Even the bottled water is called “quench”

So I’m in San Diego, and I’ve never been here before. And I’m about to expose you Big City Dwellers to my charming Midwestern naivete because MYGAWD this hotel is fancy/trendy/CRAYZEE. We are staying at the W San Diego, which is kind of like having a role as an extra in an episode of Private Practice or Nip/Tuck.

Everything is fancy and modern  and shiny and mostly black and white with pithy little names like “wet” (the pool) or “sweat” (the gym, closed for renovations) or “wired” (business center). Instead of a picture of flowers or some picturesque countryside in my room, there is a chalkboard. Should I leave a nice note for housekeeping? The elevators have actual real floormats that have to be physically changed according to the time of day. Right now, they say “Good evening.”

I have a down pillow shaped like a beachball in my room and am currently playing my ipod through the state-of-the-art system that is ipod compatible. Each room has a dvd player and small dvd library, with rentals available upon request. There is 24-hour room service (which provided me with a Kobe beef cheeseburger at midnight this morning), and I was a little self-conscious taking a shower because the door only goes halfway across the shower… and it’s clear glass. The girl who checked me in was wearing a half-shirt.

Everyone who works here is constantly saying things like “everyone at the W is a VIP” and “whatever/whenever!” Seriously. The customer service is phenomenal. PHENOMENAL, I SAY.

The hotel bar, from whence I just arrived, is called beach (lower case) and purports to have heated sand. I stepped in the sand and inquired Jeremy the bartender about its temperature. He exposed the hotel managers for the lying bastards they are, telling me that the sand was only heated for the first two weeks the hotel was open, and then they turned it off because it was crazy expensive and kept shorting out the power to the kitchen. HA!

So Jeremy supplied me with my second rather-large pomegranate martini (expense account! which also paid for my split of champagne at dinner!) to carry up to my lovely room with the view of the harbor, and here I am, missing R and Dave and wanting to go home. As always on these trips.

This was the first trip that R truly understood that I was going away. She begged me not to get on the airplane. She didn’t want me to go “play with Diego” (San Diego). She wanted me to stay there and eat hot dogs and play with her new Barbie horsie with her.

But she’s doing great with her dad. It’s great that they have this time together. And good that I have a chance to get away, too, I guess. But there’s only so much loneliness that champagne, a Padres game and two pomegranate martinis can take care of. Even if I do get to listen to my ipod in my hotel room.

After three weeks of trying and two and a half hours with a computer engineer…

We have wireless!

I’m sitting on my couch, watching the Cubs!

And connected to the outside world!

I planned on tackling the elliptical machine again tonight… but this is much more fun!

Perhaps I’ll have a margarita to celebrate. And send one to Dave’s engineer co-worker who spent the entire evening away from his wife and two kids so that I could sit in front of the television and blog.

Oh and work. For my actual job. Because that is the real reason we got wireless. Wink wink.

Apocalypse now?

What is cnn.com thinking?

Never mind. I know. $$$$.

I am so disheartened by the news business right now. I’m curious how they choose which headlines will be t-shirt fodder.

Never mind. I know. The more salacious the better.

Even worse? Send us your picture wearing your shirt. Tell us your story. Give us content so we don’t have to do real work. Get on the “social-networking” bandwagon with people desperate for their 15 seconds of fame.

Pump up our Web site numbers! Make a little money! Sell our souls to the corporate gods. Again, I know. The news business went corporate long ago. Look at me! Selling out for a higher salary and an office with a view.

I can still be sad about this.

 

It’s me, not her

R and I spent several hours Tuesday afternoon at her new daycare/preschool. She had spent an hour or so there with her father last week while I was in Savannah. This visit served a dual purpose – helping ease R’s transition to her “new school” and helping me continue the process of letting her go.

I think the plan has been successful on the first point – R asked if she could go to her new school again on Wednesday morning. On the second point, I’m afraid it may have made things a little worse. As I alternately sat quietly in a corner of the classroom or watched from outside, I saw R as she interacted with her new teachers and classmates – or, more accurately, played by herself in corners of the room opposite where everyone else was congregating.

There were glimmers of intermingling – she seemed to like one teacher, Miss Courtney, quite a lot. And she sat with the other kids during story time. And she played with the play-doh alongside the other 2-year-olds. But most of the time, she was off on her own, exploring, getting into things, making a mess.

