Category Archive

A girl on my team at work just returned from maternity leave.  The other day I was marveling at how easy of a time she seems to be having with it, and that’s when I stopped myself as I rehashed my experience…

When I returned from maternity leave, I worked Monday through Thursday, and then had to work 12 hour shifts Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Reno River Festival.  I then had to go right back to work the following Monday, so I worked 12 days in a row without a break.  One of those days was my first Mother’s Day (I’m still bitter about that, as I worked a booth at an event where mothers and their children came in droves).  I can’t tell you how hard it was to return to such a grueling schedule after spending three months of uninterrupted time with my baby.  I physically ached for her presence.

Anyway, about a week after that 12 day stint, I fell while walking with Little Miss in the Bjorn, and she ended up having to get surgery on her fractured septum.  She then had sinus infections for about a month after that, and couldn’t sleep through the night because she couldn’t breathe.

So yeah, I guess I had a hard time, and I’m now realizing that my experience wasn’t normal as I watch what it’s SUPPOSED to be like. 

That’s all.  Just had to vent.  Hopefully next time around, I’ll have one of those normal experiences returning to work.

And so starts my hell day, as I am project managing a huge event at work today.  There is a knot in my stomach, and I’m keeping my sights set on 5:00 when it will all be over.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Last night, a friend and I took our 2 year olds (OK, Little Miss is a few months shy of that) to Jump Man Jump, which is basically a warehouse filled with bounce houses, inflatable slides and an inflatable obstacle course.  It was fun watching Little Miss’s reaction as we combined one of her favorite playmates with one of her favorite activities.

We had a blast, and I have to send out kudos to Jump Man Jump for having open play hours in the evening so that us working moms can participate in the fun.  I can’t tell you how many cool activities for moms and tots go on during the day in the work week, so I was thrilled to have this opportunity.

It also turned out to be a good workout for Mom, as I jumped up and down like a little kid and scrambled through the obstacle course with Little Miss.  Her playmate was much more adept, and he ended up lapping her several times as she made her way through the course.

It has been challenging now with the time change and cooler weather to find activities that are fun for Little Miss (besides going to the grocery store — woo!).  I think we’ll be frequenting this place throughout the winter. 

And I’m also thinking this could be a really fun team building exercise for my group at work.  Especially if they’d let us go to happy hour beforehand! 

Here is a pic of me with the two munchkins on a huge inflatable slide.

I returned to work today, after being mostly healed from Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (I have spots where the blisters were, but I think the contagiousness is over).  One of my coworkers decorated my cube with signs that say, “CAUTION: ENTER AT OWN RISK!  HIGHLY CONTAMINATED AREA!”  She then sprinkled antiseptic wipe packages and latex gloves all throughout my cube.  It made me chuckle, and made leaving my Lazy Boy, which had been my working station for the past three days, a bit easier today.  Most days this week, I didn’t get out of my pajamas until well into the afternoon.

I kept Little Miss home yesterday just so that we could spend some time together (well deserved after my travel last week).  She REALLY didn’t want to go to daycare today, and it tugged at my heart strings so much.  I have started to feel like perhaps I need some more work-life balance, in the form of reduced hours.  Either that, or I’m going to need to figure out how to split myself in two.

Yes, I am on my third bout with Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, thanks to my daughter being ever so generous with her daycare germs.  Little Miss has recovered nicely, and now I’m left battling the blisters on my hands, feet and in my mouth.  What fun!  I had a full blown case of this once a little over a year ago, another very slight outbreak a while later, and now, I have my second full blown case! 

So, I am working from home until the blisters subside.  I look like a leper, and my husband is definitely keeping his distance.  You should see him squirm when I pretend like I’m going to touch him.  If he teases me, I say, “watch out, or I’ll give you one big kiss and grope you with my blistery hands.”

Sexy, isn’t it?! 

The end is in sight.  I’m in the fourth day of all day meetings and all night dinners (lasting until almost 11pm).  I have been meeting with people from all across the world.  Just last night at dinner, I sat with a Canadian living in Singapore, a Russian, a Britt, people from Ireland and an Australian.  I’ve met a guy from Yugoslavia, and people from Japan, Mexico and Ireland.  It makes for interesting dinner conversation, that’s for sure.  I think I’m getting better and understanding all of these accents.

