Working Motherhood: Podcast Edition

I had the fabulous opportunity to be part of Dr. Portia Jackson's daily podcast, Working Motherhood. It's probably the closest I'll get to being interviewed by Katie Couric or Oprah, and I have to admit, it was a lot of fun. I shared some of what my day to day life looks like, a challenge and a triumph, anda few resources I've enjoyed as a working mom.

I've never done a podcast before, and I probably over-prepared for the interview, but Portia still managed to squeeze in a few questions along the way that I hadn't anticipated. And then she titled my podcast as "Anticipating Needs," and I had a bit of a laugh over that.

You can read the show notes over at WorkingMotherhood.com, where you can also listen to the podcast, or download it for your commute over on iTunes or Stitcher.

And if you'd like to participate in the Working Motherhood podcast, reach out to me and I'll connect you, or you can nominate yourself too!

I hope you'll let me know if you listen!

Working (Mom) Moment: In the Audience

Fourth Grade Concert

The best part of my week has been sitting in the audience. On Tuesday night, I was honored to be at Hannah's fourth grade choir and instrumental concert, and on Wednesday afternoon, I watched one of my bosses take part in a panel discussion at a swanky hotel with a celebrity moderator.

It feels like yesterday that I was the one who needed a freshly ironed white shirt, or my treasured pale yellow Orchard Ensemble T-shirt, or the polyester but formal-looking black dress we wore for high school concerts. As you can probably guess, I *loved* these concerts. I was good at singing and really enjoyed doing it (I still do, and wish it was a bigger part of my life today). I'd practice my choir songs in front of my bedroom mirror, keeping my hands at my side and enunciating the final consonants. Now, it's Hannah's turn, and I've found I love being in the audience even more than when I was up there myself. I love the misplayed notes, I love that kids still sing washed his face in a frying pan "Old Dan Tucker," I love the corny choreography. But more than all that, I love the sense of pride and accomplishment that taking part in an event like this instills in kids. Sitting in the audience, my heart was bursting in pride for all of them.

I attended the panel discussion at the last minute, not realizing I was going to be accompanying him despite having helped prepare him for the discussion. Panels are tough, because participants are expected to be experts in their field but not actually sell the products they manage. Most of the time, we focus on what makes us unique, and remembering to stick to the general is challenging. But it all went well: the other panelists were interesting and covered diverse points of view, the moderator was clearly a pro, and my boss did well and was happy to have me there supporting him. And again, I was proud, just getting to sit in the audience.

So often, we wish we were the ones at the center of attention, on display and heard by the masses. This week was a good reminder that being in the audience and actively listening can be a real joy too.

Working (Mom) Moment: On the Road

The view from the car

I'm taking on a new role at work (any day now, I hope), and it's going to involve some travel. Thankfully, I think I'm going to have some flexibility about it, and it won't be too much, but seeing as my last work trip was in 2007, I'm excited to experience a change of scenery from the office life. That photo above was taken on my first trip last week, which other than a really delayed flight home, was very successful.

This particular trip was all done in one day: drive to the airport by 6 am, a few hours in the air, another hour in the car, lunch, meeting, car, plane, drive home. And honestly, it was the easiest weekday I've had in probably six months.

I couldn't do much actual work from the road, so other than replying to emails on my phone, I just had to be where I was. I didn't see Marc or the kids for the entire day, and while of course I missed them, I can definitely enjoy one day without parenting or any of the usual household tasks. I even found I wasn't as worried about flying as I often am--no kids with me (and apparently, no BlogHer-related anxiety/exhaustion), made me very accepting of the entire flying process.

While I was very excited about the success for work, by far the best part of my trip was getting to see Lauren and Denise, two friends with whom I spent many summers at overnight camp. I hadn't seen them in 20 years, and they came out in a rainstorm to join me for a cheesy airport margarita. The hardest part of my day was having to leave them after just an hour together. I'm really hopeful that I'll get to keep meeting up with people as I travel around, so be on the lookout for me to hit your town.

What about you? Do you travel for work? Any stories to share?

Working (Mom) Moment: Breakfast Dishes

Linking up with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary and her Just Write Project, its 100th installment!

I'm not home on many weekday mornings anymore, since I leave the house for work so early now. Usually, I'm out the door by 7 am at the latest. Most mornings, the kids are barely even out of bed by then, much less dressed, so it's a treat to see their fully-dressed, eating breakfast selves on this Tuesday morning, Hannah's first day of school.

