Free Day

Yesterday was my Free day. My day for doing whatever I want, whenever I want. Usually it's also the day I get the most work done. Most of yesterday I spent working, with a bit of shopping thrown in.

Two interesting things of note.

The first was a conversation with a colleague, Jay G. He is a former entrepreneur interested in motivating other entrepreneurs to strive to become more socially and environmentally responsible. His idea is to create standards of practice for companies (like the CERES standards or Global Reporting Initiative standards in that they are for companies as a whole), but that act more like LEED standards, in that they are voluntary certification-like guidelines and operate through a self-nomination and licensing structure. The interesting part of it is that if you meet enough of the criteria, you get certified to use a logo, kind of like a UL-listing, that enables customers and other stakeholders to recognize you as a "B-corp," or a for-benefit corp. I think it's an ingenius way to get people to appreciate the kinds of amazing things companies can do behind the scenes, without getting bogged down in detail. They've also done some legal work to get some language used in corporate charters that would allow and actually force boards to consider social and environmental ramifications alongsided fiduciary obligations. They've been putting this together for over a year and are about to become incorporated as a 501(c)3. Good stuff all around. They're sending more info soon on their classification system. I can't wait.

My second substantive experience happened by accident. After dinner and a quick jaunt at the library to pick up a book on HOLD, I decided to stretch my legs and walk around downtown. Imagine my surprise to find a film festival just getting started and one ticket left to a documentary on Iraq that apparently was very popular at Sundance.

So, I bit. I bought the ticket and immersedd myself in thoughts about Iraq from 10 to midnight. The film was called Iraq in Fragments, and was a collection of three separate stories taken over several years, 2002-2005.

New York Magazine Review


Film Forum in NY's description:
"A stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of Iraq today, seen through the eyes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. James Longley's 3-part opus is a series of intimate, passionately felt portraits: a fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to a cruel owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied."

That sums it up well. There wasn't one overarching clear message. Except that maybe things are really a mess over there, for those trying to live their lives . Not very political and very little about our military, except in the footage, in which tanks and young american soldiers are sitting around in Baghdad, looking like time bombs waiting to explode. They look so ominous and dangerous, especially from the eyes of the boy in the first story. I had to keep reminding myself that most of them are farmboys from Kansas. But looking at the complicated culture they are sitting in, this notion is hardly reassuring. I am certain they are not trained to really understand these people at all. How sad.


I liked how this film puts you in the shoes of real people, made you go back and forth in your sympathies for them, and defies easy description. There were some interesting themes though. One was about fathers and sons. the first story was about a 11 year old boy (pictured at right) whose father was tortured and killed by Saddam, and who had to work to support his mother and aunt. His abusive boss became his new father figure, and his life was filled with so much instability he was doing the first grade for the 4th time, unable to read or write.


In the second story, the religious leader the filmmaker followed was the son of a much more famous leader. His father was fat and opinionated, but the son was lean, extremely articulate, and spent a lot of time behind closed doors as a democratic negotiator, urging the factions to come together and make sure their elections were democratic. I was totally in awe of their quiet grace (with a notable exception - public self-flagellation at group religious marches, to the point of some of the men being covered in their own blood, but I chalked that up to self-directed religious custom) . Until they took some merchants in the marketplace hostage with machine guns, abused them and held them blindfolded, all for selling alcohol in the market. No warning or anything.

The last story was the most bucolic and pastoral. The kurds are so grateful to Americans for keeping them from being systematically killed by Saddam, and this group lives so far in the countryside as to be unterrorized by the current American occupation. It was kind of the filmmaker to end with it, as it was easy on the spirit and easy on the eyes. The father wishes his son (who is blond and built and could be the next American hearthrob he is so goodlooking) could be more educated and have more opportunities than he did. The son feels obligations to keep the family business, sheep-tending and brick-baking, going. And we see he doesn't realize how lucky he is to be away from any city right now.

There's a great page on the film's website with James Langley's production notes about what happened behind the scenes.

One other clear message: the next generation of Iraqis is going to be affected by our actions there for a VERY long time.

Equity After the Kids?

So, is it possible to have equitable division of home and childcare labor after having children?

I poked around today and found that many women blogging seem to think not. And are peeved that even for highly educated career-oriented women, it just doesn't seem to happen.

The most referred to book on the topic seemed to be: Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power, by Rhona Mahony, reviewed here.

The review states:
"Mahony argues that as long as women choose careers that don't maximize their earning potential and that give them flexibility, marry men who have more earning potential and less flexibility, and care more for their children as infants, they will always wind up doing more of the child care and housework."

