The Leaves They Are A Changin'.

I’m packing up and moving to Maine.

At least in my mind, anyway. This feeling takes over me every year about this time and yet every year, I am surprised at its arrival. I feel almost ambushed by the ferocity with which it grabs hold of me, invading my brain so deeply, it’s almost all I can think about. I’m ready to pack it all in, move to a small little farm house and prepare myself for an autumn of apple-picking, hiking, crunching around in fallen leaves, sweater wearing and crisp, quiet air.

For a few weeks every fall I check out the real estate websites and search various towns up and down the coast. I survey independent schools and Unitarian churches to see where we would best fit. I start imagining a new life – one less stressed, over packed with stuff, following our dreams of living more simply and more in tune with our world. I may even learn to knit. Just send me your sock size!

The problem is that this picture of life contradicts my other dream- the one that involves the West Coast- having my daughters grow up at the beach and on the ocean. The dream of writing television comedy and making people laugh. Living larger than life, participating in the absurd.

And then there is the present where we dwell somewhere in-between these two fictional existences. We live in a small town that is close to two big cities. We get all four seasons, even if fall remains a little warmer than I’d like and the summer is just obscene in terms of the humidity index. Pickle attends a school that we all love. We’re members of a church that we find challenging, enriching and life-sustaining. We can both hike and go to the beach here, although we often do neither.

And I think that’s the real issue. My life is dangerously off-course from where I’d like it to be in many, many ways. I focus (aka obsess) on things that pollute my time and energy. I become paralyzed with fear and instead of taking action, I stress myself out over things that would change dramatically with just the smallest of steps. I wish for change, but I want someone else to do the changing for me. I am one of those people for whom making a decision is always life or death so I am unable to choose. I look for the perfect answer, I crave clarity with every step, determined that if I research all the options long enough, squint hard enough and cock my head just so, everything will come into focus and the right path, the perfect one, my Holy Grail, will open up before me and all I have to do is walk through the light to be there.

Just as a reality check, I do realize how ridiculous those last few statements sound even before they leave my head and spill out on the paper. But we’re not talking about logic here; we’re talking about the freak-out zone in my brain known as emotion.

The irony to all of this is that I know that the road is fuzzy, murky, or in my case, as dark as a coalmine. And if you came to me with the same fears, the same questions about your life, I would confidently tell you that it doesn’t matter which step you take first as long as you take a step. And I would believe it with my whole heart. As many of you know, I am incredibly intuitive. The problem is that when my intuition turns inward, I ignore it, chastise it, belittle it and basically send it muttering back off into the far reaches of my brain, giving the finger to me as it walks away. All of which I rightly deserve. But you can see why I’ve ended up so far astray.

So instead of looking at Maine real estate or checking out new congregations and schools, this fall I’m trying to breathe through that anxiety and instead, focus the need for change on the present, the here, the known. It all sounds very Zen and neatly tied up doesn’t it? For the record, I’m not delusional enough to think that this revelation is going to be enough to change everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!) that I am unhappy with within myself. But it does me that I am going to put a little more faith in myself and my intuition and take those first few unknown steps into the mineshaft – I’ll try to keep the squinting to a minimum but I make no promises about the freaking-out part.

How I Know We Are In Trouble

Here's Teaghan's newest phrase:

"Total Annihilation"

Now in her defense, she is just copying a line from the movie "Dogs and Cats" when this cute beagle puppy is trying on different code names as part of the doggie secret service. But still...out of all the possible phrases she could have chosen from that or anything else she watches, she chose that.

I guess it could be worse. She could walk around the house singing, "I love you, you love me...."

And Now for Something Completely Different

You know, I've been thinking that it would be great if I had a place to record my thoughts, do some writing about my daily life, find some way to reach out to my friends with whom I don't chat with as much as I'd like. I've been hearing about some new-fangled web thingy called a blog. Thought I'd look into that...

Yeah. So. Right....

I'll do better now that I am unearthing from the summer. I promise.

School starts for the Pickle next week. The Staples commercial from a few years back is running through my head. You know the one- "It's the most wonderful time of the year" is playing and the dad dances with his shopping cart while collecting school supplies for the sullen children following behind. We are all VERY ready for school to begin.

And the Pepper begins daycare, but not until October. For those of you who don't live in the world of daycare, you are blissfully unaware that being under two years old is the kiss of death for daycare. It is the stuff of which nightmares are made. In Maryland at least, the ratio of caregivers to children under two is 1:2 where children over two is a 1:6 ratio. Which means there are substantially less childcare options if you are under 2. We have a lovely daycare lined up for Pepper but unfortunately, we've got six weeks starting from when we need it before she can actually attend. It's a nightmare. No one wants to babysit part-time short-term, not that I blame them and a nanny service is waaaaay out of our budget. So we piece together days- Land Baron is going to work evenings and Saturdays and handle the morning shift - I'll take over the afternoons and on Sundays we'll be able to spend time together as one family. Six weeks....

This October thing also means that Pepper can't start school for an extra year. In some ways this is good because she'll get to be the oldest in her class- a role she'll never play in the family. But it is daunting for me to think that she still has two years before preschool starts.

