The Working Mom

Life is seriously kicking my butt right now. There was the pre-vacation work panic, the vacation “I refuse to turn on the computer except to play facebook games”, and now the post vacation work panic. There’s actually posts floating around in my head.

There’s a post about how I skied last week – Sometimes ok, sometimes not ok. Sam crashed into me once and I fell. And cried. I thought about quitting. Then I didn’t and I went back for more punishment on the slopes. Now I want to go back for another lesson now that I have in my mind what I need to improve on (aside from steering clear away from Sam when he skis!!) FYI – he’s a bit of a daredevil – skiing backwards, through woods, etc. My daughter too. Oy.

There’s a post about some cool iPhone apps. That one I will definitely be making.

There’s another post about some cool products I have – I even have a giveaway to uhm… give away. Yeah. Words aren’t working for me at the moment.

There’s a post about how work is great, I’m not even advertising, but still people are finding me. In fact I think I may have too much work on my plate. (Maybe I need to charge more?? Or will that scare too many people away? LOL)

There’s a post about how despite all the exercising and dieting I’m a bit discouraged with my appearance at the moment and am tentatively investigating… something. Surgery? Tummy tuck? Mini tummy tuck? Laser something? I don’t know. Between kids and weight loss, I have… skin. How do you loose skin? It’s not fun, and it’s not really all that fair. (I know, life isn’t fair. I’m nearly 40. Maybe I should give up my dreams of wearing a bikini. I never have – I guess I never will) The cost is kind of prohibitive from what I’ve been able to gather – and really ANY cost seems so vain. The whole thing is so vain. I have a voice in my head that yells at me for even thinking about spending money on something so selfish. The money should either go towards my kids education or retirement. Anyway… I’m still looking.

That’s all there’s time for now. More to come once I dig out…

Why is it that just to take a week off requires several weeks prior of insanity. I’ve easily gone a week without anyone contacting me here and there, or with clients forgetting to get me stuff. But as soon as I say the words “I’m going to be taking a few days off” it’s like I’ve just told them I’ll be gone for several months and they’ll be on their own. My brother and his family are coming into town and he’s rented a townhouse up in the mountains for the week. So this was part of the push for me to learn how to ski this year, because I wanted to to be able to ski with everyone.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. The Pre-vacation Panic. It sounds like it should be some kind of line-dance. I’ll bet it looks alot like people running around and bumping into each other and getting knocked out. At least, that’s what I’ve felt like I’ve done at the end of each day.

I was given the opportunity to review a new book that will be coming out, and I thought I’d break from the standard here and ask a friend of mine to help me out and write the review for me:

The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey: How to Be Happy and Successful at Work and in Life by Simply Changing Your Mind.  By Barbara Burke.  Northfield, MN: Front Wheel Learning, 2006; pp. 1+138.  $16.99 softcover.

Reviewed by Katherine Weinstein, Ph.D.

It’s no secret that customer service work poses its own special challenges on a very personal level.  Assisting disgruntled customers on a nearly daily basis can test and even dishearten the most positive and stalwart employee.  Barbara Burke’s The Napkin, the Melon and the Monkey provides both helpful advice to lift the emotional burdens of stressed employees and guidelines for better communication in the workplace.

Burke’s sage advice is packaged in the story of Olivia, a struggling customer service rep at a power company, and Isabel, the wise co-worker who takes her under her wing. Under Isabel’s guidance, Olivia learns to emotionally step back from stressful situations and have a SODA—Stop, Observe, Decide and Act. She begins by taking time every day to mentally “unplug,” and finds that the daily breaks help her to find calm in the middle of workplace turmoil.  Once Olivia is able to stop taking her customers’ angry outbursts personally and actually helps them, her life at work and at home takes a positive turn.

The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey is jam-packed with Olivia’s 22 “aha!” moments which are repeated over and over throughout the book.  These include nuggets of wisdom such as “A simple apology works wonders” and “Winners don’t just point out problems.  They fix them.”  According to the book’s cover, the author has a customer service training program that incorporates the lessons of the book.  You can almost see the Powerpoint presentation in your mind as you read along!

Burke’s book clearly has value as a tool to help employees communicate better with difficult customers and deal with the emotional stress of their jobs.  However, some of the books “aha!” revelations are of the pat variety you might find printed on an “inspirational” poster next to a picture of a waterfall—ie. “Real freedom comes from letting go of the outcome.”  The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey gives us a laundry list of such platitudes, but doesn’t always show how to apply these concepts in everyday life in a meaningful way.

Holidays are especially rough when you don’t live near family. You look out the window and see that everyone’s driveway in the neighborhood is full with visitors. Meanwhile, your house is nearly empty. Just a tad bit depressing. My parents know this, so whenever they can, they try to spend some of the holidays with us. So I’m really glad they’ll be coming for Thanksgiving this year. They won’t be able to stay too long, just the long weekend – but I’ll take what I can get!

My mom usually cooks dinner – even if it’s at my house. I don’t mind. I’m not the greatest cook, so my daughter and I act as her “sous chefs” But because they won’t be here until the night before Thanksgiving, I’ve been tasked with going out and getting all the ingredients. As fate would have it – I just haven’t had a ton of time to get out and do this task and have scheduled to do it tomorrow morning. Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving.

