Self-Made Mom

Lisa Belkin (I feel like I keep quoting her) in today’s New York Times brings up an interesting point about working: can wasting time actually be productive?  She says:

Over the years I have come to see that the hours away from the writing are the time when the real work gets done. When a paragraph turns itself this way and that in a corner of my brain even while my fingers are buying books on Amazon.com. What appears to be wasted time is really jell time.

While I like the concept, and have come upon many good sites for those who want to kill time at work, I am not sure the argument for wasting time at work applies to me.  Why? Because I’m a working mom.  I feel like I don’t have time to waste time.

When I’m in the office, I’m constantly on the go, trying to accomplish all my tasks into a 24-hour work week. (I think my lack of time wasting is exacerbated by my part-time schedule.) If I don’t get my stuff done by Tuesday evening, well, I’ll be working at home on Wednesday, when I’m off of work.  My Thursdays are like a mad race to the finish line.  Gotta. Get. It. All. Done. Before. 5:30 p.m.  Or else? I’ve got a long weekend ahead of me.  And neither the husband nor the kiddo will appreciate me hovering over my laptop on a sunny-ish (I live in Chicago, remember?) Sunday afternoon. 

I’m not complaining here, just relaying life from my vantage point.  My friend who works full-time recently lamented about the coworker who actually thought she had time to stop and dawdle at Starbucks on the way back from work.  The horror! 

But the more I think about it, my whole “no time to waste time” motto may make a good case study for those women trying to get flexible work schedules.  I’m quite efficient in my shortened work week.  So much though, that a client even said to me today, “I don’t even realize it when you’re not there.” Imagine that!? Perhaps it’s that I have understanding clients (and colleagues), but more likely it’s that when I’m at work I’m there to work.  I feel as if I’m not there enough to justify a little break here and there.  I constantly aim to be busy as possible to keep on proving that part-time schedules do (cross my fingers) work in some scenarios.  For most moms who work a full work week, I’m pretty sure any free moment they have in their day is spent with their kids.  Or running errands (after work) for their kids. I don’t know many working moms with time to burn.  

Whatever the case, I can really only think of one scenario where lolly-gagging away time at work may make sense.  A great sale at Nordstrom.  Now that’s worth a couple extra hours of work on a weekend.

Tags: Lisa Belkin, working mom, flexible schedules, flexible work arrangements, wasting time at work, mom-friendly companies

Nataly, over at Work It, Mom!, has started an interesting debate over women hiding the fact that they are moms at work because of the perception that being a mom will negatively affect their careers.  Part of the issue discussed is how one woman doesn’t want to be associated with a “mommy” site or “mommy bloggers.” Pshaw, I say. Anyone, client or colleague, who I tell about my blog thinks it’s cool that I write on the side. So I personally don’t get that.

But when Nataly asks,

how many of us are hiding in the closet and limiting how much of our “mom” life to include in our professional interactions?

it makes me think: am I too much of a “mom” on the job?

I personally shout my mommy-ness from the rooftops at work. I’m not obnoxious about it (at least I don’t think so), but I do tell clients and colleagues I have a “mom blog” and I do talk about the things that happen to me as a mom.  Like when I ran out of diapers and had to leave work early to go get some, which ultimately led me to taking a client conference call from home.  I shared that little tid-bit with my client on our call.  Since my client’s also a mom, she first laughed, and then said she could totally relate to my experience.  I think telling her this story made our professional relationship a little more personal and definitely made me feel better about running out of diapers!

Perhaps it’s easier to flaunt being a mommy at work when you work with a lot of women (and moms) as I do, but I personally think that being a mom actually adds to my character instead of detracts.  I’ve talked before about traits that I now have that I think help me be a better employee - I can multitask better and have more stamina than ever. 

Of course, I try not to let the minutae of mommy-hood get in the way of work, but it sometimes cannot be avoided. My son gets sick and occasionally I have to leave early.  But I believe being up front and honest will get me farther with my co-workers than if I try to cast my mom-persona to the side.  Maybe I’m being really naive or unrealistic, but I can’t hide it: I’m a mom now, and really, that’s the most important job I have.  I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Tags: Work It, Mom!, working mom, mommy wars

I’ve often complained to my coworkers about the dim lighting in our communal bathroom at the office.  The flourescent bulbs seem to be from an era past, casting my beautiful spring whites in nasty shades of yellow.  My skin, which is already sallow to begin with, seemed ever more orange in the atmosphere of the bathroom.  Which is why I was shocked to walk into work this morning and find that these tawny bulbs have been replaced with brighter alternatives.

