Rebecca's Routine Revelations

Tis the Season

I just posted this to www.svmoms.com (read it there too!):

 

Election season can be the highlight and lowlight of my year.  Highlight because I get my hopes up!  Lowlight because those hopes are dashed.  As a mother, I see that the stakes are so much higher.  What happens next week will impact the lives of my two children.  Especially my daughter.

I don't mean to be melodramatic about this, but I can't help it.  This year, two important rights hang in the balance for my daughter, again.  The first is the right to have control over her own body.  The second is the right to grow up with role models.

As to the right over her own body, I am going to get out there and say it:  I am a mom and I strongly oppose any law that requires that I be notified before my daughter can have an abortion.   And I really for the love of gad wish that the right wingers would stop trying to "protect" me and my daughter by putting such a requirement on the ballot.  If my daughter becomes pregnant before she is 18, I expect that we will have a good enough relationship that she'll tell me about it.  But if we don't, or if she is too scared to tell me, for crying out loud let her get a safe, legal abortion.  And my story is the pretty one.  In cases where the teenage girl is in an abusive situation, a requirement of parental notification before a teenager can receive an abortion can be, quite literally, deadly. 

So I am voting AGAINST CALIFORNIA'S PROPOSITION 85 and urge all of you readers to join me.

The other right that hangs in the balance is the right for both of my children, not just my son, to grow up thinking that they can be whatever they want when they grow up.  I desperately hope that before my children graduate high school, they can see a woman be president of the United States.  ANY woman.  This fall we can move the world one step closer to that dream.   If Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker of the house, she will be arguably the third most powerful *person* in politics, and will have gone where no woman has yet gone before.   I wish that dearly to happen, and it will only happen if Democrats GET OUT AND VOTE and elect their Democratic representatives all over the country.

There are other important issues on the ballot this season.  In California, we have an opportunity to make oil companies pay their fair share, which we should take on (VOTE FOR PROP 87).  We also have an opportunity to make tobacco companies -- and, quite frankly, smokers -- pay for the damage they cause (VOTE FOR PROP 86).

We as parents need to take responsibility for our world, our country, our states, our cities and the laws that govern us.  These laws impact the kind of future we hand off to our children. 

Please, dear readers, help me -- and our children, including our daughters -- experience this as a season of wish fulfillment, and not dashed hopes.  Please vote.

Election season can be the highlight and lowlight of my year.  Highlight because I get my hopes up!  Lowlight because those hopes are dashed.  As a mother, I see that the stakes are so much higher.  What happens next week will impact the lives of my two children.  Especially my daughter.

I don't mean to be melodramatic about this, but I can't help it.  This year, two important rights hang in the balance for my daughter, again.  The first is the right to have control over her own body.  The second is the right to grow up with role models.

As to the right over her own body, I am going to get out there and say it:  I am a mom and I strongly oppose any law that requires that I be notified before my daughter can have an abortion.   And I really for the love of gad wish that the right wingers would stop trying to "protect" me and my daughter by putting such a requirement on the ballot.  If my daughter becomes pregnant before she is 18, I expect that we will have a good enough relationship that she'll tell me about it.  But if we don't, or if she is too scared to tell me, for crying out loud let her get a safe, legal abortion.  And my story is the pretty one.  In cases where the teenage girl is in an abusive situation, a requirement of parental notification before a teenager can receive an abortion can be, quite literally, deadly. 

So I am voting AGAINST CALIFORNIA'S PROPOSITION 85 and urge all of you readers to join me.

The other right that hangs in the balance is the right for both of my children, not just my son, to grow up thinking that they can be whatever they want when they grow up.  I desperately hope that before my children graduate high school, they can see a woman be president of the United States.  ANY woman.  This fall we can move the world one step closer to that dream.   If Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker of the house, she will be arguably the third most powerful *person* in politics, and will have gone where no woman has yet gone before.   I wish that dearly to happen, and it will only happen if Democrats GET OUT AND VOTE and elect their Democratic representatives all over the country.

There are other important issues on the ballot this season.  In California, we have an opportunity to make oil companies pay their fair share, which we should take on (VOTE FOR PROP 87).  We also have an opportunity to make tobacco companies -- and, quite frankly, smokers -- pay for the damage they cause (VOTE FOR PROP 86).

We as parents need to take responsibility for our world, our country, our states, our cities and the laws that govern us.  These laws impact the kind of future we hand off to our children. 

