Even right now, I have quite a few friends who are grappling with the challenge of how to get back on the horse – or deciding whether it’s even worth it at all, once the cost of childcare and other auxiliary household help is figured into the equation. These are amazing women, by the way, who were all fantastic in their careers – intelligent, wildly educated and diligent, organized workers. But not only do they worry about how they can catch up and keep up with the younger (more tech-savvy at this point) colleagues, but also how they can even find the right kind of position that would value their skills and experience now that they are no longer on the recruiter radars.

It’s funny because my agency actually represents a company that is actively targeting moms hoping to return to the workforce. To quote the press release: “Branchout is the largest professional networking service on Facebook. BranchOut users leverage their Facebook friend network to find jobs, recruit talent, source sales leads and foster relationships with professional contacts. BranchOut also operates the largest job board on Facebook with more than three million jobs and 20,000 internships.”

Branchout is running a survey of moms who are contemplating going back to work that’s offering participants a chance to win a $200 gift card. Go here if you are reading and interested!

Honestly, I think the survey, though, misses one of the biggest issues holding women back from going back to work full-time:  the ability to ask for flexible hours and some telecommuting to be able to get kids off to school and return home in time to pick them up … even if just from daycare at 5 p.m. For most of us, even a simple 9-5 office schedule, given any kind of commute, requires sacrificing either the morning breakfast routine or the afternoon pick-up (even from daycare at 5 or 6 p.m.) or both. Given the majority of people working in any given city will need at least 30 -60 minutes door to door to get into the office or home, not including traffic, the price of office facetime is mommy time, no question.

That’s not to mention the ability to volunteer just occasionally in your child’s classroom, attend his or her holiday parties or catch a sports practice once in a blue moon. Most of us would gladly work all night into the wee hours or wake up at 4 a.m. to get the work done if we were able to fit some of those simple things in. But it just ain’t happening for 99% of jobs out there – or at least not the ones where you are brand new and still trying to prove yourself against younger, hungrier colleagues.

One of my very best friends, for example turned down what she called “a great career move job” for tons of money simply because it would force her to give up the ability to pick her kids up from school at 3 p.m. everyday. Another one of my friends took a position two levels below where she had been previously (at one of the country’s hottest ad agencies by the way) for a local firm just because they allowed her the ability to telecommute twice a week.

I guess that’s why, as much as I bitch and moan about my own job, I am grateful that I’ve put in the time to earn at least some of that flexibility. And the reason why – for as long as we are able to afford it – I will sacrifice new cars and designer duds for used clunkers and Target jeans for a while to have the privileges I do for now.

o She has waaaaaay too much time on her hands (gossiping about one of your SAHM mutual friends)

o I’m working from home today. (while muting the phone to get a cartoon on for your son before a conference call)

o She’s the type who actually needs to have a job. (See above, in reference to meddling or overly dramatic SAHMs)

o I can’t imagine staying at home; I would go crazy!

o How do you have time for that?

o It’s crazy busy at work, but I guess that’s a good problem, right?

o Did you see my email?

o Did you get that Evite?

o Did you see my Facebook message?

o Did you get my text?

o Is it organic? (at Whole Foods, asking the clerk at the prepared foods counter)

o I can’t even remember the last time I went to the gym.

o I got it at Target.

o Can you order them online?

o Sex? What’s that?

o Have you tried that cleanse?

o The wheels are about to come off.

o No, seriously, I think I am going to lose it.

o I don’t have time for that drama anymore.

o Is there any more wine?

o Remember when we used to do shots? How about Long Island Iced Teas?

o What kind of Chardonnay is that?

o I cannot survive without coffee.

o Honestly, I don’t have time for TV. Well, sometimes I watch “House Hunters International.”

Come on guys, chime in … what do you find yourself and your friends saying over and over again? Help a girl out!

o You dread seeing at least one of the moms at your child’s school at drop off because you blew off her child’s “stickers chain letter project,” despite the written plea to please “take the time to ensure everyone gets their stickers .”

o At least once a week you feel at least a small pang of guilt about your colleagues still in the office when you leave at 5 p.m. to get home for your kids (even though you are always back online after they hit the hay at night).

o At least three times a week you feel severe pangs of guilt when you don’t get home in time to make dinner/bathe your child/make them breakfast.

o At least once a month you feel a touch of guilt about not spending enough “quality time” with your spouse/partner and wonder if he will end up straying if you don’t figure out a way to put out more often.

o Birthday celebrations for your child/children are always held at a crazily overpriced, annoying venue that promises to “handle everything for your party” and costs a small fortune … but ensures the party lasts exactly 90 minutes and entails zero clean-up.

o You’ve paid almost as much in daycare late fees as the regular tuition.

o You juggle at least one conference call a week with a child parked in front of Nickelodeon and the phone on mute.

o It’s hard to remember the last time you saw the dentist or doctor, though you’ve never missed a single appointment with your hair colorist in years.

o You cannot fathom an existence without coffee, white wine, DVRs, takeout/”Whole Foods prepared foods,” smartphones and flat irons.

