Shame and Punishment

I was listening to a story about school discipline on This American Life, this weekend, and it really touched home.  A large part of the story was about how minority children are disproportionately punished when compared to their non minority peers.  My children are not minorities, and I'm no expert on race discrimination in the classroom, but the part of the story that rang true for me, was when they talked about the effects of punishment on students, and what that meant for their futures.  The story also talked about the inconsistency in classroom management styles, and the lack of a standard for classroom discipline.

In a previous post I mentioned how much trouble my son had with behavior in school.  I noticed that he wanted so badly to please his teachers, but without clear standards for behavior he was often at a loss.  He was punished repeatedly, the punishment led to feelings of shame, and he began to feel like he was inherently "bad".  Obviously feeling that bad about himself, didn't lead to better behavior.  In fact, it often led to worse behavior.  He lived up to the expectations the adults had for him.  He was the "bad" kid, so he would be "bad". Except he isn't bad, he's an interested, busy, inquisitive, bright, kind, creative, sensitive kid.

In one incident I was called because he and three other boys were throwing rocks at a bee hive.  The bees were disturbed, and as a result, several students were stung.  Thankfully, no one was allergic, and no one was seriously injured.  I was told that my son, "wasn't really the instigator, but he definitely participated".  I was on friendly terms with the school principal, and he asked if I thought it was appropriate for my son to have "jobs" to do for the "next couple of recesses" to demonstrate that he needed to keep himself busy with things that were not harmful to others during recess time.  The principal also asked me to make sure I had my son write apology letters to the children that were stung.  I agreed.

A few days later, I was volunteering at the school, and another parent asked me if I realized that my son had been sitting on the yellow square,( The yellow square was just that, a yellow square painted on the ground next to the building, where students would sit when their behavior was deemed not appropriate, I affectionately called it "the square of shame" or "dunce square"), for the duration of every recess since the incident. Another mother told me how her child (not in my child's class) told her that Lucas was "a really bad kid" because he was always sitting in the yellow square. I became concerned that the principal was not instituting the discipline plan we discussed, but instead shaming my child in front of the school.   I confronted the principal with my concerns, and he said,"Yes, there is an element of shame to the punishment."  I countered, "Then it stops now."  (see parenting post about learning to advocate for my child).

Since that incident, we have moved schools (although, I'm happy to report that new administration at the old school removed the "squares of shame"), and I have become hyper aware of the different kinds of discipline used by different educators.

On the other hand, after years of volunteering in my kids' schools, I have seen classrooms where classroom management is truly lacking, and the students and teacher suffer i.e., children can't focus, because of noise levels, teachers never move beyond reprimanding and redirecting to academics.

Discipline is so essential to the overall feel of the classroom.  It would benefit the students and faculty if all teachers and administrators were on the same page. When Josh and I figured out (after a ridiculously long time of living in the dark), that punishment used in our parenting was causing shame in our children, and not really teaching them self discipline, we sought help and found an amazing resource, (see parenting post).   We learned that kids thrived when they were aware of expectations, have a hand in making decisions, and were empowered to take responsibility for their own behavior.  I have seen classrooms where what I just described was happening for my children, but what would be really wonderful is if that was happening for all children.  If I could, I would drop off a box full of these books to every school in the United States.

In the classroom, it is more than just academics that matter for our children's future.  What they believe about themselves, and their abilities matters, too.

Halloween? Hallo-Whatever!

Halloween is my second-least favorite holiday.  My least favorite holiday is Easter, mostly because it involves me having to get up early to hide eggs even though, let's be honest, my kids don't really believe in you-know-who anymore, and an egg always goes unfound and then starts to reek somewhere in the house.  We're not religious, either, so the meaning ends up lost on me.  And let's be frank, that meaning is particularly hard to explain to non-believers, amirite?  Glad I don't have to explain that bit of the Good Book to the kids.

Plus, Easter is always on a Sunday.  I hate it when things are scheduled on Sundays, period, because that should just be my day to stare into space, unmolested.

Finally, any holiday that requires ham be served as its iconic meat is just not okay with me.  If "Easter bacon" was a tradition, I could probably get on board.  But ham is just wannabe bacon.

Give it up, ham.

Besides, it's hard to compete with my most-favorite holiday, which is Thanksgiving, because that holiday gives me time off of work, absolutely nothing to sew, bake, or create, permission to eat many salty foods, and I don't have to buy any gifts.  The only requirement is that I eat too much, drink wine with friends, and sit down lots while my husband happily cooks.  Totally ideal.

But Halloween is my second-least favorite holiday, after Easter, and here's why.

TOP FIVE REASONS I DON'T LIKE HALLOWEEN.

5.  WORK.  It's supposedly a "kids" holiday, but if you're a parent of youngish children, you know that you are required to do things for parties and prepare costumes and attend events, but you don't get the accompanying time off work.  I know I should be cheerful that I get to participate in this ritual with my children--one that they absolutely adore, by the way--but you know what?  Halloween always comes at the very busiest time of the semester, when I invariably have some sort of respiratory infection or pending conference travel, and when I feel my least cheerful.  I'm a fan of the idealized 1970s version of Halloween parenting, where kids stole sheets from the linen closet to make their own costumes ("ghosts"/the KKK) and just roamed neighborhoods in great hooligan bands while parents stayed home, drank great quantities of sweet liquers, and were nasty to each other.  This reality probably only exists in my head and Steven Spielberg movies, but I long for it anyway.

4.  CANDY.  This is not an anti-sugar diatribe.  I love sugar.  I eat it everyday, preferably in the form of ice cream.  And most forms of candy I could give a rats' ass about:  Starburst, Mike and Ikes, Smarties, blah.  Who cares.  Those would sit on my shelves gathering dust for millennia.  But this kind of candy?

The chocolatey kind with peanut butter or nuts or toffee inside?  I literally have no self-control around it.  None.  I had bronchitis this weekend so bad that the doctor told me if I tried to go to work yesterday she'd meet me at the hospital to treat my pneumonia, and I STILL ate 12 of these things.  TWELVE.  That's like six real candy bars.  And I could have eaten more but my self-loathing finally kicked in.  I could be throwing up Snickers and shoving them in my mouth simultaneously is how much I love these things.

And guess what else is effed up:  we won't even be home to hand these out to trick or treaters.  So Eric bought these all for us to eat, on top of whatever we steal from the girls' bowls.

Who does that.

