Daily Kvetch

Navigating Family

I don't have a big family.  Of course, as a child I took family for granted like most of us do.  Even though we lived about 2-3 hours from the next relation, my parents dutifully packed us up in the car and made sure we attended all holidays and family events for the grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins.

I never realized what a small family I had until my mom died, and how hard it is to maintain an active part in the world of the extended family.  My mom literally was the glue that kept it all together.  She remembered all the birthdays, anniversaries, and was sure to send cards.  She made regular phone calls.  She was the Wonder Woman of activity.

Me? Not so much.

What energy I have left after full time work and parenting is reserved mostly for my dad.  I talk to him a few times a week on the phone, this is made easy by the fact that he is trying to get off the phone as soon as he says hello.  It was always like this.  When I would call my parents I would talk to mom for half an hour and dad would come on for two minutes at the end and basically just ascertain that I was ok and then we would hang up.  Now all I get are those 2 minutes. 

We see him basically every 4-6 weeks and I try to organize those visits around something that might sort of entertain both him and the kids, it is not an easy line to draw.

My brother is active on FB so we mostly keep up that way with the occasional (every 2 months or so) phone call.  He is doing better but was in such a bad place for so long that I still have some residual panic after getting off calls with him.

Then there is B's sister and parents.  I try to keep up with B's sister and am sure to remember to send the gifts and cards to his parents but I wish B would take on more of a roll but sometimes I wonder if boys really know how?  That sounds terribly sexist of course but even when I asked my brother the other night if he had talked to our dad recently, he said it had been over a month.  This is significant because my mom really trained us to call home every week.  If we didn't, there was hell to pay, like she would call us at 6am in our college dorm rooms (back in the days before voice mail and silent ringers).

Now I have to represent my family.  I try, albeit not hard enough.  I suck at phone calls.  I can't get myself to make a call even when I know I should.  I try to keep up with FB and some emails, but sometimes that is just not enough.

My cousin, the one who bought a house recently, is getting married.  I held her as a baby and watched her grow up.  When she was a kid in MA and I was an adult in CA, I flew out to attend her Bar Mitzvah.  I searched for good air fare rates so she, her mom, and sister could attend my wedding in CA.  I paid for their hotel room while they were out.  I sent cash gifts for her high school and college graduations.

She is getting married in May and I recently discovered that we aren't invited. Why? Unclear, space I guess.  They want to cap it at 120 guests and we didn't make the cut.

I am having a really hard time not being upset at this.  I know I haven't been the type to call a lot but I can't help feeling gypped out of a happy family event when it has just been a sea of funerals the past few years.  She lives an hour away.  I feel like I can't say anything to her about it.  She is the bride, so I really want a guilt trip induced invitation?

I don't have a lot of family.  My kids don't have cousins.  Their aunt and uncle aren't really involved in their lives.  They had one grandparent who is functional (my dad). My aunt and uncle who are the most active in their lives live in Vegas and we see them maybe once a year.

Sometimes I wonder about various pieces of advice I will give them when they are older.  I think up there will be "try to marry someone with a large family." 

Packing Up is Hard to Do

Although the pessimist in me worries that something bad will happen right before closing (surprise, denied for a mortgage!), I am embracing life and moving forward as if it is all going to work out.  This means packing.  Now the last time we packed, my daughter was about 3 months old, both of us were unemployed,  and my parents basically moved in for a week to help us.

This time we are all on our lonesome and working full time to boot.  It isn't so easy on a pretty sunny weekend to try to pack when your kids need to be attended to lest they waste away in front of a TV.

Plus, the arthritis in my back is acting up a bit and B has had a number of bad allergic attacks since we started unearthing things to pack.  This led us to perhaps one of the most indulgent decisions and hired the movers to in fact pack us up the day before.  Oh, we are still trying to pack what we can since the quote for packing was about $1k.  If we can lower it by half we will be psyched.  Yet, it takes the edge off to know that what we can't get done in time will be taken care of.

Of course I have to pack up the valuables and the unmentionables.  (Don't mention them!)

As the time approaches, I just can't really wait to move.  I never realized how small and cramped this place truly was until I knew I was for sure getting out of here.  We are moving from 1k square feet to 1800 sq feet. 

I also can't deny that certain things just seem to be working out.  A former colleague who happened to remember my talking about wanting to buy a second hand electronic piano contacted me out of the blue to see if I wanted to buy hers.  She is selling her own home (in the town I am moving to) and moving to a small condo right in Boston.  She needs to get rid of a house worth of stuff, including things like a lawn mower, patio furniture, AC untis, a dehumidifier, etc.  Guess what we will need in the new house?  She is selling it all to us dirt cheap.

A started her new school which is 1 minute from the new house.  Unfortunately, until we move to the new house, my daily commute has gone from 20 minutes each way to an hour in the morning (drop her off, then go to work) and 1 hour + in the evening (pick her up and head home via back roads because the highway would take twice as long during rush hour). 

She and I have a nice system going.  I pack a snack and drink and a blanket for her so she gets all cuddly and snacky in the back as we meander the roads homework.