Unfortunately, this means now I can see how bad I look by the end of the day.

I’ve ranted before about how difficult it is to get ready in the morning for work when you have a baby to contend with.  But now, I fear, my new foe is the brilliant bulb giving off its ray of fake sunshine in the loo.  It’s bringing out the very worst in my appearance.

See, 8 months into this working mom thing, I’ve got my morning routine down pat. As long as I can distract my son with an episode of Noddy or whatever is on at the early hour I get ready, I can apply my foundation semi-evenly and smear concealer onto my chin, where it seems I am reliving my adolescent youth.  A stroke of blush, some mascara, (permanent eyeliner if I am lucky), finishing powder and I am typically good to go. Fixing up my face is the last step of my morning routine and when I am finished, I usually do not take another look in the mirror.  There’s no time for hiding that one last freckle or wrinkle. I’ve got to get to work.

And when I’m at work, I’m usually too busy or too lazy to check on my appearance.

But by the time 3 p.m rolls around and I leisurely stroll to the bathroom to stretch my legs I am horrified at what I see.  My mascara is smudged, the pubescent acne spot (ok, zit!) is erupting and I have a sheen about me that reminds me why I never opted for the “dewy” look in the ’90s.  Yes, I could bring my powder compact to work. Yes, I could reapply concealer at the end of the day. But somehow, I always forget to do this.

At least there’s a bright side.  My son.  Thankfully, he doesn’t care how shiny, or matte or smudged I look at the end of day.  As long as I’m home in time to put him to bed, he glows like the brightest bulb there ever was.  And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Tags: working mom, office rants, getting ready for work

What do you do when your kid wakes up at the crack of dawn covered in yesterday’s pizza lunch, and your husband really needs his sleep?

You go to Target.  At 7:55 a.m.  And wait for it to open.

Stalking the security guard to open the doors.

And buy some useless things.

Bob the Builder and a cute cover-up really can cure a hangover.  Light bulbs, not so much, but I actually needed those.

Happy Sunday and Memorial Day.

Tags: Target, hangover, Bob the Builder

I always thought it is my job as a mother to protect my son. That was true until I met The Childproofer.

Not too ago, I began to realize that my watchful eye was no longer going to protect my son from all the evils of the world. Well, my home.

Until he started crawling, I never knew the dangers of ordinary household items. In a matter of weeks, the banal and boring became fun and exciting. Cabinets and drawers filled of kitchen utensils were a veritable chest of toys. Blind cords became ropes to swing from. You name it, my son was into it.

If you want to read more about my harrowing experience with “The Childproofer” read my online monthly column on NBC.5.com Chicago!

Tags: babyproofing, baby+proofer, child+proofer

I usually drive to work.  It saves me about 20 minutes on my commute, and I don’t have to deal with the public transit system in Chicago known as the “El.”  Or, as I call it, “the thing formerly known as the ‘El.’”  Because the El is different these days.  It’s getting a makeover.  More like a gazillion dollars worth of reconstruction, but a makeover nonetheless.  Many of us in Chicago have been dismayed by the El’s recent ongoing transformation.  Not only don’t the stations look as pretty, but the service and quality have been tremendously diminished.  There’s even a whole blog dedicated to the topic. 

Which is why it is strange that I voluntarily chose to ride the “El” to work last Thursday. It was a nice day out, and I had to stay downtown for an event after work and really didn’t want to deal with car-hopping from location to location in downtown Chicago.  So I put on my tennis shoes and headed out for my commute.

And it wasn’t that bad.

I thought for sure I would witness many levels of elbow-slinging and seat-stealing by riding the train at the height of morning rush hour.  But after I switched from the Brown to the Red line at Belmont, I actually got a seat.

To my surprise, an empty-ish El car.

And no man tried to take it before me.  I’ve written before that the El is not a chivalrous place.  And my other pregnant friends can vouch for this.  Tales of bumping and terrorizing pregnant women on the train abound.  But on my El ride I encountered none of this.

(I am going to regret writing this, deep breath).  My El ride was actually pleasant enough that even though it takes me longer to get to work I may ditch my car once in awhile and take the train to work.  Especially if I get to see a sunset like this on my ride home. 

So what if the river is dirty and cold?