I know, I know… it’s going to be insanity at the grocery store. I’m just hoping that everyone else in this town is more organized than me (which is probably not too far from the truth). I DO at least already have the turkey! It’s been sitting thawing in the Fridge – so I’m not completely out of my mind. (I already made that mistake one year. If I recall correctly – we had to try to “quick” thaw the turkey with hot water. NOT an easy task with a huge turkey!!) But the rest of the ingredients are staples that I just can’t expect to suddenly disappear from the shelves. Green beans? Sweet Potatoes? I don’t really want all this food sitting around my house until we need it. We don’t have room!

Maybe this will be another year a “lesson” is learned. I’m hoping not. Either way, the available time just isn’t there.

In any case, I’ll be enjoying company the next few days. (Hopefully with all the food we have planned! LOL!) Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Sam’s been gone for over 10 days now on a business trip. The schedule we have now, though, demands that I need help. However, we have, once again, lost another babysitter. (long drama-ridden story! OY!) So, I had to go it completely alone while he was away. In some cases that meant literally needing to be in two places at once, with those two places being a good 40 minutes apart. That was not a good day, let me tell you!

I’ve said it before (on my old, archived blog) and I’ll say it again. You single moms – I don’t know how you guys do this without help. You must be super-woman or something, because I am counting down the minutes until I can catch a break!

But in the end, I survived. I managed to to be in those two places 40 minutes apart – nearly at the same time. Even when the universe kept throwing even more unexpected obstacles in my way. I did it. And even though the house is thoroughly trashed at this moment (and I have 0 interest in picking any of it up), I am much less stressed than I was at the start of this adventure. (Maybe it’s the knowledge that the worst is behind me!! LOL! Who knows!)

We’re in the middle of getting the closet worked on – so my week included having an electrician come and rewire the cable we found that was stapled to the wall of the closet (that was apparently the only source of DSL for the office), and then a painter coming in to strip all the existing hardware out of the closet, including the baseboards, then clean it up and paint it. Zach’s day care was closed on monday, so I couldn’t work that day, then on Tuesday my email died thanks to Postini. My clients contact me via email for projects they want me to work on, so nothing came in until late that evening – and then it came flooding in – so I was desperately trying to play catch up the rest of the week.

Yeah… it’s been fun.

In any case, life returns to normal come monday. Whatever “normal” is…

You can’t have success without failure. It’s not just that success wouldn’t taste so sweet – it’s that you wouldn’t know it when you landed on it if you didn’t know what it was like to be somewhere else. It’s good to fail once in a while. Just because you fail once in a while does not make you a failure. (Obama says so! And it’s so true! By the way, I love that speech he gave.) What defines a person is what comes after that failure. How do they recover? Do they shrink and hide away? Do they become the failure? Or do they rise above and conquer it? In conquering this “failure” – the failure ceases to be a “failure”, and instead merely a stepping point. A stone from which to rise above and become better.

So why all this talk of failure? Well… yeah. I was able to maintain my weight for a few weeks. I did a pretty good job at it too – but then work consumed my life and exercise drifted into an afterthought, and then I spent a week eating and eating and eating. While I didn’t really gain a significant amount of weight (maybe 2 lbs?), the “habits” and healthy lifestyle I worked hard to build into my life dropped into oblivion. I’m not ashamed. I saw it happen. I let it happen. I’m not even sure what I learned from the experience. At least at the moment, I’m not sure I see a lesson in all this.

The end result, is that I’m ready to get back on track. I need to get running again. It’s been weeks now. I need to get logging again. It’s been weeks on that too. That lion has his eyes on me… and he’s looking hungry.

Finally tracked down our elusive babysitter so that Sam and I can escape tonight for some alone time. There’s been about a million things I keep meaning to tell him, but someone always interrupts, the phone rings… something happens and I never get to finish my thought. But finally, tonight, there won’t be anyone else to bother us. It will just be him and me. And I can sit across the dinner table from him, peacefully without any interruptions … and completely forget all the things I had meant to tell him throughout the week. =sigh=

Seriously, with mommy brain, how am I supposed remember these things until date night??

I was going to pull a late night tonight and try to get a lot of things that have piled up on my todo list out of the way (it’s going to be another crazy hectic week)… but we went to a BBQ today (which was totally fun!) and now I’m totally wiped. It’s only 10:45pm. I don’t see myself staying up past midnight… =sigh= Maybe I’ll be able to squeeze in some work-time tomorrow. This to-do list is never going to be a done-list. :/

There seems to always be discussion about the “mommy wars” – the stay at home mom vs the working mom. I have seen threads where these debates can get pretty downright mean, but to be honest, those virulent conversations I’ve found are the exception, not the norm. The majority of these external conversations I’ve seen are women telling other women to “make the right decision for themselves and their families.” A lot more women understand that everyone and everyone’s family is different. But the sensationalism of a “mommy war” sounds so much more interesting – so that’s what the magazines will try to sell you. This so called “war” still rages, but I think the reality is it takes place within ourselves. It’s hard to be 100% happy in the path we’ve chosen because it’s always easier to look at the greener grass on the other side.

