Month: March 2006

Statistics Canada released a compendium of data and reports yesterday in a 300-page tome on the status of women in Canada, collating information on subjects like demographics, employment, education, health, and family arrangements. It reported that while women still earn substantially less than men, they are filling more professional and and influential positions, and are almost as likely as men to have university degrees. It also reported that by 2004, 65 per cent of mothers with children under three were employed, a figure that has more than doubled since 1976.

Did you catch that? Two in three mothers of preschoolers in Canada are in the workforce. And yet the current government is in the process of dismantling agreements with the provinces to improve access to childcare and improve early learning opportunities.

There’s a new book out called MOMMY WARS: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. I haven’t read it, but I’ve read about it. There’s even an excerpt here. You know what? I think I’ll take a pass on this one. But it’s rankling me, because it’s stirring up all the tired old crap about ‘rivalries’ between stay at home moms and working moms.

And then, of course, there is this . I’ve been stewing on this for weeks. It’s the Web site of Darla Shine, author of Happy Housewives – which, for the record, I also haven’t read. But when I saw that the site was strictly for SAHMs, I got curious, so I registered. She says on her splash page, “You need to be a SAHM. If you are one, you know what this means. Is this exclusionary? YOU BETCHA!” And when you register, it asks you again, “Are you a SAHM”, to which I answered “no”. But it let me in anyway, and they sent me a password – which, if you’re curious, is “hotmama”. I took a look around, but I can’t see any reason at all why they would choose to exclude two thirds of women, except for some inflamatory comments in her blog like, “Staying in daycare is just as good as being in the safe comfort of your home with your mommy? Calling your child about a boo-boo or missing the soccor games is okay?” in response to Linda Hirshman on GMA.

Why have I been letting this gnaw away at me? I give no credibility to anything this woman says, and yet I am deeply offended by her exclusion of me based on my employment status.

I don’t get it. I don’t get why it has to be about facing off, about choosing sides, about your way or my way. I don’t understand why working mothers are always painted as urban vixens who carry Prada bags and spend $48 for eyeshadow who might as well leave their children in Dickensian orphanages as in child care. I don’t see why, in 2006, there continues to be criticism of women who work. It doesn’t matter whether they have to work or they choose to work – although I do believe that for the most part, choice is a myth for the middle class.

All the working mothers I know work to feed and house and clothe their families. And, why has nobody asked the question about what would happen to the economy if 65 per cent of the workforce suddenly removed itself?

This is all over the place, I know. You know why? Because I’m a working mother who has too much on her plate, whose expectations for herself are too high (thank you media and society), and who is too exhausted trying to live her life let alone spend hours formulating a coherent argument to defend it.

Happy International Women’s Day.

Four years ago today, I became a mom for the first time. And since you know how Tristan was conceived, it only seems right that you know how he came into the world. Except I went looking for his labour and delivery story in all my old files, and I can’t find it anywhere. Bear with me as I make this up as we go along.

Tristan was due on March 4, 2002. On March 3, 2002, we had a flood in our basement. We had to haul everything – desk, computer, boxes, bookshelves and books, TV, futon, the works – up the stairs and find a place to keep it while they dried out the carpet and repaired the drywall and the paint.

On March 4, CBC TV called and asked if we would be interested in being interviewed for the evening news broadcast on the subject of embryo adoption. We were!

On March 5, I was still quite impatient.

On March 6, I woke up around 4:30 in the morning to mild cramps that seemed to come with regular frequency. Only after lying in bed for 90 minutes timing them did I finally begin to believe that perhaps they were contractions. I finally got out of bed, and a little after 6:00 that morning, lost my mucous plug. (Nothing says “Good Morning” like a mucous plug.)

I woke up Beloved (nice of me to let him sleep, eh?) and took a shower, relieved to finally be on our way to meeting Tristan for the first time. After my shower, I was puttering about making breakfast but Beloved was insistent that I call the L&D unit and get their advice on whether to come into the hospital immediately or not. As much to calm him as anything, I made the call.

Remember I mentioned the basement had flooded three days before? Right. The contractors also had some labour scheduled for that day. I was sitting on the couch in the front room, describing to the L&D triage nurse on the telephone the events of the morning to date, when I looked out the window to see them coming up the walk with their arms full of paint cans, ladders and whatnot. I hollered sweetly called to Beloved to answer the door while I retreated to the future baby’s room (perfectly prepared for baby’s arrival for months but now overflowing with excess furniture from the basement) to finish my call with the nurse.

