Which way do I go?

I am an old hand with my job. I have actually been in the business for 20 years now. I have to sort it out .. sift it out.. I am even thinking -- after years of pooh pooh ing it -- PhD.  This latest job I have will terminate at the end of the summer and I have  choices I guess:

1.) start looking for something else as a staffer
2.) go back to school myself
3.) do some teaching.  I have one offer could seek more
4.) consulting
5.) early retirement

I have real concerns that work is getting folded up.  That everyone time someone walks away from a job it gets trimmed and downsized and abdicated, until employers are not offering any regular positions any-more!  But I am tired and I have often said that the 9-5 is a killer with the kids primary school schedules never to mention needs.

It will not be a simple choice but maybe someone will just make it for me.  Is that what surveymonkey was invented for?

Discoverers

It was a few weeks back we headed to the rink still learning. It is that break point of note. The learning and the having.

My children have learned a lot in their days. Things I wavered to believe I could make for them. Ha! I teach them nothing, those surly sponges, discoverers. I work a little harder each day to be invisible. Did well that day at the rink. Hand on the back of the one with the shakey legs. Silent. Him unaware as my hand slipped away and he discovered he could skate.

And one week later we were on a pond like this. Happy winter everyone.

What She Looks Like

I worked too much in the Fall. I was working more than 35 hrs a week at a new job with a big commute. I was also teaching at the university at night with all the marking and course prep and a big co-teaching collaborative footprint.

My family gave a lot to make it all work out.

I know when I work like that the kids need to see reason. Often they get the money angle, I'll be honest, so I decided on a sad night when my g'nigh came to an already sleeping face.. again... we would go away. The kids and I would spend some of the money on a little vacation. We went to Victoria.

For this trip we travel from our house for a couple hours. Bye-bye Daddy. Lunch with my parents in Ladner nearby and then the kids get to see their uncle in Victoria. A nice getaway, for sure, a simple trip.

We took the ferry and there Miss Fancy made a friend. Her friend's name was Lillian and I have a little story about it.

We met up right away at sailing. Lillian and Miss Fancy playing with Boy-o in the kids' playspace. We quickly went outside. Not. A. Playspace. Fan. I had a nice chat with Lillian's Mom. They were en route to see Lillian's grandparents for Christmas, for them from Australia. They had come via Beijing where they met up with Lillian's uncle and aunt and her 4 year old cousin. They had also said bye-bye to Daddy.

The children played and played. We mothers talked. I snapped photos with my blackberry, Lillian's mom with her iphone. As we neared the shore we exchanged emails, we'd be in touch. "Thanks for everything!" "Merry Christmas". So on and so on.

By this time the kids had taken to the floor to draw. My daughter's bag of supplies being shared, papers askew. Our new friends were setting off quickly and we were running late. They would walk off and their time was more flexible. I needed to muster to the car deck. C'mon! What is the delay?.. N. was slow. She was drawing over which she does often dawdle.

"Mom I am drawing." ..
"What are you drawing?"..
Silence. What is she drawing? I am wondering.
"I HAVE to finish this."
In my mind, what is she drawing (still not peeking) is she drawing something for Lillian?
Lillian is wandering away.
"I have to finish this."
"Finish what"
"I am drawing Lillian. I want to remember what she looks like."

...Agog.

Isn't that interesting? (I mean is that interesting?) We have these devices, their ubiquity to record and there my girl 7 years old knew and to here it means little (or nothing). She wants her picture. She replaces that -- I know her -- what I have with what she might select from her mind. Her idea under the work of her own hand is what makes the memory. It is what she will trust. Somehow I really loved that.

It was a good trip and that was the best story.

Gendrefication or power up the Cloaking Device

This morning in the race across town to my now distant cushier job I steal a peek @suefisher and @bonstewart. An excellent dialogue on gender and lego; a happy little mind bending to incisive people I have never met. I reach and think a fine few minutes of those I weave some affinity with -- the luxury of it.

Anyway.. the dialogue.. Gender to lego, enough! Damn how can lego have gender? Well too much has gender now. It is what - or it is one more thing -- that is eating away at childhood in my mind. I think one tweeter put it out as market forces. B*%lsh@t! No I know it is not. Not market forces but the aggression of corporations over childhood.

Remember I have one boy and one girl. I learned early what would and would not go both ways -- toys, clothes even books. It is something I have bucked, if you will pardon the pun. My son wore plenty of track pants just a little bet scalloped on the edge. The kids have abided the rants that there is not such thing as girl music.. even if there is.

