The Canadian Chronicles: Women's Studies Classes and Pre Christmas Hoopla 2012

This holiday post begins with a little un-related holiday back story.  When I was studying for my undergrad degree at the University of Michigan, I met with my college counselor.  I only met with a counselor once in my whole undergrad history.  He was a basic, old, overweight white guy.  He looked at my transcript and questioned the number of Women's Studies courses that I was taking.

I told him that I intended to double major in Communications and Women's Studies.  There was nothing more interesting to me in all of the classes at Michigan that I was taking as a fired up discussion in one of my Women's Studies classes.  Everyone in the class was super smart, passionate and involved.  I learned all kinds of things.  My horizons were broadening.

He shook his head and stared at my transcript.  He looked up over his reading glasses, his tired eyes met mine and he said, "You definitely should not major in Women's Studies.  Anyone seeing that as your major will assume that you're a lesbian and then they will not hire you."

I left our meeting confused.  What did he mean by people thinking I was a lesbian?  Was that bad?  I went to my next class, Women in Art, and looked around at my awesome classmates.  It's true, there were a lot of comfortable shoes.  I guess I knew a couple of them to be lesbians, but were they all lesbians?  And, so what if they were?  I didn't care.  I just like the class and its content.

In the late 80's, his remarks did give me pause.  I did want to get a job, so even though I took a hefty load of Women's Studies Department classes, I never declared it as my major.  It's amazing how one little comment, can shade your thinking.  I didn't even care if someone did think I was a lesbian, but I did need that post grad job.

Flash forward to a ride in the car with my 14 year old daughter.  We were talking about education and opportunities.  She was questioning why I chose to be a stay at home mom.  I mean, if I was preaching quality education and equating it to choice, why didn't I have some super high powered career?  Why had I failed my own mantra?  How can I even begin to give advice on women's choice?

Well, baby, I made the "mother" of choices.  I was a junior high teacher and a preschool teacher...I believe in education so much that I've been a crusader for the excellent private programs that we sacrifice much financially to send our kids to.  I always thought I would live in a trailer park, and I was fine with that.  I really didn't need much.  I didn't have dreams of wealth and riches.  It's not what I'm about--there's a lot about that here where I live, but that's not my story.

We are making our way to a remote cottage in the woods for Christmas.  It is hours away from actual stores that you could buy presents from.  I am bringing Christmas with me in duffel bags.  As I work on orchestrating what we need for the holiday, I realize I am challenged.  I realize there are people that depend on me.  I realize that I teach every single day in all kinds of different ways.  I love being a stay at home mom.  I am lucky to be doing the job that I chose!

I also totally support the women who work outside of the home.  Sometimes it's a choice, sometimes it is not.  Life is a funny path, and you sometimes end up somewhere you didn't even know you were going.  I consider myself very fortunate to be somewhere that I like being, and if I didn't like it, I would try to be doing something else.

I do believe education can give you choice in your life.  I also want to wish holiday peace to the old white guy if he's still out there.  Mister Counselor, how many things in your life didn't you do because of what somebody said or what you were afraid of someone thinking?  I am going to make it my mission to make sure my kids know, lesbian or not, go for it, don't be afraid.  If they don't want to hire you because of something like that, keep looking!

Now, time to pack more stuff into the duffel bags.  We are off to a Canadian adventure, and I'm going to take you all with me!  Stay tuned!

Why Moms Do All Of The Work: Cable Men, Hoarders and Helpers

We have always been family on the go.  We race around at breakneck speed, saying yes to one more volunteer opportunity, one more night out with friends, one more little getaway until we find ourselves right smack in the middle of a Do It Yourself Hoarders episode.  

You enter the episode by waking up, tripping on a pile of outgrown clothes and opening your eyes to a room full of junk.  Piles of junk.  Piles and pile and piles of junk.  It is usually in my bedroom, and friends that truly know me, know that if my house is clean, my bedroom is absolutely not.

Why, you may ask?  Because if I have to clean the house, I gather everything form all over the house that is not in its place and dump it in my room for later consideration.  Once the rest of the house is clean, I am way too tired to actually clean my room.  Sometimes, it can be months before some things get considered.  Right now I have a pile of hand me downs and a whole bunch of Christmas gifts just waiting to be shipped out for Christmas.

