"Sad Blog" Update

So, a funny thing happened. Remember my little meltdown about how nobody is reading this blog? Hard to forget, since it was only two posts ago. Well, the whole episode was instigated by my sitemeter. You know, the thing that tracks visits to the blog. I changed the settings so it would not count visits from my own computer as traffic, and suddenly my traffic dropped from dozens of daily visits to zero. Yes, zero. So when I complained that no one was reading my blog, I meant NO ONE. Guess what? I just got my next weekly report, and it still says that I had zero visits this week. But I know you've been here, because a number of you so nicely suggested that I keep blogging, either in comments here or to me personally. I'm thinking there is a glitch in my technology.

There is some serendipity here, however. This momentary crisis made me think long and hard about what I want--from this blog, from that other blog, from my career, as a writer, as the archivist for this family. And things are way clearer now than they were a week ago.

Clio Confidential began as a way to allow family and friends into our daily lives, and as a love letter to Clio. Over the years, watching mom-bloggers grow famous and quit their jobs and become full-time bloggers and support their families this way, I found myself thinking, "that could have been me." But the truth is, I never wanted to do the things I would have had to do to get to that outcome. I didn't want to be a web-based reality show. I didn't want to have to worry about whether or not to show my kids faces on the blog. I didn't want my friends and family to have to deal with contests and giveaways on my blog, when they were just checking in with me. I didn't want to sully the content here with anything remotely, well, business.

But I do want to be a blogger. I want to have readers. I want to be invited to speak at conferences or write columns for print magazines. I want to make my own hours and get to pick my kids up at the end of the school day. I want the blogging life.

I also want to be a writer. This is not splitting hairs. Bloggers and writers are different. You can be, but are not necessarily, both.

So here's what I hope to be/do. Design blogger. Mom writer. It's funny: sounds so simple now.

What does this mean for this blog? It means that it will remain the same. A way to allow friends and family into our lives. A love letter to Clio and Eleri. A record of one version of all of our past as a family. And...(this is important)...an incubator for larger stories to pitch to traditional media. That's the Mom Writer part. Every once in a while, I might ask for your input as parents and people about stories that interest you and what you would want to know more about. Or not, we'll see how it goes! And I will try to not be so insecure about things, and know instead that people DO read this blog, for a variety of their own reasons, and that is a wonderful thing.

Meanwhile, I'll be tearing it up over at Love Your Space. That's where I will be trying to build an audience beyond my own circle. In fact, if you know anyone interest in design and decorating, please send them my way. Encourage them to follow the blog. Pass it on. I started the blog because I love talking about decorating and I had exhausted the patience of too many people with my constant talk, especially my poor husband. I needed and outlet. And I love it. I love writing every post. I love pulling inspiration out of magazines. I love planning a week of content. I love that I have a list of 30 posts waiting int he wings, and I am excited to write every single one. Stemming from that passion, I hope that the blog will lead to bigger things. Eventually, the goal for the design blog is 3-fold. One, I am starting to take on clients who would like to redecorate their homes using what they already have, some ingenuity and elbow grease, and a modest budget for vintage and mass-market items; I hope that the blog will introduce my personality and style and connect me with clients. Two, I would like the design blog to yield sponsors and advertising revenue. And three, I would like it to get me noticed as a design writer for other outlets.

I have always known that I was goal-oriented (I need a plan!), and I have to say, it is a HUGE relief to have a direction. I'll keep you posted.

And I just want to say thank you to all of you who DO read my blogs, who support my endeavors, and who say such nice things about what I write. (I fear I might need positive reinforcement a little too badly to embark on a freelance writing/decorating life, but we'll see!) And this time around, a special thank you to my friend Jo who sent me a plan to build my blog and helped me get some clarity around the function of these two spaces. And thanks, too, to my friend Sarah B, who said: "now you're doing what you love, the money will follow." Here's hoping she's right!

Decorating and stuff

I've been looking at a LOT of home-grown design blogs lately, and I'm realizing that every other woman with half a design eye who moves into a new house starts a blog about its transformation. some of them have been super successful, and the homeowners are now full-time bloggers. I've been sort of storing up all these decorating posts, waiting until I could make them "right" or "decorator-y," and I mentioned to my friend Sara the idea of a spin-off blog to track the design process in the house. She very tactfully suggested that what is interesting about a person like me blogging about decorating is where these efforts intersect with life and family. Smart cookie, that one. And I have to say, after ODing on all these blogs, many of which are amateur hour (sorry, that;s mean), it was a terrible idea indeed. I'm obsessed with sourcing the perfect runner for the kitchen right now, but this, too, shall pass. It is a big part of how I'm spending my time right now, and it is an utter delight to settle in to such a great house, but really? It's not world changing. (Okay, duh.)

All that said, I'm going to stop saving my posts until they are genius design posts, because they just aren't going to be. My photography is weak and my eyes are often bigger than my stomach (meaning, my design ideas are often--make that always--bigger than the realized projects). So here it comes. My obsessiveness. I'll try to put it out there is fits and starts so as not to scare anyone away. Anyone left, that is, after my supremely spotty blog record these past few months!

Something funny has happened.

Over the past two weeks, I have occasionally thought about posting to this blog, but no so much because I had something I wanted to share as because I felt there was the expectation that I SHOULD share, because x number of days had passed. And for the first time, I understood the reasoning of the several bloggers I have encountered who chose to sign off, or at least give it a little rest: that they wanted to live their lives, rather than blog about them.

Over the past two weeks, I have been living my life: being offered (accepting, and tomorrow, starting) a new job; spending as much time as possible with my kids before their is less time to spend; reading books! traveling back to New York for my cousin Patrick's wedding and discovering, in doing so, the paradox of yearning for something at the heart of a place I do not miss. In 24 hours in the city before heading upstate, we managed to see both my best friend and Clio's, and it was like coming home. Just enough time has passed that it was almost possible that we had just been visiting Boulder, that we would slip back into life in Brooklyn. At the same time, enough time has passed that I think that would be impossible. In our habits, we have already moved on, begun to settle in to the shape of a different lifestyle.

I have begun several posts that felt false today- including, in all honesty, this one (I just deleted a paragraph or two about a run-in I had in traffic today.) I'm not sure if this is the culmination of the blog-dentity crisis I have been feeling since I got here (a blog is a product of your experiences; yet this blog seems awfully rooted in the angst of my years as a parent in NYC and our decision to leave) or just a dalliance with the freedom of not reporting on my life, or something mysterious behind door number three. I have been giving quite a bit of thought to what this blog needs to be for me, but I haven't found the answer.