“It’s about time!” my mother, many of my friends, and even the woman at the DMV have been crowing and I have to admit they are probably right that it might have been much easier to do this right when we filed for our marriage license than all the tedious back-tracking involved now.

So, what took me so long anyway? Or why did I even decide to bother after eight years of married bliss as Aimee Grove? The first question is easier to answer than the second, I guess. The bottom line is that I just never understood what the fuss was about taking Nate’s last name in the first place. After all, hadn’t I been a Grove for 28 years before we ever met? Hadn’t I spent a dozen years building a career with bylines under my maiden name? Why would I want to ditch a perfectly functional and slightly well known moniker just to follow an archaic and somewhat sexist tradition? Later, the inconvenience factor seemed to seal the issue. What a pain in the butt to change the name on every single legal document, bank and credit account, even the title on our home was my reasoning.

So, what changed? Well, Tav happened for one thing. At first, having a different last name than my kid didn’t seem like such a big deal, particularly when we were living in San Francisco, where this is more the norm than the exception. But then once Tav was in school and we were more in the routine of interacting with strange parents, teachers and administrators, the continual clarification of my status started to wear thin. After a while I would sometimes just go with “Aimee Wells” for the convenience and then forget and introduce myself as Grove again, only to be met with quizzical looks.

In the end, I finally decided to bite the bullet this fall. Kindergarten for Tavish is right around the corner, I finally had a teeny bit of time to take care of personal matters, and I found an annoyingly named web site – MissNowMrs.com – that could walk me through the process. I decided once and for all, I wanted to share a name with husband AND my son … and now I am. Damn if I haven’t truly morphed into a suburbanite out here. Oh well, I think “Aimee Wells” sounds pretty cute anyway, though.

Alas, it’s not so easy to find that sweet relief anymore these days. In between the pre-sleep training infancy phase and about age four, things were actually fairly simple in the “getting that kid to sleep” realm. A solid sleeper by nature, Tav never had a problem falling into a deep sleep or even with waking up through the night … until recently.

Suddenly my fearless little dude has developed a fear of the dark and (all too common) belief that monsters are lurking in the shadows of his room when the lights go down. Now, the bedroom door – just steps away from our living room TV, by the way – stays open with a glaring hall light to illuminate those dreaded monster corners.

The open door also invites negotiation, conversation, requests … whatever Tav can use to engage us and keep up going in and out of his room for what seems like hours. “Mom, can I have a glass of water?” “Mom, the cat’s bothering me!” “Daddy, where’s my blankie?” “Mommy, I can’t sleep!”

Nate and I alternate at first politely and eventually devolve into arguing over who is going to service the little guy’s demands and get him back to bed. “You go – I have to work!” “No, you need to go – he’s calling for you!”

Adding to the annoyance of the situation is the nagging guilt about wishing your kid would just go the F_____k to sleep so you could get back to your work. Ooh, even saying that on this blog sounds bad. Dealing with bedtime and monster phobias is all part of the pact you made when you decided to throw your hat into the parenting arena years ago. But there’s a reason one of the best-selling gift books on the market right now has that title right now.

As I sit across the room from a hulking box filled with my son’s Christmas present – the 3200+ piece “Death Star” Lego set that represents every young boy’s wildest dream … and every parent’s worst nightmare – I am actually filled with anxiety about how I will survive the next few days after my husband goes back to work.

That’s right. Like guilt-ridden working moms everywhere, I caved in to that idiotic need to overcompensate for lost time with outrageously expensive and indulgent gifts at the holidays, including a Lego set technically made for 14-year-olds. Somehow I forgot to think through the hell of dealing with Tav’s frustration and need for “help” in assembling that monstrosity for days and weeks on end. Somehow, when I envisioned this week of “vacation,” I never pictured myself wading through a sea of colored bricks and trying to decipher pages of cryptic instructions for hours upon hours.

That’s right, I said it. I hate Legos. Sure, I understand “they’re great” for kids’ development and fine motor skills, yada yada. It’s just mind-numbingly boring for me to build and help build with them.