That’s just something you can’t see while driving.

Tags: the+El, CTA, subway, commuting+to+work, working+mom

I’ll scrub your bathroom, I’ll mop the floor like Mr. Clean, but please don’t make me cook. I really don’t enjoy cooking.  And I wish I did, really.  I’m envious of those who enjoy a little sauteeing and flambe-ing.  But in all honesty, I’d rather dial than dice.

Which is why I’m a little dismayed at this blog post titled, “Are women responsible for obesity among children?” or mainly, are those women who work responsible for today’s fat youth?  According to Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s post, there’s a theory abounding “that when women started to enter the workforce en masse in the 1970s and ’80s, kids started getting fatter.”  The experts (I’m guessing it’s not Ronald McDonald on this one) suggest that because a woman goes to work, there’s no one around to make a balanced meal and to make sure the kid gets some exercise. 

I don’t believe for a second that there could be that high of a correlation between working moms and fat kids.  However, preparing my son’s meals are the one part of parenting I really struggle with.  Because I don’t like to cook, I am not that inventive with my son’s food.  If I can nuke it, great (don’t tell me Morningstar veggie sausage isn’t tasty). If I can get my tush to Whole Foods to get a prepared meal, even better.  I try to buy organic and healthy when I can, but if I’m rushing home from work to feed him dinner, I’m not going to cry over a 3-minute Easy Mac ‘N Cheese.  Especially when I end up eating most of it anyway. 

I hope that doesn’t mean that I’m going to get fat too.  I might just have to learn to like cooking after all.

Tags: obese+children, cooking, Sanjay+Gupta, Ronald+McDonald

As it turns out, the internet is a small, small world.  About as small as a game of Jewish geography.  Maybe it’s this way because I live in the Midwest.  More likely, is that I’m a yenta, and when something funny happens to me I like to gab about it.

So when, a couple of weeks ago, I got picked-up at Starbucks, I thought to myself, “I have to post about this random incident!” And, of course, I did. I even went so far as to publish the identity of the poor woman who I talked to with my unbrushed teeth. (I have since removed her name in the effort to not put her out there on the world wide web like I do myself. I guess I posted it too early in the morning for me to be thinking rationally.)

But what I didn’t realize was that someone out there knew exactly who picked me up at Starbucks.  Days later I received an e-mail from that someone telling me her small-world connection to my coffee shop encounter.  It was like one degree of internet separation.  The whole thing felt like destiny to me.  My nonfat-extra-hot-chai-tea latte had a broader purpose!

So I got the e-mail address of my future friend and we set up a play date last week at our local park.  It all seemed benign and meant to be. Our internet set-up was fate in the making.

And then the soy milk spilled.

Some women have martini playdates.  But I’m not that cool.  I brought only soy milk to mine. See, my son’s had a bit of a stomach bug of late and he’s drinking soy milk instead of his regular whole milk variety.  And it has thrown off my mojo.  It doesn’t smell the same and he doesn’t like as much as the full-fat counterpart.  And apparently, I can’t screw the top on those darn Nuby straw cups very well.  (They say they don’t spill, but I can attest, they do if you don’t get the top on it just perfect.)  And when it spills, it really, really spills. Everywhere. All over the bottom of my stroller and into my brand new diaper bag.

An empty sippycup and wet receiving blanket reminds me of drier days.

This all doesn’t sound so bad unless you realize that I had just received the diaper bag as a Mother’s Day gift 5 days ago, and I had to literally un-velcro the storage compartment underneath my Bugaboo to dump out the bag of milk. (It, like the top of the sippy cup, is very tricky to deal with.) The “oooh that’s messy” comment from an nosy bystander didn’t help either.

I can cry over spilt milk on my new bag.

I tried to keep my cool throughout the process of cleaning the Exxon-Valdez of sippy cup spills. But inside I was like that oil tanker plowing onto the reef.  A stressed out me about to collide with a happy and relaxing play date.

Luckily, my new friend was understanding of my situation and obliged to push my son on the nearby swing for the 25 minutes it took to make my stroller and bag look somewhat normal again.  As for me, there was no hiding of my soggy cover. 

If we ever get together again after the milk disaster I’m going to come better prepared.  I’ll hold off on bringing a drink. Unless it’s one that can make me more relaxed.