This leaves B to do both drop off and pick up for LM which has caused some strife.  When we move, until I can secure extended day for him in the new town, B and I are going to have to each take a crap shift in the workdays.  One of us will have to leave the house with him at 7:30am and drive to the old school and then to work.  The other will have to leave work, drive 20 minutes to the old school, then, provided traffic isn't too horrific, drive another 45 minutes back to the house.  Each of us can get a nice shift dropping/picking up A.

I guess you can call these "white whine" problems.

 

So We're buying a house

Sorry to leave you in the lurch for so long but yes indeedy that very weekend of my last post we visited the future Kvetch estate.  Here is the story:

The town we currently live in is very expensive although you wouldn't know it from driving around.  The place looks like any suburban town you might have visited and there are loads of two family houses.  Here they specialize in the one on top, one below type of two-family instead of the side by side townhouse type I see in other parts of the world.

Single family homes don't come cheap and interestingly enough, neither does a unit in the two family homes (sold like condos). 

We didn't want to spend more than $400k.  This is where, depending on where in the country/world you live you react very differently to this number.  My friends in the Bay Area, where the average single family home is swiftly reaching towards a million dollars, will shake their heads and wish they could buy house for that cheap.  My friends in lower cost of living areas might spit the coffee out of their mouths and think we are rich, rich, rich. (We are not)

My friends who live in this town will just shake their head and say, "Good luck!"

As it turns out, one cannot find a single family home for $400k in my town.  There are some townhouses but even those are fixer uppers and didn't meet our simple requirements of "more than one bathroom and a backyard."

The one house that was on the market for $430k was so obviously filled with mold that we all felt ill just touring it.  It sold in a week for more than asking (unsure how much more until the sale is complete).

So we branched out and decided to look the next town over which is a lot cheaper for reasons I still can't fathom.  We saw some nice homes hovering a tiny bit above $400k and we saw some dogs.  We did a private tour of one that had housed a chain smoking old lady with a dog.  B could barely get through a few rooms before his allergies kicked in.  Oh, and the 2nd bathroom?  It was built into an unfinished basement and was a windowless unused pit with a shower stall, sink, and toilet.  As B said, "This must be where she keeps her prisoners."

One of the downsides of this town that everyone brings up is that the schools aren't so good.  I wanted to see how they compared to schools in my current town and insterestingly enough, I discovered neither town has a good reputation when it comes to school systems.

If we have to rip LM out of school to buy a house then we might as well broaden our search to towns that rank higher on the schools and there is one town, about 25 miles from where we live now, where there are some homes in our price range and it is listed in the top 50 public school districts in our state.

So let me tell you about our house.  It is 2 floors with a full finished basement with two full rooms down there that the current owners use as a TV room and an office.  "TV room" is a bit of a stretch though because, aside from the genuine awesomeness of the house, we noted they had a flat screen TV in every room of the house, including one of the bathrooms.

Upstairs there are 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, and the main floor has a newly refinished kitchen (with brand new half bath off the kitchen) and an open area living room/dining room.  There is a door leading from the kitchen to a large fenced in backyard with a patio.

Honestly, the only downside of the house, which is likely what made it affordable, is that the house is right off a major highway exit ramp.  The neighborhood is quiet but from our backyard you can hear highway noise, not enough to be intrusive, and it can't be heard in the house, but still, if you cross the street and look towards our house, in the way back you can see cars travelling.

During the house inspection we met our new across the street neighbors who said they consider it a benefit because they can see if the highway is backed up before they leave the house and then they can know whether to use back roads to get where they need to go or not.

Anyway, it is a seller's market here so we went to the open house on Sunday and we contacted our realtor later that day who discovered that the seller's realtor wanted all offers by Monday at 6pm.  The asking price was $399k so we offered $395k.  We got it!

Turns out we got lucky.  The house had originally been on the market in June but the original sale fell through at the last minute because the buyers couldn't secure their financing.  The sellers had already bought their much more expensive new home so now had 2 houses to pay for.  Our offer that night had not been the highest one as it turns out someone offered $10k more than we did but they had a contingency that they had to sell their condo first and the sellers were all, "Eff that, go with these cheap ass month to month renters so we can sell this sucker."  Hence, we won.

It has been rather fast and furious since then with all the paperwork and arrangements.  The house inspection went well but determined that the only must have object was a new roof and within 24 hours the sellers agreed to get the roof done before closing if we agreed to an increase in price of $3500 (we did).

Since then it has been details, details, details.  Our current landlord, who has always been so awesome, has practically done a jig that we are moving out because he can lock in a new renter paying $400-500 more a month than we do.  How happy has he been?  He is offering to pay us an additional month of what we paid him if we are out of the apartment by 10/1.  He told us not to worry about cleaning (since he is having the place painted) so we don't even have to do anything to get our security deposit back as well.