So three potential whammmies: if you haven't already chosen a "primary earner" type career, OR married a man who earn less than you or has more flexibility OR you are better at or more experienced or devoted to children than he is, you will not achieve equity at home. That is quite a list. Breastfeeding alone would topple the odds within most couples. And then you pretty much have to start out as the primary earner between you. So whether you're my neighbor, a 20-something mother who's worked mostly as a waitress, or my former boss, a politician want-to-be corporate lawyer who would skip seeing her kids to pack in more meetings, you still get to face the lion's share of the work at home.

My old boss, is a very good example of this, come to think. She travelled the globe, earned over 500K per year, flew private jets, regularly was away from her two young boys from 5 am through 11pm at night (I know, because she was with me). She was also, ironically, rather famous for making some legal errors with her nanny. (Congress was unhappy about this and told her so, kind of publicly. Nannygate was the word they chose.) But I digress... And I remember, one day she had a phone call at work with her professor husband who was thus both more flexible and lessor earning from the list above. He was with the kids for the day and had NO IDEA what to do when her son almost suffocated from a peanut allergy, even though all the medicine DH needed was in a kitchen cabinet with typed up instructions. She flew out of her office into mine, nearly in tears: "Why does caring for the kids always all have to fall on me???"

No wonder this equity thing doesn't happen too often!

So, back to those of us in the less than 500K per year category. What do you do about this?

Well, here is a list of 8 tips of what to do to assure equitable division of labor with your husband. #6 is my favorite - choose the right guy! Basically, it says that being a full-time earner before you marry is NOT enough, and you have to consistently reframe and negotiate what working and earning money means.

And here is a response from Mary Tsao.

For a final installment on this topic, see Linda Hirshman's article in American Prospect, Homeward Bound, where she has named my notion that MANY women take years off from work to have children, the "drop-off story," and writes about it with unmitigating shock and surprise.

She asks:
"Why did this happen? The answer I discovered -- an answer neither feminist leaders nor women themselves want to face -- is that while the public world has changed, albeit imperfectly, to accommodate women among the elite, private lives have hardly budged. The real glass ceiling is at home."

Call it a glass ceiling (implying a societal dysfunction that penalizes women who try to move up), or call it a bunch of extremely high-achieving women (her sample is just these, unfortunately) who have decided that domestic life may be as important at times as the work they are being paid scads of money to do. This all may be about the inconsistency between corporate norms and expectations and the values of creating a healthy family. What if it turns out that the life feminists were viewing through the glass in 1960's is not all that great, we see now in 2006 that we've been invited in. It ain't what we hoped for. And after the mergers of the 80's and lay-offs and tech bust of the 90's, and the extreme pressues for quarterly earnings, blackberry-driven responsiveness, and globalization, this employee/employer compact really doesn't work so well, on a full-time basis, for most women with children. Hirshman never acknowledges this possibility.

Whichever way you state it, the point is that women are chosing to leave the workforce for a while. And that this is a completely different model than what the 1960's feminists argued and fought for, which her language of glass ceiling reminds us. It's not really about the ceiling if you're not pushing it or looking through it with envy. You're down by the window, opening it a crack to breathe in some fresh air, climb into the trees, explore places that are not run by corporate norms, and play with your kids for a while. And it may be for many that staying put in the company, or job-sharing or working part-time, or even taking a break from paid work, may be more consistent with your life values. And as a society we are truly unprepared to deal with this reality. Or support it, or reward it. What a shame.

And she has some rules too:
"There are three rules: Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, treat work seriously, and don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry."

There's other really provoking stuff in there. She's seems afraid that the dropping out trend will lead back to the pre-feminism days of being uninvited to succeed, or stuck in the dead end job. I'll stop here and just urge you to read it.

I don't think any of it is a solution to equity in childcare and housework, but I think the broader context of realizing that society (and those that reward the primary earners) does not understand or condone drop-out behavior, which might in fact be the most rational response to the demands of today's employers. And unless we see these pressures for what they are, how can we negotiate a home life that benefits all?

Studio Shot - 38 years, 1 month

Mike got ME into the studio today, as a test subject for his blurry photo problem. I scrambled to comb my hair to get some new headshots for work. This, here with a modern crop,was my favorite.

Jake and I spent the day playing. This morning, he was happy as a clam in a gaggle of kids his own age at Abby W's for playgroup. He really likes this new group! And after lunch, we went to play at Jacki and Wyatt's house. Boy was that a successful visit. Jake broke into smiles the minute I told him we were going, while still in his crib waking up from his nap. Then the moment we pulled up into Jacki's driveway, I heard him extort: "Hi Wyatt!!" He had spied smiling Wyatt waving to us wildly from his bedroom window. He and Wyatt played hide and seek (Wyatt's refrain: "Find me!"), assembled a Thomas train track together, cooperated on a tractor/farm animal toy, and at the end of the visit, Jake gave Wyatt a huge hug and kiss. Wyatt ran back to his bedroom and they waved good-bye through the window again, repeating their "byes," until our car was out of site. I really enjoy talking to Jacki too. She is a delight, and alone with the kids we actually get to learn about each other. We MUST play with them again!!

