CurrentMom

What Are You Tolerating?

Truth Tuesday

I am one of those Moms who alternates between feeling that I have everything gloriously under control to knowing in my gut that my life (like everyone else's!) is as messy as they come.

That said, I do pride myself in being on top of stuff. To Do lists, regular car oil changes, never running out of milk, signing permission slips way before they are due  -- the stuff of every-day life that can totally overwhelm and bury us if we don't stay on top of it. 

Yea, I got that covered.

And yea, I have been known to pat myself on the back for getting "stuff" done. Sometimes I judge the success of my day or my worthiness as a human being by how far down The List I was able to make it.

So that is why it hit me hard a couple weeks ago when I realized just how much I had let go. How much I wasn't attending to. How much I was tolerating.

Ug.

I am all about living full-out and playing big. Tolerating -- that's not for me. That's for people who may be OK with mediocrtiy. But not this girl. Not this control freak!

Right!

Right?

Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months: a Book Review

Startup Sunday

So many people dream of becoming an entrepreneur but have no idea how to translate the fantasy into action items. In her new book Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, Melinda Emerson has written a comprehensive road map to take you from the entrepreneurial concept to the launch party. This remarkably clear and readable book serves as an indispensible checklist for any would-be small business owner.

At the very beginning of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, Melinda Emerson, an author I like personally and admire professionally, douses any entrepreneurial daydreams with a bucket of much-needed cold water. Being an entrepreneur means hard work and sacrifice for the potential of rewards in the distant future.

It can take 12 to 18 months to break even and three to turn a profit; moreover, one in three small businesses close their doors within the second year, she warns. You need your family's support, the entrepreneurial mindset and faith to sustain you through the lean months -- or years -- on the path to success.

Next, Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months takes you through the key steps to opening a small business: writing a life plan, financial plan and business model as well as finding professional services, drafting a marketing plan, branding, lining up financing, building your team and setting up shop. The writing is easy to digest and follow, with user friendly bullet points, section headings and action steps at the end of most chapters.

Morning Breakfast Musings

Sharing Saturday  

As I pour the 3 millionth serving of bad breakfast cereal into my son's bowl today, I consider the areas where I have fallen down as a parent. All the things I swore I wouldn't do, all the ways I wanted to be better than my own parents, all the healthy improvements that have been made since I was growing up (Tang, anyone?)

And there it is – a giant bowlful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, staring me in the face. Rebuking me.  Reminding me that just three weeks ago I vowed never to buy it again. I was going to stick to the healthy breakfast cereal aisle, at the very least. If I wasn't going to make my kids a wholesome, Donna Reed-like breakfast every morning, at least they would have whole grains and organic sugar in their cereal bowls.

I bounce back and forth between thinking that the way we parent today is far superior to the way I was raised, when "parent" wasn't even a verb, and quietly believing that my folks had it right in many of their assumptions, including a healthy dose of benign neglect.

My mother never made pancakes or eggs for breakfast. I didn’t even learn about the pleasures of greasy eggs with toast until I went away to college and discovered the local diner. Breakfast in our house was always a bowl of cold cereal and, if I was lucky, I could sneak in an Oreo or two without my parents' knowledge. 

Loss and Recovery

Sharing Saturday  

My middle son would have been 12 years old yesterday. Even though I had only known him for five days, and Jewish law doesn't allow for morning or burial of babies under 30 days old, my husband and I, with support from our rabbi, chose to have a funeral and burial for him. It helped us accept the reality of his death.

I will visit the cemetery later with my younger son, who earlier this week asked where the baby was buried and wanted to come with me to visit him. My daughter just rolled her eyes and said that cemeteries were creepy. My son wanted to know if he had to hold his breath the whole time he was there. 

I believe that my short visit to the cemetery once a year grounds me to the story of my life.

Around this time of year, I always feel shaky. The memory stored in my body of the pain of his loss, the agony of unused milk, the shortness of breath I remember from the day we held him in our arms and he died, all comingle in a cloud that surrounds me for a few days. This year it is mixed up with the seasonal depression I've been feeling from the unending winter we've been having, and it feels heavier and more draining than most years. Every year I forget about this corporeal commemoration of the life I carried – until I've been feeling it for several days and then I remember.

Dear Kelly Ripa, Please Leave The Magic To Us

Truth Tuesday

I was going to write some really cool and potentially uplifting or inspirational stuff in this space today.  

But this week.....I want to talk about real life (which, yes, can also be quite uplifting and inspirational). 

And by "real life," I mean what most of us are living. As opposed to the "magical" lives filled with "magical" advice and worship of "magical" beings.