Now schools, yes, that is a problem, at least for LM.  We found a cool new preschool for A located a one minute drive from the new place.  They had one spot left.  But extended day at LM's new school is full and there is a wait list and there is no way I can get him into the new school until I know he is safe until 6pm so for potentially until Xmass break we will have to leave the house at 7:30am to drive half an hour to drop him off at his current school, then drive 30 minutes back to go to work. (New house is 10 minutes from where I work and about 25 from where B works).

But, in the end it will all work out because we are so excited to have our own house and to have space!  I never realized how cramped we all were in this 1k square foot 3bed/1bath apartment compared to the new place.  We can have people over!  We can have parties!

Oh and to add an extra incentive, we no longer have to listen to our upstairs neighbors have screaming fights anymore (which have increased in frequency and pitch over the years).

 

 

 

The Hunt....is on

So we went and got pre-approved for a mortgage and we are starting to look for a house.  I know lots of you are thinking, "It's about time" and I guess you are right but to be honest I am a little scared of the whole thing.  Sure, I have two kids but this, home ownership feels like such a heavy responsibility.  I think I am more afraid of it than I should be.

Mostly I am afraid of being house poor.  We did that in CA before we left and I am very sure that if we didn't sell it and leave when we did we would have perhaps lost the house to foreclosure.  That house value plummeted over $100k in the year after we sold and we had one of those fancy adjustable mortgages and had gone zero percent down when we purchased it.  Our mortgage was $3200/month and we were digging our way into some serious credit card debt trying to keep up with payments, childcare, and just plain old life.

Having experienced both of us being unemployed at the same time, I am super cautious that we do not want to be in a position where we can't pay the mortgage and associated living costs on one salary.  Sadly, we did not move to a much cheaper area.  Single family houses in my current town don't come cheaper than $400k minimum and apparently they are bidding up since it is a seller's market.

I will confess to you that a month ago I was mostly content to stay put and continue saving towards a 20% down payment fund.  It takes a lot of time to save $80k in cold hard cash and we are no where near it.  But we have a sweet deal here, nice neighborhood, ok apartment with a landlord who hasn't raised the rent since we moved in 4 years ago despite the fact that apartments like ours are going for at least $500 more a month in our town.

What swayed me, you might ask?  Here I will tell you the embarrassing and bitter truth.  My cousin who is 25 years old and just got engaged bought a very nice house in a town about an hour away.  Sure, they have no kids, and I do bet parents on both sides helped with the down payment, but seriously, it still stings that the woman I held as a baby and who, at 13 years old held a flower bouquet in my wedding now owns a single family home and I do not.

Also, the one bathroom thing.  Four people and one tiny bathroom do not make for a happy home.  I can't tell you the last time I was able to pee/poop/shower/brush my teeth without someone else in the bathroom with me.  Now that LM is getting towards 9 years old, it is more apparent that we need another bathroom.  Sure, when I am in there doing my business it is all "Party!" but when he is there he insists on privacy and shuts the door and I very clearly see that he is holding a book on his way in there.

This will not do.

Our major priorities with the new home have to be having more than one bathroom, a backyard, and not make us house poor.  Also, since commute time is a factor, and one of the very real reasons we left the Bay Area, we are mostly looking into 3 towns, including our own.

Today in fact we are going to attempt 4 open houses in 3 towns during a 3 hour stretch of time.  Two towns are right next to each other, the other a 30 minute drive.

Wish us luck!

Exercise - for Melissa

It is not often I get requests for what to post about so I am excited to talk about exercise and my beloved muse, Ms. Jillian Michaels. (Seriously, I love her!)

I think it was in March, 2012 that I decided to "get serious" about losing weight and getting healthy and it corresponded to spending $120 to buy Jillian Michal's Body Revolution program.  A lot of it, believe it or not, had to do with the money.  Since we were on a very tight budget I couldn't throw money around and knowing I spent so much I decided I was going to have to follow the program to a T (or as close to a T as possible).

The program is comprised of 3 phases and each phase is 5 DVDs.  The phase is 4 weeks so you know which DVD to do every day of the month.  Each workout is roughly 30 minutes (most a few minutes longer, the cardio one for the first phase is only 26 minutes) and the idea is you exercise 6 days a week.  The diet was a little trickier, there was a special diet for the first week that contained no sugar and processed foods/bread/pasta and is high on veggies and protein and then after that it introduces more variety but is supposed to be 1200 calories a day.

I lost 25 lbs using this system but I have been sort of stuck since then but I still keep up many of the things I have learned.

For example, I still workout 6 days a week using one of her DVDs (and not just the Body Revolution ones, I have all of her other DVDs, some Bob Harper ones, and a few Shaun T ones (Insanity)).  I have home weights in the 5/8/10/12 pound range and a yoga mat.  I have tension bands.  Most importantly, I make time.

You see, I make time by doing it the very first thing when I wake up.  I set the alarm for 6am and get straight to it.  It really is the only time in the day for me because of the kids and work and, most recently, my back which tends to hurt at night but not in the morning.

