writing and web authoring I was doing professionally that sucked me away from here. There was also a bit of surrender to the propaganda. A giving up on anything like options. My abhorrence for example of quality time and 'work/life balance' cliches. Looking to Parent Differently, TM. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I was type-tied. Reading more than writing and crafting a new brand online that was solely professional. Ha! Ha! Ha! I will talk to you in the next while about what I felt was untypeable to you but this is enough for today... Save...

You can thank me later for the great Swiss steak recipe. A classic in that lineup of working mom meal plans.
There are a lot of trippy covers of Never Been to Me!
What will make you say, hello dead blog. A comment on a long lost post like this.

Can't dance, don't ask me

I was making dinner, or washing dishes .. or something a couple weeks ago, in the kitchen anyway, when it hit me... I have, apparently, lost the ability to dance. I do not know if it is a condition of some degradation of coordination due to my advancing age or a lack of practice ... but its gone. We'll worse than gone really, it's out of synch. I still dance it seems but only in a out by two beats and a tad slow sort of way. Yes I dance like a gawky 40 something divorced from the beauty of music. One of my more generous confidants reported its a fairly common affliction but it does not make it better.

HELP! Send Arthur Murray groupons.

I am sure I will find a way to blame typing. That the deft actualization of self I achieve in this modern world with my tappy tappy fingerpads is sucking skills from my toes, foot soles, ankles and knees.

It must be fought! I am pray now and always to be a dancer. It is always a part of me. Lacking the music making skills of my elders I was erstwhile inseparable from music in the form of dance. When again?

But really how can it be expected to maintain itself with no practice and less and less physicality period. There are many things about being an office jockey that slays me but these days I zoom in on the sendentary bit. When I was home with the kids it was a pretty active life. Shopping on Fraser street to fill a stroller has been replaced by the 11 o'clock flights to a late night box store. Park time replaced by the office chair spun ever so slightly. This summer I got my own goat driving to the Y to work out in my car. That is just not me. A couple days later I started the evening walk. I use them to catch up with other mother people and generally to get out of the house/out of the office

This sort of activity is v. common in my neighbourhood where a walk at 9pm can find me struggling to keep pace with the Indian Grammas in packs of 4 flapping chiffon scarves motoring around the park. The park is full of still swinging kids on the monkey bars and maybe a pick up game soccer ... better yet a cricket match! It gets me off my butt and out of my head. Talking about being digital seems all the rage.. but this week I just couldn't help thinking how I need help being physical. And, how, I rage against the fleeting physicality.

In related news -- this week as I left for work 'shiny and new' p-man lobbed a nice compliment. "Honey, you look nice. Very Ella Fitzgerald." Moi: knit brows & confused, STARE. Him: "Oh, I mean v. ZELDA Fitzgerald!" Yeah okay better. So there, we're both losing it.

Stay tuned for details of our rehab.


Nice picture via niceness of alicepopkorn

52 Reasons: [Why] Are we [not] there yet [enough]

We have the parenting workshop at my house. We have our gaps in consistency. My cousin swears consistency is critical in parenting. I fear that constantly. The lack of shared minds, the differences in opinion the discord. Parenting the Thelonious Monk way! That's us.

I get mad sometimes. Really really really mad. I don't actually carry on about it, I mean that is what I have a blog for. So blog, I got really really really mad today. It was the same thing, a virulent shame. Angry, angry that I just cannot enunciate. I can't get it out, failure to elocute to simple tasks of family harmony. I have this image in my head of an superlative route from moment A to departure by X AM not to keep others waiting, with grace and ease and no peskiness, out the door laden with healthy foods, a perfect balance of nose-rags, spare underwear and a smile.

But that image NEVER materializes. NEVER.

We rush. I race. I blurt and the 3 perfect steps in my head are said but not heard. They are messed up in my 4 addendums and every other failing of the parenting workshop.

And that, my friends, slays me. White hot mad, ready to pin down and howl at a kid or pull my spouse's earlobes down to his fuzzy ass crack is the 'why don't you understand me!!!! Get this.' Mind the gap! I just bet if I didn't have a vision of how small the distance from here to perfect was life could be a hell of a lot more tranquil.

