This week was amazingly long: Fritz was in Germany. I went out of town overnight to do some training for my new job. My Dad flew INTO town to help take care of the kiddos. My youngest one graduated from preschool. And I was given an incredibly frustrating project that I couldn’t complete. I missed a lot of sleep, resulting in a pretty grouchy version of myself.
The long weekend is well-timed...I will appreciate every minute of it.
Here are two thing I’ve been reading and thinking about this week:
Published a few months ago, but I keep going back to it as I think about my own sons and my own experiences. "What we need to talk about is training men to read women the way women have been trained to read men."
This week, the kids and I are trying to memorize the lyrics to Purple People Eater. Bonus: multiple lyrical parts for multiple kids! Why you might want to crank up the volume on some music with your kids.
Hope you had a good one.
Friday, May 25, 2018
Friday, May 18, 2018
Thinking
This week I am thinking about how much I appreciate having Fritz around. Without him, the kids seem needier. The days seem longer. And there's no other adult with whom I can decompress. I feel more tired than normal.
***
The kids have taken an interest in gardening this year. All those years of helping me plant and this year: it clicked. "Plants grow! We can make cool spaces and have stuff to eat with growing plants!" They've used up all my spare seeds planting a garden around the playhouse. They have strings running everywhere in hopes that the sweet peas and grape vines can be trained to make a canopy. They've created stone paths running through the mulch. It looks surprisingly...good! I don't know why it took so long for them to get to this level of play. But it's really nice to see.
***
It's so scary and so exciting to begin new things. And uncomfortable. This week is my first week at a new job and I feel...slightly bored. I mean: I love learning new things, but sometimes I wish the process was quicker. It's so rewarding to be productive and crank things out. I like to feel productive. The first week on a new job is not productive. Or at least, mine hasn't been. I think about how much I could be getting done at my old firm, and I sigh. I miss my productivity. But I don't miss the bad aura that hung over the old office. Not that I believe in auras. But then again, maybe I do.
***
I'm drinking wine tonight, before I put the kids to bed. That's unusual for me. But I have a really good wine. So that's encouraging me. It's suppose to rain all weekend. I'll be stuck in the house with three kids. That's bad. I'll be lonely, even though I'm surrounded by kids. Drink more wine, I think.
***
My former coworker is a foster mom for abandoned kittens. The kittens are adopted from her when they get old enough for adoption. Right now, she has two itty bitty kittens. Females. They get along really well. They sleep in a pile. I would like to adopt them. The kids would like to adopt them. Fritz is not on board. Maybe I just need to adopt them while he's gone. Cats might be better than wine when I'm sitting here, feeling alone.
***
Also: are we done with this school shooting problem? I am. I'm done with the guns. Like, just done. Let's get rid of them. F@#$ the second amendment and your interpretation that I disagree with. I am done. We are done. It's time to step up and be done collectively.
***
The kids have taken an interest in gardening this year. All those years of helping me plant and this year: it clicked. "Plants grow! We can make cool spaces and have stuff to eat with growing plants!" They've used up all my spare seeds planting a garden around the playhouse. They have strings running everywhere in hopes that the sweet peas and grape vines can be trained to make a canopy. They've created stone paths running through the mulch. It looks surprisingly...good! I don't know why it took so long for them to get to this level of play. But it's really nice to see.
***
It's so scary and so exciting to begin new things. And uncomfortable. This week is my first week at a new job and I feel...slightly bored. I mean: I love learning new things, but sometimes I wish the process was quicker. It's so rewarding to be productive and crank things out. I like to feel productive. The first week on a new job is not productive. Or at least, mine hasn't been. I think about how much I could be getting done at my old firm, and I sigh. I miss my productivity. But I don't miss the bad aura that hung over the old office. Not that I believe in auras. But then again, maybe I do.
***
I'm drinking wine tonight, before I put the kids to bed. That's unusual for me. But I have a really good wine. So that's encouraging me. It's suppose to rain all weekend. I'll be stuck in the house with three kids. That's bad. I'll be lonely, even though I'm surrounded by kids. Drink more wine, I think.
***
My former coworker is a foster mom for abandoned kittens. The kittens are adopted from her when they get old enough for adoption. Right now, she has two itty bitty kittens. Females. They get along really well. They sleep in a pile. I would like to adopt them. The kids would like to adopt them. Fritz is not on board. Maybe I just need to adopt them while he's gone. Cats might be better than wine when I'm sitting here, feeling alone.
***
Also: are we done with this school shooting problem? I am. I'm done with the guns. Like, just done. Let's get rid of them. F@#$ the second amendment and your interpretation that I disagree with. I am done. We are done. It's time to step up and be done collectively.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
With It
Originally published on my other blog.
My new firm is really with it, at least relative to the last firm. Shiny, new business cards arrived on my fourth day, which seems like a million times better than my last business card experience. When I asked my last boss about business cards, he turned to his clients after a meeting and asked whether or not his employees needed business cards.
Nice.
Let us not mince words: the old boss *wanted* me to go.
Okay: over it. Life goes on.
One of the cool things, from my perspective, about starting over at a new firm is you realize just how many different ways there are to do things. I love this level of learning: where you compare one system to another system. I like to think about the pros and cons; I like the way the comparison allows me to strategize third and forth versions of operating. I think if someone looked at the choices I've made in my life, one could see this love for systems evaluation: I married a foreigner and moved abroad, I had multiple children (not just one), I've lived on three different American coasts (did you remember the third coast? Some of us forget it!), I attended two schools of architecture...and so on.
It's a challenge, though, to live this way. And the older I get, the less I want to be always challenged/challenging. I'll be happy to stay put for a while now. And so far, it really looks like I've chosen well.
My new firm is really with it, at least relative to the last firm. Shiny, new business cards arrived on my fourth day, which seems like a million times better than my last business card experience. When I asked my last boss about business cards, he turned to his clients after a meeting and asked whether or not his employees needed business cards.
Nice.
Let us not mince words: the old boss *wanted* me to go.
Okay: over it. Life goes on.
One of the cool things, from my perspective, about starting over at a new firm is you realize just how many different ways there are to do things. I love this level of learning: where you compare one system to another system. I like to think about the pros and cons; I like the way the comparison allows me to strategize third and forth versions of operating. I think if someone looked at the choices I've made in my life, one could see this love for systems evaluation: I married a foreigner and moved abroad, I had multiple children (not just one), I've lived on three different American coasts (did you remember the third coast? Some of us forget it!), I attended two schools of architecture...and so on.
It's a challenge, though, to live this way. And the older I get, the less I want to be always challenged/challenging. I'll be happy to stay put for a while now. And so far, it really looks like I've chosen well.
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