After a year plus it is now such a routine for me that I don't even think about it.  In fact, if I miss the workout for whatever reason, I feel terrible both physically and mentally.  There are some mornings when I have to work from home at 5am for a software release and if it goes long and I can't do my workout because the kids are awake and I have to morning prep to get them ready for school, I will actually email my team and tell them I will be 30-60 minutes late to the office because I need to work in the exercise after the kids are out of the house and in school.  I don't feel bad because I have essentially already put in close to 2 hours of work that day and no one at the office cares.

Diet is tricky.  I have remained essentially sugar free for over a year (I have had some slip ups) and honestly, I don't feel worse the wear for it.  Just yesterday I sat in an ice cream parlor with my husband and kids licking cones around me whilst I sipped an iced coffee and I didn't even feel tempted. 

I count calories and up the veggies but the weight doesn't budge much.  I have tried sticking to 1200 calories, 1500 calories, 1800 calories with no real success other than not being able to stick to 1200 calories because seriously?  How???

Recently I did some research on inflammation since I was diagnosed with Facet Joint Arthritis which will never go away and can worsen but can be managed through losing weight, flexibility, and core strengthening.  Since arthritis and inflammation go hand in hand I have been experimenting with being dairy free.  Also, L, I ordered the Wheat Belly book from the library and will read it when it gets in. (Thanks for the suggestion!)

I can't quit coffee though, it gives me such pleasure!

I forgot to mention I pack all my food for work in the morning.  I am sure to bring myself lunch and snacks and I have a water bottle I refill from the cooler at work.  I keep a jar of almond butter in the work fridge and also a thing of coconut milk creamer in case I want coffee at work.  All of this is not just a money saver but a calorie saver too.  This way I know exactly what I am eating.  It is not always fun, mind you, when I remembered all I had was steamed kale and some chicken in the fridge one day, I got downright sad.  But in the end, I remind myself that the goal is health and to be pain free and that can sometimes get me through the day.

Same here, sister

Every Sunday morning I check out the latest on Post Secret while drinking some coffee and enjoying the fact that the kids are happily watching TV and we don't have to rush anywhere.  If you haven't ever gone to the site, people send in secrets written on postcards and every Sunday they post a new batch.  If you ask me, they post too few as I always reach the end of the new ones and am disappointed that it is over so fast.

It is incredibly rare that one strikes me as germaine to my own experience but this one made me gasp "Holy Shit!" so loud my TV tranquilized kids asked me what happened.

Not even a week ago I explained to one of my dearest friends that I felt I was shockingly and horribly insensitive to when people my age tell me of their grandparent's illness, decline, or death.  Not a few days later, another friend, one I am not so open with, told me her grandmother was just diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and is not expected to make it more than a few weeks.  She is devastated of course and I said all the right things but inside, all I could think of was the sentiment on this post card.

I think a lot of my problem comes from the fact that I didn't grow up with the kind of grandparents that these folks have.  My dad's dad died before I was born and his mom was old before her time and all my memories of her involve her in an assisted living facility reaching into the sweaty bosom of her housecoat and giving my brother and I a dollar so we would be quiet and go explore while she talked to my parents.

My mom's mom is still alive in her 90s but is so out of it, and has been for years, that I am lucky if she remembers she had a daughter let alone a granddaughter.  We did spend a lot of time with her growing up but she was never the cookie baking sweet grandparent of TV show quality.  I believe I have told you this before but the one time she took my brother and I out to give my parents a break, she complained the whole time about how she had to do it.  There is also the time she came to my childhood dance recital and told me after it was over, "You were the worst one up there.  A real elephant!  Two left feet!"

My mom's dad died when I was 6 and my step grandfather's idea of bonding was cornering you while barking his political beliefs.

So here I am shockingly insensitive to the whole grandparent dying thing and feeling terrible about it because clearly my friends are in pain about it and I am having trouble trying to go through the chasm to be genuine for them in their moment of grief.

I Can't Quit You!

Before I go into the usual rambling "I'm sorry I suck at blogging" apology tour, I want to put it out there that if anyone who reads this and is not already a FB friend of mine wants to become FB friends, please email me at mammamer at gmail.com.  Those who are already friends with me there can attest that if anything, I am actually a little too active on FB.

I think anyone reading for the past couple of months might guess I had slipped into a general depression and well, it might be true, but I haven't sought out professional help about it although it seems I have had every single other medical appointment and have not been too shy when it comes to my medical insurance.

First, my back!  Well it turns out that Physical Therapy was indeed the trick!  I stopped chiropractic after noting that I would be a mess for a week after it, my back would start to feel better for a few days and then I would have another chiropractic appointment and the trouble would start again.  So I quit it.  I also started getting one hour of deep tissue massage in the lower back/hips/glutes area and that has also garnered huge improvements.  I would do more but they aren't covered by insurance and you can't even use FSA dollars towards them so the $100 is straight out of the pocket.

I have to say, I appreciate the masseuse though.  She works for herself and rents space from the chiropractor I had seen.  The first time I saw her, I had brought extra money for a tip, after conferring with a co-worker who is massage happy on what would be the appropriate tip amount.  The masseuse declined the tip and asked me to use it towards my next massage.  Since she works for herself, she pays for space and expenses associated with having your own business.  The workers who give massages at spas, she said, get maybe $20 an hour for the massage you pay $100 for so keep on tipping those folks!

