My home office

"Jesus Christ, will you sit down already?"

This is H yelling at me most Sunday mornings as we try to enjoy coffee and catalogues in the family room.  Instead of caffeinating and perusing the ridiculous kitchen gadgets in Williams Sonoma, I keep popping up from the couch like a Jack In the Box.  Btw, an olive stuffer?  You really have too much free time and storage space if you own one of these.  OK, or you live my fantasy life.  Anyway, what am I doing?  What I do every day.   I'm working.

Being a stay at home mother, in addition to no pay or sick days, you get the added benefit of living in your office.  This means while H can sit peacefully at the kitchen table and read recipes, I sit there and notice my pile of papers on top of the microwave - permission slips, coupons, registration forms and bills - is growing massive. Or alternately, I look over H's shoulder and notice the pantry, left open by the kids, is looking particularly like cabinets in his college apartment after a wild Saturday night with cereal boxes and cookie packages on their sides, half-open, ready to spill their contents all over the shelves , and an overflowing recycling bin. I think to myself I should probably put a dent in these tasks while the kids are playing nicely and I have another adult in the house to run interference.

A lot of this, I know, is my own fault.  Now that my work is taking care of the kids and keeping the house, there is always something to do and procrastination has never been part of my personality.  My thinking process is the more I get done now, the further ahead of the game I will be come Monday.  However, as I say to H, imagine if he had to spend the entire weekend in his office and not only refrain from doing any work, but have four other people actively adding to his load as he sits there idle.  He'd be twitching come Sunday morning too.  In the business world, a pause button is pushed, for the most part, over weekends and holidays.  My work world is more like Lucille Ball in the candy factory*.  It just keeps coming and coming, and forty-eight inactive hours results in my shoving the chocolates in my mouth and down my bra Monday morning trying to keep up.

Even I know that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.  And I am trying.  Look at me now, for instance, ignoring the detritus from the girls' cookie decorating playdates, and writing while they are still occupied with their friends in the basement.  But that's only because the mess is in the dining room. Maybe that's the trick.  To just walk away from the mess.  Out of sight is out of mind.

What do you think H would say to my not entering the kitchen at all Saturday and Sunday?


*I don't know why, but I have always felt H and I have a strong Lucy and Ricky vibe going on.

The Office "Party"

'Tis the season.  Time for holiday cards, gift wrapping, tree trimming and the time-honored awkward social event that is the office holiday party.

Does anyone really enjoy these gatherings?  I don't mean the after-party you and the co-workers you actually like have at the local bar once the official soiree is over.  I mean the actual party itself.  In my experience, the best you can hope for is to not embarrass yourself by doing something stupid caused by nervous alcohol consumption.

Being at the company Christmas party is like having friends over your house while you are still in college.  Sure, you can legally drink, but your dad is going to come down to the basement in his bathrobe at some point and tell you to keep that racket down.  Bosses, typically don't want lawsuits on their hands, post-xmas party, so while there is booze, it's not exactly the night to be doing Jager bombs.  This point is pointedly driven home by the fact 99% of these gatherings happen on Thursdays, forcing you to curtail your consumption in order to make it to work the next day.  Since calling in sick the day after the holiday party essentially tells the boss you are not ready for the varsity team just yet.

Speaking of the boss, of course you have to have five minutes of stilted conversation with him or her.  You try to talk about non-work things, and for some of you, you might actually have a lot in common with this person - lucky you.  For most, the only thing that links them with their head honcho is the signature on their paycheck.  Then there are the coworkers.  There's that strange guy from the mailroom you exchange thirty seconds of pleasantries with on a work day, who corners you by the buffet at the party to talk to you about his eight track player collection.  And there's always some unexpected drunkard.  A guy or gal who seems pretty sane the other 364 days of the year, but winds up leading the whole room in the Electric Slide a few hours in.

The venue is always an interesting aspect of holiday celebrations.  Your coworkers out of their natural habitat can be pretty hilarious.  Seeing the cranky accounts guy at Senor Tacos holding a margherita is like seeing a monkey driving a bus.  In my most recent office party experience (through H), the place is frequently chosen by some twenty-something girls in HR with a name like Brittany.  She thinks  low,white leather couches and purple strobe lights are awesome!  The sixty year-old head of billing does not agree as he throw his back out getting off of said couches to go be disgusted by the sushi bar and stare quizzically at the vodka luge.*

Speaking of going H's holiday parties, attending one of these fetes as the spouse is a particular kind of awkward.  Especially the first year at a company.  For H and I it is even worse, since I am usually the party navigator, and in this particular instance, I am stuck to him like a social remora, relying on him for introductions.  But come the second year, I have usually made a few besties among the office girls (shout out, A), and usually wander off on my own.  A fine line must be walked, however, since no one wants to be known as "the guys with that drunk wife" come the next morning.**  Also, over the last few years, as H has ascended the ranks, there's a bit of "the boss's wife" situation where people are oddly formal talking to me.  I'm beginning to think the boss (or their spouse) is as uncomfortable at the party as everyone else.