For me personally, I am content in the path I’ve chosen but only now after I’ve given all the other paths a try. I was, at first, a full time working mom. Rachel went to daycare at just 6 weeks old and I returned to work. We did that for a number of years. Then when I got pregnant with Zach, I quit everything and tried being a stay at home mom. As he got older, I started working from home. So now I’m straddling the fence. I work full time from home. This has the best balance for me.

That’s not to say that I don’t still often question if I’m doing it “right”. I think I’m doing it the best way I can. Every path has it’s pros and cons. When I was a full time working mom, I was making more money, I had a steady paycheck, I was advancing my career, I had better health insurance. BUT if my daughter was sick, I had to somehow get myself out of work without getting into trouble to take care of her. I missed being with my daughter and felt like the weekend wasn’t enough time. When I was a stay at home mom, I was with my kids all day, we didn’t have to pay for day care. BUT I felt like I was losing a very important part of who I was, I felt like I needed more mental challenges and I missed the feeling of being able to contribute financially to the stability of my family. What I’m doing now, I can be home if my kids need me, but I’m still getting the mental workout I need. I’m bringing in my own money. BUT there is a downside to this too. I’ve talked before about how this life is every bit as hectic as the full time working mom life. In some ways more hectic. I’ve talked before about how I am walking a fine line next to burning out. Here’s a perfect example: On Thursday, I was cooking a fever of 102, sweating and chills, and I’m sitting in bed on my laptop trying to finish a project for a client because *I* am their resource. And unless I want them to dump me and find someone else, I need to do the work, sick with the flu or not.

I read on someone’s blog about how the blogger was a working mom and absolutely hated it. If you’re in that boat, then you need to step back and evaluate what can you do to make changes to live a life that you can tolerate. It won’t ever be perfect – but if you absolutely hate it, then this does not sound like a decision that is “right for you and your family”. You may not have the option of being a stay at home mom, or it may require changes in your life that you’re not willing to make. But that’s the tradeoff I guess. I was originally a full time working mom because I thought I didn’t have a choice. We lived in a very expensive state, in a very expensive house. (I LOVED that house. It was the house I dreamed of living in my whole life. I still mourn the loss of that house to this day!) But there are always choices. It just might be that you’re not willing to accept the alternative. Yet.

We struggled to get pregnant with my son, and when we finally did, after what we’d been through, I was willing to accept any alternative to avoid going back to work after he was born. Years of trying to get pregnant, only to hand him over to daycare at 6 weeks old? No freaking way! So we gave up living in the expensive state. We gave up the house (=sniff=), we gave up living near family (=BIG SNIFF= this is definitely the hardest part!!) and moved to a less expensive state and a less expensive house so I could stay home. (At least for that first year) The life we’re living now is definitely not perfect. I still worry if 20 years from now, will my kids be in therapy talking about how their horrible mother spent hours on the computer doing web design instead of sitting next to them on the couch watching Wow Wow Wubzy. But I think my working is good for them too. I can see that my daughter is an extremely bright little girl. I want her to see that women can have a family and a career. I want her to go on and do things that challenge her and help her grow, even as an adult. Even as I am working, I am teaching my daughter about being an independent and strong woman. Since I work from home, every day is bring your daughter to work day.

This is just me explaining my life and choices however. I have a number of friends who are stay at home moms or fulltime working moms and who are perfectly happy in that choice. They are teaching their children, just as much as I am, the same lessons. Do what is important to you. Do what will make you happy and what will work with your family. Life is all about choices, trade-offs, compromises. End that war raging in your own mind and be happy.

I got a big pile of work dumped on me last week. I worked over the weekend, including the evenings. I’m kinda freaking out because it’s just a LOT to get done. I don’t have any doubt I’ll be able to do it – just not sure what it’s going to cost me in terms of time and sanity.

Some people say they don’t know how they’d get anything done working from home – that there’s too many distractions. For me it’s the opposite. I have a hard time focusing on anything else when there’s a big to do list on my desk. So instead of taking the night off, I’ll just keep working. Or even if my brain is fried and I really can’t focus any more, I’m still at my computer, attempting to get some of the work done. (Of course, the problem is that there is always more work (a good thing and a bad thing) – so there is always a to-do list. It never really goes away. So I never really just stop stressing about it)

I was supposed to go to the gym last night and do the weights (which is hard to get motivated to do in the first place) but I didn’t go. I did run on Sunday, but the whole time I was running, I was stressing out about the work I could have been doing. This is the slippery slope that got me into trouble the last year – almost right around this same time. I stopped working out, and I stopped my diet – and BAM! 10lbs later… Some people go to workout to help them relax and “let go” of work – and if my to-do list isn’t too long, sure, I can do that too, somewhat. But right now? Working out is incredibly stressful.

Still, every day I don’t workout brings its own stress. Especially given the fact that this past weekend I wasn’t as on target as I could have been. (Yeah, there was that whole bottle of wine incident). So, there’s an Aqua aerobics class tomorrow – no better time to try something new than when I’m super stressed out and feeling very unmotivated to exercise!!