In the interim I had an MRI done of my spine and got to see probably the most amazingly gorgeous doctor ever. 

After LM was born, I started bleeding out of a place I shouldn't and had to go in and see what was going on.  The doctor that had to use some sort of special camera to look up my ass was super good looking and I remember thinking that was the most humiliating medical moment of my life.  Luckily, it still is.

This new doctor did not have to do anything embarrassing with me other than explain how the joints, bones, and nerves work in the back using a plastic model.  He has probably had to do that a million times.  The result, however, is I have Facet Joint Arthritis. Hurrah!

What can be done?  Well, keep up with the PT he said but the most important things are increasing core strength, flexibility, and get to an ideal weight for my height.

That's right, I got told by a hot doctor that I was too fat.  (As an aside, I was delighted to see on my medical chart that I am now qualified as "overweight" as it used to be "obese" - hurrah for keeping 25 lbs off for a year!  Now for he next 25 pounds....)

My other medical fun time had to do with the lady parts.  I am enjoying a lot of the fruits of peri-menopause.  What is not to love about the erratic nature of the not so "monthly" flows and all the other excitements of occasional hot flashes?  It is just nature's way of saying, "Wrap it up, Grandma."

Anyway, I had to have an ultrasound per my OBGYN who wasn't happy with something I said in my annual exam with him.  Yes, my OBGYN is male and I think he is one of the best doctors I ever had and will go to him until he retires.  So while I was there, the technician had the wand up me and was looking at my remaining ovary and asked me to press down on the outside so she could get a better look.  She then says, "Do you experience a lot of pain on this side?"  I said no and asked why she asked.  "I am sure your OBGYN will talk to you after he reviews the results."

Yes, I know technicians can't give any medical info but seriously lady, now I have to live with that for 24 hours?  Does she not know whom she is dealing with?  I don't brush things off, I go Dr. Doom and Gloom Google ape shit over such things.  I probably don't need to tell you how much research I did on ovarian cancer before the doctor called me the next day to tell me it was a common benign cyst and that they sometimes cause pain.

Basically, everything is fine.

So I am trying to enjoy my respite of good health.  I still exercise 6 days a week at 6am with my beloved Jillian Michaels DVDs (and a good dose of Bob Harper too).  I am back off of sugar and also stopped dairy too in order to see if it helps with reducing inflammation for the back.  I am struggling with trying to not eat more than 1500 calories a day which I know is a lot for some people.   I have no idea how people keep at 1200 calories a day.

It is summer now, the kids are both enjoying their day camps although poor Miss A  is so wiped out when I pick her up she blows up at the slightest provocation.  For example:

LM:  What's that? (points outside A's window)

A:  (looks)

LM:  Hahaha!  Made you look, made you look, now you're in the baby book!

A:  (In tears) I'M NOT IN THE BABY BOOK!  YOU ARE!

Me:  (Slowly turns up music on radio)

Hell, at least she is learning to swim there thanks to daily lessons.  I look forward to once more being able to enter a pool without a kicking clingy barnacle attached to me.

 

 

Funklet

Minutes before I found out about the Newtown elementary school shooting I was high on life.  The night before had been my company's holiday party and the VP of my department had given my team a free pass to go see the new Hobbit movie on the company dime.  I got a text from B about 30 minutes before it ended saying, "I hate society so much right now."  I had no idea what was going on.

To me that day is a big wagon wheel of bad emotions.  I don't remember the euphoria of the movie or a work hooky day with my co-workers.  I remember the cold hard despair of trying to piece together what happened on my tiny cell phone screen and that liquifying feeling that there was absolutely nothing I could do to keep my kids safe in this world.

Yesterday, sitting in an Au Bon Pain with family, LM was going through my purse and found a notebook I keep in there.  One page had some doodles on it and the rest was blank.  He asked why it was blank and B said, "Your mom doesn't have much of an interior monologue" and I piped up with, "Excuse me, I have a very rich and anxious inner life" to which he burst out laughing so hard he literally snorted his latte out his nose.

I do, you know, have a very anxious inner life.  The daily exercise keeps it in check but it is no small secret that I would probably benefit from some medication.

We went to Las Vegas during the April vacaction week.  We went to visit B's parents who are now in a hospice type home there and also to see my side of the family.  My mom's two brothers live there with their families and one uncle/aunt set have taken a very active role with my kids and we stay with them and experience what it must be like for other people who have parents who can both spoil and watch over the grand kids.  Plus, believe it or not, there is a whole host of cool things to do with kids in Las Vegas and very little of it is on the strip.

Before we left, we had decided that since this is our only real travel vacation of 2013 ($2600 just in air plane tickets for 4 people!), we would do a day up and rent a cabana at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino.  They have loads of different heated pools and a sandy beach area.  It costs a lot to rent it but we decided to go for it and have a beach day.  We invited B's sister and my uncle and aunt to come and join us if they could and they did in the afternoon.