Actually, there are very few indoor activities favored by 4 ½ year old boys that really float my boat. Building marble mazes? Ugh. Having Pokemon battles? Not so much. Playing soccer, riding bikes, jumping on trampolines, hell, even catching lizards would be much more up my alley than building anything made of small pieces or involving foreign anime characters. But unfortunately, it’s December and it seems that my son is not interested much in any of those old school outdoor activities anyway even in the warm months.

Of course, hating all of these boy playtime activities feeds right back into my guilt again. If I were a better mom, wouldn’t I actually enjoy building stuff with my boy? Why don’t I love playing with him as much as it seems like other moms do? If I had a girl and she wanted to play Barbies with me would I be more interested? Or is it just because he’s an only child and lacks a sibling to entertain him? Oh god, one more thing to feel guilty about. Those of you with girls, fill me in. Is playing more fun or still a drag?

As I chastised my awesome – also working mom, by the way – friend who victimized me this year with her gorgeous family card that arrived on November 30^th, I told her that this is just one of several things that can really cause a maxed out working mom anxiety at the holidays.

Here are a few of the ways to really throw a wrench in this working mom’s mood at this time of year:

o Posting photos of home-baked pies and cookies or other deliciously impressive home-cooked meals on Facebook. (Cut to me struggling to find a bakery that makes decent desserts or spending $10 for a pint of dough at Whole Foods).

o Asking me to bring a dish to your holiday potluck – especially when the invitation specifies “no chips and salsa, please.”

o Throwing a holiday party in which shoes are required to come off at the front door. No! I f___ing need my boots/5-inch platform shoes to give this plain LBD a teeny bit of sex appeal!

o Revealing the good news that we’ve finally signed that new business prospect we’ve been wooing for months and they really want to meet the team … in person … on December 24^th.

o Reminding me that my son’s preschool holiday party is on the same day as a critical all-hands-on deck meeting at work.

o Finding out the office Christmas party this year involves neither copious amounts of booze or a ritzy luncheon but instead tumbling and trapeze lessons at an inner city circus school.

o Overhearing a stay-at-home mom at the park boasting about how she has finished all her shopping and wrapping and is now focused on doing holiday crafts like wreath-making and cookie decorating with the kids.

What about you? What stresses you out at the holidays?

Might not seem earth-shattering to some, but I am willing to bet that more than a few of you Womos out there can relate to list-making mania. In fact, in the trailer for the recent Sarah Jessica Parker flick,  “I Don’t Know How She Does It” the working mom heroine attributes her nightly insomnia to tortuous list making as she tries to hold it all together. The movie may have been crap (not sure, anyone seen it?) but the concept is frighteningly familiar.

Not only does every night for me end with the drawing up of a list of tasks and priorities for the day ahead, but also an accounting for all the items on the current day’s list. If not marked off in red or crossed off in black, an item must be moved to the next day. And so it goes … even for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays when I am supposedly “off” the clock. Those are the days the list fills with the mundane, “Buy groceries, pay bills, do laundry, pick up kitty litter, call friends.”

For the inveterate list maker like myself, there is rarely a break from the familiarity of this routine. When I was on maternity leave, even in the haze of sleep deprivation and borderline post-partum baby blues, I was still obsessed with listing every single one of Tav’s “pees” and “poops,” along with the never-ending list of silly errands like “buy Ergo, wash pump valves, send thank you notes to Aunt Pat.”

The fact that my husband – the original single-focused “Mantasker” (see earlier post) – does not share this list obsession can be infuriating to me. How does he know what he needs to accomplish each day? How does he know if he got everything done? And why does he always seem to “lose” those “Honey Do” lists I hand him most Saturday mornings?

That’s why this past week, in which the most important things on the agenda every day was simply fitting in a single beachfront run, was such pure bliss. No clocks, no red pens, and as much sleep as life with a four and a half year old permits. Ahhh. Now it’s back to the grind once again.

So this is my life – at least the part of my life in which I earn a living:  wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to sell more crap to people like myself and my friends. But the fact that I sadly fit this marketing cliché to “T” doesn’t seem to make it any easier to solve the problem. Here’s why:  we working moms (let’s face it – a good chunk of the Target moms are in face Womos) are a difficult bunch to reach through the traditional media channels most marketers consider first.

Everyone used to think it was all about TV – the Today Show, GMA, “Ellen,” the evening news. Get on TV and you have your moms in the bag. Well, raise your hand girls if you have watched any of the morning shows or afternoon talk shows in … well, ever. The only time most of us are ever around – and free – during the times these inane shows air is when we see a clip posted to Perez Hilton. Truth is, many of us watch little TV other than the favorite shows on HGTV or Food Network we DVR.