For those of you who check back frequently, well, there may (or may not) me an ongoing lull. When I have had these moments before, they have been enough to get me unstuck, and a flood of posts has followed. We'll see. Work begins tomorrow and it will be the first time I start a new job as a parent. I will be creating a position and building a financial/fundraising plan, in a state I'm unfamiliar with and a sector not quite my own (but then again more personally my own: Writers instead of Artists), from the ground up, and re-learning how to balance work life and home life. How to be full-time everythings all at once. Oh, and I started a book club.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post On Going Back to Work. I haven't re-read it, I just know it is there. That moment was the beginning of the end of my life in New York. I hope, in a way, that this is the beginning of a life in Colorado.

Okay, something else funny just happened. I kind of got grossed out by writing that last line, whether or not it is true. I think I might be better off if I stopped dividing time into these little parcels, and began to accept the way that it all overlaps. I have been reminded of this several times over the past few days: I have this fear that by taking a full time job, I will be short-circuiting any other plans for the future by limiting my time to lay the ground work now. I went through the same thing when I wrestled with the decision to go back to school for a Master's Degree: that somehow, I was putting off love and marriage by becoming a student again. But guess what? Dave and I met, became friends, started dating, became boyfriend-girlfriend, and fell in love while I was in grad school.

We have been talking a lot lately about the Lessons I Refuse to Learn (that given the chance, Eleri WILL break my sunglasses, for example.) I guess there are some big ones out there, too.

On Transition

Oh Blog, How I Have Missed You!

We're here, in Boulder, in one piece. We finally got internet yesterday. And for the record, I'd like to amend something I stated in an earlier post. I talked about moving being sudden, no matter how long the build up; in fact, I likened it to childbirth, where one day you are pregnant and the next you have a child (one day you live here, the next, there). But of course, both have a transition (in childbirth, part of it is literally called "transition"), and in the case of this move, everything has been very, very gradual. First of all, because we have yet to sell our house in Brooklyn, we actually have two homes right now, and both have some of our things. We have phone numbers--land lines, no less--in both places. We have plants to water here and there.

Uploading my pictures from the past week made me realize what a strange, complex thing this move has been. First off, I forgot that Clio had pneumonia our last week in Brooklyn until I saw this picture of her nebulizing herself


(welcome back--again--Mr. Nebulizer.) I forgot--already--what an intense, busy time those last few days were. We had a buyer we were waiting to hear from on the house, and we finally got word that they were not ready to buy in the middle of Monday night. Dave's uncle Ray was already in town to help with the packing and, ultimately, the driving. They were planning to leave Wednesday, though Ray thought we were cutting it too close (the truck had to be here, ideally, by Friday afternoon so the girls and I had a place to sleep upon arrival by air.) So we moved up the truck pick up and tried to move up the movers, leaving me one day to figure out what furniture stayed to stage the house and what came with us. When they didn't hear from the movers, Dave and Ray started packing the truck Tuesday, and we continued packing boxes until 3 in the morning; they went ahead and finished loading the truck BY THEMSELVES, and got on the road at 9 (just after the movers called to find out what time we needed them); my aunt Missy arrived around noon to head to Ikea for the home-staging lightning round. By Wednesday night we had the house mostly put together.


But in the in-between, I had to figure out how to feed a 3- and 1- year old with no furniture. It looks something like this:

Thursday I borrowed my friend Emily's car and returned library books, took 5 huge bags and random furniture to Salvation Army, returned a few odds and ends to Ikea, went to Target for the bedskirt that matched the bedding in the master bedroom, went BACK to the same complex for a standing lamp I saw at Marshall's, etc. Thank goodness for our wonderful neighbors, who picked up Clio from day care and fed the lot of us, thereby minimizing the time allotment for the girls to break all things Ikea.

Friday I returned the car, walked home a dozen blocks, installed a decal mural in Clio's room,


got a call from a realtor wanting to show the house THAT AFTERNOON (it happened, by the way, while I was on the plane and Elsie's mom Agnes let them in), which meant everything had to be "showroom perfect," packed our bags, cleaned up the garden, watered the plants, took out the garbage (7 contractor bags), picked up the girls from day care for the VERY LAST TIME, squeezed in a tearful good-bye (although, Dave would later ask "who else was tearful" and truth be told, just me.)


got the girls home, kept them from breaking all things ikea, called a car service, and got off to the airport.

Things look similar on this side of our landing: sleeping on the floor Friday night for lack of mattresses (they stayed in Brooklyn), hitting iHop at 6am when we realized we did not even have milk for the baby, realizing after waiting for an hour on Saturday that the movers were coming SUNDAY, locking our keys in the car at Target and having to get a cab to take us home to get keys and back to get the car, and so on and so forth.

But you know what? Clio and Eleri like the new house.


Clio talks about liking Boulder (although she would like to go to Elsie's house, even though she know understands that this would involve a plane and planes are expensive. Here's their last, Thursday night playdate:


And my parents arrived today to help watch the kids while we continue the slow process of unpacking and learning new patterns for living in our new house. And we'll buy a second-hand burley to hitch to the bikes so we can all ride together. And we'll go to the farmer's market and Boulder festival and hike in Chautauqua and be tourists while we have visitors.

I always get a little flummoxed when I've been away from blogging for a while, because there tends to be so much to catch up on, and sometimes I don't know how to parse it all out, and this has never been more true than now. When will I write about the strange lack of ethnicities here (and my surprise that the movers were not Russian, the cab driver was not Middle Eastern, and the Starbucks Barristas were not African American)? About Clio's school picnic and the fact that I chose this moment to stand firm on discipline, meaning she didn't get to have ice cream at the ice cream social? About the fact that Eleri is walking?

None of this is sudden; it is all a continuum.

More to come.

Status Update

In transition.
Offline until Boulder. The girls and I arrive Friday!

Status Update

We move in less than two weeks.

We have yet to sell the house, and, largely because of this, we haven't packed a box. If you came over, you would never suspect that such a big change was afoot. But I've always said that that's the way it is with moving (or having a baby): after a stretch of anticipation, the tangible change itself is quite sudden. One day you live here, the next day you live there. One day you're pregnant, the next, you have a child.

It's been very hard to know how much to let Clio in on what's going on. When I was pregnant with Eleri, we didn't really start talking about the baby all that much until I was about 8 months pregnant- to Clio, my belly grew so gradually that the change was imperceptible; time to a two year old is so big and stretched out relative to an adult that we figured starting the conversation too soon would only lead to impatience and, possibly, anxiety. Ever since Clio turned three, she's been talking about turning four, and I have tried to convey how much time lies between two events: I describe all the seasonal changes and major holiday milestones that need to occur before she has another birthday; I stretch out my description itself to make her feel the distance still to be traveled. But here we are, less than two weeks out from a different kind of milestone, and I found myself a little surprised when Clio's friend Elsie showed her Colorado on a map in her coat closet yesterday. There was something so tangible about it, and I feared, in that moment, that I haven't sone enough to get Clio prepared. I had pointed the state of our future residence out in an atlas recently, and showed Clio the route from here to there (it was a road atlas, and, yes, sometimes I forget that Clio is just three) but somehow Elsie's map, with it's brightly colored states and clip-art rendering of mountains in Colorado, was, ironically, so much more real.