Prior to their arrival, we were finally in vacation bliss.  We were all having fun and real life seemed far away.  When my uncle arrived he asked us if we had heard there was a bombing at the Boston Marathon.  We hadn't.  There was a large screen TV in our rented cabana and we turned it on.

Our vacation has a very clear before and after bombing delineation.  Prior to the news, we had felt carefree, afterwards, it hung over our heads.  While we perked up for the kids and relatives, we would sneak glances at news stories and track to see if we knew anyone who was hurt or killed.  We didn't thankfully, although I will never get the picture of that little boy out of my head. 

We flew home Thursday after a two hour delay at the airport and our pilot going an extra long way to avoid a storm.  My kids don't sleep on planes and so it was a long horrible day.  By the time we got to our car in the long term parking lot it was close to midnight.  Routes we knew to go were shut down.  We noticed a heightened police presence but thought it was marathon related.  We didn't think to turn on the radio as the kids were finally and blissfully asleep in the back.

As we drove home through some back roads, we kept having to pull over for police cruiser after cruiser speeding by us.  "Maybe it is an accident?"  I said.  "No," B mulled, "something is going on, this is way too many police cars."  We were probably passed by about a dozen within 5 minutes.  We made a decision to go a slightly different way to get to our house and didn't see more cops.

We pulled into our driveway and decided to unpack the car the next day.  We carried our sleeping children into the house and put them in their beds and decided to see if we could find anything online about what was potentially going on with all the police.

Being that we were away all week, we had shut everything down including our internet connection.  As B was getting everything turned on, he suggested I go to Boston.com on my iphone and sure enough in a tiny non-mobile optimized header there was the name of our town.

You might never have heard of my town before a couple of weeks ago but now you do.  Watertown, MA.

Timing wise, we pulled into our driveway about 20 minutes after the big shootout/explosions and right when the manhunt began for the younger brother.  I could walk to where this all went down in 30 minutes if I wanted to do so.  I can walk to the house with the boat where he was found in about 15 minutes.

Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep that night.  I did drift off around 3am only to be awakened at 6am via texts from my work friends to see if we were still in Las Vegas.

Thanks to jet lag, I was the only one awake when the doorbell rang at 8am and there were armed National Guardsmen asking if I had seen or heard anything suspicious and letting me know they were searching around my house and neighborhood.  It was the first of 3 times that day this would happen.

The "shelter in place" would have been more bearable had we not just gotten home from a week away.  We had no milk, bread, eggs, or fruit in the house.  Sure, we had "food" and made do, but when your kids can't open the shades, go outside, and have to eat the B rated food, it is hard to make them understand why.

The phone rang off the hook all day from well meaning family and friends checking in on us.  Of course, having gotten so little sleep and feeling sick with anxiety and the beginnings of a cold, I would try to nap at times.  This is when the phone would typically go crazy.

When they let us go outside, I started to unpack the car and talk to my neighbors.  Everyone was in their pajamas.  It was roughly 5pm.  It was short lived as we noted the uptick in the sirens and the choppers overhead.  He was captured a few hours soon after.

My funklet is not exclusive to this event. I have been dealing with a year long pain in my left lower back hip area which was finally diagnosed as a mix of "SI joint" and "sciatic nerve" issues which seem to have no probable cause of why they started other than getting older and, as the specialist said, "the straw that broke the camel's back" in that it was roughly a bunch of things leading up to it.  My physical therapist and her exercises have helped a lot and now I am to go get some deep tissue massages that, I have been warned, "might make me cry."  I might cry just because they aren't covered by insurance and you can't use FSA funds for it and my doctor says it would best to get them weekly.

I always wish I had my mom around but this is when I really wish I could get a maternal hug from her and she could give me advice.  How do we keep going trying to raise happy confidant kids and keep them safe in this crazy world when a college kid and his brother the next town over plant bombs 15 miles from your house and throw bombs at cops a mile away?  How can I continue to plan a future for myself and them when I worry I might be in a wheelchair soon or pill popping due to chronic pain?

Sometimes I think I know what she would say.  She would say "You could be hit by a bus tomorrow" or "There is nothing to do but keep moving forward."  And I tell myself those things too but honestly, I think the hug would help.

Anniversaries

Someone I used to work with posted a FB status about how she couldn't believe 3 months had passed since her father had passed away and before I knew it, I had commented that it doesn't get easier but it gets more bearable.  I don't know if I was sharing my experience, wisdom, or just basically saying, "Yes, I have a dead parent too.  Join the club, kid."  It could have been a combination of a little of each, I am not entirely sure.  All I know is that it is swiftly coming up on the 3 year anniversary of my mom's death and in fact, it has gotten more bearable.

It took my doctor to point out to me a pattern I had.  Every January/February I would go to him complaining of headaches that wouldn't seem to happen any other time in the year.  He would talk me out of MRIs and after a week or two they would go away.  Since that is the time when mom was first diagnosed with a brain tumor, he suggested this was mostly a psycho-somatic thing.  This year the head aches came a little later, early March, and lasted maybe a week before going on their merry way.