She had just finished telling me that all sounded well and I didn’t have to worry about coming in until the contractions were so strong I couldn’t talk through them (and I had to keep saying “Pardon me?” because of the crashing of contractors coming up the stairs) when I began to leak.

“Um, excuse me?” I interjected into the end of her instructions. “Um, I haven’t been incontinent at all during this pregnancy, but um, I seem to be leaking.”

“Oh!” she said, the smile evident in her voice. “Well then, that changes everything. Why don’t you come on down and pay us a visit?” So Beloved made a quick call to a friend to come over and babysit the contractors while I packed up a few last pairs of underwear and my toothbrush into my overnight bag, while the contractors used a very noisy saw to cut a six-foot hole in my bedroom ceiling to access the pipe that had caused the basement flood.

We went to the L&D unit, and they took a look and patted me on the head and sent us home again, with instructions to return when the contractions became unbearable.

By then it was getting on to lunchtime, so we stopped at Tim Horton’s on the way home. People give you strange looks when you are standing in line at Timmy’s and are very obviously pregnant and are very obviously breathing through your contractions. Go figure.

It was probably close to four o’clock that afternoon by the time we finally made our way, uneventfully, back to L&D. The contractions were good and strong (she said euphemistically) and they admitted us right away. They offered me dinner, which I declined as the contractions ramped up to the point that I was getting nauseous from them.

Back in 1999, one of my best friends asked me to be present in the delivery room when her son was born, and I had asked Candice to be present when Tristan was born. By the time she arrived at the hospital, sometime in the early evening, I had lost all track of time in the hell of contraction-inducing hallway wandering. Luckily, her arrival and the arrival of the epidural roughly coincided.

Unfortunately, the epidural didn’t ‘take’ properly, and they had to start again from scratch. As I found out through Simon’s long delivery, I seem to be somewhat epidural resistant. I’m hoping to deliver the next child, if there is a next child, by osmosis. Through the night, they tinkered with the medication until finally, near dawn, I was so frozen I couldn’t move my legs.

Looking back now, I think Tristan was just waiting for the morning shift change to make his entrance. It was around 7 am that they told me to start pushing, and the first few pushes just about popped my eardrums but didn’t seem to do much of anything toward delivering the baby. After a while, I got the gist of it and I pushed from lying down, from sitting up, from squatting. I pushed until it seemed my entire life had been consumed with pushing.

After two hours of pushing, we had garnered quite a crowd. The nightshift nurses were still hanging around but the dayshift nurses had already arrived. There were at least three student nurses, one of whom had never been at a birth before – and somehow she became my favourite, and my focal point. Maybe I didn’t know what the hell I was doing or what was going on but neither did she, and somehow that was comforting. By the time I actually delivered, there were also two residents and the on-call OB in the room – I’m sure there must have been a dozen people crowded around the bed, all cheering me to push “just one more time”.

Beloved, who during my pregnancy had expressed on a few occasions his fears about the whole delivery experience, was the only male body in the room, and was more than happy to stay as close to my head as he could manage. I remember in that final lull after the penultimate push looking up and being almost giddy with love to see him watching everything, his eyes bright with excitement and pride and anticipation.

And then, just before 9 am on March 7, 2002, a mere 28 hours after labour began, Tristan Louis was born. Nine pounds, 22 inches long. My firstborn son.

Happy birthday, Tristan!

A few quick thoughts as I scarf down my sandwich and coffee (third one of the day, because I’ve been up since four freakin’ thirty this morning. Anybody wanna buy a toddler with sleep issues? And this is before we make the transition away from the cage crib…)

Could someone please come and get your former president? Because apparently he and his buddy Lance Armstrong and 4000 fans are in town, and the congestion around my food-court of choice was rather unbearable.

Not that the former president of the United States has anything to do with tampons, but for lack of a better segue I was also going to ask you why the nice lady at the drug store always double-bags when I buy tampons. It’s a nice gesture, but should I be embarrassed? I mean, wouldn’t it be worse if I weren’t buying them when I need them?

Okay, so I could have inserted this part of the stream-of-consciousness in between the POTUS thing and the tampon thing, but they have a nice juxtapositioning, no? Anyway, I was also going to mention that I was walking through the Bay, and got sucked in by the Estée Lauder bonus display. I’ve often succumbed to the Clinique bonus offer, but I’ve never used Estée Lauder cosmetics before. (I can’t find a link, but trust me when I tell you it was an adorable little make up bag – because I only have five I don’t use already – and some brushes and stuff, but it was, you know, FREE with $29.50 purchase so how could I say no?) And my Clinique duo in bronze and something is almost a year old, so I should probably update it. So I was looking at the eyeshadow combos, and there was one set of earth tones that I particularly liked, but when she told me the price I nearly dropped my lunch.