Studio Shots - 2 years, 3 months

Here are some of Jake's studio shots from earlier today.

First, with a few of his favorite things.

Trains, Trails and Teahouse

So, Jake and I went for a morning trail walk this morning, near a barn full of old treasures. He really liked the tractor and train!








The sky was overcast, but the trail was bursting with fall color. We even saw 2 horses and their owners out for a ride.That red foliage up close was my favorite shot of the day:



Then we picked up Mike at home and went for brunch at a latino cafe in town.



The rest of the day was spent in Mike's garage studio, cleaning it up, getting the rugs down and the lights up to prepare for the week's photoshoots. We did one with Jake when he woke up and got some lovely shots, to come soon.

Dinner was pasta with pesto for us, chicken nuggets, ham and cheese for Jake. He ate pretty well, finally!

Boy the weekend went fast!

Morning Kayak

This morning I went kayaking on the lake. It started out very misty and romantic, and ended up clear and beautiful. What a pleasure, catching the foliage at the right time!

In other news, Jake is feeling better. We looked at the spider, and he was disappointingly common, with brown stripes. He had spun quite a lot of webbing insided his little plastic cup too - I guess he was REALLY hungry! We also took Jake to the doctor yesterday, a substitute older man we'd never met before, who assured us that this could not be spider bite symptoms, and it will likely blow over quickly. He also gave Mike deep, heartfelt compliments about his being such a great, concerned Dad. That was very kind of him, indeed. And Mike was very touched.

Jake has become our official Helper, helping us put together the new shelving for Mike's office. I had no idea he was so capable, but he kept track of all the plastic pieces and screws, handing me each screw on request and turning the screwdriver correctly every time. Today he and Mike put together another shelf unit and I heard that he got to hammer all by himself too. He loved it!

Polly and Alex

Got a great note from my friend Polly, who just moved to Toronto from Sacramento, CA. Here she is with her son Alex, visiting Niagra Falls a few weeks ago. She is looking for part-time work, she says, but not so seriously until after Christmas. Eric, her husband, got a university post there. They look happy!

Jake's First Photoshoot

These are photos that Jake took last week with Mike's now older digital camera. What a talent!

Brown Recluse

Jake woke up bathed in vomit this morning, only I did not know it. I went on a wonderful morning hike in the forest and meadowland park about 15 minutes from our house. Saw deer, squirrels and many birds. Wrote in my jounral, made new resolutions about food, exercise and weight loss, and felt very self-satisfied. Was on my way home to hit the computer for the first really good work day I've had in about 3 weeks when the phone rang. Mike called to tell me about Jake and ask if I could come home and watch him so Mike could launder all of the bedclothes and stuffed animals.

All day Jake told us about the stuff that had come out of his mouth, by coughing and making hand motions. By the end of the day the story including emphatic pronoucements that Daddy had cleaned it all up. Mike told Jake he could call for us the next time it happened, to let us know, and he nodded.

I ended up getting quite a lot of work done today, though I also added in time to give Mike some relief, and subtracted my plans to go into town and soak up some music. I also managed to clean out my car, call the dentist, and make cookies with Jake this afternoon, which he enjoyed thoroughly. And he even ate a few of them, making them his main source of protein (they contained eggs) for the day. He seemed fine, just was not hungry. He did have a new little red bump on his cheek, and in strong light, we could make out a small white pimple in the middle of it.

My poor child. We also found a scary looking spider in the bathroom during naptime, which had us both doing frantic internet research on what Brown Recluse spiders look like as well as their bites. They look like this:



Apparently they and black widows are the only poisonous spiders in this area. I shined a flashlight on ours, to see if he had the core identifying mark, an upside down violin, but he was not cooperating and went and hid underneath the bathmat, which freaked me out even more.

Had Jake gotten bitten and was vomiting his reaction? By the end of the day, it seemed not, as the recluse bites look really gruesome online.

So maybe he was bitten by a boring spider? I still have the one from the bathroom in a plastic container on my desk, in which Mike poked a few airholes. The website said recluse bites can only be identified if you have the spider, so we captured him earlier in the day when anything seemed possible. Maybe I will get up the courage tomorrow to open the opaque lid and check out his marking again. He looks like one through the plastic but apparently they are very hard to identify without a magnifying glass to count their eyes.

Oy vay, that will have to wait until tomorrow!

