Laundry is a Love Language

My manager recently said to me, in a gesture of reassurance, that she understood I might think my job is thankless. "No," I said suddenly, "Laundry is thankless." I have a tedious job, one that can be isolating, and sometimes the recommendations I make are stetted, the editorial term for disregarding a suggested change, but I never feel unappreciated or unimportant. I see projects roll from copies of text and art into final, polished digital displays or printed work. I see the means to an end, every day. Laundry, however...

As mothers know, laundry is ceaseless. Washed and folded today, soiled and crumpled tomorrow. The young people sheath themselves with sanitized, dried, and pressed cotton in the morning, and by evening, the clothes are dingy, crusty, stained, reek of body odor, smack of yard dirt, and need rewashing, which we do-- again and again. I thought about this and my manager's conversation with me about the importance of my work as I packed my children's clothes the other night for summer with their father. I had grouched at my daughter for folding recklessly and inconsistently, and I came after her with scolding, instructions on re-folding, and  assistance. When the children went to the porch to look for July 4th fireworks, I stayed behind, folding, stacking, and smoothing, suddenly graced with the realization that this is the one time my laundering is not an act to be taken for granted.

When my children unpack their clothes at their father's, they will see my handiwork in the neat stacks of t-shirts and shorts, undies and jammies. The clothes I blessed one last time with purposeful, nurturing hands-- hands that cradled Tiny and Chicken Little as newborns, cleaned drains and changed dressings post-surgeries, sewed Halloween costumes, and stirred pots of gumbo, polenta, and sauce. They will see how tidy and tucked into their luggage are all the essentials they themselves might have forgotten. I will be there in clothes that smell like the detergent I use and folded in the manner in which they are familiar. The children won't think about it as keenly as I might, but I can rest in the assurance that I have provided one last gesture that goes noticed at their father's house long after my good-bye hugs and kisses have evaporated from their skin.

Thankless? Not this time.

Conversation, Nudity, and a Mini-Tyrant: The Relative Social Life of the Working Mother

One evening, my children and I visited an orchid specialist, which is really a blog post in itself, but anyway, the conversation between the shopkeeper and me went the way it often does when I make a new acquaintance: food and family.

"Where's your favorite restaurant?" he asked.
"Depends on what I like to order," I said, and then elaborated.
"So what restaurant do you go to... to be social?"
"Social? I don't have a social life."
"You don't have a social life?"
I pointed to my children who were sucking on mints, swinging their legs on a settee in the shop, and toying with orchid blossoms they had been given. "That's my social life."

I think it was Barbara Walters who once said that there exists family, career, and a social life, but you cannot have all three; you must choose two. I once resented the truth of this and wondered what I was missing socially, but as my children have grown older, I have become better at embracing time with them for the gift it really is. Time is fleeting. We are creating memories. We still have our frustrations though.

Last week, after comical drills about the tennis court, we admired the lightening bugs flitting about, and then dawdled home hand-in-hand. Houses slipped into silhouettes against a dimming sky and the air held the magic of almost-summer... but then the kids' joking and chatter morphed into crabbing and arguing, an obvious signal for bedtime. I sent them in to start baths, planning to take a few minutes of solace before the usual routine of monitoring and tucking in. The youngest suddenly appeared naked on the front porch to hotly voice a bitter complaint about his sister. He made no sense whatsoever. I scratched my head a minute and thought how nice it would be to have a glass of wine at the restaurant around the corner... with someone who wasn't six years old, irrational, naked, and non-compliant.

I often say that my social life is at the office, and I think for many of us, that's true. I have a group of good women friends there-- mostly mothers like myself, some of whom have raised children under extraordinary circumstances and pressures. The peace and wisdom they give me is priceless, and I find that work provides a sense of relief rather than duress because of that. It's been a wonderful cure for the isolation I felt in a new state four years ago, and besides-- no one has ever shown up at my cube naked and irrational. :)

Parenting Two-Step: Work and Children

Tomorrow, my son will go to the office with me. I hope the good Lord smiles upon us as I bring Tiny into the building and try to pass him off as my newly hired assistant. As a working mom, I do the best I can.

Trying to keep the flow of family while working has been a challenge despite the pleasant benefits of being fully employed. Kids get sick, they have ballgames, they have projects, their schools have meetings, schools close for professional development days. Working those needs around the full-time schedule has been a dance of meeting kids' needs and losing pay for doing so, and making up that lost income with a second job that I can squeeze in during slow shifts at work, before weekday dinners, and on the weekends.

While my initial pattern was to come home after work and walk the dog, chase the kids around the block when they ride their bikes, or throw the ball outside, I haven't quite been able to work that back into the schedule. Instead, that time has become filled with other needs: stops to refuel the tank of my car, errands at FedEx Kinko's, emergency trips to the urgent care clinic, tweaking edits on a paper, meetings with a realtor over the fate of this house we rent, and last minute school supply shopping. It's a little crazy.

