Digging on these

From time to time I plan on listing out some of my guilty pleasures. 

Grey’s Anatomy – although I think I may be in to the spin-off show more, whenever that shows up.  I really liked the episode with Addison going to LA.   The current Meredith and Derek drama isn’t doing it for me.  Since we know that Burke is a homophob in real life, I am not as interested in that story line either.  For me I think it may have Jumped The Shark http://www.jumptheshark.com/index.jspa.

Perez Hilton.  www.perezhilton.com I hate to say it, but I do go check that out a few times a week.  The commentary can be cruel but contagious.  MEOW!!!!  Tough to be a celebrity nowadays.  You have to make sure you can handle carrying a non-fate latte and eye contact with all the camera phones pointed at you.  Not an easy gig. 

Boden!  www.bodenusa.com – Very cute – unique, feminine, moderately priced clothes.  I get a little bored with the Ann Taylor, Banana Republic stuff out there.

Project Runway – when does that start again?  LOVE it!  I even would download the Tim Gunn podcast to listen to on the treadmill.  I will admit, I would have my daughter watch the runway part with me, she loved it – so did I.  Bonding at its finest.

Post Mother’s Day

There were some awfully cute moments in our house yesterday.  The cute moments were not when I was waiting for my husband to get home from buying his own mother her present and freaking out because our 1-year old needed to eat, our 3-year old had to use the “potty” and I hadn’t taken a shower yet.  That was pure fun.  I probably shouldn’t complain too much about my husband’s last-minute gift buying.  After all, his impulse buying has served me well from time to time! 

Back to the cute stuff.  My favorite cute moment was when my daughter woke me up with a very enthusiastic “Happy Mother’s Day!” and handed me the gift she had made me from school.  (In our family, we refer to day care as school.   It is easier to say than day-care and among other thigns, an attempt by us to get our children excited about the entire concept of school.  A place you go to learn.  And apparently make things for your parents! ) 

My mother’s day gift this year was a jar full of bath beads with my daughter’s picture adorning the lid on top.  She has rarely seen me take a bath, she is always the one in the bathtub.  As she handed the gift to me she said “Happy Mother’s Day.  This is for my bath, because you only take showers.”  Very, very cute.  I will probably have those bath beads forever unless she figures out how to open the jar.

Work it, girl

I gave myself a year to get my body back after baby number two.  He turned one last week, I now am giving myself one year and six months.  After having our first baby, our daughter, I was very motivated to get back in shape.  I honestly think I was so impressed that my body could go through childbirth, I felt empowered to do anything.  So I decided that I would run my first marathon.  I had run some half marathons in the past and had wondered if I did indeed have what it took to go the distance.  I ended up running my first marathon in June of 2005 and did fine. I didn’t finish first (as if!!) and I didn’t finish last.  I did it and it was a great experience in the sense that if someone had told me even just a year prior that I would have done it – I would not have believed it.  If I can do it, anyone can and I mean that!  But I digress….

I am now trying to move 3 days a week – by move I mean a walk, a run, taking the stairs instead of an elevator – all that good stuff.  I was recently playing my “workout mix” over our wireless speakers at home.  By workout mix, I mean songs that inspire me to keep moving, songs that have always inspired me to keep moving – what I would call classics.  Examples would be:  Don’t Stop Believing by Journey, Holiday by Madonna, I even throw in my all-time work out favorite,  Good Vibrations by the before he was nominated for an Oscar, Marky Mark.    This is when my husband tells my daughter in a voice loud enough for me to hear in the other room, “Can you let mommy know that 1992 has already come and gone.”  Nice.  Apparently he doesn’t appreciate the “c’mon, c’mon – feel it” beat that has always motivated me.  I am sure all of us out there – who too are trying to keep moving, get the body back, lose that final 10 pounds have a guilty pleasure on the iPod.  What is yours?

A glimpse….

