Rebecca Relating

The life of the working mom is amazing.  Every day is a challenge of multi-tasking, where logistical success feels as sweet as any true win.  I experienced one such success today, then came home to bear witness to another.

At 10 am, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Beca, came by to visit me at my new office.  I was thrilled to see her!  Unfortunately, 15 minutes into our chat, I received a phone call from Baby Ari's daycare.  Ari was sick, and someone needed to pick him up.  I had an appointment at 3.30 PM with the CEO, the President and 2 other VPs to discuss a matter that involved one of the major reasons I was hired for this job, so I determined that that person who picked him up was not going to be me.

In a flurry of phone calls, I arranged the following:  (1) confirmed a doctor appointment at 12.15; (2) confirmed that my husband could do the pickup and doctor appointment; (3) confirmed that our emergency backup babysitter (whom I hadn't called in 3 months) could come over at 1 and take over from my husband; and (4) move my CEO meeting to noon so that I could leave by 4.30 to pick up my daughter and relieve the babysitter by 5.15.  10 minutes later, all 4 were accomplished.

Beca stared at me and said, "It's too bad that those types of skills don't get rewarded." 

"But they do," I answered.  How else would I generally be able to keep it together?

Later that night, after I attended an inspiring, empowering and also humbling meeting for a networking group to which I belong, and after I had relieved our night time babysitter, who covered for us in the evening while my husband made up for lost office time and I attended such networking event, I sat back and chilled out with a glass of wine (checking email and) watching my second-favorite reality show, "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll."

Sure enough, the contestant I had been rooting for, the MOM, won!  Every episode (granted, I missed most of them, but I can surmise this to be the case), they showed Mom Asia (age 18) admiring photos of her darling baby girl, telling the camera that it was her baby girl that was inspiring her to work hard and kick Pussycat Doll Ass.  Becoming a Pussycat Doll would elevate this single teenage mom from poverty to, if not riches, at least security.  And her daughter could have a kick ass future.  Go, Mom!

In the six years that I worked at my last job, I hired 5 people.  All of them were women, and 2 of them were moms.  One of the moms was the employee chosen to replace me when I left.  Let it be known:  MOMS MAKE GREAT EMPLOYEES!

Moms rule.  Go, Asia!  Go, me. 

After it bouncing around for about 3 months, I was finally tagged with the "5 Things You Don't Know About Me" Meme.  I am grateful to Pamela Hornik, as I do always enjoy writing about myself.

Hm.  I had a personal home page that was one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web (really) between 1995 and 1999, so I figured that most people knew a lot of things about me.  But these days, most people don't even know that I had a personal website in 1995, so here goes:

1.  I had a personal website that was one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web when it launched in 1995.  Back then, the web was only about personal expression, and there was no commercial presence on the web AT ALL.  Really.  Ask anyone.  The first website even to use advertising banners -- and that was what they looked like and were called back then -- was HotWired.com, and they launched ad banners after I launched my personal website.  The web was a very private place then.  There was Justin Hall, and me, and a few hundred other people.  There was HotWired and Suck (did you know that Suck was originally owned by Carl and Ed, and HotWired actually bought it from them?) and Bianca's SmutShack (not really smutty) (also bought by HotWired), and then Amazon.com.  Of course there was also Cyborganic, remember them?  Craigslist wasn't a website then.  It was a mailing list.  Oh wait, about me?  I had a website.  It looked like this: http://www.omino.com/~dom/personal.html .  Yes folks, that is like a MySpace site.  But I built it myself using a HTML writer and uploaded it with a FTP application, all in 1995 ff.