We have talked about moving to the mountains. When I talk about our new house, Clio remembers one of the rentals we looked at together, one where the owner lived downstairs and had a dog, and she asks me if our yard will have a stuffed animal in it. I tell her yes and hope I will remember to arrange this when we arrive. We talk about her new school as a place where kids catch butterflies in nets, because when we visited, some children were outside doing just that. We went to Ikea today to pick up additional sheets for Clio's bed (and to clear out of the house for a couple of showings), and as we pulled into the parking lot Clio announced that she would like a Cinderella bed. I asked her what a Cinderella bed looks like, and she said, "Just like Elsie's" - Elsie just got a cascade of white netting over her toddler bed, an attempt of her mom's to help the transition to a bedroom shared with a baby sister. We got our own netting and ceiling-mount ring, and I told Clio she would have to wait for this special princess bed until we got to Boulder, to make sure there is something tangible to look forward to.

But we haven't really talked about the leaving part. We didn't tell Clio yesterday that this was her last playdate with Elsie (though Elsie made a wonderful picture book for Clio that tells the story of their play time together, and she said to "have fun in Colorado"). And I can't quite bring myself to explain that she's almost done going to Titi's house. It seems easier to avoid that anxiety, and to let it happens as it happens. But then I wonder if I am forcing my own preferences on to her.

We have reached the stage of the "lasts" - last mom's night out, last dinner with Elsie's parents- and I find this difficult. My friend Lila had offered to organize going-away drinks for Dave and I, and said something in offering that really resonated with me: she said, "I understand if you don't want to do an event at all; you might not want that moment of rupture." This was a few weeks ago, and as the moment approaches, I realize she is exactly right: I don't want the tear, the abrupt moment of good bye. I would rather slip away, glide into my "new life." But I worry that by not giving Clio more warning, we are creating, rather than avoiding, a moment of rupture.

At the same time, I am aware that kids live in the moment, and that Clio will make new friends and will quickly adjust. Kids trust their parents, and take their cues from us in any given situation. A friend who is going through some major changes of her own said a therapist reassured her that whatever you tell the kids is "normal", they will just take to be normal. So I'm trying to learn from Clio and just live in the present. Tonight, after Dave went off to the office to finish up one last proposal and after Eleri went to bed, Clio and I went outside and sat on the front stoop and blew bubbles. She chased after them and reached up into the sky, pointing out airplanes as the sunlight faded. She allowed me to take her picture, directing me to photograph her shoes, and made very silly faces. I squeezed her tight and told her I loved her, and I'm not sure I've heard anything sweeter than the exact quality of her voice when she said "I love you too."

Status Update

Panic.

For all of you have remarked at how calm I am about this whole move thing, how zen, well, the moment has come: I'm freaking out. So there you go. I'm human.

Last night, Dave and I were trying to sort some details about actual, specific, move logistics (like who is driving what vehicle from Brooklyn to Boulder), and I got butterflies in my stomach and tears in my eyes and when I was finally able to speak again I said - well, first I said "I can't talk about this right now" and left the room to do some laundry and cry in private- but then I said, "I'm sorry- I think it's just hitting me."

"That we're moving?" Dave asked, and laughed. Which is fair because really, it is a little ridiculous. Especially since I have always been the future-oriented part of this pairing. And since I have been pushing for a move for at least 2 years.

"Not that we're moving- What that means," I said. And he didn't know what to say to that.

I think what has happened is this: for several months now, I have gone from one deadline to another, just making it, under the wire, in the eleventh hour: from the two books to the trip to Boulder to the lease on a new rental and contract at a new school to our first Open House to the girls' birthday parties. And now all of that is behind me and as the air clears.... I see a much bigger, badder, scarier deadline looming and suddenly it is so very soon and there is way too much to do and we have so little control over so many big things like selling our house and finding me a job in a city where I have no connections and it is pushing my boundaries waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond my comfort zone. Have I ever mentioned that I am a control freak? That I am terrible at anticipation? Yes? Okay. Well, both still true.

Meanwhile, at the birthday party this weekend, I actually saw friends. Lots of them. And I remembered that I like them a lot. That even if I do not have family here, I have an important support network. I mean, who's going to loan me their card table and grocery cart in Boulder? Who would help us carry all of our party supplies back to our car- if we had anyone to host at a party in the first place? I am at that point where I can look at the calendar of the time we have left all on a single page. Where my days are so finite that I will no longer be able to do everything and see everyone I want to before we go- it simply won't be possible. And I hate this sense that somehow I let time slip away, that I should have managed better, chosen differently, re-prioritized. Of course, having kids just highlights the passing of time because they change so much so quickly- and visibly; last week, my best friend had her first baby, a beautiful boy named Daniel Bing, and while I am so glad that I got to meet him in his very first hours, I am also aware that I won't be here as he gets big and sits up and learns to crawl, or while Marni grows into motherhood. Daniel is a bittersweet reminder of all that I am leaving behind, and I am afraid with the knowledge of how easily we can forget, move on, live our lives isolated by the moment.

I take some comfort in knowing myself well enough to know that once we get to Boulder, I should be fine: I don't do well with arriving; I'm much more comfortable having arrived. But I also know that in a way, because our whole time in Boulder is designed as a transition, we will actually spend our next year or two in a state of arriving; I am trying to be excited about that, but I'm also a little nervous to willingly put myself outside my comfort zone for such an extended period. So no, it's not just hitting me that we are moving in physical time or space; but I am just starting to wrap my head around the distance I am asking myself to move on the less tangible scales of measurement.

Fizzbo

That's how I hear you pronounce FSBO, the acronym for For Sale By Owner, a perhaps Herculean task that we are currently engaged in. Our first Open House is on Sunday, an ad is in the NYTimes and on craigslist, we have a website, and we only have... about 1 million projects to accomplish in the next 40 hours. This should be a new HGTV show, kind of like a combination of Get it Sold, 24 Hour Design, and Designed to Sell, with just a touch of 24 thrown in to really capture the drama.

Allow me to raise the stakes: Other than the few hours we can eke out tonight after Clio goes to sleep (at 9, if we're lucky), we will have both children on our hands for all 40 of the remaining hours. And it is supposed to rain straight through until Sunday.

Last night I painted the walls of the outdoor stairwell to the basement, in the dark, holding a flashlight between my thighs. Today Dave spent 7 hours stripping the front door (stripper doesn't seem to work as well in 90% humidity) because--naturally--it is not a standard size so we could not go for "money" in the money or time dilemma and simply buy a new one. We hired cleaners to come in and do the heavy stuff (ceiling fans, floor scrubbing, dusting the lampshades), and then proceeded to track dirt through the house as we brought boxes to the car to go to storage. We are trying to be smart about all of this, and not send things to storage that will have to be repacked or in some way reconsidered for our actual move. We are holding on to things to try to sell later- but that means they need to be photographed and inventoried before they go to storage. How many of you know that I am excellent at doing things the hard way?