Here's what happened:

I was at the eye doctor's office with my 12-year-old son. We had arrived just in the nick of time, which was quite magical in and of itself since I had only remembered the appointment 15 minutes before. Granted, we had forgotten to bring his eyeglasses (of course)-- but we were there nonetheless.

As we sat in the seating area and waited for his pupil dilation to be complete (or whatever is supposed to happen), I picked up a Redbook Magazine and began to thumb through it somewhat absent-mindedly.

Kelly Ripa is on the cover of the issue (January 2010) with the pull-out quote: "I feel like I should apologize for everything." 

Um...ok. I know where this is headed. I figured it was the typical in-depth-but-totally-shallow profile: Meet famous star/personality. Show how gorgeous and together she is while also having her admit she is just oh-so much like the rest of us -- she is disorganized, ditzy, off-schedule or whatever. (It was.)

So we look up to her and try to learn her "magic tricks" while we see she is just so much like us! Cool! 

Right?

These profiles are part of the reason I have given up most magazines and other media -- they don't reflect me or even sound like anyone I know. I'd take my friends and favorite bloggers any day if I am looking for real voices, for lessons, for humor, for being OK with my imperfections.

So, anyway, despite all this, I read the piece. Because I was at the eye doctor's office and didn't have a whole lot else to do. (And probably The Universe was toying with me because I had just recently tweeted about Kelly Ripa and the totally-unrealistic Electrolux commercials.) 

There wasn't much new...or exciting...or even interesting in the piece. And that's OK. That's what those puff pieces are for. 

(Sorry, Redbook, but it is the truth. Real Moms and Real Women crave connection with other Real Moms and other Real Women. Enough Kelly Ripas and Angelina Jolies. Gives us the messiness and awesomeness of reality. Call me, Redbook, if you need more insight.)

So I read about Kelly, her kids, her insistence that they are polite to all they meet, the sacredness of their weekends, her very real non-star girlfriends and the utter loveable-ness and hot-ness and amazing-ness of her husband Mark. (She reiterates how she is never recognized in public because she is so ordinary -- it is her striking husband whose good looks always give them away!)

Super!

She even talks about how hard it is to work on a marriage and how important it is to her:

'We argue but we have an allegiance to each other, and we have beautiful children, and from what I hear, divorce sucks. It's not something I think I have the fortitude to go through."

Kelly, that is so great. Sounds like you are a real girl and a normal girl who was thrust into the world of Manhattan and Regis and stardom. (And by the way, divorce doesn't suck for everyone, but that's a topic for another day. Since Kelly is a Magical Being, she can get away with generalizations that don't reflect real life in any way and still sound cute!)

Funny....we look up to these stars and take in their magic, and they then spend the entire interview telling us how normal they are. 

And the bigger picture: Why are we looking up to women who have little to teach us or show us? 

Why are we trying to model ourselves after non-reality when reality is totally doable and awesome? 

Why aren't we connecting more with one another instead of taking fiction and trying mightily to apply it to our non-fiction lives?

As I read this over, it sounds like I am cynical and angry. Actually, just the opposite: It took me getting really centered and happy to realize what a role model really is. 

Or where the lessons really lie. 

Or what magic really is. 

Kelly Ripa is cute and famous and happy and sweet and fun. And that is awesome! Maybe she is the Girl Next Door, maybe not. 

But at the end of the day, she has little to share or offer me or my friends (and by "friends," I mean YOU, too). At least not in this format. 

Maybe if we were to meet and speak in person, I'd get a real person. But this is not a real person, not in this medium. 

The truth? I'd rather read about YOU and know YOU -- how your morning routine goes, what you do when your kid asks you a ridiculously sticky personal question, what your love life is like, who your best friend is, what you last pigged out on or what prompted your last really, really good cry. 

Without the lights, without the makeup, without the canned lessons and, please, without the fake magic. 

Because what you do every single day in reality is, in my humble opinion, the stuff that magic is really made of.

And because YOU Uncensored is pretty magical. Even on the most non-magical of days. 

A Mother's Pro-Choice Mantra

Sharing Saturday   

I am 47 years old and quite wise in the ways of preventing pregnancy. However, if by some crazy chance I were to get pregnant at this late stage of life, I know what I would need to do.  I am not about to move back into the baby business with my youngest of three teetering on the brink of independence.  I am done, absolutely and positively done with having babies.  My energies must go to raising my three children and to pursuing the many pursuits I have in mind for the second half of my life.

There is no question in my mind that I would end the pregnancy. It would be the best choice for me, and the best choice for my family. And thankfully, living in a large metropolitan area and at a time when abortion is still safe and legal, I know that I would be able to address the issue quickly, if need be.

