Grumpy Monsters Bubbling Snot

If I were single, I'd be at my sister's house right now, a five hour drive away. But the reality is I have two sick kids and chose not to endure the long car ride with grump monsters bubbling snot in the backseat.

Kids are kids. They inspire love, panic, boredom, anger, amusement, resentment. The panic comes in two forms. When I've been away from them for too long - as I was on my business trip this week - I need to hold them, feel their physical presence, their breath, their heartbeats, touch a flesh-and-bone reminder that they are healthy and alive and I haven't through some long absence neglected my offspring.

The second sort of panic comes from constant care for them from sunrise to sunset and then again from midnight to three in the morning. And then again, from sunrise, with forty eight hours more stretched in front of me. My husband works long hours on the weekends, so Saturdays and Sundays my hands are full and my brain cannot disengage. Every waking moment I am responsible for two human lives. Taking a shower and exercising and plucking my eyebrows and spending more than four minutes on the toilet and reading a magazine and cooking a hot healthy meal and having the freedom to drive to the fucking liquor store and back are far off dreams of a time long before and a time that surely will not come again for at least five years.

I've experienced both kinds of panic this week. I've rushed home to crawl into the cage and hold my children and I've mentally bruised and bloodied my fingertips clawing at the iron bars.

Working Parents

What image pops into your brain when you think "working mother?" Is it a bedraggled, tired woman focused on a laptop, ignoring her screaming baby on the floor? Is it a woman with a cell phone in one hand and a crying baby in the other?

The image is a blatant stereotype of yesteryear, the invention of Stone Age guilt-mongers.

Here's the reality today: working moms and dads ARE struggling to keep their heads above water. But as they are wading through, they are holding their children up, passing them back and forth, doing everything they can to make sure their kids are happy, warm, safe, dry, rocked, cuddled and played with. Working parents - often to the detriment of their own health and schedules - go far to make sure their children are content and cared for.

Here's a new image: a muscled woman bouncing her happy smiling baby in one arm and turning off her cell phone, because she leaves work at work, where it belongs.

Balance

So, I'm a working mom.

I have found that balance for me means compartmentalizing my obligations. When I am at work, I focus on work to be the most productive. When I am at home, I focus on being a wife and mother and maintaining all the domestic chores. I forget work. When I have my rare personal time, I focus on myself.

Lately, this balance also means cutting out some obligations at work. Saying no. Which is hard, because I should be able to do everything, because I'm sorta perfect that way.

I wake up though in the middle of the night, freaked out that I am missing something at home. Something important. That my mind is not focused enough on The Kid, or the New One coming. I've had moments of panic in the middle of the night where I wonder if I'll die and somehow miss all the important things in life.

So to simplify right now: I am saying no to some work obligations. When I feel rushed on the commute, or overwhelmed by my to-do lists or my mind begins to dwell on job duties, I lean towards that warm sunny place which is home, that Kid who puts a smile on my face even when he's knitting his eyebrows, that Husband who holds my hand while we're watching TV.

I'm also trying to relax about housework. Let the floor get a little crunchy under bare feet for a while. Even though I vacuumed last night, I'm trying.

In middle-of-the-night clarity, playing with and hugging my child is the only thing that matters. It's the only thing that will matter fifty years from now.

Work and Family Balance

Here are ten ways to balance work and families from the study Ten Adaptive Strategies For Family and Work Balance: Advice for Successful Families by Shelley A. Haddock, Scott J. Ziemba, Toni S. Zimmerman, and Lisa R. Current.

Plus one I added.

This study focuses on dual working couples with children.

1) The importance of family is the highest priority.
2) Both partners strive for equality in both earning income and caring for the family.
3) The couples described enjoying going to work and deriving meaning from their work.
4) The couples also create and enforce strict boundaries to keep work and family separate.
5) Productivity at work is not sacrificed.
6) Fun becomes the first priority rather than more work at home.
7) Dual earning is valued and embraced.
8) Simplicity is an emphasis.
9) Successful dual earner families tend to collaborate on decision-making and be mindful of their boundaries as they do so.
10) Time is regarded as a valuable resource.
11) Time alone, solitude, is regarded as a valuable resource.

Law Enforcement Dudes

Tonight I moderated a conservation law enforcement panel. Now, I'm married to a game warden, and I was a game warden, so I know something about this stuff. There, I've just added a defensive qualifier, feeling compelled to justify my presence on the panel.

One participant said "it's a lifestyle" and "don't come into the interview asking about benefits or time off" and "you will miss all the holidays and birthdays." Another participant talked about how lazy "Generation X is, because they only want to work 8 to 5."

As the moderator, I graciously looked into the audience while they were making these comments. I did not argue. You would have been proud of me. But it irked me.

Isn't Generation X the ones who saw their Baby Boomer parents working their fingers to the bone, who became latchkey kids? I've seen examples of people who live to work - and it's not me or my husband. Family is number one, and any other view on life seems to me be misguided or would at least require relying on a spouse to be the sole dispenser of attention to the kids.

I work full-time, but I treasure my time off, and I take it. There are many, many good old guys in my agency, but I'm waiting for the day they retire and we get can some work/family balance institutionalized.