Still to do: paint that front door (buy paint at Home Depot), clear out the basement and stage the office as a guest room, organize the closets, read the For Sale By Owner Handbook so we know what to do if we actually get any offers, get flowers and balloons and pre-made cookie dough (who doesn't like chocolate chip cookies at an open house?), oh, and a cute umbrella stand in case it does in fact rain on Sunday- no need to have wet umbrellas dripping through the clean house. Make take-aways (flyers and stat sheets on the house) and have them copied: What's the right amount? Who knows? Paint the frame around the bathroom ceiling light and scrub the bathroom ceiling. Etc. Etc. Etc.

And tomorrow I am supposed to go to the opening of This World and Near Ones, a major 19-artist installation on Governors Island, the last project I really worked on for Creative Time that will be realized, where one of the two books I just edited will also debut. Do you think I have time to go? Let me mention that to get there I would need to take a subway to a ferry.

So, this post is partly a post- this is very much where we're at right now- but it is also an excuse, to let you all know why I have not been posting so much. There's so much to tell, so little time to tell it.

Wish us luck on Sunday!

Status Update

Boulder.
First impressions: the air smells good. A little bit LA, a little bit Santa Fe (definitely "Western"), but if you hold your hand over the mountain view, you could almost be in parts of the Midwest. Our first night I went to the grocery store behind our hotel to pick up snacks and dinner supplies (we finally got wise and booked a suite with a kitchenette and separate bedroom- no more going to bed at 8pm with the girls--though, with Eleri's internal clock set to NY, we would have been wise to go to bed early; yesterday I got up with her at 5am local, today Dave had the pleasure at 5:45); the woman at the checkout said that they, too, have had two weeks of rain, but to remember Boulder is some kind of desert (note to self: what kind? look this up) and to drink lots of water an invest in some chapstick. And it's true: my lips are constantly dry.

I drove all over town in my early morning with Eleri, and Boulder is small but lovely. When Garmindy (our Garmin GPS system has been inexplicably named after Carmindy, the make up artist on What Not to Wear who, incidentally, I worked with on a photo shoot a decade ago and who Dave and I both can't stand) sent me on a weird detour through a high-end subdivision, I came upon the Boulder Reservoir, a man-made lake and recreation spot, which, at 7am, was teeming with cars. Turns out there was a triathalon (there ususally is) but, undeterred, we came back to spend Father's Day morning there. And despite my misgivings, mine was not the only soft, pale body (though boy, was I in the minority.)

Speaking of pale, the town is, as we were told, overwhelmingly White. The only minorities we have seen are maids in our hotel. Coming from the racuous mish-mash of NYC, and particularly our current nieghborhood where, as White Americans, we are the minority (following Hispanics and Eastern Europeans), this strikes me as weird. But far more than the lack of racial diversity, I wonder if this place will feel one-dimensional in terms of ideologies: is everyone here liberal? relatively affluent? well educated? Or is this a town, like other college towns in beautiful settings, that has only a few distinct class populations: a student class, a more-or-less leisure class, and a service class? Where will we fit in to all this? I have noticed that, again coming from New York, the job opportunities seem to be narrow, and I have said that I would work at a bookstore (or whatever), yet I find myself surprised to see these young, white, educated people working at the car rental or the hotel front desk or the deli counter.

I have also heard that Boulder is a nice place to live "for a year or two," and the rental properties that I have looked at seem to speak of the itinerant nature of a college town. Serviceable. Rents higher than you might think because they can be--the population of Boulder is 95,000, of which 25,000 is the UC Boulder student body; that's a lot of turnover--but a real dearth of options for a family. It's freeing to be a renter; but it's a little depressing to look at rentals, especially on what will essentially be a student budget, when you have been a professional and a homeowner for a decade. But I have managed to shift my perspective, not to think in the long term about having a home, but to think about what will work, what's right for the girls, and even to try something on in terms of lifestyle: a townhouse with a pool and maintenance built in to the rent; a tiny house with a big yard; a less-desirable property in a more-desirable part of town.
So I guess I'm expanding my horizons. Which is a good thing.

I will say this: driving here is more pleasant (and parking galore!), people make eye contact at check out lines, biking is not a combat sport, good pre-schools are STILL enrolling for the fall, and my suspicion that there are easier places to live than NYC, and that choosing to "sell out" for an easier life, is a good choice. The right decision.

Status Update

I'm sitting in a Starbucks near Clio's school eating oatmeal and waiting for my cold medication to kick in, hoping my chai will restore my voice which I inexplicably lost overnight, and staring down the pile of work that is due tomorrow. What better time to put a life update out into the world?

For the past month, our future plans have once again been on hold. I had applied for a great-sounding position in Minnesota before we made the Big Decision to move to Boulder; I had heard through a connection that the position was on hold until the next year's budget was approved, plus I didn't technically have some of the major requirements for the position, so I kind of put it out of my mind. So of course, no sooner had I posted details of our Boulder plan, than I got a call to come for an interview. I got the message during dinner one night--I was a little sick then too, and really tired--and I just started crying. I always find it interesting to get sort of sideswiped by something to see what your real gut reaction is; in this case, I was surprised to find myself so emotional about having Minnesota suddenly within reach. So we decided I would interview, and figure it all out from there. If nothing else, if I didn't just go see then it would always be "the one that got away," and I would always wonder (and possibly resent Boulder).

So off I went, and had a lovely, if very quick, visit with my family, and a very promising 2-hour interview at the Children's Museum. It was clear to me that they were grappling to define this position, and that they could take it in a couple of directions; for one direction, I would be great, but for the others I didn't make any sense. It was an education position and I have no formal education background, much less early-childhood education. It is an institution and I have no institutional experience. And it had a community partnership component, and I would be new to the community.

I loved the interview. I haven't really been on a job interview in almost 10 years, and it was empowering to have someone very interested in me despite the obvious lack of qualifications. And I really liked the woman I met with, the vibe of the Museum, everything. But at the same time, talk of systems and structure and institutional politics made my throat close up a little, begging the question: do I really want to go back up this road? Didn't I quit my job to pursue other avenues? (Of course, this is a shifting, on-going debate, and I'm sure there will be some zigzagging over the next several years as I seek the right balance.) I came back to NY and waited for the call. Dave held back on Boulder plans. I avoided the calls from the Montessori school there. And held my breath.

And she didn't call when she said she would.