And then there are good blog posts.

Smiles everyone, smiles!

52 reasons: the liberation that binds

There must be something in my Catholic upbringing ??? or my Presbyterian heritage ??? or my feminist orientation or ??? my feminist short-comings or something ??? ... that embarrasses me for my imperfection; and, I like it. It is a part of my identity??? The endless being at loose ends of unknowing and the addictive blamelessness of being put upon.

To stay-at-home, for me, presumes a surrender to a sort of non-victimizing imperfection I have erstwhile not known. I realize today that this is another imprint I took in a time before of why I would not be a stay-at-home parent. To finally take a pass on being the failure. To risk authority and leadership and all manner of grubby words of powerful and accountable identity.
To say home would mean, in some greater measure, an admission that:
1.) I will never be the best parent there is.
2.) But, I am the best parent, or caregiver, my children can have.
And other such things of knowing.

Gasp! Responsibility! Now there's a reason I thought I could not be a stay at home parent. Still, to unburden myself of all my childish self-centredness and my long-standing focus on failures -- gripping in the darkness every potential for failure -- could I do it? It would bespeak of a paradigm shift come of parenting, most certainaly. It can be pretty alluring. Especially when the blessings we have are adequate in number as to offer such a diminution of risk even a scaredy cat like me has a good chance to overcome. Hmmmm....

Wishing you all many blessings and for the success of every heart's hope this Thanksgiving. xoxox my pretties! love mo-wo

52 reasons: Due Diligence

It was a dreary rainy Sunday here nearly fall in Vancouver. A perfect cloister it makes for spending extra time with kids or a latte or ... Often a good day to do some extra hours at work. Peace and quiet at work to catch up and get extra prepared for my busiest time of year that starts in about 10 days.

This afternoon as my kids rested I went into the office. But, not to work. Sure I shuffled a few emails and cursed the boot up time needed for my ailing workstation but I was really there to cop some photocopying power for our coming Block Party next weekend. Zoinks!

And, as I made my way up abandoned Sunday afternoon stairs to my office I was sad. Again. Like I have been so many times -- at times -- to not be doing the work. This return to work has not been simple for me, for a few reasons. Some were expected, many commonplace but others blindsided me. Like this one.

Such a sad lonely craving to be my former self in the employee department was not something I would have predicted. I have at times a profound yearning for the days of overtime. I tremble in the fear of regular hours, undertaking decisions with a hesitance characteristic of ill-preparedness. I worry constantly about the risks I take with directions or commitments because I don't have my old suit of armor. Hours and hours of overtime, overkill?, professional preening, contingency after contingency. Leadership borne of haggardness was my feeble mantle then. Now what?

One of the reasons I thought I could never be a SAHM is that I love my work too much. But in the rain of today it is tricky for me. I am torn between all my babies, including the one this job represents. I peer through the ages of work hoping to find, and wondering how, mothers manage(d). Catching a whiff of shit in all my machinations. Plucking myself up to find that it must be a crock of something. Picturing my Baba planting potatoes while her second youngest of five rocked the baby's basket. God help me.

The work experiment continues.

52 reasons: If I was a tree?..

I never really wanted any of the 52 reasons to be why I can't be a go-to-work-parent when I think it's that maybe I should be SAHM but here's the exception. Maybe some days I should be a stay-at-home Mom because I don't work as hard as I used to? I no longer work 10 extra hours every week. Instead I show up late. I don't spring to answer whiny customers. I get enough of that at home.

It is a charm in the end that I didn't change jobs after my leave because back in place I can still feel a bit like my former high performing self. As one compatriot put it... if I suck today at least I have a bank of credibility there. But I can't say I am really at ease with the 'permission to suck' thing.

I do love my work. I am currently reacquainting myself with my vocation and career; this is not just a job to me. I was utterly devoted to it. I believe it helped, helps, me remain utterly devoted to my family. It taught me the degree to which I could devote myself, my time, my identity to something that no other job had ever given.

But it isn't the same as it was those few years ago.