Yes, cliches abound along with painful social interaction, office hookups and inappropriate photocopier for example. If (most of us) have learned to avoid some of these behaviors, like making copies of one's ass, why can't we get past the weirdness?  Because we didn't choose to hang out with these people, that's why.  It's like family.  Some of us are lucky enough to have a great time with ours***, but others merely tolerate theirs.  So if we can into these things with that mindset, maybe things would be better.  You wouldn't have a rager with your Aunt Maggie.  Don't expect that of your boss while enjoying your free booze and shrimp.

*One year, H's party was held in this industrial space where a guy dressed in a mirror gimp suit did a suspended acrobatic act like a human disco ball.
**I didn't help the year I stol the life-sized cardboard cutout they had made of H, dragging it into a cab with me.
***Lucky me.

"I don't care, as long as it's healthy!"

So if you're not watching The New Normal, you have to start.  It's great comedy, sprinkled with hilarious parenting advice, such as, "In my day, all you needed to control a child was an icy tone, pursed lips and a squinty eye."

An episode a few weeks back tackled the topic of gender.  Specifically, the gender of our children and how we react to that as parents.  The gay couple expecting their child via surrogate, accidentally finds out the gender of their baby.  One husband is delighted, the other is disappointed.  In his defense, the disappointed hubby posits, no mater how much we pay lip service to the contrary (see title of this post), we all care, deeply, about the sex of our child.

Now go ahead and pretend he's wrong.

All of you out there who wound up with the "wrong" gender kid are going to say, "I was not disappointed at all!"  Of course you'd say that.  How could you possibly admit the person you love more than everything on the planet isn't exactly what you once wanted them to be?

I will be the first to admit, I wanted a girl, BADLY.  H and I had picked the name of our first daughter long before we were even thinking about kids (and, yes, it is the name we gave her), but if you asked me what I would name the child I was carrying should it be male, I responded ala Lucille Bluth, "I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it." I was so invested in having a daughter I couldn't process the idea of it not happening.  You know, because I control the universe and all.
We all have our reasons for desiring a certain gender kid, and usually, it is a child of our own sex.  Unless you are my mother, who only wanted sons.  You know I have a sister, so you see how well that worked out for her.

We all have visions of what parenting will be like.  We look forward to all the meaningful moments we will share with our offspring, and some of those are gender specific.  I looked forward to reading Little House on the Prairie with my daughter, and watching Gilmore Girls while we painted our toenails.  I wanted to watch her play field hockey* and lead her Girl Scout troop.  I wanted to take my twelve year-old shopping at the mall and silently and immediately understand why she thrusts her three-scoop ice cream cone into my hands on the down escalator when the boy she has a crush on approaches on the up escalator like my mother did for me...and then have a talk about food and how if you can't eat in front of a man, he ain't for you and you need some therapy, which my mother didn't do.

That brings us to another point. half the reason I was so invested in having a female child was because of my mother.  A lot of us want to recreate what we had with our own same-gender parent.  I know I basically wanted what my mother and I had minus the, you know, dying young part.  Or maybe it's the opposite. and your parent didn't do the hottest job with you and you want to try it your way with your own kid (see ice cream scenario above).  There is healing in that,  but also A LOT of expectations and that can be really dangerous.

Expectations are what pregnancy is all about, but parenting is about managing expectations, otherwise, we set ourselves up for major failure and disappointment.  Even if you wind up with the sex you wanted, your child may not be interested in all the things you dreamed about doing (when #2 told me Little House was boring, a little part of me died).  Giving birth is the ultimate case of "you get what you get and you don't get upset".  You child was born the person they are.  They were not born to meet your pre-conceived notion of what your family should be.  wWhen I mention parents who wound up with the "wrong" gender child, what I should really write is the "surprise" gender child.  You didn't know what you needed and maybe the universe gave it to you.  I never thought I wanted a boy, and was in shock when the ultrasound technician told me I was having one.  I didn't even think I made that flavor.  But now I can't imagine life without my sloppy, affectionate, goofy little sidekick.  If I'd only gotten what I wanted, I'd never know what I was missing.

Maybe we worry we won't be as connected to a child we won't necessarily share the same life experiences with.  Yes, sharing common interests can promote a strong parent-child relationship, but so can learning something new with your kid.  I now know more about construction vehicles than I ever thought possible. God help me if he plays football though.**  I also worry about how little I think I can teach LM about being a man.  Instead, I should focus on teaching him how to be a good person.  I can also teach him how to treat women, which I think will set him up OK in life.  Or at least his wife.  You're welcome for raising a man who lifts the seat, does his own dishes and knows how to call a florist.


Your kids teach you as much as you teach them and we need to be open to the lessons.  That being said, you know if my first three had all been boys, I'd be sitting here pregnant again. ***

*Which, sadly, has been replaced by girls' lacrosse as the "suburban white girl in kilt" sport, where the rules prevent body contact.  What's up with that?

**The World's Most Boring Sport.
***When H and I were deciding about having a third, he assured his desire was not in an effort to have a boy.  After Little Man's birth he laughed and told me this was, in fact, utter bullshit and he'd keep having them as long as I would to have a son.