2.  When I quit my (prestigious) job as judicial law clerk to the Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995, my income dropped from like $65,000/year (which I thought was a lot back then) to, well, zero, as I launched my career in the Internet industry (why didn't anyone TELL me that SOME Internet companies actually paid their employees back then?).  As a result, I was audited by the IRS for the year 1995.  After all, I had gone for more than 2 years making an actual living as a lawyer after graduating from Harvard Law School, and then my income went down to zero, so they must have figured that I was hiding income.  As it turned out, I was not.  I showed up to the auditor with my PowerBook and clicked through my website (I had to use the files that were stored locally as wireless access didn't exist back then).  I tried to explain that my PowerBook ($2000) and all of its softwere did constitute business expenses that should be deductible, but the auditor didn't know what a PowerBook was, and didn't understand what software was, and didn't understand any business purpose for a WEBSITE, so ALL of those business deductions were disallowed.

Question to any accountants out there:  can't I please go back to them and claim my business deductions?  12 years later, the IRS knows that websites serve business purposes, right?

3. I attended Burning Man 6 times.  This wouldn't really be so cool if I didn't specify which years:  1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.  The first and second year I went, everyone knew everyone else.  It was a close-knit community and didn't feel anonymous, but did feel uninhibited.  It also felt a bit scary. GUNS, yes guns, were allowed, as were motorcycles, and there seemed to be planes landing all over the place, so as you walked around, you literally had to watch out for (1) bullets, (2) motorcycles and (3) planes landing on you.  It was a surreal week for people who loved to build very elaborate art projects then enjoy burning them all down.  As Burning Man grew bigger and bigger, I started to enjoy it less.  I very personally grateful that I was at the right moment in time to enjoy this strange phenomenon while it was still so personal.  Of course, had I been a decade younger, I would have missed B-Man but instead, I probably would have been picked to be on The Apprentice.  Ah well.

4. I was on both the Math Team and Cheerleading Squad in high school, and I actually did a much better job at Math Team than I did at Cheerleading.  At least, I didn't get kicked out of Math Team.  Well actually, I wasn't really kicked out of cheerleading either ... I just wasn't very good at the non-cheering aspects, like decorating the boys' lockers.  To this day I am lousy at decorating and always seek to have others decorate for me.  Meanwhile, I am still very good at math, which is happily something that my daughter shares!  What other 3 year old do you know that answer the question "How old are you?" with "Three and five-sixths, but I need to tell you three and three-quarters because that is easier."  Oh yes, back to me.

5. When I was in 8th grade or so, I was selected as one of the top 10 young writers of the _country_ by Glamour Magazine (or was it Teen?), but the reward involved spending a summer with the magazine and away from my summer camp, so I turned it down.  This outraged my writing teacher, who had championed me to the magazine, and baffled others in my midst.  It was funny, because a very similar thing happened on the wonderful but short-lived TV Series, "Freaks and Geeks" to the lead teen character, who basically was a version of me.  I was convinced she would take the academic summer, but my husband knew that she would choose following the Grateful Dead to her academic prize.  Then my parents reminded me that I did the same thing.  Ironic thing is that I did end up writing for a living (if you can call it that) between 1995 and 1999 or so, and I still dream of writing a novel that gets turned into a feature movie and then converted into a Broadway Musical.  DAMN YOU, LEGALLY BLONDE!  That was MY story of Harvard Law School.

Now to tag someone else.  I'll keep it to the www.vox.com and www.svmoms.com  universe to keep it simple:  My husband Curtis Smolar, my dear friend Beca Leckman.  Zornitza.  Jill Asher.  Andrew Anker, you must have done this already?   (If so, I'll try more!) 

I am obsessed with the iPhone.  I must have it!

Curtis was quoted about the iPhone today.  My husband is not just cute - he's also clever!

http://blogs.business2.com/beta/2007/01/cisco_sues_appl.html

Just the other day I was walking quickly down 24th Street, the main drag in the cozy San Francisco suburban-type neighborhood in which I live, Noe Valley, and I saw Kati Kim.  She had bright red hair and an adorable preschooler attached to her leg, and I smiled at her and said hello.  I knew I knew her, and I figured that I would remember how I knew her as I continued to walk down the street, and it took me only a few paces to piece it together: this was Kati Kim, the now famous young mother who lost her husband to the snow during a horribly tragic car ride down from Oregon to San Francisco.