Tags: soy milk, martini playdate, cocktail playdate, Bugaboo, new mom friends

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article by famed “opt-out” author Lisa Belkin on ways women are re-entering the workforce after baby.  There really was nothing new or earth-shattering in the article that we didn’t already know.  Again, Lehman Bros. was mentioned as one company that’s really making an effort to re-hire women who’ve been out of the working world for awhile. (Did they hire E&Y’s PR person or something?)  I thought the article was pretty balanced, overall.

And then, this morning the Today show covered the topic again, first focusing on a group of women - one who works and doesn’t have kids, a SAHM and a working mom.  They were asked about their thoughts on their life, the usual stuff.  Then Ann Curry interviewed Belkin and author Sylvia Ann Hewlett who is coming out with the book, “Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Women on the Road to Success” about the topic.  

A few things struck me about the interviews with the women and the experts.  First, the SAHM, who has an MBA from Harvard mentioned that she probably wouldn’t have opted out of the workforce if she didn’t choose Wall Street and maybe worked in a different industry.  As we’ve all discussed and heard, this just isn’t true. Inequities and inflexible schedules are not industry specific. I work in PR and have a great work schedule, but many of my working mom PR and marketing compadres do not. 

And then Belkin made some interesting comments.  She said women don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, so it’s not like they pick careers that they think will be flexible when they have kids.  Good point.

But then she said that women should try to think about their careers and choices of on-ramping or off-ramping “strategically.”  I think I get what she’s saying (keep your toes in the mix if you can), but it seems to me that acting this way may pigeon-hole working moms and women without children into specific careers.  And If I heard her correctly (let’s be clear, I was trying to distract my son so I could watch), I think it all sounds a little backwards.  I’d rather see us pushing employers to make more adjustments for the working mother in the careers we want rather than us working moms making adjustments about what we want to do with our careers so that we can achieve the flexibility we desire.

Did that make sense? Because it doesn’t make sense to me why this all is still so difficult to achieve.

Tags: on-ramp, off-ramp, opt-out, Lisa Belkin, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, flexible careers, working moms

There is a movement taking over motherhood. It has nothing to do with staying at home or working, and everything to do with looking hot and loving it. Ultra-feminist at best, tacky at worst, the MILF movement is sweeping the nation. From coast-to-coast, online and off, mothers are trying their best at a chance to best to be sexy.

Two New York Magazine writers commented on this trend in a recent article. They question the movement and it’s timing “…why the hot mom and why now?”  I agree with their rationale that is has something to do with women having babies later in life and the need to rebel against traditional mommy stereotypes. I think we can all agree that there’s nothing sexy about June Cleaver.

Or me. I am not MILF-y.

I may be at my pre-baby weight, and I may not look a day over 28 (I’m hanging on to my twenties, here, people.) But I’m nowhere near the hotness of Stifler’s mom or Kathleen Clearly of “The Wedding Crashers.” I could never utter the words “kitty cat” with a straight face.  My chest is flatter than it was before I had my son and I only wear sweats to bed.  I’m about as hot as Dora the Explorer.  Thinking that I need to do something about my lack-o-sexiness, I decided to poke around town to see how I could improve my va-va-voom.  The results?  There’s lots you can do if you want to be a MILF in the Windy City.

• MILFs must have very toned abs.  I need to spice up my workouts a bit, so I might listen to the pro Chicago trainer Jim Karas and try his “cardio free” diet.  Or, I may just sit on my couch and watch the season finale of “The Bachelor.”  Both, I assure you, will be equally stimulating for my heart.
• I don’t have very many MILF-y accessories, and I like to shop, so I may stroll to The Pleasure Chest in Lakeview.  It caused waves when it moved to my ‘hood, but getting sexy without having to drive somewhere sounds very pleasurable to me.
• MILFs and strip teases go together like Barney and purple.  So if I want to get sexy, I’d better learn how to move my booty.  My friend tipped me off to Arabesque, also known as home of the burlesque dancer on “America’s Got Talent.” (You know you watched it too.)  What size pasties do you think I’d wear?
• Finally, every good MILF needs a pouty lip.  I’m all for the au natural look, and thanks to Annie at Time Out Chicago, I can get it with this incredible sounding new lip gloss.  Plus, it’s called Oxymoron, which is what me trying to be a MILF really is.

Tags: Arabesque, Cardio Free Diet,, MILF,, Pleasure Chest,, Time Out Chicago

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Cross-posted at Chicago Moms Blog. We’ve got some great stuff over there so now go on, get!