I know this is normal. The center director assured me that she’ll get into the routine in a few weeks, following the other kids. She may have some rough patches, even several weeks into the transition. But I think Monday will be a rough day for everybody, with R in a new place away from all her friends and her beloved second Mommy, me wondering if she’s sitting by herself clutching a Lego and Dave sitting in the city-county building waiting for his juror number to be called.

I also know that this will teach her so many things that I never learned as a child. This will teach her resilience, independence and that life sometimes changes unexpectedly. And she will learn that no matter what, Mommy and Daddy will keep her safe and always love her.

Brave little toaster

“I’ve had three or four different careers,” Margaret Truman Daniel told an interviewer in 1989. “I consider being a wife and mother a career. I have great respect for women — both those who go out and do their thing and those who stay at home. I think those who stay at home have a lot more courage than those who go out and get a job.”

Margaret Truman Daniel died Tuesday. She was 83 and what we might call a renaissance woman. A singer, writer, actress, daughter of a president, wife of the one-time New York Times managing editor, and mother of Daniel tried everything. Her obituary caught my eye, and I’m glad I read it. Because that quote is fantastic.

And I think she’s right, and not just about considering being a wife and a mother a career. I am not a brave person. I never have been. I remember, and this pains me to actually admit, that in middle school I actually thought how glad I was I wasn’t a boy. In addition to the lack of painfully visual evidence every time I was attracted to someone, I also believed that because I was a girl, I didn’t really need a career. I could just get married and have my husband take care of me.”

I seriously thought that. And it’s because I am not brave. Never have been. At 12 years old, it seemed so much easier to just get married and have babies and that would be that.

Now I know that it would be infinitely harder for me to stay at home. Because it is the unknown. Because it would mean so much change. Because it is not what I expected out of my life since I was 15 years old and discovered I could put a few words together to make a decent sentence.

And I guess I’m not afraid to admit that.

But Daniel was right about another thing, too. I think we all deserve each other’s respect, no matter what decisions we make for our families. And while I may go to work every day, I still consider my “career” to be that little girl, her daddy and any other children that bless us.

no right answer

Sometimes I feel like I’m giving 110 percent at home at 110 percent at work, but I’m not getting the job done at either place. Warning: work talk will follow. Sue me. Any Sex and the City watchers out there who remember Miranda’s struggle with what we call “work-life balance” in my industry?

We’ve recently made a rather large adjustment in our “communications platform” at work, which has drastically changed the nature of my job. Where I used to spend five percent of my days on technical, technological things, I now find myself going over html code; cropping, sizing, lightening and otherwise adjusting pictures; writing headlines and photo captions; and entering text into boxes for hours on end. I’m lucky if I have an hour or two at the end of the day for the reason I took this job: the creative stuff, the writing, the interaction with human beings outside this office building.

I used to at least be good at my job. Now I feel like I’m drowning.It’s been three weeks like this, including the trip to Nashville, and it’s starting to take its toll. I actually figured out how many working days until I vest (517 if you’re counting, minus vacation days and sick days). The thing is, I can work as hard as I can at this job, and I still make mistakes. And it’s not like it’s difficult work - a monkey could do it. It’s just easy to get careless and not very stimulating. And it takes  a lot of time.

At home, I still struggle with the fact that I don’t see R. very much. I try to be blasé about the fact that she’s started calling her babysitter “Mommy” while she now refers to me as “Mom.” I know she doesn’t mean to hurt my feelings. I know I’m doing the best I can, providing her with a great role model, blah blah blah blah blah. But it still rips my heart out.

One of R’s friend’s mother’s called me Saturday to tell me that despite the fact that her daughter received the chicken pox vaccine, she came down with the disease anyway. And the first thought into my head was - “Oh God, I can’t miss that much work.” Not “I need to check R for spots” or “I hope R’s cold isn’t a precursor to something worse.” What’s wrong with me?Once when I mentioned that worrying about work is what keeps me up at night, a co-worker said I was nuts. If I laid awake thinking about anything, he said, it should be about my daughter and her future.

The thing is, I don’t worry about that, at least not in the way he’s talking about. To me, R is beautiful and smart and curious and normal. Why would I worry about her? But I really don’t. And I can’t figure out if that’s a bad thing or not.

I haven’t even talked about how I feel I’ve neglected my marriage. That’s a subject for another day.

Finally, something light-hearted

So a few girls at work introduced me to the concept of the “Office Boyfriend.” I have embraced this concept now that I slowly feel the life being sucked out of me while I sit at my desk and size photos and enter copy into boxes for hours a day. It makes work more fun.