So Little Miss is on the mend, and I can’t wait to see her when I get home.  It was a hard week to be away, and our reunion will be that much sweeter.

This afternoon, I think a few of us are going to downtown Seattle to actually enjoy ourselves a bit before the flight out late tonight.  Lord knows we deserve it!

I just put my non-existant infant on a wait list for a daycare.

How insane is that?  I’ve been trying to get Little Miss into another daycare since February.  I called last week to check on her status on the list, and was told that we’re at least another year from getting into that daycare.  I then asked how long the list was for infants.

“Basically, if someone gets on the list when they’re pregnant, we can usually get the child in by the time they’re three years old,” was the response.

That is just out of control.  Anyone want to open a daycare in Reno?!  Anyway, I got to thinking…  We do plan on having a second child, and it would be best to have both kids in the same daycare, and I do hope to have that second child within the next three years, so I should get on their list.

I called and lied, saying I was pregnant, so that I could get on their list.  I even had to tell them my due date, which had me fumbling a bit.  So Baby Bellin, the child who is only a twinkle in his/her parents eyes right now is on a daycare list.  That thought has me shaking my head in disbelief, but I really think that’s what needed to be done.

And you should have seen my reaction recently when a co-worker, who is 8 months pregnant, told me she kept meaning to get on daycare lists, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  I think my eyes about popped out of my head.   

On to another hot topic for me from last week’s Women’s Conference, flexible work.  I swear almost every session I was in touched on work life balance, and the flexible work concept ripped my eyes open to the fact that it is possible to still have a rewarding, upwardly mobile career while working either reduced hours or in a job share. 

Two of the speakers that floored me the most were women in executive management, reporting into a Vice President of my super huge software company, and THEY WERE IN A JOB SHARE.  I always assumed that job sharing would mean that you were in a lower, more administrative position, but these women were in a strategic leadership position, managing an entire team of people in a job share.  It blew my mind.

The way they worked it was by not splitting up tasks, but by splitting up their commitments (formal commitments you make to your company about what you will accomplish).  They meet every day for at least 30 minutes, and stay abreast on what the other is doing so that either one of them can act as a single point of contact for that role.  WOW.  That is so inspiring. 

There were also a few presenters that were working reduced hours.  One woman had been working 20 hours per week for the past 10 years, and had even managed to get promoted in that time frame.  She said the key was that you do the same high quality work, but just less of it.  For example, if you’re a project manager, you’ll still manage projects, just have less of them.  Great concept! 

Telework and flex-time were other concepts discussed, as there were mothers saying that they flex their schedule so that they can be home when their kids get off of school, so they work some time from home.  The key to that, they said, is that you be available via email or cell phone at all times for any specific questions.  I think that’s a fair trade-off for being able to step out of the traditional 8-5 and be able to be there for your family when you want to be.

The fact is that women make up a significant part of the workforce, and if companies restrict them to rigid work hours without flexibility, they will lose those women.  My company is taking steps to address the needs of these women, which is so encouraging.  It might take a while to bring that philosophy to the Reno office, but at least I know that when I want that kind of situation, I have a good business case, and proven examples of this working at the corporate headquarters.

As for dealing with the guilt that all working mothers struggle with, we were told to set your priorities and stick to them.  This has worked for me, as I clearly draw the line when I’m at home, I’m done with work and I’m 100% tuned into my family.  Although my time with my daughter is limited by me working right now, I make sure that the time I spend with her is really high quality – no TV, no telephone, and a lot of one on one attention. 

And when you’re at work, focus on getting your work done at the same high quality as it always has been, and you can prove to your management that flexible work can be a win-win arrangement.

Do any of you out there have flexible work arrangements that you can share?  This is really an inspiring topic for me, and I’d love to keep the discussion going.

I know last Friday I promised you all kinds of great content from the Women’s Conference I attended last week.  Well, then life got in the way.  The whole month of October was a blur, as I traveled every other week and the weeks I wasn’t traveling, I was struggling to catch up at home and at work.

And now I’m staring at my notes with such great content, but wondering how to slice and dice it for all of you so that it makes sense. 