FORTY-EIGHT DOLLARS for eyeshadow? Holy hell! I mean really, I know there’s probably some measurable difference between the Cover Girl stuff in the drug store and this, but at ten times the price? Did I just reveal myself as pathetically hick and make-up unsavvy? We’re talking one little palette of four eyeshadows here, not even three square inches for the whole thing.

Sheesh. This being a girl thing is getting expensive, what with the name-brand tampons and all…

On Saturday, we brought Tristan and his cousin/best friend to see Curious George to celebrate Tristan’s upcoming birthday. It was the first time in a movie theatre for both boys, and they both loved it. Of course we did the whole deal with popcorn and a drink (apple juice – haven’t yet caved in and let him have pop yet), and aside from a few squirms and particularly loud comments (one of which drew laughter from the parents around us), both boys were golden.

It’s a gorgeous little movie, probably my new favourite children’s movie ever – and I’m married to an animator, so I know from kids’ movies! It’s sweet without being saccharine, beautifully drawn in classic 2D style, and not once is there a joke based on farts, burps or bodily fluid. There is no scary villian, and nobody gets mauled or dies. Can you imagine? (Tangent: what is it with Disney movies? Ever noticed that a parent almost always dies or is recently dead in Disney’s animated features, and it’s usually the mother? Everything from Bambi to Beauty and the Beast to Finding Nemo… I could go on.)

Back to Curious George, tho, and the music – I bought the soundtrack as a birthday gift/memento for Tristan, but I’m the one who has it on repeat play on the stereo. Like the movie, it’s gentle and catchy and impossible not to like.

My first and lasting impression, though, was the very same thing that occured to Beloved as we watched the movie. Curious George is Simon. Not only the way he gets into trouble and is so damn cute about it, but something about the way he is drawn catches some intangible aspect of Simon’s personality. We’re not the only ones who noticed – my cousin’s wife picked up a Curious George T-shirt as a late birthday present for Simon, and said it just struck her as the perfect gift for him.

I’m sure me casting my son as a troublesome and pesky monkey has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he has climbed out of his crib three times in the last two days. I’m not ready for this. He’s 25 months old, for goodness sake! It’s not time for a big-boy bed yet. We just gave up his bottle on FRIDAY!!

When we moved Tristan to a bed, we did it with a sense of purpose, if not a little guilt, when he was 20 months old and his sibling was due to arrive and commandeer the crib in two months. I would have kept Simon in his crib forever, given the opportunity. Hell, he slept in a cradle beside my bed until he was eight months old and so large I had to fit him in with a shoe-horn.

I am beginning to suspect I have issues with him growing out of his babyness. Little bit, maybe? And yet, although I have acknowledged on a logical level that we might someday move my 35 lbs child out of his crib, I am in no way prepared (emotionally or bedlinen-ally) for this transition. We have a bed frame, but no mattress. We have no sheets, no comforter. You’d think that maybe some time in the past two years it might occur to me to watch the white sales and pick up an extra set of sheets, maybe a pillow.

Denial. It can be an art form.

It’s Sunday afternoon. The house is so quiet I can hear the dog breathing heavily in the next room, deep in doggy slumber. The clock ticks and my keyboard tapping are the only other sounds in the house. Clear, latewinter sunshine streams in through windows that are impatient for their spring cleaning.

The older boys have gone off to pick up one last birthday gift delivered through Toys R Us, and Simon is fast asleep. For the past two days my head has been crowded with ideas to blog about, ideas large and small, serious and frivolous. And now, in the sleepy quiet of midafternoon, I can’t commit to any of them. And still I itch to type, to tell, to talk to you.

There are other things I should do. If Beloved and Tristan were to walk through the door, I’d jump guiltily up and close the laptop as if caught slacking on the job. After having a house full of people yesterday, and coming nowhere close to ‘company clean’ before everyone arrived, you can imagine that there is some tidying to be done. But the mental cobwebs are humming louder than the crumbs in the carpet, so I will let them call the tune just now. At least until I hear the crunch of tires-on-snow in the driveway.

I give up. I wanted to be literary, but there is also stuff I want to tell you. And I know, realistically, I’ll not get the chance to go back and edit this properly, so once again I’ll just heave the words into cyberspace as they come to me and leave them there, unedited and raw.

I think I’m done being sad for now. I was feeling kicked around by the universe for quite a few days, but feeling sorry for myself doesn’t seem to have improved the situation. The sunshine, and the warmth of my family and friends yesterday, and the joy of watching two preschoolers and a very happy dog on a hike through the woods this morning seems to have penetrated the fog of self-pity I was stewing in. (Can you stew in a fog? Never mind, I said we’re not editing this.)