Parental Involvement

"Despite the surge of women into the work force, mothers are spending at least as much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago, and the amount of child care and housework performed by fathers has sharply increased, researchers say in a new study, based on analysis of thousands of personal diaries." said the NYtimes today. Read times article here

If you look closely at the chart, what they found is that mothers have replaced hours doing housework with paid work. They spend three times as many hours working and half as many hours cleaning. And they continue to spend about the same time with their children. Dirty dishes plus income = more time with baby, with appropriate gadgets (exersaucers, babybjorns, fancy italian strollers, etc.) to make it more fun.

The article goes on to quote at least one conservative source crowing about how smart women are to realize they need to be with their children, working or not.

And fathers? They seem not to have come to the same conclusion. Fathers, yes, have doubled their time with children, though it's only from 6% to 12%, but continue to spend only half as much time with the kids or taking care of the house as women do.

OK, so what does this all mean?

First, don't kids need Daddy time too?

Second, it means this feminism stuff you learn in college is all crap. Working women do all the stuff they did before, and more. Men do less childcare, less housework and work nearly twice as many hours as working women on average. They are still in primary wage-earner mode. The women are schizophrenic, trying to do three jobs nearly equally well, as the colored bars for 2000 show. But they are the supporting earners.

And also that very very few people experiment with other models, as we are doing.

Again, from the article:

"Over all, the researchers said, employed mothers have less free time and “far greater total workloads than stay-at-home mothers.” The workweek for an employed mother averages 71 hours, almost equally divided between paid and unpaid work, compared with a workweek averaging 52 hours for mothers who are not employed outside the home.

On average, the researchers said, employed mothers get somewhat less sleep and watch less television than mothers who are not employed, and they also spend less time with their husbands."

So it seems that working women have the toughest job of all. Less leisure and pleasure, more scraping by. I have to say this jibes somewhat with my view of Moms I have met here. Most of the stay at home moms, once they get into a groove, seem very organized and in control. They spend their days with the kids and take evenings to go out with the girls, scrapbook, and curl up with their husbands.

Maybe it's just me, but I never feel organized and in control. One missed nap and I have missed a call or a deadline. One extra bump in deciding with my husband who's going to take care of the kid, and I am no longer in the mood to write that draft. My husband and I do shifts with the child during the day and a lot of our work at night, and every once in a while we manage to watch the same show for 30 minutes together.

As with all of these studies I also wonder how many of these women working 20 hours per week have pre-school aged kids. My theory, completely unexplored, is that many women take a 5-10 year window to make babies and work less or not at all. Not many NY or LA women, to be sure, but certainly most other American women. How else do you get the 23 hour work week as reported above? Just imagine a work culture that would support women in doing so. Have a pay scheme for "0-5 Parents," that rewards them for job-sharing or part-time work. Give spouses who are working when the other is at home a bit extra during that period only. Extra pay, extra vacation time, you name it. Why? Well, for one, all the retirement calculators I've ever seen ignore the fact that women are the ones likely to live the longest and also the ones who are likely to take hiatuses from retirement contributions. They should let you schedule in your 5 years off, and calculate the effect on your money.

And because, god-*** it, children need some quality time with their dads too. And Dads should feel proud of their added family responsibilities, not ashamed of the extra time they need.

Our culture is a bit nuts.

Wheeee!

What did you do today, Mommy?

8:15 am: Pulled on warm clothes.
Kissed son hello.
Read Curious George, upside down.
Listened to The Three Little Kittens CD.
Put on clothes again, this time on squirming son.
Kissed husband hello.
Supervised breakfast of waffes, pancakes, bananas and cereal.
Kissed two cats hello and let them outside.
Put on an extra sweater.
Swept the back deck.
Replanted potted plants and brought them inside.
Planted tulip and daffodil bulbs in the front yard, with a little helper.
Fertilized the lawn with a spreader, with a little helper.
Made peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk (twice) and ate it in front of Baby Bach.
Changed a very full and stinky diaper.
Applied cream to critical area under said diaper.
Read son three stories and sang him two songs.
Kissed son for naptime.
Played with pictures and this site on computer.
Watched the end of a Season Two HOUSE episode.
Had a snack of tea and toast.
Cleaned the entire downstairs: dusted, wiped, polished, swept, mopped, vacuumed, and scrubbed.
Every five minutes ran back to stove to stir husband's simmering beef stew.
Thanked husband for mowing lawn.
Read one section of the Daily Progress.
Played Blues Clues and Mickey Mouse online games with son on laptop in den.
Washed son's hands before dinner.
Ate amazing beef stew with crusty bread and merlot.
Told husband how amazing stew was, in between bites.
Washed son's hands after dinner.
Spread legs standing as a bridge for son's zooming car on floor in kitchen.
Got husband to vacuum rug under dining room table by offering him the task of dish clean-up as an alternative.
Cleaned dishes and kitchen.
Thanked husband for vacuuming dining room.
Read the remaining sections of the Daily Progress, including comics.
Ran bath, lit candle, soaked, watched bubbles rise when jacuzzi was on.
Yelled reply to husband that yes there was chocolate upstairs to give to son as reward for peeing in the potty, and its location.
Dressed again.
Pretended to talk to son on phone at his pretend car wash/garage.
Read son three stories and sang two songs.
Put 2 ounces of water in son's bottle.
Kissed son goodnight.
Answered email, surfed web.
Watched Desperate Housewives, while reading Syriana reviews online.
Let one cat knead my stomach, her addiction.
Checked email again, surfed more.
Turned off all lights downstairs.
Took 5 vitamin C tabs, brought 5 more to husband in his office.
Kissed husband goodnight.
Wrote this list.
11:20pm

