48 inches is a wonderful thing

Day One: Notice anything?


Day One: See it yet?


Day Two: How about now?


Day Two: I'll give you a hint...

Everyone is over 48 inches so there are no pictures of Mom and Dad crammed on the rides! 

Bittersweet.

Can it be any louder?

We listen to music with our kids.  In the car. On the radio in the kitchen. At night on their radios in their bedrooms. But nothing "musically" seemed to stick with them.

Alex gets excited over Lady Ga Ga's Alejandro because we told him it was his name in Spanish.

Abby used to like a Fergie song when she was younger but never really latched on to any one artist.

Today, however, we may have turned a page.

When told to clean her room, my daughter lovingly started pouting, slamming doors and probably used the word "hate" when referring to cleaning her room....gotta love that...so I walked down stairs to leave her to herself. I explained she could clean her room quickly and get back outside to play, or spend the day up there, it really didn't matter to me. I had no plans except to clean out the refrigerator - big goings-on in our house on a Saturday.

About 10 minutes later it happened.  Kiss108 (the station I grew up on) was BLARING from her room. All crackly and staticky because it was too loud.  Appropriately it was Kelly Clarkson's My Life Would Suck Without You - exactly the word I want my 7 yo daughter singing at the top of her lungs.

I let it go.  I remember being that age and performing karaoke in my room to the Bee Gees, Pat Benator, Aerosmith and Kiss.  It was a release.  It was a distraction.  I loved my loud music.

And wouldn't you know it - about 6 songs later she came downstairs with a smile and pretty clean room!  Thanks Kiss108. Looks like we'll be resurrecting our love for each other again in the next generation.

TV sitter

I've been struggling all summer with the amount of time I let my kids sit in front of the TV.

Trying to find a job requires me to spend some time in front of the computer searching the job sites  - uninterrupted - and not when I'm exhausted at 9:00 at night after the little ones are tucked in bed.

So, I will admit that during this incredibly HOT, SUNNY summer (with no rain days to fall back on), I have placed my children in front of 824 for an hour - or two - or maybe three - on a day or two or three.

(824 happens to be the HD channel of Disney - they feel cool calling it 824)

Making this confession makes me feel a little better - I've been hiding this secret for a few weeks and now that I've come clean, I bet a few of you can relate? Right?!

The Kids Are Alright

Month one of unemployment.

Week one of kids home full time.

Last time I counted there were 10 fingers, 10 toes on each of the two children, two parents still speaking, a mother-in-law and sister-in-law making themselves at home and we were all accounted for in the same house.

I must be doing something right.

Inspiration at a Pig Roast

Being forced to take the journey into networking on my own behalf, and not for a company, has proved to be very enlightening.

Over the past three years, when I'd meet a new group of people, attend an event, talk on the phone or go to the market and engage in a conversation, I would always think "Is there any way this person may want or need text analytics software?"

Crazy, right? It was my job. I was the evangelist, the motivator and the messenger for the company.  I was wired that way.

Now, when I go out, I have to figure out how to engage with people and not wonder about their software needs, but wonder about them. What drives them?  Who are they?  Do we have common interests?  Will I make any sort of impression?

Don't get me wrong, if I met my friends for a happy hour drink I would put the job behind - way behind - in the spirit of socializing.  But more often than not, the job would come up in conversation.  This weekend was probably the first weekend I attended a social event and DIDN'T talk shop or think about networking.  In fact, I listened. And I was so impressed.

My husband's cousin's son (got it?) graduated from college recently so Saturday they had some friends and family over for a traditional Puerto Rican pig roast.  Pig lovers, don't worry, I won't go into details other than to say YUMMY!  And while there I had two things to overcome: I don't speak Spanish and I'm not 20 something years old.

A lot to handle at one time.  Amazingly, neither of those things mattered because what I learned from those 20 something year olds is that they are paying it forward.  They are motivated. They are inspired.  They wear their causes on their hats, their shirts and their rubber wristbands.  They are laughing hard, playing hard, and willing to talk about dreams and goals.  I listened to their parents talk about raising children, finding jobs, serving in the military, and overcoming addiction. 

I don't think I realized how impressed I was going to be by the conversations I was about to have at that celebration.  I sat on a folded chair, in a modest backyard, among 99% Latino men and women playing dominoes and listening to Spanish music among Brazilian neighbors and Caucasian neighbors only a handshake away and I didn't want to leave.  No judging. No ego-trips about their job titles or how much revenue their companies made last quarter.  Just family, friends and talk about how to make it better for the next generation and wondering if they can make a change.

Such a cultural departure from where I've been.  And so damn refreshing.