Please, dear readers, help me -- and our children, including our daughters -- experience this as a season of wish fulfillment, and not dashed hopes.  Please vote.

Ari's first shoes

MOV01316

Ari's first shoes

MOV01316

Studies show that these Moms are crazy.

Thursday night Curtis and I used perfectly fine, highly-expensive babysitter time to torture ourselves (at least for part of the time).  We attended a parent panel where representatives from 13 of San Francisco’s most popular private schools spoke about why their child(ren)’s private school is the best, and how they were so clever in successfully gaining admission to said best private school, even though they almost destroyed their marriages in the process. 

 

Here is what we learned:

 

1. Most parents are crazy.
2. Everyone likes their school enough to talk on a parent panel about how best it is.
3. If you spend the amount of time and money getting your precious into a school, you better like it.
4. Studies will show anything you want them to.

I’m going to start with number 4.  Studies, studies, studies.  Studies show that if you hold your son back to start kindergarten when he is age 7, he will do better in kindergarten.  Studies show that girls and boys are different, thus they should go to different schools.  Studies show that the more money you spend on a school, the better it is.    Studies show that people will definitely end up liking their school if they went through hell to get into it, then empty their retirement accounts to pay for it.

 

Studies show that these parents are insane.

 

Several of the mothers on the panel explained that the process of applying to private schools was so painful for their marriage that they actually had to enter marriage counseling because of it.  Others described the difficulties in lining up childcare when they had 10 private school events to attend each week.  Another mom described a scene where her daughter fell and “cracked her head open” when she (the mom) was out the door to attend a private school event, and she actually was already at her car before realizing that maybe, just maybe, she should skip the party that night to attend to her bleeding daughter.  (“We were admitted to that school anyway!” she explained triumphantly.)

 

Here’s what I know:  to get your child into the right private school, you apparently must visit 14 of them, missing 14 mornings of work (if you work, which apparently none of these mothers do) to see what they are all like.  Then you must buy an accordion file folder for all of the materials you pick up so you can file every postcard, brochure and paper clip that is handed out.  You must purchase a calendar for all of the separate events required by each school.  You must attend at least 6 open houses, fund raisers, interviews, child evaluations, coffee breakfasts and playdates for each school.  You must write long essays describing how skilled and giving you are, and how special and brilliant your children are.  You must write thank you notes for everyone you meet.  And you probably – although no one admits it – have to write big checks to buy things at silent auctions or t-shirts at school fairs.

 

Perhaps I am throwing away the future of my children, but for the life of me I’d rather be thrown into a pot of boiling lava than behave as these women described themselves as behaving – going to open houses several times a week, fundraisers, coffee klatches, meetups, interviews, second round interviews, child interviews and psychological tests.  … All to win the right to pay $22,000/year to send your child to a private school that often doesn’t even have a gym or its own playground (for that they need to walk across the busy street or share with the community center next door).

 

Maybe I shouldn’t be so cavalier about this.  We still can’t afford to replicate our nice San Francisco lifestyle (aka, house) in a nice school district like Palo Alto, and San Francisco public schools are, shoot me, crap, so unless something big changes, there is a large chance that we’ll still be up in the City next fall and going through this apparently hellacious process to enroll our precious older child in the right private school a year from then.  But without looking at any of these wonderful schools, we already know that the one that we will probably want to send our kids to is the Jewish Day School, because, well, we’re Jewish and that’s just what we want.  And if we don’t get in there, maybe I will seek refuge in a boiling pot of lava anyway. 

 

All I know is that I don’t have time or interest in participating in this beauty contest.  My vacation days are a precious commodity that I plan on spending with my family on the beach somewhere, not sipping coffee with a cardigan-dressed $22,000-annual-check-writing mommy who will then craft an opinion about whether I represent the type of mommy who will fit in most at her special, expensive, exclusive private school.  I’m a full time working lawyer mommy who closes deals for a living, owns no cardigans and gulps rather than sips my coffee while driving on the highway each morning.  I already know I won’t fit in.

 

Having made this revelation about 60 minutes into the event (what took me so long?), it was not a hard sell to ask my husband if he wanted to leave.  We had ducked out before another mom got into her standard spiel about the same – the studies that show that her school is best, and the knowledge that the hell she went through to enroll her child was worth it. 