One thing you don't know is that when I started this blog I wanted to call it "Working Mother: like there's any other kind." Back in November 2005 I was in my exploding job share, 2 months **SURPRISE** pregnant, childcare arrangements falling apart; all the while asking asking... "How am I supposed to do this?" and "This is a mess. So I give up. Let me out. I abdicate." I am at odds with the paradigms of mothers with careers. I definitely have one, and while I was away for those 2 years I feared for the health of it still it did not pull me to hurry. Maybe its because I started working at 14 more than 20 years ago and never stopped that now I feel I can. Sure but also it is that I believe what Katherine Hepburn said about motherhood -- you can't do it all, no half measures she said. Me neither! chimes mo-wo (Don't I always want to be Katherine Hepburn? of course). Supermom is crap.

I apologize for every lateness and those in the know just scoff at me. Still, I want to be the one with a work around then in another moment I'm some post-post-Annie-Hall all Baby Boom and crap... my disregard for basic professional standards and etiquette SUCKS! I pine for the pace of production I used to offer and then I question who they might get to do better, anyway. Oh, I'm vain.

Last week I attended a retirement party for one of my superiors a quite gracious man who has worked for the Board for something in excess of 30 years. I enjoyed that lunch after a good morning, one where I had hit all the bases for a change. I looked around at my friends and thought about the work life of the man being honoured. I wondered if he ever sucked like me. I bet he did, ya know except he's a man -- but that's another post. Generally, I don't worry that I am denying my kids anything by working, they are supportive and at this point they are enjoying their very active lives in daycare and with their grandparents Monday to Friday. I think they don't do math the way we do. They have enjoyed having me home for two years great but this is good too. They don't see less they see different. What is different now is not about hours or minutes but rather about commitment. I am now otherwise occupied and that's really about it from their end. I have commitments at work that I must keep. I am doing my best to keep them and that's the big deal, but that's my big deal. I think it will get better.

Experiencing and expressing the commitment intrinsic with my job is about as hard as I thought it would be. But the example it shows my kids can't be all bad hey?

And if you tire of my 52 ponderences, I was very flattered to see the topics getting chewed over here by one smart chick!

**Further to the Hepburn thing... I'm not quite sure what species of tree I am but they way I vacilate you can bet it's deciduous.

52 reasons: Patience

Wow. With my sudden return to work I am way behind with my 52 reasons I cannot be a stay-at-home-parent which are all bunk.

Here is one I have really been bursting to post. I do hear it a lot from other moms and wonder if blogger parents share this one in their arsensal of "rationalist parentings" [sic], hahahahahahahahahahaha. Here goes...

I can't be a stay-at-home-parent because... I am not patient enough.

Do you do that one? I mean I have done that one to death. It is actually pretty much full of it and here's why.

1. I am patient enough.
2. Being patient all the time is not good for children.
3. Pay-as-you-go caregivers are not always patient. I have found I am relatively actually more patient. If you count up the minutes/hours for sure. Yay me!
4. Free caregivers (often known as grandparents) are not patient either they are sort of... well... oblivious, or something.

What is it we are saying when we say we are not patient enough? Is there someone patient enough to hang with a 2 year old and a 4 year old 24/7? Who are these angels of bottomlessnessed giving outlook? What would real children have been like for centuries before if they had access this manner of child-rearing-droid? In the hierarchy of virtues where does patience lie? What am I saying????

Yesterday, was my first day of work and I'll go again tomorrow. It is short to start. I negotiated a part-time graduated entry program; just four hours a day this week. I do love my job, it is a good one. I don't really feel at odds with my "52 reasons I might be a good stay-at-home-parent" while I'm working. The work needs to be done. I am doing it right now, someone needs to. After 23 months out of the workforce it feels nice to fill that need again. I will watch closely how my family feels about it, and these reasons will inevitably help me work through the watching.

52 reasons: When a myth is more a mistake

Here is the latest installment in my 52 reasons for never thinking I could be a stay at home mother, and now where am I?

I don't really fit in as a SAHM because of the all the protocol shit. Sure I once worked in a royal palace, and I have invited two lieutenants-general to dinner without incident but preschool? I am an hick!