So I was feeling quite prickly a few weeks ago as I watched the trial of Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller, the brave and remarkable Kansas doctor who performed abortions when most other doctors had stopped.  I also was following the Focus on the Family anti-choice ad that ran during the Super Bowl.  And my blood pressure has been rising.

Is "I'm Sorry" Enough? On Tiger Woods' Apology

Therapy Tuesday

Overshadowing the teamwork and joy of the Olympics is the long-awaited press conference recently called by professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Questions have been surfacing over the blogosphere and the news circuit: would his apology be enough? What details would he reveal? Is he truly sorry? What about his golf career?

While we have the tendency to look at celebrities and the fish bowls that they live in with great curiosity, at times, we forget their humanity. Standards are applied differently.  With this in mind, we can turn to Tiger Woods. But before we do, maybe it's important to look at how we process our own misdeeds.

Making mistakes reminds each of us of our own fatal flaws. Errors point out to ourselves, and perhaps others that we are far from perfect. While many of us can accept this as fact, the application, in and of itself, is a whole different matter.  Psychologically speaking, this falls into a concept called "cognitive dissonance."  As human beings, we fight to maintain cognitive harmony: that is, our thoughts and actions remain congruent. Cognitive dissonance comes into play when either our thoughts or our actions differ.  An example would be the idea that a person might hold that they are faithful in their relationships. Dissonance can occur in several ways with this example. Perhaps this person has unfaithful thoughts.  Or perhaps the person acted unfaithfully under the influence of alcohol. Or perhaps the unfaithful act occurred intentionally.  Any of these scenarios (or countless others) creates the internal feeling of imbalance and discomfort: the idea of being a faithful person has become unhinged. 

To resolve the emotional conflict, a person would have to do one of several things: change their internal construct (i.e: I'm a faithful person), change their behavior, or learn to tolerate the discomfort of the struggle between the two. Much easier said than done!

Coming Out Of The Closet: My Name Is Allison And I Work From Home

Truth Tuesday

Here are some things I would like you to know about me right now, in this moment:

• I work 60, 70, maybe 80 or more hours per week.  
• I am my own boss.
• The walls of my office are orange (as I am someone who is generally afraid of color, I felt you should know this)
• My office is in my home. Past the kids' bathroom and before the guest room/playroom. An empire has been and continues to be built from this space.
• When I tell you I am working from home, I mean that. I am not watching Oprah, doing laundry and eating BonBons while pretending to work or fitting work in here and there. I am actually working my you-know-what off.

Working Mothers Come Out of the Shadows

Startup Sunday

Photo by laihiu via Flickr.

Working mothers must periodically make the choice: do I explain when I have a family commitment? Or do I simply say that I have a scheduling conflict? It's not always an easy decision, but when in doubt, I'd encourage working mothers to come out of the shadows and acknowledge that you do have a life outside of work. You may be surprised by the results.

Recently, I was working for a new client on a project, alongside another independent contractor. The other contractor and I were discussing when to touch base about our progress and I suggested Friday at 2:30 p.m., since it's the one day I pick up my daughter from school at 3:25 p.m. I could practically hear her relief through the phone as she agreed, commenting that it would give her time to get her son from school shortly after 3 p.m. It was quite a working mothers moment.

If I hadn't been the first to broach the subject of school pickup, do you think she would have mentioned her son? Probably not. We would've missed the working mothers bonding opportunity, but more importantly, we each might have continued to feel tense about our family obligations -- not that we were hiding them, but that we wanted to keep them from appearing to intrude on the project.

Snow and Grouchiness and Gratitude

Sharing Saturday (but written on Monday before the second storm because I'm convinced that our power will go out again and I won't be able to post)  

I'm really grouchy and don't feel like writing at all. We've just dug out from under two feet of snow and  the National Weather Service is telling us to expect another foot tomorrow. My little block in suburban Maryland was without power for nearly 48 hours in bitter cold weather. The only saving grace was that instead of the usual outages we have in the summer, this time we could easily preserve our refrigerated food in the snow. Too bad the icicles hung off our noses as well.

The kids are clearly home from school for the duration. There was no Wii, no television, no way to watch the movies-that-I-stood-on-line-for-an-hour to take out from our local video store when our power was out. There was certainly blessing in this, but to be perfectly honest, I have to remove my "electronics are the bane of our children's existence and can you believe that they spend 7.5 hours on them a day" hat. I really would have liked some of those 7.5 hours to be filled with electronics when we had nothing but snow and books and food and board games in the dark to comfort us. And I desperately wanted to catch up on the last season of "Weeds."