And about two weeks after the interview, I said to Dave, maybe I don't want this after all. Maybe I am panicking (finally!) about the economy, about my prospects for a job I will love when we eventually land in the Twin Cities, about what I will do in Boulder, about a big gap in my resume. Maybe I am scrambling to get back on a road that I know, that I can navigate with skill, even if I'm not happy traveling its contours.

Well, he said, this guarantees you'll hear from them tomorrow.

And I did. And I didn't get the job. They need someone with early-childhood education experience. With institution experience. With community experience. She said she just kept looking at my resume, and I like to think she was hoping these things would materialize. But of course they didn't. From her perspective, this is not the time to take a big risk on a critical position, and as an administrator, I get that. But it's funny: I feel like I'm back at that place I thought I was in in December, when I first quit my job, or March, when I left it, and I wrote about risk taking and being brave. I'm so glad I decided about that job before it decided about me, because in the space of those two weeks--from interview to final call--I feel like I finally claimed Boulder for myself, as an opportunity to step so far outside of myself that I will, hopefully, not be tempted by the same old roads and will instead head into uncharted territory.

So I called he Montessori school back and made an appointment for June 23. I'm about to book our flights out there, and set up a time to look at some rentals with a broker, and contact the folks that friends and friends of friends have been kind enough to put us in touch with out there. Then I'll use the contacts another colleague gave me for people who might need books edited, see if they might want to work with me. And then I'll think about what I want to write.

What a long process this has been; and it's only just beginning.

Status Update

So, we're moving.

To Boulder, CO, a city to which I have never been. (As I pointed out to my mother, this is not the first time I will have moved to a place sight unseen: there was Lugano, Switzerland, to attend The American School in Switzerland; there was Poughkeepsie, NY, to attend Vassar college.) In keeping with the trend, this move is related to school, but this time I will not be the student. Dave is planning to study Structural Integration; depending on which school you attend, this is also known as Rolfing. You can Google it if you want to know more- Dave says he doesn't yet have his sound byte down to describe what it is, exactly. I like to say it's "on the body work spectrum," more to the chiropractic and movement therapy end than the swedish massage end. But I haven't even Googled it, actually, so don't listen to me.

While we're there, Clio will go to Montessori school, Eleri will go to day care of some kind, and I will re-enter the work force. Preferably doing something related to future goals, like teaching, writing, editing, or working in Public Programs, all somehow related to cultural or educational environments. But hell, if it brings in more than childcare takes out and covers basic expenses, I'll work in a bookstore. Or as the assistant program manager at a gym. (yes, this is a real job that I really might apply for. Climbing wall birthday party, anyone?) This is what I find exciting about the whole venture: the possibilities. I feel a little bit like we get to try on another life for a little while. We will likely be renters. We can try new hobbies and no one will know us well enough to say "really??! you!!?" when we say we are, I don't know, going to train for a triathalon, as so many people apparently do in Boulder. (Something about that thin mountain air.)

I like that we will know what it is like to live somewhere in "the rest of the country." I have lived my entire adult life in New York City, a wonderful, if somewhat skewed perspective, and I am eager to get another view on things.

At the end of this experiment, lasting somewhere in the 12-24 months range, we will pick up and move again, to settle down in the Twin Cities, and begin the rest of our lives. Or the next part of the rest of our lives. Or the rest of the next part of our lives.

At least that's the plan.

For now, there's work to be done. If you know of anyone who might want to buy a 3-bed 2-bath attached house in Brooklyn with central air, outdoor space, and parking, all for the price of a 2-bed coop in one of those new buildings on 4th ave in park slope, send them my way. If you know someone who might want to employ us, rent to us, or befriend us out west, ditto. If you want to take our kids off our hands every now and again as we prepare our house for sale, well, where do I drop them off? Any other ideas? I'm all ears!

As for all the nitty gritty details, no, we haven't figured any of it out. But we will.

Status Update

Because I am constantly blogging in my head and slightly less frequently blogging on my blog, sometimes I am alerted to gaps in my communication. For example, after a post in December about quitting my job, I realized that I had not quite shared the part of my plan that included some kind of freelance work, and many of you were concerned about our family surviving on one salary. My most recent post about Clio interviewing at a Minneapolis Montessori begs the question whether we're moving to Minnesota.

Apparently on Facebook (which I'm still not on, though for both freelance work and a possible move I would be wise to join), you can endlessly update your "status" to broadcast to the world where you are and what you're doing ("At work;" "Loading the Dishwasher;" "procrastinating") . In a way, I both love and loathe this idea; on the one hand, it fixes you at a place in time, moment by moment, which seems potentially reassuring, if completely unnnecessary (on a related note, if someone can explain to me the point of Twitter, that would be great); on the other hand, at moments of transition, it can call attention to the fact that you feel dislodged, unsure of your status at all.

I guess my status includes such right now tangibles as "unemployed," "hung over," and "blogging" as well as more abstract stuff like "considering the future," and for some reason this impulse to label your place in mental space tempts me to borrow from movie titles, like, at the moment, "Waiting to Exhale" and "Feeling Minnesota."

So here's the deal: I'm done with my job, but keeping the girls in day care three days a week in order to take on freelance work. First up, editing a book for Creative Time. I'll be looking for other writing/editing work (in any field), consulting work at arts organizations, and whatever else might come along, so send leads my way. Meanwhile, we are considering moving to Minnesota to be closer to family and to have an "easier life" (parking, parking, everywhere!). We are also considering a short-term move to Boulder for Dave to go to school for Structural Integration. (Upon reading this post, Dave's status will change to "annoyed at my wife who just shared too much information on her blog." Sorry honey- people are asking questions!) Clio has been applied to Montessori schools in both places, and I imagine we will need to formalize our decision next month, when a contract and tuition deposit will be due.

As for the status of possibly staying in New York? I'm not sure: ask Dave.

Sorry, honey.

On Being Brave

In 1992, when all of my classmates were heading off to college, I boarded a plane for Switzerland, by way of New York. I was 17. I well remember arriving at JFK airport hours before my departure was scheduled, and wandering the halls of the terminal, killing time and testing out this new sense of being on my own. I wore a floral culotte jumper so unfortunately popular in that age, a coral blazer, and, inexplicably, Birkenstocks, and carried a brown leather Coach purse; I had chosen this carefully as my armor. When it came time to head to my gate, I made the bewildering discovery that this airport had multiple terminals, and to get to the one I needed I would have to take a bus. I was told to take the red, white and gray bus from the back of the terminal when in fact I required the red, white and blue bus departing from the front. Somehow, I did make the flight, and this small incident with the buses started my journey with the knowledge that I could find my own way.

The thing that lingers with me 16 years later is how everyone told me I was so brave. As if I was going off to Paris to build a life, like the heroine of Sabrina (and countless other coming-of-age tales). In fact, my year in Switzerland was simply a year at school, just like my peers who went off to college and adapted to a variation on the theme they had been living for most of their lives: more school, wherever it may be, is still a familiar structure in which many of us can function with ease. It was living away from home that was significant, not the fact that the place I chose to do it happened to speak another language.

