Raising a Native New Yorker

Is this how it’s going to be?

In the past week, I’ve learned that a good friend’s father is dying of cancer, my sister’s dog died (and to my sister, her dogs are like children), and another good friend has separated from her husband, after they endured the death of a preterm baby and subsequent miscarriages.  I feel terrible for all of them.  I’m also afraid that it will be my turn next.  I’ve received these glancing blows, where things are happening to friends and family, but so far, no direct hits.  Is this what life is like after a certain age - one grief-producing episode after another?  Our parents age and get sick, our marriages falter. Next up: our children disappoint.  Maybe I’ve been reading too much Franzen. 

Update: Back Home

Just reread my post from January, when I first started commuting to Midtown.  Well, that lasted 8 months, and then I took a job in recruiting and am typing this from my bed two months into my new work-from-home-again job.  So, yes, commuting turned out to be miserable. Actually, not miserable so much as just not as convenient as NOT commuting.  If given the option of a great job where I have to go to an office every day, or a boring job where I don’t, looks like I’ll take boring.  Does this mean I’m lazy, or is it proof that I know what’s important in life?  Maybe a little of both.  I suppose if I were to be paid significantly more money to go to an office AND the job was a lot more interesting, then I’d probably do it. Or maybe if I ever got off my ass and switched careers and was doing work in nutrition, then going to an office would be my first choice.  Not sure.  In the end, for me, outside of some fits and starts of thinking I should be doing something worthwhile with my life, work is work.  If I can do it in my pajamas, all the better.

Serial (not multiple) Personalities

This would also transfer well to a TV series:

A psychopathic woman who constantly reinvents herself.  One year she is suzy homemaker, the next she is dyke construction worker.  She leaves behind loose ends, because that isn’t important.  There is always the threat of being recognized as her last persona, but she is not that person anymore, so she doesn’t give it much thought.  She is not trying to con anyone, she simply moves on.  Takes born again to a whole new level.  What if someone figures it out and wants to “be” with her.  Do they get on the train too, or do they become the global variable that fits with all the lives.  The person that never changes bc they always fit or the person who always changes.  Or there could be a whole series of serial personality folks and they bump into each other.

When is she just a bitch vs. a psychopath?

I have an inkling of a book idea and I’m wondering: What behaviors would make a woman a bitch and what behaviors would she have to exhibit to be considered an actual psychopath?  And, furthermore, how is Asperger’s syndrome different from psychopathy?  These are my upcoming research topics.

A word about fundraising for private schools

I really do not get how a school that charges more than $30,000 a year for tuition cannot meet their operating costs.  Why not either increase tuition to fill the $2000 per student gap, or decrease costs?  What is the real motivation behind the Annual Fund and the yearly fundraising?  Is it because they will always get more money that way?  Is it because the mothers want the sense of responsibility and the social outlet that being part of a fundraising committee gets them?  Can someone explain this to me?

3 Days in a Work-a-Day Life

For the first time in at least 5 years, I spent 3 straight days commuting to an office in Midtown, and am going to continue to do so for at least several weeks.  I can’t say it was terrible!  The commute is 20-30 minutes.  The train is crowded, and I know it will suck in the summer, but I’ve always loved the orchestration of the throngs of people in the rush hour commute in New York.  I am even tickled at how implausibly quickly the ridiculously long line moves at the Dunkin Donuts under Rock Center, which probably has more customers in 5 minutes than some franchises see in an entire morning.  I’ve always loved these ‘only in NY’ moments.  I record them in my mind and fake complain about them to non-New Yorkers, or revel in them with like-minded people.

Compared to what I was doing in my last gig in Minneapolis, the work is almost zero stress, although it is probably less rewarding.  However, it does have cool factor, as it involves developing a way to read magazines on the iPad.  And the people are friendly and smart and opinionated.

So, what I am thinking after 3 days is this: yet again, it is proven to me that nothing is ever as bad as I think it is going to be.  In fact, I’m now wondering how I stayed at my old pointless work from home gig for as long as I did!

Will I be less enthusiastic in a few months?  Doubtless.  But I can’t imagine I’m going to be completely miserable.

On becoming a WOHM

Starting tomorrow, I will be commuting to midtown 5 days a week, a work-a-day job, for the first time since Mr. T disrupted our world.  In fact, ever since Mr. T was born I’ve been ranting about how the typically structured work day, with its requisite face time, is a virtual logistical impossibility in a family with two working parents.  I guess I get to prove it now that I’ve given up my cushy Work From Home gig.  Now I will have to show up somewhere day after day, by a certain acceptable hour, an hour that was clearly not selected by mothers.  This will involve dodging Mr. T’s “don’t go yet Mommy!” at preschool drop off.  It will mean leaving the office by a certain hour, to get home to relieve the nanny.  I’m sure that will require a dodge of a different sort, of clients and their last minute requests.

I’ve never understood how parents accomplish these feats, especially with the kind of client work that I do, and it may in fact be impossible.  Stay tuned for details of my first day at it…