Where the hell you been?

I'm not a very good liar. I was going to post something like:

Sorry I haven't been around. We've been vacationing in the South of France without the kids. Lie.

Or maybe:

Sorry I haven't been around. I landed a million dollar job that I love and was training all week to take over the world. Lie.

So, truth be told. I found an awesome gig - nonpaying of course - and in the 24 hours I have been involved, it has sucked every single minute of my time that's not spent cleaning, cooking or meeting people trying to find a paying job.

So hopefully you'll excuse me while I fit this into my very unorganized schedule and once I get into the flow of children home 24/7 and my willingness to volunteer on behalf of Boston's entrepreneurs, I'll get back to my regular blogging. Maybe. Lie.

Parenting 24/7

Ready for some honesty 101?  Here goes.

I'm approaching very uncertain times for me - because of the job situation we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to send the kids to summer camp starting July 26 through the start of school.  It was just too expensive and the place we use wouldn't allow us to cut our days to 2 a week.  It was 5 days or it was nothing.

So...deep breath...that means the kids and I will be spending 7 days a week together. 24 hours. Non-stop. No school. No camp. You're probably like "So what? They're your kids."  I love them. I have since they day they entered the world. No. Before then. When they kicked and squirmed inside of me.  But save for the first 14 months of my daughter's life, I haven't spent all day with them for more than a week.

That seems so odd to type.  I went right back to work about 10 weeks after Alex was born and hubby did Mr. Mom duty with him.  I'm nervous.  I've always admired Mom's who are home with their kids all day because I really don't know if I have it in me to be that type of parent.

So, Moms and Dads, lay on the advice and suggestions on how to keep your kids occupied during the summer months - I'm ALL EARS.  I'm thinking keeping the wine stocked for wine o'clock when Daddy gets home may be the first thing I need to do?

How you been? Good summer so far?

Hey there visitors. How's it going?

Me? I'm hanging in there.

I'd love to share some pictures with you from our recent vacation but I can't. You see, on Thursday, about 5 hours after my last and final meeting for my "old" job, my laptop from my "old" job that I was using and borrowing for a few weeks while I cleaned it and moved some files and did some final projects decided that since I no longer had a job, it no longer needed to work.

It quit. Kaput. No juice. No power. No battery. No reboot. Black screen of death.

So, all those pictures I had recently uploaded to post on facebook are sitting on that dead laptop. Along with my iTunes folder, resume, crackberry software, passwords, cookies, etc.

I'm holding off on buying a new laptop until work things are figured out and will be relying on our little netbook which gives me a browser and a trial version of Microsoft Office to post and stay in touch.  Excuse me if there a bunch of typos -this puppy has a keyboard the size of a slice of bread. We're still figuring out how to work together.

Hope your 4th was fun. See you soon.

The Definition of Christine

Christine is Latin for "Follower of Christ"........or a horror novel by Stephen King written in 1983. Depends on your Google results.

Ahhh.......that doesn't help.

OK, start easy:  Christine is a mom. Christine is a wife. Christine is a daughter, a sister, a friend, a cousin, a niece, a granddaughter.

That's all well and good, but doesn't define me beyond my relationship to others.  At times I stop and really try to define who I am to myself and get a little discouraged.  In a grotesque way I often wonder what my obituary would say.  "She was a nice person. Didn't do anything extraordinary, wasn't the member of any organizations and didn't have a passion for anything outside of a cold glass of pinot grigio with a few ice cubes."

But seriously, now that I'm going to be forced to talk about myself at job interviews, I'm starting to worry.  I don't want to let unemployment define me.  And I don't want to start a pattern of writing and blogging about how I can no longer "label" myself as a VP, or as a working mom, or even a stay at home mom, because I am in that in-between place right now.  But I have to figure out how I want to present myself to others in order to try and secure that next gig.

On the flip side, I have incredible pride in the fact that I'm raising two children who don't use many labels so why am I obsessed with my own? They've never used black or white to describe someones skin - they use light or dark.  We've discussed when and how to use fat and skinny and we remind them that people come in all shapes and sizes.  They don't see wealth or poverty in what someone "has" but understand that we do our best to help those who need some assistance, whether it's food or clothes.

So when it comes to trying to describe or define my own purpose, it gets pretty complicated. Do you ever think about your definition?  And is mine now officially "neurotic"? Could be...probably don't want to start off with that in a job interview, huh?

Natures calm

When things are beyond your control and it seems like you'll never get back to that place that was so familiar and comfortable, nature has a sweet way of reminding you to stop...breathe...and instills a welcome calm into the madness.

Sunset   June 28, 2010