Yep, I'm the mom who loses the birthday invite and misses the party. And then I'm the one who still doesn't get it that I need to cough up a gift until I get given the deluxe in absentia loot bag. I can't pick the birthday boy out of a line up but I guess I better wrap up a nice gift by lunchtime tomorrow.

I guess I might hope to be better than this... but I'm not. No myth here some of this etiquette is too serious for me.

ps... We have turned on comment moderation. We haaaayte it! but we wanted to whack the spam a bit and thought we'd try it out. I figure we'll turn it off soon, it is only slightly less/more irritating than word ver. stay tuned.

52 reasons: People are People

I have a lot of reasons why I thought I would never make a good stay-at-home mom. Sure I could start with something easy like, I don't have enough patience, or I am addicted to my career but no. No. Sharp inhalation, here goes.

I never thought I would be a good stay-at-home mom because.... I don't really like women.

Oh for shame. What was wrong with me? I thought raising children was women's work? and androgyny my defense?

I was always sort of weak at being a chick, suspicious of girls -- and women it seems. But dudes? Well, I was the soccer mom at 18. I was driving my co-worker bellmen friends from the tourist-compound mandatory hospitality service I did in '88, call it Rocky Mountain Hotelerific piss up and pinch stuff for a summer or two, to their soccer games in Canmore. Ah soccer, is it not the very best sport for the display of fine male specimen buns? I lent them my car to make extra $$$. The other waitresses? Oh, no, thanks. I'm not here to fit in, woman-person.

I ultimately drifted to the fringes of my lady-laden library profession? Note, my expertise falls outside of books or tale telling. My skills are grafted, instead, to IT. I routinely advise some geek, as a means of conflict resolution "Oh come on. We can do it this way just this once right? Try it or I'm breaking up with you."

So is it true? If I hate going to the mall... and If I haven't read a diet book in 25 years...and If I am selfish and superficial and like to watch sports on tv, sometimes. Does that mean I can't be a stay-at-home mom?

Well it turns out. No.

Facet #1 of the mythology. Stay-at-homers aren't all Moms. Seems roughly half the population of parentingland is made up of men. Good, that keeps it interesting. Why hadn't I thought of that?

Then. Facet #2 The girls are alright. Women are what makes this game run. Sure there are the competimommies and the cliques and the deepening political divides. But all that seems a lot more gutless here in the glow of afterbirth than it ever did at under the dim lights of the dance palaces of youth jostling for mirror space to perfect each application of mascara and every slink of a blouse or hem. We are all, or at least many of us ready to admit, hacks. At work I was out to be the best in the business -- so many of us were. In the mothering game for every 1 out to succeed I would suggest there are 4 or 8 sane, self-effacing and affable mother-people. This based on my well-sourced bloggy research acumen.

As one friend says, I just need to get back to the hut. The heterogeneity can be overrated. I just want the women and children together in the hut awash in comprehension and support. I wont [sic] some other woman to hold my baby while I have a shower! Today I had a date with M. (not her real name) and I was happy as could be wrapt in mom on mom action for nearly 2 hours. Just a cuppa and her bouncing baby girl (10 months, since I know you're wondering). We shared our failings and our outlandishly high standards. We came to the agreement that to completely suck 3-4 times weekly was a good baseline.

-- yes I am trying to put that song in your head!

52 reasons

Two years ago when I was SURPrISE pregnant and childcareless and job-share becoming job-partner-annulment I became Mother Woman.

I started to blog.

I was reluctant to surrender to a life mothering. I had a laundry list of reasons why it was not for me. I was for one thing, a very adult-oriented person. I didn't fit the mould mother-woman.

There were other reasons too. Last week I said their were 52 myths I had against staying at home. Starting tomorrow I will take advantage of you all to try digest those myths. Yes, witness the eating of words.

But before I list the reasons I wouldn't stay home, and why they were a myths, let me list why I would. Why I am? staying home.

1. No decent childcare
2. No strict financial imperatives
3. No energy
4. Vocational crisis
5. Curiosity about what it would mean to eschew the rat race for the egg and spoon race

And, let me take this moment to also promote the very interesting Mothers Voice project. It is a PhD research project that touches on my issues here. What about yours? Please see the link to participate in Mothers Voice, a blog-based Canadian mothering research project.