Now again I find people telling me that I am brave. That they wished they had the guts to quit their jobs, whether to spend more time as a parent or to pursue a passion, long-forgotten in the detritus of making ends meet, making the grade, making partner, making it here (to make it anywhere). This time, I won't have a familiar structure to ease into, and all the metaphors for what I am about to do use the cliched language of risk and adventure: taking a big leap, stepping off the cliff, heading into the unknown.

What is so ridiculous is how undramatic the events of this big change actually are. Today I moved my employee file from "current" to "past." I asked our designer to take my photo and bio off the website. I took myself off our bank accounts. I made a laundry list for the new director of operations, who will take on some of my role: I wrote things like "merge HR files" and "manage per-project insurance needs." I deleted thousands of emails with one-word or one-sentence replies.

After nearly 6 years, tomorrow is my last day at Creative Time. On Thursday, Clio and I go to Minnesota for a long weekend. Next Tuesday, I will get up in the morning, and....

This weekend at Jim and Missy's we all took a bunch of personality tests on line. Mine indicated that I am future-oriented, which is exactly the language I use when I struggle to plan for our family--when I complain about what Dave is not. For the past three months, it has been much easier, somehow, to focus on the organization's future without me, instead of my future without it. It's not so much that I feel my identity to be wrapped up in this place (though all the major milestones of my adult life have happened against this backdrop); it's more that in choosing to leave (for parts unknown, to continue the cliches), I am choosing to define my own identity. And from this moment, when it hasn't begun but it feels like so much rides on it, that shouldn't be scary, but it is.

When I was 17, I knew that my trip, while an adventure, was not at all brave. Right now, I have absolutely no idea if I am brave, or crazy, or something else--I just know that something was not working, and it was time for a change. The stakes are high now: three people's livelihoods and happiness are linked to my own, and to the choices I make. Next week, when it starts to settle in a little, I might feel relief, or I might panic. Either way, I will probably make a laundry list for myself. On it I will write such dramatic things as "make new budget," "update resume," "clean toilets," and "potty training!" and I will begin to tackle these things while I look for a way to get started on what comes next.

Restless

I was supposed to go to the movies tonight.
In fact, I'm supposed to be there right now.
It was supposed to be the cure for what ails me.
But instead, I drove around for 40 minutes looking for parking. By the time I conceded that I should just park a ways away and walk, there wasn't enough time left to walk from a ways away and still make the movie on time.

So I came home and looked at my "favorites" listings on the multiple listings service for Twin Cities real estate. For all the problems with sprawl, there's something to be said for multiplexes with PARKING.

It's funny: in one of our MANY conversations about leaving NYC in seek of an "easier life," I listed "accessible parking" (or you can walk to everything) on my list of amenities. Dave sort of laughed. I stand by it.

On Making Decisions

Saturday morning, Eleri took a return trip to the Doctor to see whether the nebulizing treatments had worked. The on-call Doctor theorized that she had Bronchiolitis a second time (it's caused by two separate viruses, and while it's not common to get them both, a child with an older sibling and exposure through day care is the most likely supect), and he cleared her for travel.

Sunday morning, she woke up less than an hour before we were scheduled to leave for the airport, and in the scramble of getting our family of four out the door, we noticed that she was "in bad shape" (as I said to Dave), but could attribute it to any number of things: grogginess, the albuterol treatments, etc. At the airport, just before boarding the plane, she had one of those poops that completely blows out the diaper, and we discovered that we had packed spare clothes in the carry on for everyone BUT Eleri. As I stood in the airport holding a feverish baby in a "dress" made from her sister's shirt, and they called us over the intercom, "Petersons, please board your plane," we had to make a decision: should we stay or should be go. It makes me think of that song: "If I stay there will be trouble; if I go it will be double." Or maybe it's the other way around? The point is the same: if we stayed and it was a false alram, we would regret missing Christmas; if we went and Eleri was truly sick, we would regret traveling with a sick baby (and possibly making her worse). In those instants when there is no time to seek help, and no help available (Sunday morning at 10am is not a time to get a quick response from the pediatrician), you simply weigh expert advice against your instincts, and take a gamble.

We got on the plane.

We didn't have seats together (we were booked in 3 seats, and the gate agent said there was "no guarantee" that we would get any together, even when I held the girls in his face, even when I pointed at Clio and said "Really? She's TWO."), and while I sat next to a claustrophobic passanger trying to keep my limp baby out of her way, my little baby who seemed to grow more unlike herself with every degree her body temp raised, I was calculating my plans to find an emergency room immediately on landing in Chicago. Somehow, though, while waiting for the baggage, she seemed to perk up, and Clio even got a few laughs out of her. At the car rental, we labored over the decision to upgrade to 4-wheel drive (total cost: $100) for more time than we'd had to decide abuot flying here inthe first plance, and then, in a white-out blizzard, we proceeded to drive to Morrison, where, it turned out, the power had gone out. Over candlelight in Dave's grandpa's house (his power had gone out more recently and was therefore still warm) we made the decision to call urgent care as soon as the phone lines came back up.

The clinic nurse sent us straight to Emergency, where the attending took one look at her and rendered his diagnosis: pneumonia. The Xray tech was called in and a service in Minneapolis confirmed: pneumonia in both lungs.

After 2 aggressive rounds of antibitoics and ongoing breathing treatments and oxygen, she's doing much better, and is scheduled to me discharged tomorrow morning. While sitting with her in the Morrison Community Hospital, I've had plenty of time to think whether we made the right choice, and whether we would have been better of staying in New York. This thinking is unproductive, and the question is unanswerable, yet I find it impossible to accept that and put it all aside. What would have been different if I had followed my gut and not gotten on the plane? My assumptions were challenged when our regular big City Doctor missed this while the small-town ER diagnosed quickly and confidently; here, Clio has the undivided attention and loving care of her grandparents while Dave and I switch off shifts at the hospital. The hospital itself, while not set up for infants, is full of a kind and attentive staff that has been as creative and flexible as you can imagine. At home, we would have had the ease and comfort of home, but a long commute to a likely crowded hospital, and no one to stay with Clio. Retrieving our luggage would have ben a nightmare, and, of course, we would have missed Christmas.

Although, that's a decision that still needs to be made. Tomorrow, we will need to decide whether to play it safe and keep Eleri home, or drive 6 hours South to meet her great grandmother, Ruth, from who she takes her middle name. Ruth is 90-something and there is the sad but inevitable question of whether she will be here to meet Eleri when we are scheduled to come back for Christmas is two years. When you are trading in emotional capital, how do you measure risk and reward? At work, we sometimes use a "quadrant evaluation" to measure impact against resource- it is a tool that takes you out of your preconceived notions and helps you see a decision from a different angle. But anyway I look at this one, I can't see the right way through.