Kati Kim is a neighbor of mine.  When I heard on my Noe Valley and San Francisco Mothers' Groups email lists that she and her family were missing, I pieced together who she was and how I had run into her a few times in our neighborhood parks.  Her older daughter is just a little older than my daughter, and her younger daughter is not too much younger than my son.  She owns two local shops which I have patronized and her husband was a reviewer (my former profession) for CNet and TechTV, my former employer.  Kati and her family were caught in the snow in her Saab Station Wagon - one of the safest cars on the road, and, not surprisingly, the exact same family car we drive.  And we too have been known to take road trips up and down highway 5.

Clearly I am not alone in finding myself somewhat of a soul sister to now widowed Kati Kim.  Her story struck a nerve in so many people in my neighborhood and industry that I can barely mention her name to fellow mothers at work or home without knowing that I was forcing them into the uncomfortable state of fighting back tears that I have found myself in too often as well.   It is just such a horrifying story -- family trying to make it back home on the freeway, misses the turnoff, gets caught in the snow, runs out of food, barely stays alive -- with such a tragic (father dies while going out for help) yet inspiring (mother kept both children alive by breastfeeding them) ending that the fact that it strikes so close to home is almost not even necessary for it to have such profound impact.   I can't imagine what this ordeal must have been like for Kati.  And I certainly don't want to.  And now her brave, selfless, heroic husband is gone.   The unfairness is deafening.

As readers of my posts will see, I tend to get way too caught up in my petty concerns.  Seeing and thinking about Kati helps keep my perspective.  This holiday season I will be giving money to the James Kim Memorial Fund www.jamesandkati.com.  Please consider joining me.

One of my first posts here (and my first post to www.svmoms.com) was about the insanity of a person spending $1000 on a stroller (unless that person, of course, like my across-the-street neighbor, has so much money that she doesn't know what to do with it).  So one would think that I would have gotten all of my Bugaboo Stroller issues out of my system.

Not the case.

Here's my latest gripe:  out of the kindness of my heart, to be generous, I gave four of my best and most expensive baby gear items -- including the $120 Fisher Price cradle aquarium swing, a bouncy seat, a Jumperoo and an exersaucer -- to a friend of mine because I somehow got the idea that this friend didn't have a lot of spare money lying around to buy these expensive baby items for herself.  After all, she and her husband had just purchased a tenancy-in-common in a not-fancy neighborhood of the City along with another couple, and the rumors were that the other couple was covering some additional expenses (and taking the larger unit) in order to help them out.   Then, I saw said friend of mine at a fundraiser recently sporting -- you guessed it!! -- a brand new bright orange Bugaboo stroller, complete with accessories and bassinet attachment (Price Tag: $1000.00).

Meanwhile, one of two the genuinely not-wealthy women, a mother-daughter team, who come to our house to clean every Tuesday and Friday is now pregnant, and I would have really liked to have given her those items instead.  So now I'm scouring my house to come up with remotely equally as generous items to give to my cleaning lady.  I already filled a bag with bottles, nipples, pacifiers, etc., and found a bassinet to give her, but I really would have loved to give her that aquarium swing or the Jumperoo.  After all, she could use it a lot more badly than a person who obviously has enough extra cash to fork over $1000 for a stroller.

An unrelated Bugaboo anecdote:  I really love it when I see posts on Mom's lists like the one I saw the other day.  It went something like this:

"For sale - Prince Lionheart cup holder, bought new at Day One for $14, selling for $5, never used.  Warning: doesn't fit Bugaboo strollers!"

I got a tip for you, honey:  It's gonna take a LOT of $5 cup holder sales to regain the $1000 you plunked down for your overpriced baby buggy.

(I posted this to www.svmoms.com first this time!)

For the first time in a LONG time, it's day after Election Day, and I'm not disappointed.  I'm PSYCHED!  Most psyched of all is the fact that my very own beloved Representative, for whom I have loyally campaigned and voted, is now going to be SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE!  And she's a WOMAN!  AND A MOM! 