I used to enjoy this bit of time, I know now that I no longer have it. Yes, I used to be stressed and rushed in the morning, but now that it's not my routine, I found myself enjoying the tasks before me at that 7 am hour. First, empty the drying rack of hand-washed dishes. The heavy, wooden, square cutting board usually gets put away first--it's used in preparing almost every meal around here. The sharp, long knives that fit in the just-right spots in the knife block. The pots and pans and then on to the dishwasher itself, racing to finish emptying it before the kids finish their cereal and the newly dirty dishes should be loaded again. Only I am aware of the race against them though, and usually I win.

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"Enjoy your last day of freedom," Hannah says to her little brother, who won't start kindergarten for ONE. MORE. DAY. He doesn't get it, and I don't bother to explain. I ask her if her life is really that bad, is school really that hard, and she admits that she knows it's not, but she can't help dispensing her cautionary tales. She is excited, all rainbow loom bracelets and Converse and neon, to see her friends and have the teacher who is "really nice." She packs her water bottle and her snack, which pleases me because I worry when I'm not there to do it for her. I know there are days when she forgot them last year, and she survived, but my working mother guilt persisted too. No lunch to pack today because of course the "first day" of school is our usual early release Tuesday, and she will be home before I can catch my breath.


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The scene repeats almost verbatim on Wednesday morning. Again, I am grateful to be home with them for this first day of kindergarten. Again, I'm unloading the dishwasher and realizing that it is foolish for me to stay home late on Monday morning to watch Max get on the school bus for the first time. I will get to see him on Tuesday, do the same exact act, just for the second time. I know I don't need to be there, but my heart still hurts over it. I have already cried this morning, looking at the pictures from Hannah's first day of kindergarten four years earlier, when one year old Max wore his then-favorite train shirt. How is it really his turn to go? This time, the kids are smarter, and ask for breakfast from Starbucks as a treat. We say no, that the morning is busy enough, and so I have won the race again and am waiting for their cereal bowls. Neither kid is very hungry this morning--it's too exciting--and I run the disposal after putting the bowls in the farthest lane of the top rack of the dishwasher, which has just been emptied from an extra run after Marc had prepared Rosh Hashanah items for our holiday dinner taking place that night.

Max is ready. He has been ready for years.  I am ready, too.

I come home after drop off, and a few hours later I tackle the remaining dishes, needing to run the dishwasher one more time before the holiday dinner. I scrub potato peels off the counter, sweep flour off the floor.

There is no race this time, just the constancy of washing dishes, even on the days that make you cry.

Working (Mom) Moment: Daycare and Days Off From Work

Hannah was just two years old when I had the amazing discovery that my office closes for Good Friday, but her home-based daycare did not. I can't remember the details of how I passed that particular day off, but I was likely packing to move from our condo in Brookline to our new house in Newton. Regardless, knowing that there was a day like that - daycare open, work closed, for a reason that didn't apply to me - was such a miraculous thing that I eagerly anticipated the next Good Friday for the coming year and many of them since then.

And you know what happens with all of that anticipation? Yes, you set yourself up for a tremendous letdown when all doesn't go according to plan. The extra special hitch in the plans for three year old Hannah's Good Friday was that I had signed her up to Shabbat Helper. I'm sure you can imagine the giddiness involved in it fiiiiiiinally being her special day to lead the class in their sacred Friday morning rituals, especially when you have no concept of time and it's been approximately forever since it was your last turn to be the leader. I was thrilled to get to enjoy this special time with her, and then leave her happily ensconced in school while I fiiiiiiinally got the alone time I'd been craving too.

All of that build up? Leads to a major case of pink eye when Hannah awoke that morning, of course. I honestly can't remember who cried more over the disappointment of that particular day.

You'd think that would have taught me a lesson - to not put so much expectation into one day - but I still can't help myself. There have been a few of these magical times over the years, including a couple of vacation days taken on purpose so that I can get things done - or not - while the kids have been in school or daycare. But using my own vacation time is less than ideal since that runs at a premium as it is, covering all of the days off that the kids have that I don't. Plus, the office continues on without you when you take a vacation day, and I've surely experienced moments when the vacation day wasn't worth the being put behind in your work upon returning. Having a closed office is really the key to how special these days are.

With this being our last week of daycare, it's unlikely I'll have many of these days in the future, but I will always be on the lookout for these mythical unicorn days. And if you haven't looked through the school calendar yet to find a unicorn of your own, go do it now.