We make hundreds of little decisions every single day, without even recognizing that we're constantly making choices. The big ones often seem more labored. Sometimes, a big decision is about opportunity; as the saying goes, when I quit my job, I closed one door to open another. But more often, it seems like big decisions are made when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, and you have no choice but to take stock of the options and do the best you can.

So, I quit my job.

That's right, you read correctly. As the country is shaken by mass layoffs, corporate scandals, and the highest unemployment rate in decades, I quit my relatively well-paying, somewhat stable, pretty darn flexible, 4-day-a-week job.

And I feel good about it.

It's funny, I've written this post in my head many, many times over the past week, and, now that I have a little breathing room to actually write it here, I'm no longer sure what I want to say.

The truth is, the past 3 months have probably been the hardest of my life, and while I knew going into them that this would be the case, that knowledge didn't make it any easier. I thought somehow that signing on for hard would somehow diminish the hardness of it; In fact, I have been surprised by how much harder it has been than I even expected. And I have begun to realize that doing it all does not equal having it all. Because the truth is, you can't fit my job into 4 days a week. You can't grade final projects in your "spare" time and still be thoughtful about your daughter's teacher's Christmas gifts. You can't burn the candle at both ends and still expect to have the patience and sweetness that your children deserve. And you can't shoulder this much burden and expect your marriage to be untouched.

On the night of our staff and board Christmas dinner, I was talking to one of our board members about the economic downturn; he said that he felt hopeful, because he believed that in these tough times people would embrace the things that were most important to them.

On the last night of my class, one of my students showed up drunk. I didn't realize this until we were deep into conversation after the other students had gone, and she told me she thought that Deputy Directors had a bad deal and that I should be the Director; I could be Anne Pasternak, she said, I should Anne Pasternak, if only I would embrace my fears.

When I started working with Anne 6 years ago, I was a grad student named Heather Duggan with a brand new boyfriend; Now, I am a married mother of two, and I feel as if my entire adult life has played out on the stage of Creative Time. Despite the fact that we are facing a bad economy with a mortgage, tuition, and child care bills, I understand that I need take a big risk and figure out who I am again; I need to embrace what's most important to me, face my fears, and become Heather Peterson.

It's time.

Report Cards

Things have been all about me, me, me lately; we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

We had our very first parent-teacher conference two Mondays ago; because I went directly from there to Eleri's doctor's appointment that led to the hospital and so forth, it got all but forgotten during the week. I remember conferences with some mix of pride and anxiety; at my particular Montessori school, children were actually invited to participate in the conference, and I always felt a particular dread in anticipating them: while it was embarrassing to be discussed with your two main frames of authority both present, it was sort of delightful to have them all agree about how wonderful you were. (I was a good student.)

It's funny, planning for Clio's conference, I realize in hindsight that I made it about me, too: because we are one of the few two-career households in the class, and because we are less conveniently located to the school than anyone else, and because we don't have hired help (a Nanny) or family help, I have felt, quite self-consciously, like we are "those parents," you know, the absolute disasters who can't quite get it together. It seemed like we were always sending Clio to school with a green snotty nose or dirty socks. In the early days, I had a very hard time judging how long it would take to drive the 4 or 5 miles to school; because of the rivers of traffic and the actual canal we needed to cross, one day it would take 12 minutes, the next day 43, making us very erratic in our arrival time. Being late for drop off is one thing; then we had the babysitter incident, where the girl we hired to pick Clio up on Thursdays showed up 30 minutes late (and didn't call me), so Clio's teachers were left to entertain her after the rest of the class left.

Plus, Clio was the child with the greatest separation anxiety. I still believe that this had to do with some confusion over the nature of school: in Clio's world, you get dropped off for the whole day with a bunch of kids (day care), or you go do an activity with your parents and a bunch of kids for an hour or two (swimming, Music Together, playdates), and because the phase-in involved very short days with me sticking around the school, I think Clio simply placed it in this second category. Plus, I was on maternity leave and I think Clio would just have prefered to hang out with me. Once we straightened out the fact that Mommy's don't go to school, she was fine, and never looked back.

At any rate, I was bringing my own brand of crazy into that conference, waiting for the big judgement. I truly expected a lecture on the importance of being on time (I know!) and the impact of broken routines on toddlers (I know!).

This is weird on a couple of levels. First, it turns out that I'm the grown up in this situation, and that, in a way, the teachers "work for me." Well, really for Clio. Second, as a teacher myself for the first time, I have realized that so many of the little things we stress about as students really don't matter. One of my students asked me if I wanted footnotes or endnotes in her term paper; my answer? I don't care. Others have given me frantic excuses for being late or missing a class altogether (attendance and participation are factors in their grades); you know what? I don't care about that either. Because this is a Master's program, these are adults, and sometimes in life, things happen. We are late. We have to make choices. And what I really care about is that people show up because they're interested in what we're talking about. That they do the reading because they find it engaging. And that they participate because school is one of the safest testing grounds for your ideas, and not taking advantage of that space is a lost opportunity.

So of course, Clio's conference was about her. And because she's actually doing very well there, no one had a lot to say. They told us that Clio really uses the whole room. That she has bonded with a little girl named Haley. That she's really into snack (no kidding.) And that they're really impressed by how competent she is, especially as the youngest in the class. They said it's clear she's been socialized (i.e. a day care kid) because she really knows how to negotiate the social landscape, even asking kids if she may play with them; they say this is a skill they can only hope for by the END of the year.

They asked if we had any questions. I wondered if she was testing limits with them. She's not. They hope she doesn't start. They clearly have a fondness for our big little girl that makes me proud. And I left there feeling relieved and, yes, a little crazy. For having worried so much.

This week, Eleri got a report card of her own. At her 2 month checkup, we talked to our Dr. about Eleri's tendency to look only to the left when lying down, and her droopy neck when being held up. We got in touch with the State's Early Intervention program, and after a drawn-out coordination process, we finally had the evaluation this week. A physical therapist, cognitive development specialist, and social worker all arrived at the house in a minivan, and filed in iwith clipboards, wearing scrubs. They had me put Eleri on a blanket and ran her through a number of exercises. They said that sometimes big babies, especially born at full term or late, are slower to develop certain motor skills because they had so little space to move in there, but that she's right where she should be for 4 months. She smiled and laughed and charmed the pants off of them all. We'll get a full written report in several weeks, but for now, they say she's a beautiful, healthy little baby, and they recommend that the case be closed.