This week, when my children's step-mother politely complained about what she perceived as my inadequate packing for recent visitation, I reflected on why the packing had been so haphazardly done. I had worked all day each day and had plans every evening that week. The last evening before we left town, my son had fallen asleep in my lap at a school rezoning meeting (exhausted from his earlier soccer game) and was put to bed early, therefore making it impossible to check the length of the pants I had packed for him (oops--I sent high-waters for him to wear). I was up until midnight cleaning, readying the house for a house sitter, readying the house sitter for the dog. I had sworn off working through that weekend when I got a last minute assignment from my second job, which meant additional preparations to pack my work. My husband, who had been travelling out of state for the second time this month, arrived home shortly after midnight with only a few hours of sleep to grab before he got up to work. I put the bags in the car before I went to sleep that night. After work, I picked up kids, waited briefly for my husband to finish his packing, and hit the road exhausted. Sometimes, we just do the best we can, and this was one of those times. At least, when the kids arrived at their final destination, they were clean (the packed clothes were clean, even if a shirt had stains), fed, entertained with activity bags and movies for the drive, hugged, kissed, and sent off knowing that they were cared for. I could have spent extra time digging for perfect outfits and multiple pairs of coordinating shoes, but instead, I rocked my son in my lap the night before and managed a cup of tea with my daughter before bed.

Those moments are the ones that matter, and make me so eager to come home each day despite the frantic pace we run from dawn till dusk and all over again each night. I think the "best I can" is working for my little family and I, and lucky for me, I work for a company that, so far, has been awfully supportive of this. It's all hard though, and by Friday, we are all exhausted, which makes weekends with the kids even sweeter than ever.

Retina Rectal Syndrome

Some years ago after an afternoon with a difficult client, a co-worker stopped me and explained that the woman had been so unreasonable due to an apparent case of Retina Rectal Syndrome. The co-worker, a grandfatherly type named Bob, explained in his gentle voice that his wife, a hospital nurse, had described this sort of thing often. I was 25, still naive and bought it--hook, line, and sinker.

"Apparently, there is a nerve that runs from the corner of your eye all the way to your anus. It can cause all kinds of problems in people, can get inflamed, et cetera," explained Bob to me that day. "Sometimes surgeons have to sever that nerve and it can take a long time. It removes your crappy outlook out of life." He stopped and smiled, then added sweetly, "In some people, both eyes need to be done."

I have held this story close to my heart for years. Having been faced with a jerk more than once, remembering the story while someone spews hate has been a life saver. In fact, recently I sat with my husband at a dinner with an out of town guest. The gentleman there was discussing a notoriously difficult (to say it tactfully) supervisor.

"You know," said the colleague to us that night about his boss, "he's had a hard year. And he even just had some sort of surgery for a nerve problem or something." I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

Retina Rectal lives.

Office Humor

Occasionally, there is downtime in the office, and employees will create amusing distractions. In one office where I worked, we used to hide the air fresheners my boss was so obsessed with, or invite him to talk about his distaste for Christmas trees (a blog for later--but just know that watching him lecture about tree-killing removed at least 15 minutes of work-time from my day). To pass the time in my current office, I routinely sabotage a poster of Donald Trump that someone hung in the copy room. I make him a costume out of paper and give him a new alter ego. This week, he is a pirate complete with tri-fold hat, earring, eye-patch, and parrot on his shoulder. Last week, he was a beauty queen. Apparently, I am not the only person in the office that likes to kid around, but I do know what is and isn't appropriate.

One of the managers brought her eleven-year-old daughter to work last week. Before heading to a meeting, she gave the child an iPad and instructions to keep quiet. The daughter, however, had other ideas, and found on the iPad an application that produces snippets of pre-recorded speech. Apparently, she located the perfect one, pressed play, and slid the iPad under the door where her mother was giving the meeting. All of a sudden, the following resounded through the office:

"Will someone open a window? I'm trying to give a meeting and it smells like farts in here."

You can imagine the talking-to that child must have received later, but the prank itself will forever live as one of my personal favorites. I still can't think about it without laughing.

Maps Needed of a Different Sort

I work for a corporation that allows for a little play. One of the things we have here at the office is a fun way of naming our conference rooms, something that I wish could be more practical.
A couple of weeks ago, I was told we were having ice cream in Wisconsin. Yes, this firm has offices all over the U.S., but we are not at all close enough to Wisconsin to cross the border for an afternoon going-away party. Wisconsin, as it turns out, is the name of a meeting room. Once I was told which floor and color to find (as we are a color-coded building), I found Wisconsin with little trouble and for considerably less cost than an airline ticket there.
Not only the new employees like me wrestle with the state-named meeting rooms, so maps are available throughout the building. But last week, I completely stumped a co-worker by asking about a meeting in Baltimore.

“Where is Baltimore?” I asked.
She began to describe the drive to Baltimore, Maryland, in terms of hours.
“No, no. Baltimore, the room.”
“Ohhhhhhhh. Check the map.”
The map listed rooms by state only. Baltimore, being a city, was no where close to being listed, but with a little computer research on our company intranet, we found it—the right floor, the right color section.
I have a dilemma this week though. I have to find Tucson. I have learned that Tucson is somewhere in the basement. Who knew? Fortunately, it will be another short trip. I wish like Wisconsin, there was ice cream in it though.