"Work-life balance." While the phrase is meant to describe a healthy approach to doing both things well, for me it calls to mind the image of literally — and constantly — weighing one against the other. Is it more important if I miss this meeting or miss kindergarten field day? Shift the weight. Work late with the team or get home in time for dinner? Shift the weight. Spend dinner enjoying the macaroni or glancing at email on the sly? Nudge the weight. "Work-life balance" means work and life physically work in opposition to each other. The demands of agency life, even an agency as generous as mine, made for constant trade-offs that seemed out of my control. And for us, it hasn't been...working. So I've decided to throw out the scale and erase whatever artificial boundary separated work from life. It was a blurry line to begin with — every facet of my life informs my work; my work (when it works) is inspiring, joyful fuel for my life. Becoming my own boss gives me better control over both. Forgive me while I hunt for a better analogy here: levers? hoses? I'm not sure how to describe this new version of work/life but the goal is certainly more "and" than "versus." Stay tuned. And I welcome any wisdom.
Nose in a Book
Lu finished the chapter book she checked out from the library on Friday...on Friday. Her Saturday treat: a trip to Half-Price Books for her to buy more of the same series. Tonight she fell asleep lying on her right side with an open book propped up by her left arm. My girl.
Graduation Day
WARNING: CORNY Today was my last day at T3, the place I've worked for 12 years and 267 days. T3 has been as much a part of the "Kate brand," as my boss Jay would say, as any other aspect of my adult identity. T3 was the setting of many of the major events of my life: two of the bricks Jason sent me during his elaborate proposal were delivered there. When I went into labor with Lucy, I stopped by the office before we went to the hospital (still had some stuff to wrap up, naturally). As infants, both Lucy and Milo were raised by the village that is T3. It has given me so many amazing friends. Oh, and I learned to do advertising along the way. I grew up there.
And yet, as grown up as we think we are, we keep growing still. So I have graduated — to a new life of freelancing. I am stepping into it with all the excitement (and fear) that any new graduate has, both feet moving forward, but allowing myself a few wistful, grateful glances over my shoulder at where I've been.
Tell Me the Story of Your Life, Part 2
I love the moment, in passing or somewhere in the interview portion of the evening or even in a movie, where I discover something truly surprising about someone. You don't know me: you think I am a ______, but really I am a...blue belt in judo! Accomplished belly dancer! Mountaineer! Cellist! These moments can be the stuff of spy fiction, but they happen in real life too. Like when my friend Pie, someone I like to think I know quite well, totally moved and surprised me with her cello choir concert on Saturday. I knew she was rediscovering the cello, taking lessons, practicing with the choir. I'd even heard her play some on her own and with the burgeoning family band (longer, later post here). But I didn't really understand her secret cello identity until I heard her play with the cello choir. It was as surprising as if she'd given a speech in Farsi onstage. It was stunningly good, all those strings together, Pie a part of them.
So. Please, stun me, tell me more about your surprising self because it wakes up my capacity to live bigger, to show up to my life in more ways. Even if I am a little tone deaf.
You Know Summer is Over When...
...Lucy throws a shoe and a few other things at you and says, "I hate you again, Mom, just like I did earlier. You are the worst." I just continued making cookies, which is a better reaction than the time about 30 minutes earlier when she also hated me. She has been a shrill, angry wreck since we got home from El Paso: the victim of too much fun and not enough sleep, and maybe some nerves about first grade thrown in to season the furious stew.
Surely tomorrow will be better. Or least someone else's problem for 8 hours or so.
Vacation
When I tell people I am spending my vacation in El Paso with my in-laws, I get pitying looks. Is it the "El Paso" or the "in-laws" that draws such sympathy?
Let me speak in defense of both. Coming here (where I am as I write this) is relaxing, in some way more relaxing than all but the most tranquil, lie-around-and-do-nothing beach vacation (the kind we don't go on because we like to do things). There are no sights we have to hustle to see (just some family to visit). There are no fancy restaurants to get into (just various local cuisine to sample, much of it made by Grandma herself). And unlike being at home, there are no house projects, no laundry, no busy social life. Just a swimming pool and plenty of free time.
Oh, and I like my in-laws. They are fabulous hosts. They love my children. They appreciate me. They are thrilled we are here. And did I mention the swimming pool?
Oh. Hi.
The whole life is under repair here in Suganaholand. Traveling. Changing. You know. Some recent progress: • Lucy can put together the entire Mousetrap game with only muttered adult encouragement. (This adult can only mutter encouragement, as she herself cannot put it together.) • Milo can blow kisses. • Jason and Kate can still shake it at a (totally freaking fabulous) wedding.
More later. X to the O.
Biter
Did you start laughing the moment you read the title of this blog post? It's not funny.
It's not funny when your son is either so impressed or pained by his new teeth that he bites anything within an inch of his mouth. The spoon or finger you are feeding him with. The fleshy part of your thigh as he pulls up on your leg. The arm of another child who happened to reach past Milo's face (this generated an "incident report" at school). After he bites you/something, he grins as though to say "The world is so DELICIOUS."
It's not funny.
Did You Know...
...that Lucy has so many great ideas that people are ALWAYS trying to copy her? Like, one time she had a great idea for a special superpower, and ten or eleven other kids wanted to pretend they had that superpower too. Only, she can't remember what the exact power was. Just that it was really good.
Naughty
Milo is learning to be bad and mad. He crawls around trawling for the tiny, the sharp, the swallowable. When he finds it — which he always does, because all of Lucy's favorites playthings are tiny, sharp, and swallowable — he will show it to you triumphantly, put it in his mouth, then motor away. Today I fished a dime out of his maw and he screamed furiously. I told him what a bad baby he was and then smooched his neck till he laughed and laughed. Some scolding. But he really is pretty naughty.