The thing is, when you’ve decided life is treating you poorly, you can always find examples to back you up. In a short 24 period on Friday I found out I flunked my French exam (I don’t usually fail, so I do not deal with it well) and messed up financially in a minor but meaningful way and found out we’ll likely have to invest money we don’t have in a new washing machine and had my eldest son scowl at me pretty much continually for the entire time between getting home from work and going to bed and had a fight with my husband over the fact that I’ve been feeling sorry for myself and realized it was time for Simon to give up his bottle and had some kid hanging out with the questionable teen from next door barf all over our lawn and driveway.

It was not one of my better days.

Going in to the next day was no hell either. I absolutely could not get Simon to nap, and the only person in the world who gets more cranky when tired than me is Simon – and we were expecting a house full of people for Tristan’s birthday party. I had put him down for the third, maybe fourth time in an hour when I heard the unmistakable thump of a preschooler aerial drop. I crept to the top of the stairs and listened for crying, but all was quiet. Then ever so slowly, the doorknob began to turn and with exquisite care, he opened the door and peeked out. When he saw me, he immediately began to whimper – I’m not sure if it was from fear of getting caught or remorse from the hard landing. The second exodus was less than ten minutes later, and the window-rattling thump was followed immediately by a burst of surprised and angry tears. His, not mine. He never did nap. No breakouts today, but the hike in the woods might have had something to do with that.

I feel bad. I don’t have any pictures worth posting of Tristan’s birthday party. That’s the last of the negative thoughts though, because with the exception of the fact that I absolutely forgot to buy candles and we had to use the “1” candle left over from Simon’s birthday last year on Tristan’s cake (he was very understanding, all things considered) we had a lovely day celebrating Tristan’s birthday.

Crunch of tires-on-snow… it’s not quiet anymore. It sounds like I’m done.

In honour of Nancy, who seems to so enjoy them, we’re off on a Friday ramble.

I imagine it has something to do with the stress that has been radiating off of me this week, but the boys have been particularly pesky this week. A lot more whining, a lot more bickering, a lot more random mischief.

I’m getting ready for work this morning, and Simon is wandering around looking for trouble. I step out of the closet and catch sight of him just as he is about to dunk my little green watering can, stashed in the bathroom to tend to the last surviving plants in the house, into the toilet.

Gotta give him credit for ingenuity, if not hygiene.

Have you see the ubiquituous Advertising Slogan Generator? It’s good for at least five minutes of entertainment on a Friday. My favourite returns were:

“Poppin’ Fresh Postcards from the Mothership” and

“Choosy Mothers Choose Postcards from the Mothership”

Got my language test results back. Not great. I need to get a B level, but I only got an A. I know I’m capable of the B, but I got rather flustered during the interview. Bleah.

Ever wonder what the number one Billboard song was on the day you were born? What, you haven’t wondered?? Whyever not? Okay, maybe the nostalgia engine will be stoked if you look up the number one song on the day you graduated from high school, or lost your virginity, or the day you got married (or divorced!)

Gotta admit, I was a little disappointed with this one. The number one song on August 1 1968 was “Hello, I Love You” by The Doors – cool in a 60s kind of funky way; the number one song on August 1 1970 was “(They Long to Be) Close to You” by The Carpenters – pure fromage. But the number one song on the day I was born, August 1 1969, was “In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zager & Evans. What now by the who now? Sheesh.

And finally this little beauty via Adventures in Parenting. I love Flickr. I love soduko. What’s not to love about making your very own soduko with Flickr???

(Grrrr! There was supposed to be a very nice picture RIGHT HERE of my very own Flickr Soduko puzzle, featuring Tristan and Simon. But Blogger is being its usual obstinate self and will not let me post it. So, you’ll just have to click through and take a look for yourself.)

Whoops! A late-breaking addition: With all the Blogger trouble I was having this morning, I forgot to include this link to the official blog of the writers for Grey’s Anatomy, my new TV obsession. Thanks to JoJo, who really should have a blog, for pointing it out to me.

Found any fun stuff on the Interweb lately that you’d like to share with the class?

I’m not sure if I’m clever or pathetic to be mining my own archives for material, but I’ve always particularly liked this meme. It was one of my first, and when I posted it a year ago, I had maybe three readers, so not too many of you will have that sense of déjà meme. And it’s a year later, so it is a little different.