Look Ma, No Wrinkles!

This photo came in a forward from Josette, my French friend who lives in Turkey, today - I thought it was quite funny.

Jake and I spent the morning creating: making pancakes, painting magnets, decorating the front stoop and door with a scarecrow and halloween decorations, and listening to his Kindermusic CD together. The air was crisp and the sun warm and we both really enjoyed our domestic morning of calm.

After nap, Mike came with us to the small playground, where we bumped into Julie and her two kids. Mike tested his new camera again, so hopefully pix will come soon! Jake got very excited watching Meghan, 3 1/2, go down the covered slide, and ventured forth for the first time to go down, which he then did about 10 times. And he waved hi to every single kid that arrived at the playground - my little ambassador.



Mike chatted with Julie, learned she is originally from New Hampshire, and found her very pleasant. After dinner of turkey enchiladas for us and hotdogs for J, we all took a sunset stroll around the block behind our house. Jake learned the words "dead end" and kept repeating them the whole way home. He spoke back to "Baby E" the entire time he was watching it, identifying which lions and elephants were the mommies, daddies and babies. Delightful.

Jake spent his bathtime trying to blow bubbles with a very old bottle of bubbles and then used the bubblewand as a pretend recorder. He loved it when I wrapped him in his towel and called him a pretzel, and loved it even more when I told him I was dipping him in chocolate and that made him even MORE delicious.

He peed in his potty and asked for chocolate, the first time he's done that with me in a very long time.

A very calm nice day all around.

I'm off to go watch some DVDs, either HOUSE or Syriana.

Oh, and Mike and I found some good dates for the next grandma visit - got to tell her the good news!!

In the mountains

We spent today up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We were going to hike, but time was limited so we stopped at several lookouts on Skyline Drive and had a picnic lunch. It was about 40 degrees up there and quite windy – very cold! Jake loved it and Mike took many pix so they’ll be posted soon. Mike was tired and cranky the whole way up but seemed to calm down after lunch.

The view was mostly clear and it was very sunny and warm directly in the sun –and Jake loved watching the hawks circling overhead.

At one point he kept circling me with one hand brushing me as he went around singing “ee-eye-ee-eye-oh” in his halting soprano. So cute!

We made it home by 2 in time for Jake to have a 2 hour nap – a good day for everyone! Jake and I went grocery shopping when he awoke, and we saw two Mommy friends there. Dinner was garlic and parsley angel hair pasta with pesto sauce from Mona Lisa for us, and palak paneer, sweet potato fries and hot dog chunks with cheese sauce for Jake, finished with his favorite dessert: "blue ice," which is blue colored frozen ice in a clear plastic tube.

His ghost now has a name: Boo. Boo chased us all around after dinner and scared Mom and Dad terribly. When we turned it around and used Boo to scare Jake he shrieked and wiggled in horror just as we had done. What a good mimic.

At bedtime he fixed cars in his garage, collected ice drippings in small bowls he placed under Boo (who has a surface that looks a lot like ice), spoke to Daddy on several pretend phone calls to his garage customers, and told us he was putting his "money in the bank," when placing coins in his frog bank. It's like a switch turned on somewhere and the brain was just on overdrive.

I had one interesting work call today. With Camilla S. who is also a mommy working from home, now in NJ. She is consulting to large financial firms about environmental and social responsibility issues. She is completely impressive and it was interesting also to talk about her attempts to try to work full time with two small kids, and why she decided to give up the work. She kept saying she simply never saw her daughter, her second child, didn't know her, and decided to give up the high-powered corporate job to not miss her daughter's childhood. They moved out to the burbs from a 2 bedroom apt in Brooklyn when the daughter was born. She misses the city but the space and draw of a house forced them to move and they love being in a house with offices and bedrooms for all and a real guestroom. The town she lives in is very pricey so her husband must be high-powered as well. Always interesting to see more signs of the balancing act we all face!