As the kids grow, I miss my mom more.  I wish she could see them and interact with them as they are now.  My daughter wasn't even walking when mom died, and now she is this little spitfire chock full of personality and love.  I swear the kid is the biggest snugly love bug around, always wanting to snuggle and hug.  I can envision my son reading out loud, as he loves to do, and my mom patiently being interested in the stories.

I miss being able to go to her for advice.  I have so many things I would love to seek her insight on and at times, I feel bereft with only internet searches and blog lurking to guide my way.

I am, however, getting a lot better about not being bitter.  For the longest time I would be bitter and jealous of friends and strangers alike who still had active mothers.  For many having the parents take the kids for a weekend or even a night is a routine, for me it is an impossible fantasy.  It ranks with winning the lottery in the realm of possibility.

I had coffee with a friend I don't see too often one recent night.  This woman, I have to admit, is not a close friend and I have, at times, thought of her more as a frenemy because of some of the things she has said to me in the past.  But, there we were and she was telling me about how her mother was going to take care of her toddler son and newborn baby so she could go on a weekend trip.  She also mentioned how upset she was because her grandmother, whom she is very close to, was starting to exhibit signs of aging and forgetfulness at the ripe old age of 85.  Her eyes welled with tears as she said she doesn't know what will happen when her grandmother dies because she loves her so much.

Mind you, there is a decent part of me who understands how hard it is to watch someone you love and who you are close with deteriorate and the sense or mortality that provides.  This part of me was the sensitive one who touched her hand and said all the right comforting things.  I am ashamed to say there was a lesser part of me who wanted to laugh spitefully in her face and say things like, "Poor you with the house your daddy bought you and your cool active mom who takes care of you and your kids and your grandmother who seems to be doing A-ok up to now when my only real pleasant memory of my own grandmother is her telling me I was the worst dancer at my 8 year old dance recital."

Sheesh, part of me is a real bitch.  (Insert B, "Only Part?")

In a week we are traveling to Vegas Baby to see the relatives.  B's parents now live there in a group home near B's sister and my mother's two brothers and their families live there as well.  One of my aunt/uncle pairings is super awesome with my kids.  They had stepped into a grandparent role with them and we will be staying with them.  Tonight on the phone they offered to babysit one night so B and I could go see a movie or something.  We are going to take them up on it!

Since our trip revolves around family, and we are staying with my aunt/uncle, we decided to splurge one day and rented a cabana at the Mandalay Bay casino pool area.  It is crazy expensive but we are going to spend the whole day there pretending we are somewhere super exotic and drink colorful fruity drinks poolside and swim in their variety of pools, taking breaks to lounge in our cabana in front of the TV.  The kids are besides themselves excited.

During the trip, I will be seeing my own grandmother.  She is in her 90s now and her mind is mostly gone and she has no idea her daughter is dead and has been lo these past 3 years.  I don't know how that will go but I figure I owe it to my mom to visit her mom.

But while we are there, I might as well toss a quarter in a slot machine somewhere and see about winning some money.  Who knows, stranger things have happened.  Maybe 3 will be my lucky number.

Leaning In

My friend Melissa recently wrote about women, working and feminism and it got me thinking a lot about items in the news the past couple of months.  First off, there was new Yahoo CEO Melissa Mayer who recently launched a "no work from home" policy and then there is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's latest big seller, "Lean In, Women, Work and the Will to Lead."

I have been both a stay at home mom, albeit for 18 months with baby A, and, for most of my professional career, I have worked full time out of the home in software and internet technology companies, including Yahoo (although back in the Jerry Yang days).

As Melissa states, "I keep reading article after article about women and working, and I’m not sure what to make of it all. One side seems to think I am letting feminism down by quitting work to stay home with my kids, while the other side says feminism is all about choice, including the choice to stay home."  I must say I 100% agree with her here.  There a lot of increasingly irate voices on either side of the Mommy wars debate over staying at home vs. working and my own position is mostly, "Do what works for you and your family" as well as, "Shut the hell up haters" because if there is one thing I hate, it is some holier than thou person on any side of a debate smugly telling people who don't follow their beliefs that they are failures.

But what of when the babies are grown and in school full time, should a woman then go back to work?  Obviously, it is not my position to tell anyone what to do, circumstances vary per person and family.  I do, however, read a bunch of personal finance blogs and it is common to see comments and articles about women whose husbands either up and divorced them or died or had a lengthy and expensive illness and all of the sudden these women have to start at square one in making ends meet financially and this is concerning too.

Can a woman who hasn't worked out of the home in 20 years whose kids are now "technically adults" get alimony?  I have no idea.  The job prospects for them are probably not super high paying.  I have an aunt in her 50s who works at Subway sandwich shop full time.  She told me once she will likely work there until she has a heart attack and drops near the meat slicer.  She was kidding of course (I hope).  In her case, she stayed home with the kids, got divorced from my uncle when the kids were 18 (her decision I should add), remarried someone she had met on the internet and he didn't have as much money as she was led to believe but did have a bit of a gambling problem.

