Like most senior executives who have been with their company for many years, I technically have more than my fair share of vacation time. In fact, I have so much in the bank, I stopped accruing months ago and literally was forced to take a week off to get moving again. Yet, what am I doing with this oh-so-precious, long-awaited free time? Lounging on a tropical beach somewhere? Guess again. Traipsing through an exotic city, touring the sites and seeing art? Right. Throwing away hundreds of dollars on rides and corn dogs at Disneyland? Not even. Try, putzing around the house, making French toast, paying bills, watching HGTV, and dealing with various and assorted, mundane household chores.
Yep, that’s right. For Womos without enough time to breathe during the ordinary work week, it’s literally essential to take at least a couple weeks a year of just “get your life back together” time. When else am I going to reallocate that damn 401(k), get the car smogged and research after-school sports options for my budding athlete?
Most importantly, of course, these more...
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Tags:Time Is A Four Letter Word
Kidpic Slip: the seemingly accidental slip during a business presentation when your computer screen flashes an irresistibly adorable photo of your child as the screensaver designed to (hopefully) elicit a murmur of “awwws” and some sympathy for your lacking powerpoint.
Okay, here’s a secret (at least for those non-womos out there): those insanely cute screensavers that working moms have on their laptops – i.e., the pics of her giggling kids licking popsicles or rough-housing on the lawn – are not only there for her enjoyment. Sure, glancing at the sweet pics of her bundles of joy can bring a smile on an otherwise dreary day. But there’s often another ulterior motive to popping those babies up for the world of coworkers and business associates to see. Showing off these photos (typically by accident while booting up before a meeting or when a laptop crashes during a presentation) gives us an opportunity to become human in the eyes of our audience … and hopefully to evoke some empathy and more...
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Tags:On The Career Track, WoMo Words
September 16th, 2010, posted by Marcie
Pixated: (adjective), used to describe people that obsessively showcase and
distribute digital photos, usually of their children.
Aaahhh! If I open my in-box one more time and get greeted by yet another email brimming with chirpy anecdotes and 14 attached photos, I think I might...
cry.
Who has the time for this? The last time I downloaded my camera, I had almost 10 months worth of photos. It was July and I was forging through pumpkin patches and Christmas morning.
Honestly, I get bi-weekly updates from friends and family members. I get it. Your kid is adorable. So is mine (face it, we've all got a case of baby goggles when it comes to our own kids, right?). The fact of the matter is I simply don't have the time to deal with the photo fixation. Open, close, open, close...ah, cute... open, close, open, close. And you wanna know what really kills me? When I open, close, open... And ahhhhh, there's the exact same photo as the one before, only precious more...
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September 14th, 2010, posted by Aimee, Tags: Juggling & Struggling
C Student: state of being for working moms in most areas of their life, particularly those who formerly excelled at most things but now struggle to simple get through the daily “to-do” list without pissing someone off, losing your job or losing a kid. Also known as “embracing mediocrity.”
Most of the working moms I know probably at one time or another excelled at one thing or a few in their lives before having offspring. Many of us were honors students who sailed through academia and rose through the career ranks swiftly, gaining praise and promotions as a superstar and often juggling amazing social lives and artistic, athletic or philanthropic pursuits to boot. We were fun! We were smart, rising stars! We were skinny! And then we had kids … and the wheels began to come off. Suddenly your always perfect grammar begins to slip, you start skipping those sweaty sessions on the treadmill in favor of the daily dash to the bus stop and you start to resort to store-bought jars of Earth’s Best instead of the “super easy” more...
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Tags:Juggling & Struggling
Momvice: the overwhelming need to give advice to pregnant coworkers and warn them about the travails they’ll face on the road ahead.
Across the hall from my office sit two lovely young colleagues, both of whom are expecting (not with each other) their first babies. One is a newlywed darling girl with the glowing cheeks and basketball belly belying an impending due date just three weeks away; another a newly engaged, slightly freaked-out looking 20-something guy whose firstborn-to-be is still a grainy image from the 10-week sonogram. Both seem eager – though admittedly said guy for whom impending offspring was a bit of a surprise is a little more “stunned deer in the headlights” than elated – and just so darn naive. If only they knew what I know is around the corner for them … the endless string of sleepless nights, bleary eyed struggles with burping and breastfeeding (yep, he’ll be right in there helping his gal achieve the elusive “latch” at 4 a.m.), the struggles to get out the door in time for that 8 a.m. meeting, the more...
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Tags:Colleagues & Coworkers
September 2nd, 2010, posted by Aimee
Invisi-Mrs.: woman who sends out emails using her husband’s account, possibly because she doesn’t have her own email account (or computer or smartphone).
It was one of those emails in my inbox that I would ordinarily delete without opening. After all, I don’t know anyone named “John Stanke,” and doesn’t my IT guy regularly warn us against clicking on unknown messages? If it weren’t for the subject line “Playdate for CPP,” that sucker would’ve been history. But CPP is the shortened name of my son’s preschool, and so the email – inviting us to a Friday afternoon park playdate – was spared. Turns out, the email was signed “Sherry Stanke,” obviously the spouse of said John Stanke.
Not sure why it irked me, but it did, the fact that Sherry was sending out notes from her hubby’s account. But I wondered, in this era of iPhones and crackberries, Droid phones and everything in between, not to mention free Web-based email services from Google and Yahoo, how is it even possible that an adult woman might not have an email address more...
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