Shopping Day

This is my happy boy, playing in the yard, while Daddy tests his new camera.

Mommy was out all day, doing conference calls from her cellphone and shopping for shelving for the playroom.

After trips to Staples, Walmart, Target and many other smaller stores, she was VERY tired.

She walked in with new shelves, a new sofa table, new bedding, new trash can, a new purse, halloween candy, notebooks, labels for the yard sale, a photo box, and 3 rugs. Good job, Mommy!



This is Jake telling Mommy that he wants her to come home so that they can plant bulbs together. He has been playing in the dirt, getting all ready!!

News arrived by email that Jen Z. had her baby girl today. All are well.

Mommy also brought home a small plastic ghost, who proceeded to say "Boo!" to Mommy and Daddy for about an hour after Indian dinner and before bath.

They were SO scared!

Balancing Act

I spent the afternoon with a new and very good friend of mine, who is freaking out, having 8-day long migraines, from tension and stress. She and her husband are fine-tuning the details of their new life at the Lake. They moved here so she, the main bread-winner, could work part-time and spend the bulk of her time with her one year old son. The plan was that her husband would find a job once here with full benefits, and then she'd start having their second kid. The plan has not worked as planned so far: her job is part-time, the only one he's found is part-time, and they do not either of them earn good maternity benefits, so she feels stuck. In addition, it emerged that she has not been paid in over 2 months and when she was her employer, a major university, paid her half of what they were supposed to. She loves her neighborhood and new friends but misses CA and they both dream of moving back.

I gave her whatever practical advice I could muster (including skipping her meetings to stand over the lowlife in HR who is not returning her calls about not being paid), but thought about it long and hard. It is so tough to balance work and family when your roles are untraditional. She was the main earner, so they moved for her, and the new model is that while here he would become the main earner. But without being sure he could find the perfect thing in our relatively small labor market, it's possible that he will not. And it's also possible that she will have to work more to get full benefits and more pay to make their desired scenario work of being here to have a second kid. Apparently, she might be able to work just one more day a week and get much better benefits. It might be worth it!

I fear that the work-family balancing act is all much easier for people where the father is the main earner and the mother either works some, fulltime, or stays home. When the mother is the main wage-earner, all the pressures are magnified. She must worry about money and children and not offending the spouse about what she needs from him all at the same time. This 60s liberalism we all grew up with is much harder in reality than it was in Bob Dylan songs!

This all makes me feel very lucky that:

1. Our scenario is working, so far, at least. We both work part-time and can afford it, and calculated very good benefits that we buy directly into our costs from the get go. And if we do decide to have another child, neither of us has to negotiate with anyone over maternity leave. We don't get paid for being off, either, but at least we seem to be able to stretch or shrink the work we do to fit the time we have.

2. My husband works entirely from home and can timeshift nearly every major task, making my part-time work and trips possible. I didn't quite realize how unique and helpful this would be when he quit his fulltime job at the end of my pregnancy. It is a coup to the balance struggle.

3. We are planners. It may have seemed to many as if we jumped before looking but in actuality, Mike and I ran many different scenarios before settling on this one. And we bought a house that was relatively cheap and financed it cheaply to make our plan possible. And we are trying to live cheaply too. Emphasis on the "trying."

Speaking of cheap, much of my day was spent unpacking my last boxes from our move, over a YEAR AGO, in preparation for a yard sale we want to have next weekend. Nice to find some things I really like, and nice to be able to part with many we do not need!

Communication Skills

My 2 year old is a proud member of the 21st century: he needs only a hint of technology to amuse himself.

He picked up a fake phone today in the car and had a very lengthy conversation with himself. He seemed to agree readily with most of what was said on the other end. He paused, looked around as if he were listening carefully, and then replied, "Yeah, yeah, …aaaaaaah! yeah, yeah." About 7 times in a row. It was a riot to watch in the rearview mirror. I asked him who he was talking to and like any good cellphoner, he ignored me completely and kept talking. He knows the rules!

In other random communication news of the day, I helped a lost dog find her way home this morning. Mitzi was dirty but had a collar and a pink bow pinned to her head. She looked like she'd been out all night and kept following me until I turned 180 degrees around and walked her all the way home.

In Kindermusik, Jake and I acted like jelly, wiggling and rolling on the floor. Later we rolled pizza dough, covered it with sauce, veggies, cheese and spices and ate our very nicely risen concoction (see Kneading post) for lunch. Mike sat admiring us and said he'd like to videotape us cooking, as we are so cute together. That was sweet!