3.  DECORATIONS.  I have a complicated relationship with stuff, okay?  Our house is on the cluttered side of things, and I've inherited all sorts of "treasures" from my family that I find hard to give up, and I love clothes and shoes.  But I also do not like having a bunch of unused stuff around that has to be stored.  Ski clothes and holiday decorations fall into this category, and are frequently donated to the thrift store every year in a purge, then repurchased every year in a guilt-fueled binge.  We are perpetually cold in the winter and always shabbily under-decorated.  Because I feel so cranky about Easter and Halloween, in fact, I do not decorate for these holidays at all.

This makes my children sad.  In their minds, our house should be decorated in orange lights and drop-down spiders and fake webs and jack-o-lanterns.  Instead, there are just moldy leaves in the front yard and the cracked, peeling concrete of our front steps.  

I'm sorry kids.

It gets so bad that my normally bookish, tv-addicted children take matters into their own hands and decorate things themselves.  Like this weekend, when they decided to make a scarecrow for the front yard.

Just to be clear, that IS a Cabbage Patch head peeking out there.  And this IS on par with having a toilet in your yard as a "Christmas" decoration.  

In case you can't appreciate the utter sadness:

2.  HAVING TO DRESS UP.  There are lots of funny memes and commentary going around about "sexy" women's Halloween costumes and we can all nod knowingly and get feminist-indignant about it, but frankly there IS kind of an art to killing it at Halloween, and I sort of admire both the sexy barmaids and the family that can show up as the entire cast of The Office as their gimmick.  I am usually running around at 5:30 the night of the party we've been invited to trying to figure out what I am going to "be."  And, surprise, it's never a sexy barmaid, because rarely are the makings of "sexy barmaid" just lying around in my recycling bin.  

Also, let's be real.  My sense of humor is a little off, yeah?  One year, I thought it would be really funny to go as Octo-Mom, so I dressed up in a large shirt that I had sewn eight dolls' heads to.  This made me laugh maniacally at myself while I was putting it together but when I tried to explain it to people at the party, they just half-grinned and moved away a little.  

Another time, I was Hermione Granger but the wig was all wrong and I ended up looking like a cast member from Spinal Tap.

Please note that Eric actually looks like Harry Potter.

And then there was the year I was a Zombie Mariachi.

It pleases Eric to no end when I show up in such sexy costumery.

Anyway, my point is:  some of us have the Halloween spirit, and some don't.  I belong in one of those groups.  

It's not the first one.

1.  KIDS COSTUMES.  Oh, what to say about this.  I'm definitely not one of those moms who feels compelled to make her kids costumes, or to fanatically buy them, either, as some sort of statement about parenting.  There have been years we've bought costumes off of Amazon, years we've raided the thrift store, and years I've made them.  So this is not anxiety about source or procurement.

However:  the first year Addie was in school I completely forgot that she would need a costume and had a real loud crying fit about whether or not I should have ever had children, and now I have PTSD about remembering or forgetting Halloween altogether.  It should be obvious that my preference would be to forget it, but there is some decent part of me that knows that's not an okay option for my children.

And so I push the kids weeks, nay months, in advance to think about their costumes.  I lock 'em in early.  We try on costumes early.  And then, when they want to change their minds the actual week of Halloween, we have very many large fights about it and I turn into monster mommy, my very favorite Halloween role.

This year, Addie wanted to be a zombie bride (apple, meet tree) so we tore up a sheet (Spielberg!) and she ended up like this:

Great, good.

Except it itched, of course, and necessitated much futzing and complaining and fighting.  Awesome.

And Nolie wanted to be Cleopatra, which made me inwardly rejoice, because a few years ago Addie wanted to be a "Grecian Goddess," a costume which I actually sewed by my ownself with no pattern, and in my head I unilaterally decided to be culturally insensitive and historically inaccurate and lobbed Egyptian ruler and Grecian Goddess into the same category so that Nolie could wear Addie's old costume, currently balled up in the dress-up bin:

See the wrinkles?  Cuz I wasn't about to iron that shit.  Nope.  Not on Halloween.

Changing the World One Raisin at a Time

Why, oh, why do people insist on ruining perfectly good baked goods by putting raisins in them?

I mean really!?!  What's wrong with a cinnamon roll?

First of all, it's my understanding that raisins start their lives as plump, juicy grapes, (which I love), and then are dried to make raisins.  I applaud this in terms of food preservation, and I'm not opposed to the little wrinklie buggers on their own.  As a matter of fact, I love all sorts of dehydrated foods, sun dried tomatoes, those little cranberry things, dried apples, figs, just to name a few.

What I do not understand is why you would take the water out of them, only to have them reconstitute inside my cinnamon roll.  The raisins draw moisture from my otherwise delicious cinnamon roll, and suck it into themselves like some kind of parasite, and then when I bite into them, they have a disgustingly unnatural plumpness.

The worst is when I expect chocolate, and instead bite into that reconstituted old, tanned, flesh like texture.

I know not everyone shares my hatred of raisins in baked goods, but I also know I'm not alone. Check out this buzzfeed list on the subject.

Imagine a world where every baked good was filled with the deliciousness of itself.  Can't you just taste the oatmeal cookies, carrot cake and cinnamon rolls, raisin free?  I think we can agree, that the world would be a much better place.

The next time you google a cinnamon roll recipe, and think,"This would be so much better with raisins.", think again.

On Sarkeesian

Been thinking about the whole Anita Sarkeesian thing again.  Anita Sarkeesian, in case you haven't been following, is a feminist media critic who writes and speaks about misogynistic tendencies in video game design and culture.  Video game culture--and I would argue computer sciences in general--are often pretty male-dominated and women-hostile, though I'm sure you could find some good exceptions to this rule.

Anyway, Sarkeesian was invited to speak about her work at Utah State University, and received some really troubling death threats from someone promising to shoot up the event.  So she canceled.  My friend and colleague wrote a good letter about why the threat and the cancellation were so troubling, which you can read about here.  But the gist is that allowing people to carry concealed weapons around on campus elevates the concern all of us--faculty, staff, speakers--feel when we are speaking thoughts that might be unpopular.

I used to work at a university where my work--which was sometimes critical of the fossil fuel industries that supported my (public) university--was also pretty unpopular.  For a long time, I watered down what I wanted to say and tempered how I taught and what I assigned because of this.  This was not the most courageous thing to do, but that's what I did, and so I'm very interested in cases in which particular policies or environments make it hard for us to speak truth to power.  I also worked mostly with men, and mostly with young men, and in fields where they dominated in more ways than one, so thinking about how feminism gets muted in these areas is also interesting to me.

The other thing I'm thinking about is how we manage dealing with difficult or controversial topics in our classrooms, and how we make ourselves and our students vulnerable when we do so.  Often that vulnerability is necessary for us to learn.  But we can screw up the opportunity to make vulnerability safe so easily.  The line between vulnerability and anger or rage can also be thin in practice, if not productively directed through self expression, and I think this is especially true for young men.