This Hoarders Episode is more acutely brought to light when the cable guy arrives to fix the modem.  Our modem is in the garage.  I figured, why clean the house if he is going to be in the garage on a Sunday morning?  What happens in the garage, doesn't always stay in the garage.  In fact, that cable guy was in our house right quick parading past the unscooped kitty litter, unwashed dishes, half finished laundry, jumble of shoes...well, you name it and he paraded past it.

I want to say our house doesn't always look like this, but on the weekend, it usually does.  After our family has an extended holiday weekend, it especially looks like this.  

Was my husband ever furious!  He went into his speech about how our kids need to get to work and that we should all have our list of chores and that we absolutely never should have our house looking like this.  He was saying this as I was scrubbing his breakfast pan from the day before.  Remember, honey, you thought it would be nice to make a big breakfast?  Now 24 hours later I am scrubbing eggs off the bottom of a yucky pan, your yucky pan.  I didn't even get any of the eggs!

This unleashed my wonderful husband into the Tasmanian Devil of garage cleaners.  Considering the inside of the house, he banished himself to the garage.  He put all of the kids to work cleaning their rooms (don't look in the closets or under the bed, mind you).  I cleaned my room....I am still cleaning my room on Monday morning...

Husband's idea of cleaning the garage and putting things out for recycling and garbage can be seen below.  He didn't factor in the raccoons.  I can guarantee that I was the only mom outside at 7:40 in her Wonder Woman pajamas cleaning up his cleaning job for 45 minutes.  Not alone making breakfast, doing laundry and cleaning up from breakfast.

Clearly, moms would never have left the garbage in this state.  It would have been quicker to do all of the recycling and garbage today by myself.  AND, I wouldn't have to clean slimy egg shells and other assorted food off the cement!  Moms do all of the work because their "helpers" don't understand the big picture.  The big picture could include raccoons or why you don't pile a bunch of furniture in the area of the garage that you need to get in and out of on a daily basis.  Or hanging your daughter's bike up and parking the car in front of it when she needs to be racing to school early in the morning by bike.

Well, I do love him.  He did try hard.  They all try hard.  Unfortunately, happy Monday to me.  It looks like a  multiple espresso kind of day.

Canadian Chronicles 2009: One Good Idea Is All It Takes

It all began, like so many things do, over a glass of wine. My good friend, Paula, and I were wanting for a little adventure in our stay-at-home-mom lives. We only had one glass of wine. If we had two glasses, we might have come to the realization that a girls trip should not include "girls" under the age of 10.

But, as far as we knew, we were planning the getaway of a lifetime. We decided to hit the family Canadian cottage early, before all of the summer guests arrived. We plotted quiet nights, lazy mornings and lots of girl time. Kayaking, frolicking in the water and delicious food danced like visions of sugar plums in our heads.

Reality hit hard and fast. The bickering began on the plane. You might have guessed it, the quarrel was over the window seat.

The window seat has long lost its appeal for me. I now prefer the quick and easy exit of the aisle seat. I love not having to lope over strangers two or three times in a flight to stretch my legs and make a run for the bathroom. This should be why a person might take yoga, so they can bend themselves like a pretzel over the legs, bags, reclined seats and trays between themselves and freedom.

However, when you are seven, the window seat holds the magic of the fluffy clouds and the people and places as tiny as ants. The world looks nice and tidy when you are gliding over the geometry that bisects and trisects the landscape. The most mighty of reasons the window seat rules you may ask? When you have it, no one else does.

This theme popped again and again throughout the trip. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and when someone else has something, that makes it all the more important that you have it, too. When you don't have it, and you are a girl under a certain age, the whining can turn an 8 hour trip into at least 16 hours.

When we got off the plane and got the rental car, the girls started to fight about who had to sit in the middle seat. Paula and I looked at the mountain of bags--we were going to have to work a small miracle to fit them in the car. Our eyes sagged with fatigue, and the whining, the whining, the whining, kept right on going.

We still had a two hour drive and the task of picking up a kayak and strapping it to the roof. Girls getaway? Are we there yet?