I had a wonderful catch-up call with Jed Emerson this afternoon. Jed is the guru of social entrepreneurship, who's about to move in to a house 2.5 hrs away from civilization in the middle of Colorado. He's just agreed to reduce his hours working for a London firm specializing in social investment, to help some cavalier exInternet millionaire to develop sustainable ranches around Montana. The world is a very interesting place, and it was great to hear him sounding so grounded, literally and figuratively, I guess.

Later, my dentist told me I have dark spots that look like infections underneath BOTH of my root canals. Gotta get a real expert to take a look. And Mike and I had a glorious Cajun dinner and stroll on the Corner.

Kneading

Just spent the last 15 minutes doing something people must have done for hours over the centuries of human existence, but for which few of us now have time: kneading dough.

It is a surprisingly tactile and satisfying task. The lumpy mess of yeast, water and flour you start with becomes a smooth, elastic lump, that absorbs all the flour from your board, leaves your fingers clean, and gives you a sense of both creative and nutritious accomplishment in several short minutes!

Would that all of life's messes could be fixed so easily:

-got a lying, cheating husband? Add water, 1 tsp sugar and knead him (above the waist please) for 30 minutes, If he's still too lumpy, put him in the oven at 200 degrees for a warm up. He should come out pliant and will not rebound when you poke holes into him.



-got a crying baby? make a well in the middle of your flour mixture and pour the child in the center. slowly kneading her soft parts, avoiding knees, elbows and face, until she is rosy with pleasure.

***

Thing is, my last two doughs looked great, but did not rise. Today I used a thermometer when adding the yeast. Here's hoping for some expansion and some great pizza for lunch tomorrow!!

Stickiness

Today was my first full day back at home after 4 days in New York. It was, well, sticky.

Sticky fingers. This morning, Jake and I made pancakes. He wanted to make "Monkey Muffins," which is muffins with bananas, eggs, walnuts and chocolate chips, but the bananas were no more, so we I dubbed our apple, walnut and choc chip pancakes Monkey Pancakes and we made appropriate "eee - eee" noises while eating them. They were a hit, though by the end of breakfast we were all very chocolatey and very sticky.

Stick in the Mud. Mike decided to accompany Jake and me on our nearly weekly Sunday walk in the Park over on the Saunders trail up to Monticello. The parking lot was full, though, when we arrived and it had rained here for 3 days straight. We slid in the mud next to the paved area and before you know it, our Honda Pilot was sliding down the hill towards a paved ravine. One more foot and the car was going to turn over. We stopped, got out and Jake informed us we needed to call Bob the Builder to come help us.


We did not know Bob's number, but while on hold with AAA a wonderfully generous guy on his way to hike with his 3 year old daughter offered to come back with his 4 wheel truck and a chain, and he did so so fast we were able to get the Pilot out of the mud, park the car, and go on our regularly planned hike. All great, except that Jake kept lamenting that there had been "no Bob." We said, no, it was Jason today, not Bob, but weren't we happy that Jason helped us? Blank stare.

It was Mike's first time on the trail, and once we got to the covered, shaded part where the bridges start he marvelled at its beauty. It was an overcast day, cool and we hiked up at full speed with Jake in the stroller singing and babbling lightly, and then hiked down with Jake running at first, then walking, then, finally, after we fed our bread to the fish in the pond, sitting on the ground in the middle of the trail. We were all VERY tired and Jake skipped lunch entirely to make his way upstairs for his nap. Mike and I nestled on the couch together to watch a second season episode of HOUSE with Cynthia Nixon in it. She was great.

Sticky ghouls and ghoblins. Last but not least, it was Matthew C's 2 year b-day Halloween party. Woken early from his nap, Jake refused to put on his dragon costume, but liked the idea of being, yes, you guessed it, Bob the Builder, so we gave him a plaid shirt and a truck and some tools to hold ( he accepted only the truck), told him that from now on his name was Bob, which he repeated happily, and made our way over to the Clubhouse at the lake. The festivities were well underway - craft tables for the kids to do playdough, cover wooden houses with icing and candies, and stickers of houses, cats and ghosts to stick on paper plate wreaths. Huge frankenstein floats and jackolanterns and a huge floating haunted house outside. Jake and I ate about as many candies as we stuck on our haunted house. Jake also ate chicken, hot dogs and fries, and sang happy b-day to Matthew while Mike took some pix of the candle blowing by Matthew and his dad (see photo), and a good time was had by all. Jen Z. was running around (12 days to due date) looking like she was a huge balloon about to burst. Jake played with Aiden, Emily, Emeline, Sam, Connor, Matthew, and many other friends.