I didn't always know how to direct that vulnerability, or when to use it effectively for learning.  t was a total stress biscuit when I first started teaching.  I mean, I loved it.  I loved the performative aspect of it, the engagement with the students, the intellectual stimulation.  I felt alive in the classroom.  And I still do!  I spend a lot of time prepping for class, figuring out how to do things better, and wanting to meaningfully engage my students.

But early on:  stress biscuit.  And not just from teaching so many classes for so little pay, either.  But because I was always afraid I would make a fool out of myself in class and reveal my ignorance, or step over some sort of line.

I did both.

I think most good teachers do look foolish and step over the line, at some point or another, in their careers.  Because you don't get better if you don't take risks.  And if you take risks, you will fail sometimes.  Sometimes, and especially if you're teaching already risky or difficult topics having to do with power, say, or privilege, or our own culpability and responsibility in the making of the world, you have to approach that metaphorical "line" in order to model courage and failure for your students.

So you have times where you mess up and have to make things better.  You can also get better with experience.  You learn some practical lessons.  Like never to pretend you know something when you don't, while still maintaining credibility and leadership with your students.  You model how ignorance can make you vulnerable but also exquisitely open to growth.  That takes time, to do that right.

Also, it's tempting sometimes to show off in class.  This is my personality anyway, so you know.  I have to watch it.

Like the one time I had a student who every damn day showed up to my class and proceeded to fall asleep, and then I threw a piece of chalk at him one time to wake him up, out of frustration.  I think I thought that would be funny, and maybe it kind of was.  He woke up and grinned, was a good sport about it, and didn't sleep again in my class.  But I'd never do that now.  Maybe that kid was working night shifts, what do I know?  Just talk to the kid, give the kid the crap grade if you have to, but don't embarrass him in class.  You don't throw stuff at people.  You always err on the side of compassion until you have a reason not to.

I knew I went over the line with that one, and I was punished for a good long time with a recurring nightmare in which some faceless student was being belligerent in class and I lost my cool and ended up beaning him with a dozen chalkboard erasers, rapid-fire.  When all the erasers were gone, I stood there in front of the class, red-faced and panting, while the other students stared at me with horror.  I knew I lost them.  I knew I had lost.

I always woke up sweating from that one.  Luckily, I don't have it anymore.  Because I'm pretty rarely frazzled in class these days, and it takes a lot to make me mad. Because: compassion.  For me and them.

So what's my point here, with all this rambling.  My point is that if you really want to show up in the classroom, sometimes you have to show up big, and you can show up too big--personality-wise or conceptually--and then you may have to do work to mend those fences.

I also have a few stories of my own regarding students who couldn't manage their own emotions in class, either.  I gave a pop quiz one time--it wasn't even going to be graded, it was just a pre-test--and a student got so mad that I would dare do that without announcing it ahead of time that he yelled at me in front of the class and exploded out of the classroom's double doors.  I was shaking for a good long time after the class was over.

Another time, I was invited to be a guest speaker in a colleague's class, and I said yes as a courtesy and a favor, because that's what you do.  I said some critical things about the students' future industry,  supported by research, and I was booed out of the classroom by a bunch of hooligans in the back room who had never been told that what they were about to go out in the world and do might not be met with applause.  That happened.  I shook after that, too.  And then I did a real good postmortem about my tone and content and went back to the same class the next year and had a very successful experience.  But you can bet I didn't say exactly what I really meant, either.  They may have been able to hear me better, but I didn't really communicate what I wanted, either.

Another student, another class:  he hadn't handed in assignments for five weeks, so I emailed him to let him know he was failing the class and should consider dropping before the census date.  Kindly written, a courtesy.  He then showed up in class and spewed invective at me, because how dare I think I could grade him poorly on a topic that even a kindergartner could master?  That was followed up with a lot of hateful emails that I passed on to the Dean of Students.  Just in case.

The "in case" being that one of these times a student might get really mad and, you know.  Throw some "erasers" my way.  Sometimes teaching and learning can feel like really emotional exercises.  They can sometimes change the way we see the world, or ask us to change ourselves.  Mostly this can be done safely.  That's what school is for, we hope.

But sometimes not.  Sometimes one of us misjudges our role or what we're supposed to be doing, and we act out.

These examples stick out for me after fifteen years of teaching because they are the outliers.  Mostly, students are respectful and fun and interesting and provocative, and they make my life so much better just from knowing them.  They make it a pleasure to show up to class.  A few here and there don't care for class or school or maybe me, and that's fine too.  But mostly, students are great.  They allow me to push them now and again regarding their beliefs or what they know or how they think, and they demand the same of me.  I don't need to throw erasers anymore, don't even think to.  We get where we're going pretty safely, mostly, and deal with our shake-ups productively.  I'm at a big university now, too, where the students don't take system critiques quite so personally.  That's pretty nice.

But I self-censored for a long time, out of a sense of self-preservation, and because I didn't always trust myself or my students to handle difficult things well, or with grace.

So I don't blame Sarkeesian for canceling her talk.  And I think allowing concealed weapons on campuses is madness (they were allowed at my previous university, and they're allowed at my current one, too).  Perhaps the data doesn't support my fear.  Perhaps I will someday be saved by a well-intentioned student carrying a gun who will be able to stop a mass shooter come to do me and my students harm.

But I have to think the elevation of violence all around, the willingness to engage our conflicts and difficult emotions through anything other than words--whether that's throwing erasers or shooting people--isn't good for anyone.  And we must all collectively decide to protect safe places for speech and growth together, absent the potentially to physically wound one another.

I Don't Care What You Think of My Parenting

Eleven years ago, our first amazing bundle of joy graced us with her ethereal presence.

She ate on a schedule, slept 8 hours at 8 weeks old, by eight months she could recite flash cards, saying things like "Apple" with deliberate precision.  As a toddler she never ran away from me, and when told "no", not only did she cry, but she burned the experience into her memory, and was never told no about the same thing twice.  Why am I telling you this? ... because I was convinced that this had something to do with me, and I judged all those "other moms".

Two years later I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.

Shortly after we took him home, he began to cry.  And he cried, and he cried, and he cried...for six straight months.  I mean I may be exaggerating here.  There were times when he didn't cry, like when my breast was in his mouth, or the 45 minutes at a time he would sleep, but other than that, he was crying.  He crawled at six months (maybe why he stopped crying), and walked at 9, by 10 months he ran.  He unlocked doors, darted into traffic, attempted to eat poisonous berries, and when he was told "no", he turned, smiled and ran as fast as he could in the direction of the off limit item.