I am a big believer in insurance to cover for the slings and arrows of life.  Both B and I have hefty life and long term disability insurance.  We have a revocable trust and estate plan (ironic since we don't own an actual house yet).  What can I say, I am a planner!  Next on my list when we turn 50, long term care insurance.

But, as strong as I feel my marriage is with B, stranger things have happened.  He could decide to give me the ol' heave ho later in life. 

This brings me to my next point (I had a point?).  As I mentioned, I am a woman (middle aged at that) and a mom with a career in high tech.  This means that I basically work in an industry that mostly favors men and youth.  Don't believe me? Well, take a look at this article about diversity in Silicon Valley that I found particularly real to my experience. 

For my first position in management, I was one of 6 managers in my division and the only woman.  We had a daily meeting with the director of our department and the first 10-15 minutes would be sports talk.  Once I discovered that the director had invited every single manager to a weekend golf thing except one.  Guess who that was.  And sure, I hate golf and honestly, I hated most of these people but still, this was accepted practice.

The company I was laid off from when I was pregnant with A?  Our Cambridge, MA office had 50 employees, only 10 of us women.  Sure, it was nice having "my stall" in the ladies bathroom and all, but the cut that took me out also took out 5 other women and about 10 men leaving the office with 35 employees, only 5 women.

You might be saying, "Well that is because there aren't that many women and minorities in tech" but you'd be wrong because when a company devotes itself to ensuring diversity, then you get my current company.  Half of the employees, including senior management, are women and there is a very obvious ethnic diversity.  Our average age of our employees is 40 and most are parents so the "work at home whenever you need"policy is especially nice and not at all taken advantage of (at least to my knowledge).

This is not a scientific study by any means.  It could well turn out that my company will fail and there could be a correlation between that and the fact that we aren't almost entirely staffed by young white and Asian men who work 80 hours a week and leave all the parenting to their stay at home wives.

I can tell you that in my own personal experience, many of the men who do have kids with stay at home mom wives don't understand why you can't make a meeting from 6-8pm and I was once told that if I couldn't commit myself to a project by working through the day to 9-10pm most nights for 2 weeks then I should resign from it.

Please note, I did not say all men.  I have also met my share of male coworkers who are truly humbled and amazed by the amount of work their wives do to take care of the kids and home while they work.  I obviously gravitate to those guys as my favored work project partners.

Melissa Mayer, the CEO who has banned working from home, in my opinion, has taken a huge step backwards for working parents of both sexes.  I know some folks who don't work in tech couldn't understand the big deal of not being allowed to work from home.  My aunt, the one who works at Subway, asked me what the fuss was about.  After all, it isn't like she can make sandwiches from home for customers (well she could but....)

Most people in tech have to work odd hours.  If there are software releases, they have to be done in windows when many people won't be using the software.  For example, we do ours at 5am.  Oftentimes, to test things, it takes a certain level to get the environment ready so that testing is also often done at odd hours.  I have had to do a lot of testing after 9pm.  I do this from home.

Many people are also parents and have to work around the daycare/school schedules which require someone drop off and pick up the kids at reasonable times, not to mention take care of the kids, take them to doctor's appointments, etc.  Being able to work from home allows people to get their work done, meet company goals, but also give them time to say, put in a load of laundry between call in meetings, or make dinner for their kids while a build is being prepared for testing.

This isn't just good for parents!  I have worked with a lot of young folks with lots of energy and time to spare.  I have seen them burn completely out making their job their lives only to be laid off anyway when the economy and industry went south.  People have many interests, and the happiest most productive people I work with are the ones who get to pursue outside interests as well.

Personally, I kind of wonder if Mayer did this just to not have to provide lay off severance packages.  In this way, people will just look for new jobs on their own with companies with more progressive work from home policies.  I can tell you that being forced to work in an office the entire time would not work for me. 

So where is this going?  This long rambly post about women, work, technology, blah blah blah.  There is going to come a day, probably within the next decade, when it will be hard for me to get a job in my field because I will be too old.  It will depend on the company of course, but I don't see the industry changing out of the youth dominance because that is way of technology, it demands fresh perspective and cutting edge skills.

I am hopeful, however, that my skills can translate to a somewhat marketable job above the Subway sandwich pay scale.  I am hopeful that my resume can still make me attractive to employers because I am not going to be one of those people who can retire early and securely.  Unless I win the lottery, there are no windfalls coming my way.

Whether we get paid for our work or not, we moms do have marketable skills that need to be maintained and expanded.  I do think women should "Lean In," and that doesn't mean going for a full time position.  It could mean enhancing some interests, skills, volunteering, or whatever a woman can possibly fit in her time depending on her life.  I am not the asshole who is going to tell the mom of three kids, all with special needs, to carve out time to learn to code Java.  That lady deserves a vacation!  But, I might be the asshole who will tell a woman who has kids in high school that she might want to pursue some classes or interests that might help her if she absolutely has to go back to work.

You just never know and to me, feminism is as much about being able to take care of yourself as it is about choice.