 

We’ll take our chances, thank you very much.  We may still end up forking over the $22 grand for a year of tuition, but at least we’ll save money on marriage counseling.

twinsies

Today Curtis and I dressed the same by accident.  I put on my Burberry pants and he was wearing the exact same pattern shirt.  He kept trying to point this out to me repeatedly in the morning as I was on a call-in conference call while desperately trying to get the kids dressed, fed and all of us out the door (cell phone attached to my ear all along) but of course I was a little distracted and couldn't understand what he was talking about. 

"What do you mean, should I change my shirt? What the hell is wrong with your shirt?  Will you please get the baby's milk bag?  Elan, have you gone pee?"

As if I'm supposed to keep track of these things like I'm dressed identically with my husband when I haven't had my coffee yet, and I'm listening to a call-in management update on my cell phone.

Then, tonight, when we went to hear a panel of crazed mothers talking about their process of getting their children into a San Francisco private school, I noticed a few funny looks (not to mention comments) when Curtis and I walked in together.  "You look like you could be one person!" said the guy in the elevator.  Things did not improve when we ducked out early to catch the end of a law-firm sponsored private event at the DeYoung Museum.  Nevermind that Curtis bought his shirt on eBay.com and I got my pants at the consignment shop down the street on 24th.

"I tried to tell you this morning," Curtis reminded me. 

True enough.  It's the kind of thing that my parents do on purpose.  For me, it's just another unintended consquence that flows from another day that begins with a conference call on bluetooth and ends with a babysitter paid $20/hour.

Elan with Brody at Stanford Sierra Camp

Brody-Elan-SierraCamp

Shanah Tovah

Now that my daughter is at a Jewish preschool, which we love, I have become a Good Jew < tm > again.  We do Shabbat dinner almost every Friday night, complete with candles, wine and challah.  We sing Hebrew songs. We celebrate the holidays.  This is nice. 

Passover has always been my family's Thanksgiving, and now it is replete with extended family and best family friends.  The High Holidays in fall are usually our X-Mas/New Years, and this year is no exception.  Rosh Hashana is always fun, with apples and honey.  Simchat Torah is a blast, with the parades, drinking and dancing.  Sukkot is festive, with the gourds and dining al fresco.  It's just Yom Kippur that is challenging.  I like the theory of it - day of atonement, say you're sorry, make amends, start afresh.  All that is good.  It's just the fasting I can  do without. 

For the past four years in a row, I didn't have to stress about fasting.  I was either pregnant or nursing (or possibly pregnant, 2 years ago), so I wasn't allowed to fast any of those years.  Now for the first time in FIVE years, I have no excuse not to fast.  And this is, I might add, as of today.  TODAY, conveniently, was the first day I stopped nursing our baby, who turns 14 months tomorrow.  That's right - TODAY was the first day I stopped nursing.  Had I just waited one more day, I could have had an excuse not to fast.  But no.  I had to stop nursing Today.  Sometimes I make no sense.

The thing about fasting is that I just can't make it work.  If I fast, I spend all day thinking about food.  If I don't fast, I spend all day feeling guilty for not fasting.  Back a long time ago, like a decade ago, when I smoked, I used to give up smoking during Yom Kippur instead of food.  But now I don't smoke.  And I don't bite my nails.  And I don't have that many other bad habits right now (if I may) except maybe for my eating habits, so I really should fast this year. 

Maybe my excuse this year is that I have two children to take care of, so I can't be hungry.  But does hunger really interfere with parenting?  Or, maybe I can say that I get too cranky when I don't eat, and the last thing my kids need is for me to be even more cranky than I already am (is that even possible?).  Hm.   Or maybe I should just give up and not try to have an excuse at all.

Listen, G*d, if you are out there.  I have tried to be a good person over the past year, and the best parent I can be.  I know I have made some missteps - probably tons more than I even realize.   Working full time too many hours, I am too often an absentee parent.  Running around all day and doing too much juggling, I am too often cranky. I'm sorry for all of that.  I'll do my best, starting today, not to sweat the small things.  Like whether or not I fast.   And I'll focus on the good things - such as small favors like a Jewish holiday that allows me to spend a whole entire day with my family -- hungry or not, cranky or not, guilty or not, fasting or not.

Happy New Year, indeed.

Mo' Money

I wrote this for www.svmoms.com 's Money Day ....

Money doesn't cause problems.  It solves them.   It gives options, opportunities, choices, freedom.  Like most of us down here in Silicon Valley, I have some money.  Also like most of us, it doesn't seem like enough.