Two short years after that my third child was born.

This sweet boy was also beautiful, and calm, a joy for his father and I.  He was easygoing, patient, and adaptable, and we were grateful.

Josh and I had an authoritative parenting style.  Feeling that the stricter we got, the more ordered things would become.  We laid down rules, outlawed things, said "NO" on a constant basis, and dragged children to time out benches.  Grace adapted, and spent most of her time trying to figure out how to please us.  Luke did not, he fought, screamed, threw tantrums, broke things, and we assumed that he needed more rules and punishment.  I saw the stares of other mothers in the grocery store or at the library during story time, and I knew what they were thinking because I had though it, too.  They were thinking I was a bad mother, and it weighed heavily on me.  

In school Grace excelled, was a favorite.   Teachers judged me fit by her behavior.  For Luke school was a constant struggle, his academics were fine, but behaviorally he was always in trouble, and it seemed like no amount of punishment. (I should explain that we agreed not to spank and never have, although many times I came close completely out of anger and frustration), threatening, lectures, or disappointment made any difference. The judging looks his teacher gave me at his daily pick up added to my stress and frustration.  I wanted her to think I was a good mother.

One day while driving home from half day kindergarten with just Luke and I in the car, he started crying and said, "Mom, you never should have pushed me out, because I'm bad."  I was devastated, here my five year old was saying he never should have been born.  That moment made me rethink everything I'd been doing. This high spirited, hilarious, energetic boy was being broken.  He believed he wasn't good.

We found a fantastic counselor who turned us onto a fabulous parenting book, and accompanying class, which taught us that we had to let our children have natural consequences, not imposed or logical, but natural, that punishment only caused shame, and shame didn't change behavior for the better.  When I understood why Luke was rebeling (because he felt like he had no choice), I understood how to make things better. Our authoritative, controlling parenting methods were turning Grace into a pleaser who didn't want to take risks for fear of failure, and were turning Luke into a black sheep rebel, who felt he could never do anything right.

Things have greatly improved for all five of us since we've been practicing this new style of parenting.  Our children have opened up to us in surprising ways, and we've developed bonds I never knew parents could have with their children.

The biggest lesson I've learned is to not care about what other people think of me as a parent.  My focus on what other people thought, made me less effective.  I didn't know how to advocate for my children.   I was so worried about the kind of parent people perceived me to be that I missed being a good one.
 
We still aren't perfect parents.  We mess up constantly, even by our standards, and people still give me dirty looks, or unsolicited parenting advice, but I just don't care anymore.  I know that I am the best person to make parenting decisions for my children, and what you think about them just doesn't really matter.

Fashion Post! Jeans Edition

I have some stuff I want to write about soon, like why feminists are getting death threats for planning talks on college campuses, and about the fossil fuel divestment movement gaining speed, but also, I like to honor all of my interests and personalities, so today, a little post about

FASHION!!!!

I'm a big fan of the clothes, and think about le fashion a lot.  I've been an obsessive thrift store shopper, and also--at a different time in my life--spent almost $200 on a pair of jeans.  Jeans, people. I'm not proud of that fact, but there it is.

In fact, for today, let's focus in on jeans.  Here are the tenets of my jeans philosophy:

1.  Find the right pair for you and stick with it.

Having the right pair of jeans makes all the difference to how excited you are to get dressed in the morning.  The right fit/wash/style--for any body type--can totally pull a look together, yeah?  I think this is why women are always building up their collections of jeans.  Because they're in search of the holy grail of jeans, the one pair that will make getting dressed easy and fun.  But they can't find the pair, and so they assume it doesn't exist, and let a bunch of inferior interlopers crowd out their closet.

Finding le pair can take a little work, but I believe fit is possible for every woman, in every budget and shape.

2.  You only need four pairs.  Really.

That said, you don't need to have a bunch of jeans in your closet.  Like, this is ridiculous:

Once, I was complaining about bras to my buddy N., and she gave me some good advice.  You need two, maybe three bras, max:  one beige one for wearing under white clothes, and a black one for under black clothes.  If you're a teacher, get a little padding so you don't nip out in front of the young ones.  And maybe get a third for when one of the others is being washed.  I would add that you might also need a racerback style, since so many shirts are that style now and they look better without straps peeking out.

When those are worn out, ditch them, and get new ones.  But you don't need 12 bras in your underwear drawer unless you're Dita Von Teese.  And she probably doesn't even own that many bras. She's more of a bustier type.

But really, that's it.  No need for a bunch of fancy, patterned stuff.  In my house, nobody notices that anyway, if you know what I mean.  "They" would rather you weren't wearing a bra at all, if you know what I mean.

I think the same is true for jeans.  You could have a pair of distressed skinnies/boyfriends that are good for a casual look; a pair of dark-washed you can wear say on a casual day at work; a black pair; and maybe a colored pair (I have gray--daring!).  I don't really think you need much more than that, and grappling with 25 pairs of jeans that just don't fit that well can make getting dressed in the morning  a bummer.  I think it also leads to excess spending and waste.

If there's something you don't like about the jeans you own, spend some time finding the just-right pair and donate the rest.  Then don't bring in new pairs that don't do you justice.  That's my rule.  Even if it's a pair of $2 Joe's Jeans from the thrift store (a bargain!) if you don't like where they hit your ankle, you'll never be happy with them.

Bottom line:  don't settle for jeans that don't give you the Jesus-descending-from-the-Heavens feeling.

***I suppose one exception here would be if you fluctuate sizes frequently, as some of us do.  If this is true, put your bigger/smaller jeans in another closet.  If you don't go and get them after a few months, I think you have your answer about whether you'll ever wear them again.

3.  Stop washing your jeans.

I know this sounds crazy.  I used to think it was crazy.  In fact, I used to wash my jeans after every wearing because they would get baggy and not look right.  But here's where I stand now:  the right pair of jeans shouldn't bag out on you by the end of the day.  If they're falling off your hips by dinnertime, they are either the wrong size or the wrong material.

Jeans should have a little stretch and fit so that they pretty much look the same by 6pm as they did at 6am.  And you should hang them back up at the end of the day instead of washing them, unless you really trashed em out back in the manure pile.  Otherwise, spot clean.  Every once in a while, machine wash, but don't dry.  They will last tons longer, look better longer, save you time and money and aggravation on laundry, and give you a sense of which materials are more durable and flattering over time.