I do believe I have become a rantafarian. I freak that we are holding onto childhood by our fingernails that the mania for industrial child corps to extinguish the ambiguity of children in favour of the profitability of mini-adults is winning. Remember I was an administrator for schools so impoverished for resources, begging, brokering and selling to make learning happen. It was a part of my work for a tough three years sick to see the Matrix of learning devices and 'free' software pin kids from the youngest possible ages in a dataset of self that will set them for harvesting for sale in perpetuity. I can't help often to see the black patent swish of a Trinity trenchcoat in each 'it will save us' post of the graces to Ipad in education.

I say this with the intense vulnerability of this space do I? That I have done as much to pin my own children (thinly veiled) on a blog? I don't think so. More than once I thank the test space of this parenting dialogue to allow me to want to hack parenting and fight and differentiate. I have said it before it is the dialogue in these distant spaces that have fueled my (hard come by) commitment and fitting in to to IRL action of being mother-woman. I am not here to tell you how this will end...



So you see I was biting my tongue just a tad....

Inhibited

It has been a long while since i posted and I smirk what I posted on last.

Our family has had a very hectic few months for sure. Our second child had his first day of school, I went back to teaching at the university on top of a full time job, changed that full time job, p-man out to extend himself, grandparents newly solo.. things here and there. I might write of those things another night.

Really it has been this while since I have been off cavorting around you my friends. Tossing my words about in other 'spheres' as we like to say. Testing the ideas of identity, brand, conversation and so on that began here. Wondering how I can tend it's end now. If that's what's in order. I am out and about on work blogs, and tri-twitter feeds shy to gather the threads or at times writing myself some bigger, more self conscious story of how I really have 'good' reasons to plug up the channels between.

Funny that in light of the name.

It was the descent into family that was the ink in my print. Why has the run out has broken that chat rather than brought it out? Honestly it is that you do feel inhibited. First by the simple math of the life, writing soooooo much by day anyway. Fun though it may not have been. Then there was the cross over and the uncertainty of ever exposing my family to my other sphere there... and exposing what that is/was to what troubled me too much.. why trouble you...

Well anyway, was off, yes. Am back. yes. Will drop in some of the thoughtful on life after schoolwork, on my soc. media diet for 2012 but also leverage the support here whilst we crash from our overindulgence in bacon this holiday season, the What about Santa? fodder of family blog, the state of the cats and so on... Maybe a book or two...

Will give it a go.

'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?

Teeth falling out

Babes in arms. I would give anything for babes in arms. The mental separation of self and the unitasking of physical need. Now that I live with this 6yo girl andd 4 yo boy it is all existential. I type here and am AWAY. And, I measure away. Sometimes I ask their permission to check my blackberry or use the computer for my writing activity. But really it's not like nap time or the separation from a baby. That first set of growth if different before the teeth fall out.

But time is out. We struggle between my limits on their TV screen time and theirs on my laptop time. It is mostly that they wonder, I am sure, what am I making? Is it some sort of digital cookie?? Do they want one?? Is it their business, and I can't say no. What if she read it?

And that is one more reason why it seems sensible that these are my last posts. I have always admired the exceptional bloggers who can write a digital story in their posts, and I am not one. I drift more to the reportage of stories of others as I lack the art and alchemy of words you will find in the faithful memorists like bon or Nora or Claraor... -- see blogroll.

At six I give first my girl and then my boy -- give back -- their story.

Reading this post last month from bon I never felt closer to encapsulating the gratitude I have for discovering this communications space back in 2005. To have intersected the dialogue to help me through instead of books or kaffeeklatsches.

I wrote on that blog post this comment.
Six.

With that — and the teeth, like you say, all the stuff of babies’ and their human making falls through fingers. At six the squeeze of babes we were so responsible goes away somewhat to a more horrible frustration of the independence we crave so long for them. It has been a tough, aggravating year… The sort of year I pined for a time when my arms ached for hours of feeding and calming and unending latching of me and her (then him). I was so tired then. I thought this would be the dream, something easier. Let them walk. Feed themselves. Tell their stories. But wrong I was.

Weaning and teething -- I have been known to harp on my friends. When they fuss about the right pre-school, or daycare space or sleep routine I remind that these children will be our children all our lives. But that said from a certain age their stories are no longer our stories. And when I watch these children make their stories unfold I am glad I do it on the foundation of parent storytelling.