The best part about this is the way that the Republicans attempted to defeat her.  They aligned Nancy Pelosi with so-called "San Francisco Values" and cautioned, "Do we really want the country -- and world -- to be governed by San Francisco Values?"

Apparently, the answer is YES:  we DO want the country to be governed by San Francisco Values.

I know I sure do.  I live in San Francisco, and I love San Francisco Values.  I have San Francisco Values.  I am San Francisco Values. 

What are San Francisco Values?  San Francisco values include respect for each person as an individual, regardless of sexual orientation (this upsets the right wing the most).  They include valuing diversity and embracing difference.  They involve relishing innovation and encouraging entrepreneurism.  They involve intellectual curiousity and questioning the status quo.  They involve disruptive philosophies, technologies and governments.  And they involve the love of the environment, nature and the indescribable natural beauty that surrounds us. 

Sure, San Francisco has its traditional conservative element as well, and I like that too. San Francisco has solid cultural institutions, museums, ballet, symphony, fancy shmantzy black tie events like the one I attended at the Plaza Hotel the other week to hear Justice Anthony Kennedy (a Californian) speak.  It has some of the world's best academic institutions -- Stanford University, UC-Berkeley and UCSF -- within minutes of the downtown.  It has some of the world's renown doctors, bio-medical engineers, scientists, technologists and inventors.  It has numerous Nobel Prize Winners, Pullitzer Prize Winners, Caldecott Prize Winners and McArthur Foundation Grant Recipients.   It has more artists and engineers, as well as engineers-who-are-artists, then perhaps any other metroplitan locale.  For people who want to invent something, or reinvent themselves, the San Francisco Bay Area is the place to go.

Its restaurants aren't bad either!

I'm proud to be a supporter of and contributor to San Francisco values.  And I celebrate the victory of these values in yesterday's election. 

After all, Nancy Pelosi is not only an advocate of San Francisco values, she is also a direct beneficiary.  Without the types of values that arise in a place like the San Francisco Bay Area, we couldn't have dreamed of what happened today, the day when a woman and a mother will FINALLY  take her rightful place as the third most powerful politician in the world's first most powerful government.

It's a day to go down in history.  Thank you, voters. Thank you!

My family of four operates at ground zero for mutating germs searching for hosts.  We have two children in two separate full day child care programs located in two very different parts of the city and occupied by two very different sets of germ-carrying populations.  If that is not enough, my husband and I work in two separate cities – San Francisco and San Jose – a full 60 miles from each other, with co-workers who carry completely distinct sets of anti-bodies.  Not surprisingly, there are probably three days each year where one of us is not harboring some sort of virus, flu or bacterial infection. 

But that doesn’t stop me from operating in denial.  Right now, thank you very much, it is conjunctivitis.  I was knee deep in goop and crust and at a Halloween event in lovely Marin, of places, before I broke down and finally admitted that we – the Smolar-Eisenberg family unit – is under attack by a nasty bacterium.

Do I need to describe conjunctivitis to you?  It’s another word for pink eye, but as far as I’m concerned, it should really be called green goop.  Green goop in eyes, crust on eyelashes, yuck YUCK yuck.  First Ari had it, then I got it.  Curtis feels it coming on. We already dropped off the prescription in advance of Elan’s symptoms.

What is particularly not fun, like this time, is when we pass the illnesses back and forth among us like some sort of warped game of hot potato.  We think it is gone, but NOPE, it’s back again, and worse than ever.  The germs tend to cycle through me and the kids for a bit, then we think they are gone, then Curtis gets it worse than all three of us combined.

Since I don’t have much of a silver lining about our germ situation, I am trying to find a way to monetize this.  If you are a graduate student in biology, looking for a great observational environment to witness mutating germs and futile human attempts to combat them, contact me.  I’ll rent you my life for a few days.

I just posted this to www.svmoms.com (read it there too!):