4.  More expensive doesn't mean better.  Though it can.

The $200 jeans I mentioned above were a revelation to me.  I tried them on in a fancy boutique and it was like the heavens opened above and rained down blessings upon mine head.  That is why I bought them.  But then, guess what?  I got home and googled the pair--make, model, and size--and they were $50 on eBay.  Maybe still a lot of money for some of us.  But if you only need 3 or 4 pairs--instead of 20--and if you don't wash them so that they last a reeeeeaaaaallllly long time, then I think you'll actually save money in the long run.

Lesson learned:  go try on as many fancy pairs of jeans as you like in your local boutique or department store, but don't buy them there.  Shoot a pic of the label or write it down, then go shop online.  But take note of the make and model and size so you get it right.

[in case you're wondering, the expensive brand is Adriano Goldschmied (AG), and I like the Stilt Cigarette style]

Here's fashionista Olivia Palermo wearing them.  Remember when she was on The City, that spin-off of The Hills?  Yeah, I watched all of BOTH of those shows.  Quit hating.

But my colored jeans come from Old Navy.  I buy the Rock Star style, in a particular size and style.  And they last just as long (cuz I don't wash them hardly ever) and look just as good.  $35.  Probably less if you go on a sale day.

The Rock Star, in a range of fruity flavors.

I believe Angie likes these, too.

I'm also a fan of the brand Just Black.  Cute stuff, great fit.  For me.

5.  Ignore the numbers, pay attention to fit.

We pay a lot of attention to numbers, as women--numbers on the scale, numbers on the tag.  But you have to put all that behind you when you get in the dressing room.  If you try on your trusty size 14 in the dressing room, and you can pull the waist band on that pair of jeans out by two inches, they are too big.  Size down.  If you try on your trusty size 2's and you can't get them on past your ankles, it's time to size up.  There is no rhyme or reason to sizing or numbers, so ignore them.  Pay attention to fit.



In conclusion:  there are ethical problems with the kind of "fast fashion" Old Navy represents, for sure--and the clothing industry is one of the most polluting on the planet.  You can find jeans in all sorts of places and with all kinds of ethics, but I think the best thing you can do for the environment is probably to buy fewer and wear them longer.  And still look SICK and FLY.

Sorry.

By the way, I hate fashion rules.  They're usually all wrong for me.  Like, I don't own one "classic button-down white shirt" which every fashion maven on the planet says you must have.  But I don't like how they look on me.  So feel free to disagree with everything here.  But I think if you want to have a streamlined, workable wardrobe, jeans are a good place to pare down your numbers, and ramp up your expectations.

What's a Fancy Word for Armpit?

Two weeks ago, I was doing a breast self exam, and I felt something different.  It definitely felt lumpish in my left armpit, lumpier than my right armpit at least.  I noticed this difference because I've been doing breast self exams daily, not because I'm a super responsible person, but because I could never remember to do monthly self breast exams, so I made it part of my daily routine.

I didn't think much of the lump....  I'm a liar.  I worried, but not in the way people usually worry about such things,  You see I worry about everything, and I know this.  Therefore, I have established different levels of worry.  And this was definitely an "I'm worried about this, but most people probably wouldn't be pulling out their burial wishes, and you know that, so check yourself before you wreck yourself, girl." kind of worry.  I knew I was probably blowing things completely out of proportion.

My physical was scheduled for a week and a half from lump finding day, so I figured I'd have the doctor check it out, and that I'd put it out of my mind....  But I couldn't.  Once a bad thought enters my terrifyingly neurotic mind, it's like an instant replay.  You know the scene in the Exorcist where the possessed girl starts vomiting, yeah, see how I did that, just put that horrible image on instant replay in your mind. It was like that.

I figured I'd ease my worries by asking my sister to ask her husband, (Mr. M.D.,PhD), if it was anything I should go in early to get looked at.  Mr. M.D. PhD was working that evening so he was unavailable for consultation.  Naturally, I consulted the next best thing, Web M.D, the Susan G. Komen website and any other frightening website.  And I got freaked out.

I said nothing to my husband that night.  I decided I would sleep peacefully, and go to urgent care to have it looked at in the morning.  This seemed like the plan a sane person would make, but it didn't work for me.  I tossed and turned, cried, thought about how my MIL could move in to help Josh after my passing, fretted over all the things I'd need to write down,  (he doesn't even know how to pay the bills, he can't braid), I thought about the journals I would start writing to my loved ones, and I sweated, like a lot.

The next morning, sleep deprived and insanely anxious, I sent the kids on the bus, and Josh and I went to urgent care.  At urgent care the P.A. said she could feel something, but that it didn't seem like a big deal to her, and that I should just have the doctor look at it when I went in for my physical.  She did mention that sometimes shaving can irritate lymph nodes in the armpit, and suggested that I not shave before I see the doctor.  I left feeling better.

The next week I went in for the physical.  I arrived early for my appointment, and as I sat waiting to be called in I realized that I didn't know the proper terminology for armpit.  I consider myself well spoken and well read.  I've done my best to use anatomical terms when speaking with my children about their body parts, but here I was about to have a body part examined that I had nothing but slang to describe.  (My mother, versed in medical terminology, and disturbed by my ineptness in this area has since told me the term is, axilla. In case you need that information someday.) This vocabulary deficiency, along with the choice I made long ago to stop wearing antiperspirant/deodorants, and my hairy armpits started to worry me more than the lump.  Of course, as happens often in doctor's offices, I was left to wait for a grossly exaggerated amount of time, and all during this time, I was fretting and sweating.  I realized that things were not looking good for this doctor.  She was going to have to examine my sweaty, stinky, hairy armpit lump, and the later she arrived, the worse the situation.

This is not a pic of me, but you get the idea.

An hour into my dysfunctional self chatter, she arrived, we discussed the "armpit or underarm, or I don't know the right word for it" lump, and she left the room so I could change.  Three seconds after she left the room, she flung the door wide open without knocking, while I was dressed in only one sock, I held up my large paper napkin in modesty, she apologized and left the room.  This time she did not return for 15 minutes.  I sat, waited, fretted and sweated on the exam table.  She returned, knocked, and I yelled that it was safe.  I made a joke about the first time she opened the door, she seemed at ease, which is the goal when you're naked sweating and hairy, to put the other person at ease.  Before she proceeded to the breast/armpit exam, I made my apologies for my sweaty hairiness and my ignorance on the medical term for my underam, she laughed and was again, put at ease.  She was very thorough, and her lack of gloves may or may not have added to her thoroughness.

After all that, sweating and fretting and worrying, she had me sit up, she looked at me with genuine care, and said, "I think it's just fatty tissue"  

Babies on the Brain

I'm reading this great book about babies and academics called Do Babies Matter?.  If you are an academic woman, work at an institution with any sort of women at all who might have families, or advise people with families or others who want to balance babies and academic life, you should check it out.  There was also this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education today, if you want to read that.