We’ll start with Women and Finances, as that was a big topic of discussion.  The first speaker I’ll discuss was Lois P. Frankel, author of Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich.  She started off her talk asking the audience what were the messages we received about money as we were growing up.  Some of those were:

• Men take care of the finances (because they’re good with numbers, and women aren’t)
• We’re taught to be nice girls, and to have people like us (if women are powerful, they are called a B-I-T-C-H, where as powerful men are called successful)
• Don’t have uncomfortable conversations (such as those about money)
• If you work hard, you will be rewarded
• Don’t worry about your education, your income will be “extra”

And the key is that now most women are working outside of the household, and it’s time for us to stop being NICE and to start managing our finances.  We need to stop saving our money and start INVESTING it.  We need to have the goal of being rich, which is defined as having all the money you need to live the life you want, free from concerns about money.

Another big topic she covered is that women are by nature caretakers.  Women tend to go into nurturing professions, which include teaching, nursing, etc, and notice that those are the most underpaid professions.  She asked the audience how many of us were told that we should be teachers, and almost everyone raised their hands.  She then asked how many of our brothers were told to be teachers, and almost no one raised their hands.  I’m not saying that teaching isn’t an honorable profession, just pointing out how women tend to be socialized to take lower paying positions. 

And why are those care giving professions so underpaid?!  It is wrong, as where would our society be without teachers and nurses?  We need to start standing up and demanding that those people get more pay.

She also talked a lot about socializing today’s girls, noting that at 13, they tend to “dumb down” because that’s what they believe they need to do to get people to like them.  We need to teach them to save, to give back through philanthropy, the difference between wants/needs, and we need to have open conversations with them about the household finances. 

That leads into a second speaker, Valerie Morris, a former CNN correspondent, who recommended that teenagers should sit down with you when you pay bills so that they can see how much money is required on a monthly basis to keep the lifestyle you enjoy.  That is a huge concept to me, as we never talked about money much in my household.  (Not to say my parents did it wrong, as they instilled a very healthy philosophy of money within all of their kids).  I’m just saying that this is a new generation, and one way to combat this culture of greed that seems to be overcoming tweens and teens these days is to teach them openly about finances.

She said that at retirement age, 90% of women will be responsible for their own financial well being, and that the average age of widow-hood in the US is 55.

WOW.  I sure hope to God that doesn’t happen, but I had no idea about that statistic.  It does make a case for women to make sure they are financially secure for themselves, and not just relying on their husbands.  She was actually talking about leadership, and said that every day we lead, and for many of us, we are leading our children.  Teaching our children about finances is our own act of leadership.  She suggested that you start teaching children about finances at age 3, giving them four piggie banks:  one for college, one for something special, one for giving/philanthropy, and things you want. 

She said that you teach your children about needs and wants by telling them that parents will cover their needs (clothes, food, etc.), and they will pay out of their piggie banks for their wants (parents can contribute if they think it’s appropriate).  But importantly, there should be a philanthropy component in everything we do — as adults and children. 

She then said that we give our children two gifts — roots and wings.  The wings are the harder gift to give.  But the biggest gift of all that we can give our children is our own financial independence in retirement (otherwise, it will be a huge burden to them).  As for the trend of 20 somethings returning to their parents’ houses after college, she stressed that at age 20, you’re “off the payroll”, and if they return home, they need to be paying rent, for food, and to have a plan for getting out on their own.  Because all those adult children are doing by returning to the nest is spending their parents money that should have been theirs for retirement.

I hope some of my rambling made sense to you.  I came out of these sessions feeling thankful for the way I was raised, as my parents truly taught all their kids a sound financial philosophy, and I have some great ideas now for teaching my daughter about finances in this ever changing world.  I feel a bit more armed against those marketers that are just waiting to target her with their ads, toys, etc.  I’m also committed to more actively manage my 401K and savings accounts.

Edited to add:  Another thing that Lois P. Frankel said is that women are socialized to think they aren’t good at math.  The truth is that girl’s brains don’t develop to start comprehending advanced math until 11th or 12th grade.  We need to be teaching our girls math in a way that works for them, and advancing those teachings when appropriate.  It’s something to keep in mind as our daughters enter the education system.  I know I struggled a lot with math, and I think a lot of that was my attitude towards it.  And the ironic part is that I deal with math on a DAILY basis, both at work and at home.