Update

So, I made it through the week.
The Strategic Plan made it to Anne late, but still in enough time for her to get it done and out to the staff ahead of schedule.
I brought the wrong presentation to City College, but we still had plenty to talk about (it was a great group of students); plus I had never been to the campus and I always love alighting from a subway station to a specific place I have never encountered.
It felt like Dave and I were absent from work more than we were present, but we haven't been fired.
While Eleri does not really sound any better, a follow-up with the Doctor on Friday shows that she's at least gaining weight (at the Dr's suggestion, we started supplementing with formula, which seems to be working), and as far as the bronchiolitis, I guess it has to run it's course, which can take weeks. We'll try her back at day care tomorrow and see how it goes.
Dave and I even got out of the house last night, thanks to an unclaimed babysitting swap from about a year back. We went to dinner with Marni and Matt and then to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno. We chose this movie not so much because it was anyone's first choice, but because Slumdog Millionaire was sold out for our desired showtime and Zack and Miri was both late enough that we could make it from dinner, and early enough and short enough that we could make it home at a decent hour (plus right around the corner from the subway.) Dave and I laughed harder than anyone else in the theater, leading me to believe that either our sense of humor has melded over the past 6 or so years together, or we were the only ones there in such desperate need of a little levity. Either way, the little break was much appreciated.
Today we were back to it, meal planning and grocery shopping and braving the crowds at Ikea because we only had one sheet for Clio's bed and lately if one of the girls is not soaking through her bed, then the other one is. Does the glory never end?

Pity Party's Over (with apologies for the indulgence)

Nothing like a full day at the hospital to get back on track.

I mean this sarcastically, of course; losing several work hours yesterday and all of them today did not do much for working out my schedule stress and deadline issues. But I also mean it earnestly, and I'll tell you why. (Everyone is fine, by the way.)

Much of the trouble yesterday had as much to do with the lost time and the logistics of making a return trip to the Doctor as it did with the emotional impact of a sick child; however busy or stressed you are, that's just out of whack. Even at the Doctor's office last night, I asked point blank how many visits we might be expected to make this week, and expressed concern for the amount of time Dave and I have both been out of the office because of the kids lately. Our Doctor looked at me a little strangely, even (or especially) when I said something along the lines of "I mean, of course we'll do everything we need to do; I just need to wrap my head around the schedule." Similarly, this morning when Eleri's breathing continued to retract and the Dr. instructed me to go to the emergency room to get her chest x-rayed, I quibbled a bit over the trip into Manhattan, etc.

But somehow, at the hospital, something a little bit wonderful happened: I got to spend the entire day with my baby. No email, no phones, no TV, no distractions. Just me and Eleri in a private little room in the ER, hanging out. (Despite the labored breathing she was as happy as can be; I think she was equally delighted to get a full day with just her mom. She made a ton of friends, and I've never heard such fawning about how cute she is, or what a good baby.)




And so I remembered that kids are not in our lives to make it more difficult ("The World Is Testing Me (And I'm getting a failing grade)"); I remembered that it doesn't matter if you're parenting as well as any other parent, so long as you're parenting well enough for your kids ("Keeping Up With The ...."); and I remembered that our schedules are crazy because we want to do everything possible to make our world a good place for our kids to be.

Tomorrow, when I can't deliver the strategic plan that is due and I haven't done the readings for the class I'm teaching, I will undoubtedly begin to panic once again. (I notice I'm holding by breath again just thinking about it.) But that's okay. I knew that this fall was going to be one of the hardest periods of my life, and that when I come out on the other side I will be glad to have done it all. I know it is not sustainable, and in a few weeks or months I'll have to make some decisions. For now, the holidays loom large, and they'll be here before you know it. And we'll all breathe it in.

Welcome to my Pity Party (Another installment in the On being a working mom Series)

I'm up in the middle of the night to pump and can't seem to get back to sleep (which I will regret tomorrow). To give some context to the last two posts (and likely future ones), I think I need to offer some background. I'm not sure why I expect people to feel bad for me- many, many people have much, much harder lives. And I'm not exactly sure why I think that people feeling bad for me will make me feel better (it usually makes me feel worse), but that seems to be the brain space I'm in.

So you get a sense of what I'm dealing with, here's how my typical week unfolds:

Monday and Tuesday, get the girls to Day Care and work a normal day. Pump twice at work. Hold bi-weekly departmental meetings with my teams and monthly departmental strategy meetings. Tuesday night, do readings and prepare notes for class on Wednesday.

Wednesday, get the girls to Day Care and start the work day early with staff meeting, which I run. Work until 3:30, then prepare files (paper and electronic) for Thursday morning. Run to NYU for class. Pump at least once, preferably twice. After class, field questions from students, thereby putting me home too late to feed Eleri before bed. Pump some more.

Thursday and Friday, drive Clio to school, punch the meter, set up shop at Starbucks and work remotely for two hours. Punch the meter, walk or drive the few blocks to school, drive Clio to day care, feed Eleri in the back room, re-park the car, grab some leftovers, and take the subway into the city to work for 4 hours. Pump once.

That's just the basic, and obviously doesn't include things like actual work at work, meal planning, cooking, doing dishes, blogging, corresponding with friends and family, laundry, grocery shopping, time with the kids, etc. at home.

This week, let's add a few specifics on top: Monday, parent-teacher conference for Clio; 4-month check up for Eleri. On the way from one to the other, the fuel light comes on in the car. At the Doctor's office, 1 1/2 hours turns out not to be enough on the meter, so in the middle of the appointment, re-dress Eleri, take her outside, punch the meter, return. Head to the pharmacy, punch the meter. An hour wait for saline at the pharmacy means drive to day care, pick up Clio, stop to get gas, head back to the pharmacy; search for 10 minutes for a quarter for the meter (roll of quarters begged from a bank I don't belong to was apparently stolen out of the car when I left it unlocked in the school pick up craziness); head home to feed Clio a late dinner and nebulize, nebulize Eleri. Pump.

Tuesday, back to the Doctor. New prescription for me: directly after feeding Eleri, pump and feed THAT to her, too. Doctor visits may be daily this week. Work from home on Strategic Plan, due back to Anne on Wednesday. Field last minute questions from students, whose papers are due Wednesday. Pump, pump, pump.

Wednesday, input to Strategic Plan draft due. Between staff meeting and class, head out of the office to meet with prospective web redesigners. Receive student papers (23 students x 15 pages of critical theory each = shoot me now.) Who has time to pump?

Thursday, pull together images for lecture for Friday. Finalize changes to group health care plan (benefits manager only in on Thursdays, and we're just under the wire for renewal deadline).

Friday, head way uptown to City College to give a lecture to a class of undergrads; get back to Brooklyn in time to pick up Clio at school. Take the subway or bus back to Day Care.

Hmmmm..... somehow, stripping the week down without all the details and little things that inevitably go wrong (and without my actual to-do lists layered over the top) makes it seem like this should be doable after all. I guess if I could just figure out how to strip the stress and emotion out of it when I'm actually doing it, I'd be way better off. But to do that, I might need to get a little more sleep. And then, when would I pump?