A bit about me, I am married, live in the Bay Area – the land of fine wine, technology and the $1 million dollar fixer-upper, raised ranch oasis.  We have two children – we did luck out and win the baby lottery- we have one of each.  Our daughter is currently 3 going on 15 and our son is about to turn one-year old.  They were also both preemies, they each weighed under 4 pounds at birth and decided to both make their entrance six weeks early.  They both had to stay in the hospital for a month before coming home, required a team of amazing neo-natal care nurses and doctors to get them off to a great start, wore the tiniest outfits you ever have seen and sounded like newborn kittens when they cried.  Today they are both just fine, so perhaps we won the baby lottery more than once?!

The fact that I seem to have the world’s smallest babies and the fact that I am still working full-time and couldn’t imagine a world with more children depending on us for food, shelter and sound advice adds up to the fact that we are done having kids.  Done.  Nope, I am not on the fence about this, I know it.  We are done. 

 As my mother joked with me after I had my son, “You have made it clear that you won’t be having any more children, even the janitor in labor and delivery now knows you are done.”  What can I say?  I like to make a statement. 

I am a communications professional and currently work in-house at a high-tech company in Silicon Valley, which means that 90% of the time I am the only one in a meeting that doesn’t have an engineering degree.   The other 10% of the time , the time that I seem to relate well to everyone in a meeting is when I am holding a staff meeting with other communication dorks like myself - go figure. 

Tomorrow is Monday and another crazy, hectic week is underway.  The good news is that no child is sick (at least not so far) and I have picked up my clothes from what I lovingly refer to as “clothes jail” aka the dry cleaner.  Thanks to the genius of Safeway.com we have a stocked refrigerator, I will going to Pilates class tomorrow night and oh yes – I have a girl’s weekend planned in Las Vegas – wow- how did I almost lose sight of that! Speaking of clothes and Vegas, I wonder how my mom jeans will go over?!! 

My best Tammy Faye

Getting ready this morning my husband and I did our typical tag team approach to getting us all ready and out the door.  I actually had enough time to do my make-up this morning and blow dry my hair because we had the one year old play with some toys in his crib and the 3 year old munching on some toast.  Absolutely no wrestling was involved in dressing my daughter this morning, as we are known to do because we are in the “only dresses” phase of wardrobe selection so things were looking good.  It was looking as if we may get out of the door earlier than normal – wow – we are good!

I was putting on mascara when it happened.  A sneeze.  A big one.   Why is it never when the mascara is dry?  I ended up with black streaks above and under my eyes.  It was “a” look but not one I was going for.  So, it was pretty much wipe the make-up off and start again.  Then I realized that our daughter had a field trip to the duck pond planned today and had to wear her special shirt.  As I start to do my make-up again I remembered that I had to pack my lunch because I am trying to work out at lunch and eat healthy (which has only happened a few times since January – nice resolution, huh?)  So I quickly did whatever I could with my face and scrambled to get everything else ready.  Why is it when you actually think you are going to be on time you jinx yourself?  Is there anyone else out there that tells themself every morning that if they just got up 15 minutes earlier they wouldn’t be running around like a mad woman to get out the door?  Amazing how I forget that each time I have my hubby hit snooze. 

Just as fine as she can be….

I am writing for the working mother who deep down inside knows she is a better mom because she is working.  Whether it be part-time or full-time – her own business, corporate, consulting, teaching, buying, selling, whatever it may be- I think you catch my drift.  For the working mother that keeps one foot in the working world, even if it is to dip a toe in from time to time.  We don’t think we can have it all at once, we just find ourselves doing more at once than we ever had imagined and such is life. 

I write for the working mother that isn’t guilt free but is happy that it is a day in age when we have a variety of options.  It may seem overhwelming from time to time, but the type of mother I represent actually wonders what she would do without work.  Work can represent stimulation, upward mobility or quite simply, it can represent time away from the little people in her life.  The type of mom that may come home exhausted from a day at the office but recharged for her children and she likes it that way. 

So if you have ever driven 90 m.p.h. to your child’s day care center so you won’t be late and charged over-time.   Or, if you have taken a conference call from home with children in the background and you suddenly realized it was most likely a working mother that invented the mute button in order to hide the tantrum being thrown down the hall, this is a friendly spot for you.  Please read on…….