Nope, I'm not pregnant, and never will be again, if I can help it.  But I think a lot about my experience of being on the tenure track with two little girls (1 and 3 when I started), and about how this influences my advising graduate students now, and how it shapes my thinking about feminism and family.  I'm also co-writing a book about how to maintain your humanity when you become an academic (my co-author is a former colleague of mine, who happens to be both a scientist and a dude who raised some kids himself when he was coming up through the ranks).  So this stuff is just on my mind.

This is before my second daughter was born, and before the tenure track.  In later pictures I am more desperate and hollow-eyed, but I like this one because it shows how that time was just a zombied movement between the computer monitor and the baby, monitor and the baby, monitor and the baby.

[Misunderstandings about tenure abound, so....  When you're on the "tenure track" that basically means you have about six years to publish a whole bunch of work in academic journals or in books, maybe get some big grants from the federal government, maybe make sure some graduate students you advise graduate, and maintain somewhat decent teaching evaluations.  Essentially, you work your ass off with no guarantees of reward.  Because, in your sixth year, a bunch of people--and I mean dozens of people--evaluate your work.  If they agree your work is deserving, you get tenure, which usually means a pay increase and that you get to stay on at the university until you choose to leave or really, really step in some bad doodoo and are forced out.  If you don't get tenure, you either have to start all over at another university (which is rare) or you have to build a whole different career.  You might have gone to graduate school for ten years to get your degree, have $100,000 in student loans, have put your whole life into your work, etc., but if you don't get tenure, you're out.  The weight of that potential failure is excruciating for many of us.  And yet we are the "lucky" ones because at least we got tenure-track jobs and can make a living wage.  Most academics do not even get a shot at these jobs now.]

The honest truth is that my life was a mess for those first few years of my career.  I had been what's called "contingent" faculty when my kids were born--I was either working as an adjunct or a "lecturer" which means you're mostly paid to teach, rather than do research, and you're often paid very little, overworked, and may or may not have benefits (I luckily did).

My older daughter was also a sick little kid until she was about six years old, and my husband worked full-time as an engineer.  On top of that, my department was going through a majorly traumatic leadership transition and I was riddled with insecurities about my ability to publish academic work--my dissertation was a sad whale of a meandering circus and I had never really learned how to write a journal article.

And I was surrounded by young male engineers all day.  I could write a book about that alone.

Jeez, we look pretty happy here, too.  But on the inside I'm sure I was screaming for help and desperately seeking out Oreos to numb the pain and boredom of raising young children while simultaneously panicking about not getting my work done.

My marriage suffered, for sure.  There were some times where we almost didn't make it.  My health suffered.  I remember going to one conference with the Swine Flu and just thinking to myself:  if I die on this airplane at least I won't have to get up to a podium and present a paper because I feel soooo shitty.  I probably got that whole plane full of people sick, too.  I'm sorry people on the plane.  And I was sick all the time, and overweight, and exhausted.  Also, I ran around campus like my ass was on fire, barely pausing to say hello to people because I was busy.  Ugh.  I feel so sorry for that me, now, and for all of the lovely people who had to deal with me.

I did it, though.  I survived days where me and the kids were so sick we couldn't get out of bed and I had days full of meetings and classes and no family around to help us out and Eric having to go to work anyway, while I cried, feverish and vomity, into the couch while trying to nurse the baby and clean up the toddler's vomit.  I worked Christmas Eves.  I survived helpful but controlling mentors and horrible workplace policies that required me to return to work just weeks after having my second daughter.  I learned how to publish academic papers and present at conferences and put up with condescending, overworked b-holes who held my future in their hands.

Also:  We spent tens of thousands of dollars on childcare.  And that is no exaggeration.

I learned some important lessons, too:  no conference travel, ever, on one of my kids' birthdays.  No working holidays.  Eventually:  no work on weekends, either.  If someone's bullying me about anything, I walk away.  I only do projects with fantastic people who are funny and brilliant and make me love my job and be a better scholar.  Sometimes I work too much if there's a project I feel passionate about.  Other times my family takes precedence.  Mostly my family takes precedence.  I exercise.  I take time for other projects, like this blog.  I try not to scurry anymore.

But above all, I work to make sure life is better for those coming after me.  I created an advising group for women at my former university, because that place was mostly run by men who might have been well intentioned but who practiced bone-headed sexism and insensitivity almost everyday and then wondered why more women weren't succeeding in science and engineering.  I'll probably do that again at this new university, too.

I try not to be bone-headed and insensitive myself.  Sometimes I fail.

When I advise students now I get to know them as well as I can so that I can work with them to figure out how to balance their personal goals with their professional goals.  This doesn't always involve babies or children but it sometimes does and it's part of my job to understand that.  I also try to model this for them by not being a condescending, overworked b-hole myself.

And lately I [radically, I think] refuse to put busy-ness above the things that make life beautiful.  This means that occasionally emails go unanswered for a bit, or I miss a deadline by a few days.  It means I work from home more than I used to because I'm happier and more productive there, and that translates into me being happier and more productive when I am in the office.  I do not vote for public officials who don't take women, and women's rights seriously.  Or gay rights.  Or worker's rights.

I speak up.  I admit when I mess up (which is often) and try to do better.  I always try to do better.

And then I go take a nap.

Knope

One of the things I've loved most, unexpectedly, about moving to Boise is that I ride my bike all over the place.  Back in Colorado, which is very bike friendly in general, we lived in the suburbs, and we had to drive the kids to school because of where their school was located, and we lived on a street without bike lanes that was *just* far enough from work to make biking a real pain in the ass.  So I maybe rode my bike twice a year.

That could be an exaggeration, even.

But here, we're blocks from downtown Boise, blocks from Gram's, and I'm a 15-minute bike ride from work.  It's early fall and the weather is beautiful (except when it's still hot enough to fry your bacon).  My mom is "letting me borrow" her Schwinn cruiser, one with a super-fat seat, set low, so that you don't even have to stand up when you pull up to an intersection...you just set your feet down and sit there, cool as a cucumber, till you start pedaling again.  I especially love to ride it without a helmet, just to scandalize you further.

I've been pumped (pun!) to ride my bike more after spending time in the Netherlands and Sweden last summer, too.  There, everyone--little kids, middle agers, teenagers, grams and gramps--rides their bikes.  AND they ride all manner of bikes--shitty bikes, nice bikes, bikes with trailers.  AND they do it in their work clothes.  The ladies are in skirts and tie-blouses and pumps, pedaling around with their groceries in their bike baskets, looking very chic and unflappable.