Now, though, marketers seem to think “mommy bloggers” are the perfect vehicle for broadcasting their message. And it’s understandable. Mommy blogs – even Womoments – seem to be low hanging fruit for consumer companies. Certainly there are tons of bloggers out there who live off the freebies companies send them under the guise of running reader contests. But here’s a dirty little secret that most marketers seem to not be interested in uncovering:  Few moms – at least working moms – are much interested in reading mommy blogs. Am I wrong? How many of you – past those horrid first few postpartum months – read on a daily or even weekly a mommy blog? For god sakes, I don’t even know how any of my best friends has time to read my blog. Oh, yeah, that’s right … they don’t. Even my best, best friend has only read my blog about once or twice in two years.

It’s just that after a long day of work or child rearing or whatever, most of us just want to zone out. If we go online, it’s typically for a purpose (find a recipe, research vacation options, check the weather) or to peruse some of the fun celebrity gossip rags (hello, Dlisted, Jezebel). I don’t really want to read about potty training/breast feeding/discipline tips, tricks and tales from the trenches.

Oh yes, and then there’s social media. Facebook is undeniably a place where you will find more than a few Target moms, especially after our kids hit the hay. And yet, who of you coveted tribe actually “like” and keep visible the posts from any major brands on Facebook? Sure, most of us have “liked” brands and products … but how many of you didn’t hide the posts after a while? Let’s face it, Facebook is where we go to check out old classmates and vent, not to see a million contests or lame polls from companies.

Twitter is another world as well. At this point, I would venture to guess that few if any of my fellow womos, aka “Target Moms” are on Twitter – except if they are a PR person or a reporter.

So where in hell do you reach us elusive Target Moms? What sways our purchasing decisions anyway? How do we hear about new things, and how do we decide to buy one brand over another? I have my theories. But what are some of your thoughts? Anyone want to clue me in? I have a proposal to write … for yet another company hoping to reach me.

Uh, okay. Try telling that to my employer who bills my time in 15 minute increments and lists “ability to multitask” in my job description. Or to my husband, who expects me to pay all the bills, buy all the groceries, throw together dinners and bring home my share of the bacon (cue, “and never, never, never let him forget he’s a man …!)

Sadly, I can hardly recall the early days of my life when I had the luxury of dedicating my time and intellectual energy to one assignment at a time. In a day and time when a typical lunch hour for me is spent wolfing down a salad while listening on mute to a conference call and toggling back and forth between Twitter, Facebook and Jezebel, it’s comical that I once was heckled for reading pretentious novels on my lunch hour as an intern in my first job. (What the heck’s a novel, anyway? I only read magazines now.)

I think it may be getting a bit out of hand for me, though. Just take a look at a few of the activities I have combined with varying degrees of success within the past week:

o Searched for a cat sitter and researched our next vacation while watching the “X Factor” and updating my timesheet.

o Browsed magazines and listened to “The View” on the eliptical machine at the gym

o Made phone calls and sent texts to friends while grocery shopping with my kid in the cart playing his Leapster

o Took two client calls and checked in with my boss outside the gym while my son was taking Tae Kwon Do (on my day off)

o Listened to my husband’s work dilemma and offered advice while scrolling through Twitter to get ideas for this blog

o Scheduled a doctor, dentist and hair appointments while on mute during long conference calls

o Wrote this blog while glancing up and down at a Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion on mute

You get the picture. It’s frenetic, and I am sure your life is the same way.

Interestingly, my husband – and I would venture to suggest most husbands from what I hear from my friends – does not follow the whole multitasking way of life at all. In fact, he seems physically and emotionally incapable of juggling more than one task at a time. It drives me nuts! When he is waiting for his teapot to boil, why doesn’t he start making toast, or comb Tav’s hair? When he’s watching that surf contest, couldn’t he fold a few pieces of laundry or pay bills? How is it he can watch episodes of that dumb British car show without feeling the need to check Facebook and the weather forecast at the same time?

Nope, he’s proudly single-focused. He cannot see why in the world I need to achieve five things at once, why I drive myself crazy with making lists and checking things off those lists. He just takes life step at a time.  I call it “Man-Tasking,” which you can characterize one of two ways. On the positive side, “Man Tasking” could be seen as the ability to focus on one activity at a time. Of course for me, I would define it as “the absolute inability of a man to juggle more than one task at a time.” Semantics, yes.

What are your thoughts? Is this a man/woman thing or a “married to a Womo” thing or neither? Is Nate a freak? Am I?