Without further justification, the time travel meme:

15 years ago today I would have been:
… living in a one-bedroom apartment in Vanier with my ex-husband
… just about to make the collossal mistake of buying a $400,000 triplex in the Glebe with him, his parents, his brother, his cousin, his aunt and his uncle (yes, we were all on the mortgage. If I knew then what I know now…)
… working as a clerk in the tax centre, answering taxpayer mail and reassessing tax returns.

10 years ago today I would have been:
… living with Beloved for all of about eight weeks in a tiny apartment in Old Ottawa South.
… providing technical guidance, training and expertise to the clerks who answer taxpayer mail and reassess tax returns.
… more than half-way done my six-year quest to get my university degree studying part-time at night.

5 years ago today I would have been:
… childless, struggling with infertility and heartbroken over compound loss of the approaching due date of the baby we lost to miscarriage in 2000 and the failure of the second of two unsuccessful IUI treatments.
… working in my first communications position for a program that recycles used computers from government and businesses and donates them to schools.
… negotiating with the landlord of our garden townhouse near Hunt Club to buy it from them.

1 year ago today I would have been:
… a newbie blogger with three daily readers.
… back in the work force for a scant few weeks after my maternity leave with Simon, and overwhelmed by the pressures of mothering two and working full-time.
… working as a communication advisor.

This year I am:
… still overwhelmed by the pressures of balancing work and family, but with more good days than bad.
… consumed with all things bloggy, and very proud of the success I’ve had with this blog and the friends I’ve made through it.
… a senior communications advisor, but on the look out for a position that will allow me to be more of a writer.

Today I:
… am being tested on the oral component of my French-language exam (yikes!)
… am trying to work out the details of how exactly we will celebrate Tristan’s birthday this weekend.
… missed my bus because just as I was pulling the door closed behind me, Simon started calling out “Hugs! Hugs!!” and I told him I had to run, pulled the door closed, got to the end of the driveway with his voice still ringing in my ears, decided I couldn’t spend the rest of the day thinking about it and turned around to go back and give him a hug.

Next year I hope:
… to be legitimately published, anywhere.
… to be pregnant with our third and final child, thanks to our frosty.
… to be involved with Tristan’s school somehow – PTA, volunteer, something like that.

In five years I hope:
… to be getting paid (a lot?) to write (creatively?).
… to have two kids in school, and one getting ready for registration.
… to be independently wealthy. (Yes, this is a repeat from last year. Some dreams never die.)

Sorry about yesterday’s blatant cry for sympathy. I’m a little bit stressed out these days, in the same way Tim Hortons sells a little bit of coffee each day.

You know what triggered my waterworks? My time sheets.

We have this intranet thingee where we complete our time sheets, and mine has been screwed up since July. I finally got it fixed last month, but it has been so busy that I haven’t had time to enter the 4 months worth of outstanding time sheets I have to key in. The end of the fiscal year is coming, though, so I had to do them. And I had to do about 100 other things. And the people for whom I was supposed to be doing things kept calling and sending me e-mails and complaining about stuff I couldn’t control and asking me to do stuff I couldn’t do, and the people who might have been able to help me accomplish things seemed bent on being obstacles instead. And the time sheet interface and I had a disagreement, and I lost it.

Yep, I cried over data administration. If that’s not embarrassing, I don’t know what is.

Oh wait, yes I do know what embarrassing is… embarrassing is deciding to cheer yourself up by any means possible, while atoning for the snack-food self-medication excesses of the past week, and deciding to go to the gym before work this morning. (no we’re not at the embarrasing part yet) And also deciding that whereas what you would REALLY like to do is stay home and watch Ellen and Dr Phil all day, what you can realistically do is wear your jeans and favourite sweater as a form of textile comfort and minute rebellion against the office. (here comes the embarrassing part) And after working yourself up into a collossal sweat and then having an invigorating shower in the locker room of your office building, you realize that you forgot to pack a bra. And you hold up the soaked, smelly bra that you were just wearing and realize that the choice between this bra and no bra is really not so much of a choice at all. And you also decide that you are very glad you work downtown within a 10 minute walk to some lovely lingerie stores, to which you will be paying an unscheduled visit on your morning coffee break. And you will hold a large sheaf of papers tightly to your chest should you need to actually leave your cubicle for any reason until you manage to accomplish that excusion. (see, embarrassing. I told you.)

When I’m stressed, I eat. I don’t drink much (the migraine is rarely worth it), I don’t smoke, I don’t pop pills. Barbequed chips and chocolate chip cookies are my current medication of choice. What do you do to release the pressure? And if you could, which source of stress would you eliminate from your life?