And almost all are doing it without helmets, primarily because most Northern European cities are set up for bicyclists, so you don't feel you're taking your life into your hands every time you ride to work.

For some perspective on how backwards we do it here, you can check this out:

Or if you don't feel like watching, I'll summarize:  we're basically idiots.

But the North End is set up for lots and lots of chill, helmet-less riding (just to invite you to scold me further) and so I'm riding my bike(s) a lot more, and I'm trying to do it with less hand-wringing and preparation than I used to think it involved.  I'm not road biking or mountain biking or competing or trying to get my heart rate up, or any of those aggressively exercise-y things.  I'm trying to ride in a Brigitte Bardot sort of way, where I just stick a baguette in my basket, tie a scarf on my head, and hop on my Schwinn so as to propel myself from one location to another.  It's so romantic that I've fallen terribly in love with myself, and glean great pleasure from the whole enterprise.

We're also trying to economize a bit around here and save on gas.  Biking helps.  Added bonus.

But let's be honest.  Usually I look a lot more like

than

and rather than hopping on my Schwinn for a neighborhood spin, I hop on my commuter bike, my panniers filled with books and my heavy, heavy computer for work, and I pedal like a madwoman down to campus.  Which isn't Knope-y in itself, except sometimes I decide I'm going to be all European about even this and I try to hop on my commuter bike in a pencil skirt and pumps.

Um.

Sometimes, when I'm doing this, I have to hike my pencil skirt way, way up to even get on my bike, and I badly scratch my leg just trying to get it over the bar so I can ride.  Then I try to inch the skirt back down so as not to offend, you know, EVERYONE.  And then I have to pedal with my knees really close together.  Because I'm wearing a pencil skirt.  And then it becomes really hard to stop at intersections without hiking the skirt up high again, at which point a nice lady in a Suburban might pull up real slow beside me and shake her head and wag her finger at me real hard.

For reals.

And then I might stay at work an hour late just because I dread trying to get back on my bike in my pencil skirt.  I might even contemplate calling my husband to come get me.

But I don't.  I commit to Knope it all the way, and ride my bike home, sweaty and panting and when I get home I throw the black pencil skirt in the wash with a bunch of white towels **just to punish it**.

Sometimes it's just hard to live a life in line with your values.

So, You "Help" Your Husband With His Business?

For years, I was a SAHM, and I endured all those awkward "What do you do?" conversations.  I even remember a time when I was explaining to a woman how I made homemade dust cloth solution, and she looked at me with pity, and said, "Oh, so you stay at home, then."  And while this kind of encounter left me unappreciated, and misunderstood, my new position as work at home mom seems to be even more confounding for other people.

When people find out that my husband is a plumber, and has a plumbing company, the conversation inevitably turns to what I do for a living, I know it's coming...  "So, you help your husband with his business?"  I know they think they're well meaning, generously giving me some credit for all I do for him.  I will only dabble in the inherent sexism of this question... why are women the "helpers", maybe I'm a freaking plumber.  I have over time learned just how to answer it.

In 2007, shortly after the birth of our third child, Josh came home from work, and informed me that he had been laid off.  I hadn't ever established a career (after college I worked a couple of odd jobs, just until our first child was born, when I made mothering my career), so we knew I probably wouldn't be bringing home the proverbial bacon. We were worried.  While Josh had established a career as a journeyman plumber in the commercial construction arena, we knew that commercial construction wasn't exactly booming, but he had a plan.  He suggested we open a small service plumbing company.  I was hesitant, but also knew that we had to somehow feed, clothe and house the three people we brought to the planet, and this seemed like a better plan than the local homeless shelter.

I threw all my energy into making our new business a success.  With help from my brother in law, I learned how to use a bookkeeping program, I went through business check lists, I made sure we had the right licenses and were registered with the correct entities, I designed a logo, ordered business cards, created a website, met with phone book companies and placed ads, I designed form letters introducing us that we sent to property management companies.  I even recall a cold winter day, where after cutting out homemade door hanger advertisements, I loaded up my 4 and 2 year old in the double stroller, and strapped my infant in a sling, and started hanging them on my neighbors' doors.

Since then, I have become our business's office manager, human resources department, book keeper, collections department, customer care representative, and 50% of our business development team, among other things.  I do all of this from the relative comfort of my home office.   The beauty of this arrangement is that I also take one day a week to volunteer in my children's classroom, or go on a field trip, I walk my kids to and from the bus stop daily, I wash and dry a load or two of laundry everyday while on the job, and occasionally don't make it into the office until 9pm with my glass of wine.  I love my job, both of them, but when someone asks me about what I do, and I tell them that my husband and I have a small plumbing company, and they say "Oh, so you help your husband with his business?"  The answer is, no.  I don't "help" my husband with his business.  I work at our business.

Old and Gray, Sad Trombone, Sad Panda, Whatever

I've been thinking about how to write about this for a while now.  I think maybe it's going to take a few posts to get it done.  But you have to start somewhere.

I'm motivated this morning by this video:

This is Ali McGraw.  She played Jennifer in the 1970 movie Love Story.  I still haven't seen it.  My mom says that's where she got the idea for my name (along with 3 gajillion other women, apparently.  If you throw a dart into a room full of late-30s white women, you have a 90% chance of hitting someone named Jennifer).  She's talking to Oprah about aging.

Full disclosure:  I love Oprah.  I always have.  I have a PhD and critical faculties and loads of cynicism, but I still get O Magazine every month and once paid money to see Oprah speak.  She's done a lot of good in the world and she's one of my heroes.

Anyhoo, I like this interview a lot because I've been thinking about aging a lot lately.  Because this:

Not a great picture, right?  I've got several big pimples on my face because sometimes that just happens at 39.  No surprise there.  I don't have any makeup on, my hair isn't done, the lighting sucks, no filters, and yep.  That is a whole lot of silver there framing my face.

Because I've decided to stop coloring my hair.

That fact makes some of you recoil.  I know, because it used to make me recoil.  I pretty faithfully have had my hair colored since my 20s.  I used to be able to go a few months between colorings, but lately it was getting to be more like every four weeks, with a box of color thrown in to tide me over between appointments.

But enough.  It's been 8 weeks.  This is what it looks like.

I tried this growing out the gray once before, about a year ago, and made it two weeks before I freaked out and went to get my highlights did.

But this year, with us worried more about money--my husband was out of work for a whole year, until recently--and with me feeling fed up with any situation in which I can't totally be myself (I'm not sure where that is coming from, but there it is) I am growing it out.  I'm totally silver--like Christopher Walken silver--on the sides.  I call it my gangster wings.  I think I'm salt and pepper everywhere else, but who the hell knows.