Dinner was breaded fish, corn and couscous and Jake refused to have any. He loved his bath, which he spent squirting water into his mouth and on his head, had a lovely naked run around the upstairs and went to bed quite happily.

Who's stuck now? Mike and I spent the bulk of the evening looking at photos he'd taken today and discussing our different approaches to cropping them. Finally, we got tired and stopped. That must mean we agree, right?

The Swimmer?

So, why do I call myself the swimmer here?

First, because I wanted my handle to not include my name.

Second, because so many of my roles right now are in relation to what I am to someone else: daughter, wife, mother, resident of, etc.

I wanted to choose something that refers to a skill and passion that is pure me.

Swimming is quite literally one of those. I swim several times a week (or intend to!). In winter I swim in the pool at the gym, in summer, at our lake beaches. I just recently took it up again (before my 2 year old son was born) from a passion that I had as a teenager, but had left behind in my rush to build my career in NY in my 20's. BTW, swimming pregnant was an unforeseen delight - I could feel my son as a baby moving from side to side in my belly as I stroked, and at each end of the pool, he and I flipped together. Best of all, I felt weightless every time I got in!

Just as importantly, though, for this evolving blog, swimming is a great metaphor for what I've done all my life: plunged into new cities, new cultures, new circles of friends, to breathe in and out, and make my way through a new environment, emerging often much stronger and with a new richness to the oxygen in my blood.

As Claudia said in The Mixed Up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler, one of my favorite books as a kid, she wanted to come back, not differently (as in by taxi instead of by bus), but different. That's what the best kind of travel does for you. It gets in your skin; changes the way you look at everything you saw so clearly before.

I guess I must like this feeling, of coming back different. I did it when I visited France as a teenager, living with a family for several weeks though I barely spoke french. I did it as a college student stepping from my comfort zone in a large northeastern city into the bucolic but quite stratified world of a large southern university. I did it when living in Strasbourg, France for my junior year of college, and then again while travelling through Yugoslavia, Portugal Alaska, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates in my 20's. I did it when moving to Washington, DC after college. And I did it three more times, moving to New York city when I knew no one, moving to Brooklyn, where I lived for 7 years, and moving to the far off suburbs in Setauket, Long Island. And now moving here, to central Virginia.

Each time, I note, the same coping skills have supported me. I observe a lot. I find a core grroup of interested and interesting folk to help guide me through the new norms and intuit new ways of acting. I do translations of what people say to what they really mean. Language is not the real barrier, I find; culture is. I try to keep my core values clear, but open myself to other contexts that drive to other ways of acting on values. I try not to judge immediately, before I decide what to accept and what to reject.

This new lake life is just another phase of that plunging in, I am sure. It is invigorating to feel the rush of the unfamiliar, and also reassuring to establish daily routines. What's different this time is that I have a partner. My husband of three years and I embarked on this particular pool together. We picked up our life, our incredible amount of stuff, and our year old son last year and declared we were moving for our quality of life. We both do most of our work virtually, so why shouldn't we choose a place we love to live and work?

We chose a place from which I can commute to NY in 3 hours, when necessary, but where housing, insurance, and health care were all half price compared to where we were. And we created a parenting model that I now see as much more unique than it seemed at the time. We both work, from home, and we both parent our son. As nearly equal partners, at least on the childcare front. Our paid work, we do separately, though I help him with his second business, a children's photography business, and he helps me with my consulting work by being my custom database programmer. But when it comes to Jake, we both do baths, we both dress and feed, we both discpline, amuse and get jumped on, we both get thrilled at every new word and new step and we both get very, very tired.

The good news is that my husband and I bring our routines with ourselves and our child wherever we go. We do our laps. We mark time. We laugh, love, cry, fight and stew. We lay awake at night, pondering. We sleep soundly, sewing the actions of our busy days into our dreams.

The challenge for me as a sole swimmer is that we are also doing all the new place coping for the first time together. One could say we found an incredible child-friendly community and we have lots of new friends. One could also say we are new york liberals in a conservative southern culture that can be quite conformist. We try to focus on the former. We observe others and try to take the best of what we see and make it our own. We put up walls against values and behavior we do not approve of or want to bring into our lives, without even trying.

We admire this particular piece of the earth and the incredible natural beauty it brings to us every day. We take notes on the things that don't work so well and intend to incorporate them into the list of don'ts for the next gig. We try to live in the moment as much as possible, to enjoy the bliss of watching a young child grow. Isn't that what we all yearn to do, whatever we do, wherever we go - enjoy the good moments?

So anyway, when I met my husband, even though he grew up on a very large island (Long Island), I was amazed to learn that he had never learned to swim. The first summer in our home there I taught him to float and swim in our pool. I can safely say he is learning and I am relearning how to do a double stroke in a vast new pool.