Working (Mom) Moment: A New Use for the Camera App

Despite my love of the blog and all things social media, I still maintain a pen and paper to do list at work, in a basic, spiral-bound notebook. One of the best feelings in life is being able to physically cross off a completed task (I'm a big fan of a large X through the task). I also bring the list with me to meetings, so that I can add any tasks to it right then and there, and to my boss's office as we prioritize items and add more on. At the end of the year, when writing my self evaluation, I flip through the year's worth of lists to try and remember just how I've spent my year at work. So the pen and paper works well for me.

Until I'm sitting on the train, trying to strategize about my day ahead. Or I'm unexpectedly working from home, and left my list at work. Or it's Sunday night and I'm trying to get my mind back into work mode, wondering if there's anything little I can knock off my list first thing on Monday morning.

So somewhere along the way, I decided to start taking pictures of my to do list. Since my phone is always with me, my list is always with me too. I'm not spending much time transferring the list to another device, nor am I remembering to add or delete things to more than one location. If I've made significant progress over the course of a week, I might take an updated picture even though I haven't rewritten my list yet (something I do about once a week). I even consulted my photo when rescheduling a doctor's appointment - my calendar wasn't as helpful because I don't have every task scheduled there by its due date.

It's just another way that technology has improved the juggle for me; the addition of the camera app is a tiny change that helped removed some of the burden of remembering everything no matter where I am. I hope sharing it might help one of you too!

Working (Mom) Moments: The Hallway

I can still picture the hallway, as nondescript as it was. Hannah's first daycare was family-based, in an apartment in a nice building a few blocks over from where we lived. The hallway was just beige walls, carpeted floor, lots of other apartments to pass along the way. When the daycare owners moved to another apartment about a year later, the hallway got even longer as we walked to our new destination.

I'd fretted over that first major decision we made in selecting daycare. I remember looking up different places online, desperately wishing I had more information, clinging to the hope that our instincts would be good enough. We ultimately visited three places. The first had one small room in her apartment where the kids would spend the majority of their time, and a long contract that requested more vacation time than Marc and I had. The third seemed okay, but that the kids might not be getting much attention there. But the second place was warm and loving - almost all of the apartment had been turned over to the business of childcare. The whole family was involved. Hannah thrived there, staying for the first two years of her life, making her first friends. It ended up being Max's first daycare too.

Though we have been very fortunate to have such great daycare experiences for our kids, no matter how great it was, I was still terrible at drop off. Most of the time, dropping off was Marc's job, but when it was mine, I was never happy about it. Neither kid has ever had an especially difficult time with saying goodbye - they've always acclimated quickly, sometimes heading off to play a little too eagerly, leaving me in the dust. I've never questioned that they would be well cared for during our time apart. And I knew what the experts said to do: keep it brief, a quick hug and an "I'll see you later, kiddo." So that's what I would do.

But that moment after I was out of their sight, the single second when I feel like I actively decide to go to work and leave them behind, well, it hits me smack in the heart. Even now, the kids are so big, and yet when I dropped them off on a recent weekday, I felt the old lump form in my throat. I'm not good at leaving them, but I know that leaving them, both their experiences at school and mine at work, is good for us.

Yet I can still remember the feeling of that hallway, the carpet underneath my knees, when I slid down the wall overcome with grief over leaving one year old Hannah all those years ago. A random day that I'd dropped her off - I can't remember the circumstances for why - and I rounded the corner out of her sight and cried.

Working (Mom) Moment: Unexpected Dinner

My role at work is changing, and I've started attending more meeting with clients, instead of just doing all of the background preparation for the meetings. I'm very excited about this, but it's also made my schedule more complicated.

You may remember that I've been working 8-4 since mid-December so that I can pickup both kids from school in the evenings. But last week my client was scheduled to come in at 4 pm, and I had to hop on an international conference call with another client at 6 pm. So Marc and I flipped schedules, and I drove the kids to school that morning, thinking I wouldn't arrive home until 7:30 or 8 pm.

Just after I'd refreshed my make up and added high heels to my navy suit, the 4 o'clock meeting cancelled (pro tip for foreigners - the USA is a big country. Plan accordingly. :) ) I was sad to have upended my day unnecessarily, but thankfully we were able to reschedule for the following afternoon instead.

And me? I ended up taking the train home and indulging in dinner, alone, at the pub in my neighborhood. I sat at the bar and had a burger and, well, a moment to breathe before the next call. It wasn't how I expected the day to go, but it was really nice to have a moment to take care of myself. I made the 6 o'clock call, and by 6:30, I was able to call the work day done. I'm glad I seized the opportunity to do something nice just for me - it definitely made having to suit up again the next day easier to take.

Have a Working (Mom) Moment to share? Dads are welcome too. Email me at havingitallproject@gmail.com.