So you're going to see me in person and in photos here and my hair is going to be all sorts of colors and there will be days I'm fine with it and days it pisses me off.  Because I can be pretty ambivalent about "aging."

I love what McGraw says when she's talking to the Opester, though--what kind of message are we sending to women in their 30s and 40s about life?  That it's "almost over" when you hit 40 because you're aging?  And why must I spend all this time and money on "maintenance"?  What am I maintaining?  And finally, I don't look like the young women of Instagram, no matter how much money or time I spend, so why am I trying?  Do I want to look "homogeneous" anyway?  Or do I want to be my interesting self?  Which makes me feel better?

The answer is that stopping feels better.  I still love my makeup.  I still love clothes.  But more and more I just let my hair do its wavy thing and its silvery thing and most of the time it just feels good and exciting and like a big effing relief.

There will be some posts that come up where I whine about the "skunk stripe" and people assuming I'm my (absurdly young looking) husband's mom and about toddlers calling me "Grandma," I assure you.  But this is the first attempt to be open and public and untouched and unfiltered.

Because in every other respect?  Getting older is awesome.  And I'd rather move forward with awesome than in fear.

***obligatory no shame qualifier:  if you color your hair, NO judgment implied.  You can still be authentic and awesome and happy and color.  I just wanted to voice a different perspective.

Gram Poops

Somewhere along the way Gram decided it was okay to start pooping in front of me.  My whole life she had so many rules about physical contact and dignity:  no kisses on the mouth (her father never did that, it's disgusting), make sure to always have a supply of disinfecting wipes with you because you never know what kind of people have used the public toilets (the implication being you could get black or jew germs on you), and so many secrets in the family closet having to do with bodies and sex and identity that a kid like me grew up with a healthy or unhealthy fear of asking any real questions.

But now I go over there and climb the red-carpeted stairs, following the  oxygen tube's long, snaking path to the second floor, and halfway up I can hear the grunts and moans.  "Gram?" I call out ten or twelve times as I sloooowly ascend the stairs, hoping that she'll hear me and tell me to wait downstairs or at least shout out "look away!" when I get to the open doorway.  But that doesn't happen.  Instead there is her great, huge butt, draped over the sides of the toilet seat, her body inclined forward in mid-wipe.  She talks to me from there, in between her ongoing pleadings with the "goddamned piece of shit" that is torturing her to get OUT of her body.  Lately, it refuses.  This causes her great pain and also a lot of clean-up as she slowly loses control of what is happening down there.

This is recent, but looking back I see foreshadowing of this total release of self-consciousness around the plodding devolution of her body.

I brought the girls to visit her last summer.  She was still able to get up and around without the use of a walker, and could still hear well enough to answer the phone.  But she was also bad enough that she forgot things like appointments and plans, and spent a fair amount of time in bed.

The girls had loved going to see her because she usually gave them an entire package of Oreos EACH and a roll of quarters or a hundred dollar bill, back in the gravy days.  So my six-year-old went busting up the stairs, expecting to see the old gram, and instead was greeted by a wild-haired, naked mammoth of a woman, unsteady on her feet, pendulous breasts framed by great draping swaths of skin.

Nolie screamed as she rounded the corner and flew past me back down the stairs.  I was also appropriately horrified, mostly because I had always been terrified of Gram and also because I thought *she* would be horrified at being caught in such a state.

But she wasn't.  "I ate two pounds of grapes and a pork chop last night," she said, as she laboriously pulled some underwear on.  "I've had diarrhea like you wouldn't believe!  I can't come out with you today, but you'll come back at noon tomorrow and we'll have lunch then."

And that was that.  Back then, diarrhea.  Now constipation.I think it is not long before I may have to clean her up, and that I am not looking forward to.  At.  All.

But there is also a beauty to this total breaking down.  She grabs me hard when I get ready to leave at the end of our daily visits, and hugs with a fierce vulnerability she would have never let herself show when we both were younger.  She kisses me on the mouth.  She loves being caressed on the arm when I come into her room to wake her up so she can eat, and craves signs of tenderness, as she inches her way toward dying, in her bed on the second floor, independent but also alone and lonely.  All of this surprises me, and also is touching in its desperation and difficulty.

5 Reasons My Smartphone Makes Me a Better Mother

Despite what the recent study published in the journal of pediatrics says, I believe that my smartphone makes me a better mother.  And here is why:

1. So I’m not bored when helping with homework.  We’ve all been there.  Your second grader has some spelling homework, that while challenging for them, makes you want to count dust particles in the air.  I simply sneak away to FB while they’re writing, and giggle to myself about a baby hippo that’s been mislabeled a cat. If it weren't for my smartphone, I'd quickly lose interest, and be off to run a load of laundry or run a plumbing company, but with the smartphone I remain present in the event they actually need my help.

2. I actually take pictures/videos.  I must admit, I’m one of those people who have no natural aptitude for documenting the minutiae of my life.  I realize, however, my children may want their lives documented.  The only pictures I have of my husband and I when we were dating, were the random ones someone else thought to take. I am not naturally a camera carrier, nor do I think, “I should document this moment for posterity”, but with my smartphone, not only do I have access to a camera and video camera at all times, but I also find myself wanting to one up those “friends” on FB, with the natural charisma, talent and good looks of my offspring.

3. I have a calendar that I actually use.  This is obviously related to my non picture taking proclivities, but before children I never kept a calendar, I kept all my engagements safely tucked away in my head.  This was perfectly acceptable, particularly because the people I surround myself with tend to be the reminding kind. When we started having children, I realized that my system was somewhat flawed. My best friend was somehow not invested in telling me when my toddler’s well child visit was approaching.  Guess what? There's an app for that.

4. I can check or send email when otherwise I’d have to be in front of my home computer.  Picture this.  I have an appointment to meet with the school counselor and my son’s teacher to discuss some very pressing issues.  I get a call just a few hours before that my pregnant sister who is home with her 18 month old, while her husband is in another state, cannot stop vomiting and must be taken to the E.R.  Not only am I going to miss the school appointment, but the school is closed and no one can be reached by way of the school office.  The only alternative to becoming a no show is to email both the school counselor and teacher, but I’m not in front of my trusty computer. Smartphone to the rescue.  So what if I look illiterate because my giant fingers can’t properly use the tiny fake keyboard.  At least the message gets across.

5. I can google my way to answer those “why” questions.  Without my smartphone, when my kids ask “Why is the sky blue?”, I’d just answer “I don’t know, honey, ask someone smarter than Mommy. Maybe Jen.”