I have to be very careful with this whole "Back To School" season. I'm addicted to office supplies, much like any writer, and the potential of going to staples and dropping three hundred dollars on pens and notebooks and pencils and cases and sharpeners, well, I'm salivating at the thought of it. If we need anything there this week, I should probably send the Land Baron to go pick it up.

I know, I have a problem....

Quote of the Week

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning...


- Calvin and Hobbes

Ellen Goodman, a nationally syndicated columnist who works for the Boston Globe wrote an article entitled "A Third Gender in the Workplace.” It’s a discussion of the theoretical monetary value of moms, both stay-at-home and working. More interesting/disturbing to me about the piece, however, is the discussion of the results of a study by Shelley Correll published in the American Journal of Sociology. Correll discovered in her study that there is a “Motherhood Penalty” in the workplace. Moms were seen as less competent and committed. Moms were half as likely to be hired as childless women or men with or without kids. Moms were offered $11,000 less in starting pay than non-moms. Eleven thousand dollars!?!?!?! And, just for good measure, they were also judged more harshly for tardiness. Correll also extrapolated that women who have been out of the workforce for two years or more, have it even harder.

I’ve been in a job search for many months now: many long and fruitless months. I have had exactly one interview- for a job that turns out, pays a lot less than I can afford to work for. Now I absolutely realize that I do not have the skills or experience to become a CEO or senior-level management. What I’m aiming for is a job that will cover the daycare I’ll have to pay for to go back to work and have some money left over to make a contribution to the family finances. If I was challenged and enjoyed the job as well, that would be a bonus. I am blessed to be a well-educated woman. I’ve been successful in the workforce. And I cannot find a job. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for mom less-educated or younger or with more children. What is left over after childcare?

I’ve been trying to wrap this blog entry up for three days now. I can’t seem to write a final paragraph wrapping it all up nice and neat. Maybe it’s because I can’t wrap this topic up nice and neat. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been writing after the girls go to bed and no one is sleeping well in the house so we’re all sleep deprived. So maybe I’ll just end like this: Cut moms a break. We could all use it.

36

I have a little site meter on my blog. Nothing fancy, although it took me a few weeks to figure out how to install it properly. For those of you unfamiliar with site meters, they keep track of how many people visit your site each week, how long they hang out for, etc. I have been stunned the last couple of weeks when I’ve opened up my report and found that fairly consistently I’ve had 33-36 visitors per week at my site. Thirty-six? Now that could be thirty-six unique visitors, or it could be one person who doesn’t really have enough going on in their day. I prefer to think that it’s closer to the former.

But over the last two weeks, it’s been sort of haunting me. I really thought that maybe one or two people were stopping by occasionally, just to see if there was anything new up, just to be polite, just checking in. But thirty-six? Now I feel responsible. If all of you are going to go to the trouble of showing up, the least I can do is post a little more than nearly never.

Thanks, by the way, for sticking around.

So I’m working on a spec script. It’s a half-hour tv spec. I think it’s pretty good. I’m amusing myself with it, which is about all you can hope for in your own writing. It has the word “boobies” in it. I think that speaks for itself. I’m entering it in a couple of upcoming competitions. Thought you’d like to know.

I just read an article about improving efficiency in your life. One of the mandates was to stop multi-tasking because that kind of distracting, split-focus doesn’t work. Of course, if you are a parent of a small child, or even a medium, large or extra-large child for that matter, you know that this is just crap. If I didn’t multi-task, the only thing I’d actually complete during my day is the sentence, “Just a second.” Children don’t live in a linear time plane. Time is irrelevant. Everything must happen instantaneous and simultaneously. The only time I get to dump multi-tasking is for the few minutes before bed when I work on a Sudoku puzzle just so my brain shuts down enough to go to sleep. I multi-task to keep my head above water. There was a time when I didn’t multi-task and I still had plenty of time to do everything that was important to me. But that was B.C. (Before Children). I am always astonished at the amount of time I wasted B.C. and for the most part, I was a pretty busy person. I think if I could get that kind of time back, I could cure cancer, bring about world peace and make a pan of vegetarian rice crispy squares to scarf down while watching Grey’s Anatomy. Speaking of- Am I the only one hoping that the spin-off will finally be the star vehicle Taye Diggs deserves?

On that note, I need to go to bed before I make said pan of treats and end up channel surfing for the rest of the night.

Thanks again thirty-six. Let’s do it again real soon.

A Couple Random Updates

Welcome to the world Calvin! I hope you like it here. We've been waiting for you and your arrival thrills so many of us. You change the world just by your presence.
____________________________________________________


I've been reading a book, written by a friend of mine, that has achieved a good deal of success. It is, quite frankly, scaring the crap out of me. I used to be able to read good horror fiction any time of the day or night. I can't pick up this book once the sun goes down. So I get through maybe three or four pages a day. It's good, in a very creepy way.

The coolest thing about this book, World War Z, by Max Brooks, pick it up literally anywhere books are sold, is that he gives me a little shout out in the book by mentioning Dax, my Dalmatian whom we had during my grad school days. I am tickled, thrilled, giggly and amused. Fantastic. Thanks man. You made my month.