We have been pricing real estate in Palo Alto, where we'd like to move.  Real estate in Palo Alto is really expensive.  We had planned on living in the most 'affordable' neighborhood in Palo Alto.  Then we discovered that there really isn't a most affordable neighborhood.  We were excited to send our children to the JCC preschool in Palo Alto.  Then we discovered that the price of full time preschool for two children in Palo Alto adds up to one thousand dollars more a month than it costs in San Francisco.  It confounds.   Do the preschools in Palo Alto serve gold and diamonds to the children?  (They do seem good though.)

Both my husband and I have been dirt poor before.  I worked as a writer, chronicling the lives and riches of Silcion Valley moguls for almost 4 years.  In that capacity I lived in a dank and dusty apartment in the (worst parts of the) Mission district, and was responsible for helping make certain Internet instantaires many of their millions.  (Seriously, I received emails thanking me for this very fact.)  My husband graduated law school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of school loans and lived above a head shop while getting his legal career off the ground.  We both now make comfortable livings, but we are scarred and marked by our previous experiences.  We never want to be broke again.   We work like dogs, lawyer dogs, to avoid it.

I would like to say that we look back at those times and reminisce about how great, how "simple" it was.  But we don't.  We look back at then and thank the heavens that we no longer have to open our front doors and navigate around sidewalk syringes, before moving our car from one side of the street to another to avoid the street-cleaning tickets.  There was nothing quaint about scavenging change for a burrito, or taking old books to Green Apple for some money to help pay the rent.  Do I miss the fact that I had to sell all of my jewelry, and even my beloved Miata, to purchase our first home, a tiny shack in a marginal neighborhood?  About as much as I miss pimples or law school exams.

Money brings good things.  It brings homes in safe neighborhoods.  Medical care.  Preschool.  It brings vacations and books and toys and babysitters.  It lets people move into a house closer to their jobs.

Right now there is a gap between what I want and what I have ... and certainly a money bridge can cross that divide.  Maybe it will appear.  I'm probably in denial, but optimistically, I await it.

Money doesn't cause problems.  It solves them.   It gives options, opportunities, choices, freedom.  Like most of us down here in Silicon Valley, I have some money.  Also like most of us, it doesn't seem like enough.

We have been pricing real estate in Palo Alto, where we'd like to move.  Real estate in Palo Alto is really expensive.  We had planned on living in the most 'affordable' neighborhood in Palo Alto.  Then we discovered that there really isn't a most affordable neighborhood.  We were excited to send our children to the JCC preschool in Palo Alto.  Then we discovered that the price of full time preschool for two children in Palo Alto adds up to one thousand dollars more a month than it costs in San Francisco.  It confounds.   Do the preschools in Palo Alto serve gold and diamonds to the children?  (They do seem good though.)

Both my husband and I have been dirt poor before.  I worked as a writer, chronicling the lives and riches of Silcion Valley moguls for almost 4 years.  In that capacity I lived in a dank and dusty apartment in the (worst parts of the) Mission district, and was responsible for helping make certain Internet instantaires many of their millions.  (Seriously, I received emails thanking me for this very fact.)  My husband graduated law school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of school loans and lived above a head shop while getting his legal career off the ground.  We both now make comfortable livings, but we are scarred and marked by our previous experiences.  We never want to be broke again.   We work like dogs, lawyer dogs, to avoid it.

I would like to say that we look back at those times and reminisce about how great, how "simple" it was.  But we don't.  We look back at then and thank the heavens that we no longer have to open our front doors and navigate around sidewalk syringes, before moving our car from one side of the street to another to avoid the street-cleaning tickets.  There was nothing quaint about scavenging change for a burrito, or taking old books to Green Apple for some money to help pay the rent.  Do I miss the fact that I had to sell all of my jewelry, and even my beloved Miata, to purchase our first home, a tiny shack in a marginal neighborhood?  About as much as I miss pimples or law school exams.

Money brings good things.  It brings homes in safe neighborhoods.  Medical care.  Preschool.  It brings vacations and books and toys and babysitters.  It lets people move into a house closer to their jobs.

Right now there is a gap between what I want and what I have ... and certainly a money bridge can cross that divide.  Maybe it will appear.  I'm probably in denial, but optimistically, I await it.

eyes awake again

Miraculously, I have become a morning person again.

And a night person.

My day is so much longer!  I get so much more accomplished.

Welcome home, friend.

I'm cleaning house today.

Different catagories of humans altogether:

Those who wear watches.  Those who don't.

Those who like flat.  Those who like hills.

Those who run early.  Those who run late.

I am perpetually former and never latter.  Maybe it is genetic.  I'll think of more.