(GGC Survival Guide for) The Beautiful and the WAHMd

As an epiblogue to my last post. I put together a little list for those of you WAHMing it up, hoping to someday WAHM and/or trying to decide between being an astronaut* or a WAHM when you grow up.

GGC's Ten Secrets to Highly Kinda Sorta Successful(ish) WAHM'ing

1. Make Lists, Check Them Twice - The only way to keep track of assignments, appointments and show-and-tell themes is to write them all down. Every morning I write my to-do list and most of the time I get to some of it.

2. Coffee - The only drug moms can do out in the open without risk of being judged. Also, it helps you wake up in the morning, late morning, early afternoon, late afternoon and evening when you have deadlines.

3. Separate Work Hours from Kid Hours - Designating play hours may seemed contrived but its kind of imperative. Implementing "no Internet/no phone" zones is sometimes the only way to pull back from work to enjoy your family without constant vibrating. There is a time and a place for your "shit to blow up." And it isn't while your child's begging you to build sandcastles.

4. Get the Hell Out of the House - For me, it's near impossible to focus 100% on kids in my house, especially during weekday afternoons. Too many work-related distractions a mere feet away (This might have something to do the fact that my office space is in my living room, inches away from where the kids play with their toys. In my next life I'm going to to be filthy rich when I have kids so I can have an outdoor office or a separate wing to keep my computer.) so getting out of the house for activities everyday is a MUST. Whether it means going to the park, meeting for a playdate or simply taking a "nature walk" around the block to collect rocks.

WAHMside!

5. Get Dressed. Every. Day. - I can trace every bad WAHM day to poor wardrobe choices. This might seem incredibly shallow but it's true. Just look at the women of one hundred years ago. My great-grandmother gave birth to triplets during the great depression and still managed to change out of her pajamas every morning for chrissakes (true story!) so we have no excuse.

Honestly, though. Getting dressed to go to work everyday is obvious. You wouldn't show up to an office job with your hair in a scrunci, so why show up at your home office looking like a slob? You say you can do your best work in your pajamas and slippers? I don't believe you. Makeup works wonders on a poker face. Style is the first step to substance.

6. Stick to a (Flexible) Schedule -  You absolutely must have a schedule if you're going to get through your day. For me, for now, scheduling my days is difficult because of Fable's no-nap policy but I do schedule my nights around my work. The most important part of having a schedule as a work-at-home parent is knowing that things will probably be switched around ten thousand times and you'll have to cancel most of your plans to deliver by deadline and everyone you know will call you a flake behind your back.

7. Prioritize - You'll get to all those TIVO'd episodes of LOST, later. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see. Okay so you'll most likely never watch LOST again.

8. Stay up an Hour Later or Get up an Hour Early - Quoting my inspiring friend, Rita Arens, sleep is for the weak. You want to get it all done? There are nights you'll just have to sleep less. One hour won't kill you but it will make you stronger if you can finish your daily deadlines without stressing yourself to an early grave.

9. Surround Yourself  with What Inspires You. Get Rid of Everything Else - Days are too short and time far too precious to surround yourself with downers and ghosts and judgment and people who bite. Period.

10. Delegate. Delegate. Delegate - If you can afford a part-time sitter? Do it. And if you can't? Don't be afraid to ask for help. From your spouse (who should be offering anyway p.s.) or partner or mom or grandma or neighbor because quite honestly, NO ONE can do it all on their own. We get by with a little help from our friends.

.............

Now it's your turn. What are your secrets do doing it all? How the hell do you manage your life/work/kids/marriage/porn addiction/craziness? How do you make it happen?

Bring on the bullet-points.

GGC

*Not discounting those who are both mother and astronaut. Just saying it's probably impossible to astronaut from the home, correct me if I'm wrong.

The Beautiful and the WAHM'd

The term "work at home mom" is a total conundrum. It's also redundant. It is one of the few redundant conundrums I can think of, or, because I get off on word play, redundrums which was why I brought up the topic of balancing work with motherhood on today's yesterday's Momversation. I'm always desperately curious as to how so many of you do it all. WTF, people? How do you even have time to read this blog post right now?

I've always been on the outside of the (not-so) great "mommy debate" of working vs stay-at-home momdom, waving my Swiss flag because I have no idea what side to stand on. Do I have to pick a side?

It seems pretty obvious to me that the great majority of everyone is doing what they have to do to raise their kids happily and healthily, whether that means putting off career to focus on family or pursuing everything at once. Sides can go fuck themselves.

Regardless of the choices you or me or the chick standing behind you in line for coffee has made, we're all trying to achieve balance, to find happiness, to spread the love.

Behold:

"How do you do it all?" we constantly ask one another, seldom answering the question ourselves.

Perhaps because there's no answer. Because our circumstances are so different, constantly changing, that every day is its own unique experience. The amount of balls we have hovering in the air above us changes momentarily. Like right now, for instance? It's late. Kids are sleeping. Husband's in the shower. I'm alone. I can blog and when I'm finished with this post I can clean up and eventually go to sleep* and maybe I don't sleep as much as I could but neither do you.

Because that's what happens when you have kids. Because that's what happens when you don't have kids. Because that's what happens when you work long hours. Because that's what happens when you're an adult and you have shit you'd like to do. You need to do. You have no choice but to do.

I can't speak for all mothers but I can speak for myself as a work-from-home-mom (WAHM) when I say that maintaining order in the court is not an everyday occurence. There are some days when I rock the shit out of my life - when I write ten pages in two hours, have dinner on the table by the time Hal's home from work, have kids down by 8:00pm, but six days out of the seven, I'm disasterville - the kids still wandering the halls at 10:30 and me struggling to write a blog post, bleary-eyed, teary-eyed and overwhelmed, Hal home from work to find me in a heap of drugs, gigolos and gambling debt.

This is is why starting this week we're hiring me a part-time helper. Because Fable doesn't nap and therefor I cannot work during the day. I tried "doing it all" without assistance but it didn't quite work, so ten hours a week I'll be working outside my home, writing at my neighborhood coffee shop. This is a good thing. This is necessary. For my sanity. And my creativity. And my career. For my kids. So that when I'm with them I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder envious of every laptop at the coffee shop I'm pushing my stroller through.

The pressure to perform as a writer and a mother and a wife and a friend and a daughter and a sister is nothing new.

I'm pretty sure that by day's end, we're all on the same side - managing stress, trying to achieve balance, striving as best we can to be be good, happy, well-adjusted peeps.

I mean, right?

GGC

*It was late last night when I started this post, anyway.

Sunday Snaps

I thought it might be cool to start a collection of memorable weekend moments. Too many of them fall in the couch cracks with the loose change and Cheerios. I'm hereby launching a weekly rescue mission. Feel free to join me.

Archer holds Fable on the porch, Sunday afternoon.

1. The way they love each other

is impossible to watch

with dry eyes.

2. He looked at me waiting

to give him the okay

to play in the rocks.

3. The man who sells me lettuce

at the market always smiles

when I have exact change.

3. She opened her hand

in her sleep and then closed it

tight around my finger.

5. It was the first time
we'd ever dressed up
for each other like that.

On our way to see La Traviata Saturday night.

GGC