When I first started working here, I had an “Office Boyfriend.” We were very close, and then we just grew apart. First I had a baby, then he (his wife) had a baby. My job changed and we didn’t talk so much, then his job changed and we talked even less. One day he snubbed me, and I called it off. It was him, not me.

So the spot of my “Office Boyfriend” is officially open and I am auditioning (”Convention Boyfriend” and “Intern Boyfriend” positions are filled).  My requirements are minimal: easy on the eyes, not a complete jackass. I must see them occasionally, which does eliminate a sizable number of staff members. I don’t care if you’re married. We’re keeping this at work.

This is not a serious thing, I do not harbor fantasies of running away with my Office Boyfriend (or Convention Boyfriend or Intern Boyfriend). In fact, I would be mortified if any of them knew of their designation. It’s something I like to giggle about with my friends.

One friend’s Office Boyfriend was an IT contractor who used to sit down the hall from her. He shared an office with another contractor who was also attractive. She weighed her options and chose the taller of the two. But now he’s changed offices and we don’t even know what floor he’s on anymore… Office Boyfriends can be so fickle.

This year, I even convinced my boss’ boss to pick a Convention Girlfriend. He chose well, considered carefully. However, I do believe his fatal mistake is that we don’t know if she will be a fixture at Convention. Unless he gets a new job, my CB will be around for awhile. I think that’s a key element in the Convention boy/girlfriend choice.

Office Boyfriends come, and Office Boyfriends go. But work is a little better when they’re around.

The universe hates me

Why is it that at the end of a particularly trying week-long business trip, when you and everyone you work with are all cranky and tired and just want to get the hell home already, everything that possibly could go wrong does?

And why do I have a tendency to exaggerate when things don’t go my way?

So we’re on the bus home (yes, our cheap-ass environmentally friendly company made 400 people take chartered buses to Nashville, not even allowing us to drive ourselves unless circumstances were dire), about 125 miles north of Nashville on I-65 when it comes to our driver’s attention that we are leaking GASOLINE all over the road. So we have to pull over at a truck stop (exit 105). The bus driver hops out with a single paper towel to inspect the situation.

I, of course, burst into tears as though I were the only person on the 60-passenger bus who really really wanted to get home. Don’t you people know I’ve been counting COTTON BALLS for God’s sake? Long story short, we ended up winding through some residential neighborhoods outside Louisville, spewing gas the entire way, to get to a repair shop and, ostensibly, another bus to get on. Eventually we make it on another bus and are back on the road.

We got home 2.5 hours late, obliterating the lovely afternoon I had planned for R and I. Not that it would have mattered because she has a runny nose, sore throat and cough.

But we got to snuggle on the couch last night. Like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes.

Clicking my ruby slippers

There’s only one cotton ball left. And that’s just because I’ve been working in my room for about an hour and haven’t had the opportunity to take a shower yet. All my suits are folded neatly in my suitcase. All the unnecessary supplements to all the agendas of all the meetings I attended over the last week are in the trash.

I’m going home. There’s no place quite like it.

Goal setting

I belong to this professional organization which I will not name for fear of outing my industry. I’m not sure what I truly think about professional organizations – a lot of them, this one included, seem to be more about who you know and how important you are than anything else. Nevertheless, I belong because it’s strongly encouraged at my workplace.

This year, the organization has started a new “FIT” program, in which participants must set a goal for themselves (not necessarily health and fitness) over the next year and report out the progress made toward that goal each month to a “team leader.” I have the misfortune good fortune of having a team leader three offices away from me and was heavily recruited for the project.

We were asked this month to “tell our story” to the other members. This is what I submitted:

I have a very modest goal over the next year – I want to try to take more time for myself. In the two years since my daughter was born, I feel like I have lost my individual identity, becoming more “R’s Mom” and less “Michelle” every day. I hope to reclaim a little bit of Michelle while still being the best “R’s Mom” possible.

The biggest obstacle I am facing is overcoming the guilt I feel every time I do something (or even think of doing something) for myself instead of for my family. The last haircut and color I had was in July because I can’t stand to spend three hours away from home on the weekend for something that seems so indulgent. So please don’t comment on my roots next time you see me.

I don’t think I’m that much different from any other working mom. I think in my heart of hearts I believe I can have it all – the family and the career and the independence from both I need to have a complete life. But every time I have to show up at day care with cash to pay the $2-per-minute fee for being late or rush out of work early to pick up a sick kid, having it all seems less and less attainable. I think this project will help me to strive for more balance.