People I never thought I’d be

25 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Education, food, Technically Pretty, Wider world

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I spent the first part of this week in Tampa for work. I had not yet unpacked my suitcase from the LAST business trip I was on (Minnesota) before I had to pack for this one. It was my third business trip in about 8 weeks. I felt – as I went through the well practiced shoes-laptop-liquids process – like a jaded road warrior.

Tampa did have some advantages over Minnesota

Tampa did have some advantages over Minnesota

I remember my first few times flying – Boston to Seattle in college – when I stared horrified a the people blowing off the whole “in case of emergency, your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device” speech. Didn’t these people care about their lives? I pitied them their calcified ways – eyes on the Harvard Business Review as this remarkable patchwork of humanity is exposed below them. Do they not know that their flight represents the wildest fantasy – never to be obtained – of generations of humanity? How can they so casually close the window and catnap?

Yeah. During the safety notification, I check to see which is my nearest exit. I wonder if there is anyone, anywhere who doesn’t know how to buckle their seatbelt. Then I open Harvard Business Review (ok, actually it’s usually a fashion magazine for a Technically Pretty fashion magazine review). I still like the window seat, and I still try to spot my house/college/guess-the-big-city as I fly, but the magic is indeed gone.

The training I took was on Pragmatic Marketing. Why I needed this training was a story for another day. It was excellent training – well delivered, thought-provoking, very educational. But there were a lot of identity-crisis moments for me in it. Here was I: liberal arts major, lover of medieval literature, classical musician, backpacker, mother, role-playing-gamer-who-wishes-she-could-talk-her-gaming-group-into-dungeons-and-dragons, baseball-lover, programmer, technical architect… in a marketing class. The word marchitecture was extensively and non-ironically used.

I learned a lot of extremely interesting things I had never previously imagined knowing, but wondered to find myself in such a place under such circumstances.

I am – at this moment – sitting at Chuck E Cheese. I know – I’m breaking form. Usually my now-weekly posts are written at the YMCA during basketball practice. But today Grey and Lincoln have a video game playdate, which would not be nearly as fun if the “little brother” was present. So I told the little brother type person to name his entertainment, and for two hours it would be his. He picked the rathole.

I’m lurking on a local wifi network (seriously, Chuck E, how can you not have wifi). I have a GREAT idea for a new type of business… imagine a big central play area for kids from 3 – 10 years of age. A big, bouncy-housed arcade. Imagine seating around the sides – maybe raised – with great visibility of the play areas. Maybe there would even be closed circuit cameras covering the blind spots. Then imagine this seating around the edge was a mix of 4 – 6 person tables and one to two person locations. There would be a light appetizers and drink service to the grownup section. There would be great wifi, tons of power, comfortable seats, lower noise (low enough that a phone call would be plausible) and someone at the door (like they have at Chuck E’s) to make sure there are no small person escapees.

Work-from-home parents and folks like me would come with our laptops, offer our kids some great exercise/fun (maybe with their friends). We could either catch up on our work/personal digital lives, or come with our friends (who are increasingly the parents of our children’s friends) and catch up on the latest together. It would be awesome. Maybe there could be a per hour (or per day) fee, or you could sign up for a monthly membership. Maybe they’d even mix in some enrichment activities, like sports/activities.

They’d rake it in, I tell you.

I find the process of being no longer young continues to surprise me on a regular basis. My latest “get off my lawn!” moment happened last weekend. I was making some pies. Now, you must understand that I know how to make pie. I was running some quick calculations in my head, and I figure I’ve made between 100 – 120 pies in my lifetime. Every single one of those pies was made with the same recipe, inherited from my grandmother, which is hard to make but deliciously flaky.

Then, a few years ago, Crisco changed its recipe in response to the backlash against transfats. As far as I can tell, Crisco was all trans fats. This pie crust recipe that my grandmother passed down to me is entirely made of Crisco. It took me a while to eat through the old pie starter and Crisco I had. But then I started having trouble. I blamed it on all sorts of things: not enough flour on the pastry crust, too much shortening in the pie starter, not cold enough, too much water, not enough water. Finally though, very tired on a Friday night and working on pie 2 of 6, I finally realized that it just. Wasn’t. Working. For the first time ever, I actually got a pie crust so bad I couldn’t make it work and I had to throw it out. (That was a pie crust that ACTUALLY didn’t have enough water.) Dawning realization hit: it wasn’t me. I wasn’t making a mistake. It was the pie crust. It was unworkable. Crisco ruined my recipe.

Depressed, I turned to America’s Test Kitchen and made a shortening-and-butter crust that came out much, much better. But I had that “Why do they go “improving” perfectly good things and ruining the way I’ve always done them?” I mean, in this case I understood. Transfats = bad for health. But a tie that went back to the early 20th century, and my bright-eyed great-grandmother, was just severed. I mourn its loss. As I move from youth to middle age, I better see the costs – not just the benefits – of the inexorable march of progress. I know how things once were (through the rosy tinted spectacles of youth, of course) and lament their loss. My sons will never learn to roll a pie crust using Grandma Finley’s recipe (unless some enterprising entrepreneur brings back the classic formulation – you never know.)

My grandma’s caramel corn recipe requires corn syrup and brown sugar. Perhaps I’d better make it while I can!

Leaning In

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Deep Thoughts

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Leaning on each other

Leaning on each other

I just finished reading Sheryl Sandburg’s “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead”. If you have been living under a rock for the last two weeks, the COO of Facebook has written about what she’s learned in the course of becoming a leader of a Fortune 500 company; specifically, regarding what she’s learned about gender in that journey. For her troubles, she’s been roundly criticized and excoriated in the media. However, I found this book extremely useful, tactical and eye opening.

One of the key criticisms waged against the book is that it is written from a too-privileged position. Sheryl went to Harvard. She studied under Tim Geithner in grad school. Oprah was a cheerleader for her as she wrote the book. It’s soooooo a book written from the point of view of a woman who started with all the advantages (although she is definitely aware and explicit that she knows she’s in the minority of women).

The point is this: if Harvard-educated, brilliant, fully-advantaged women are still struggling to break through to leadership positions in corporate America, what chance does a Latina from the barrio have? And how COULD Sheryl really write about her experience as an under-privileged girl with the same accomplishments, when that’s not her story? It just wouldn’t be true, or authentic. Sheryl wrote the book she could, and did it well. And we don’t necessarily HAVE women in a fully privilege-neutral position to write a book about becoming a corporate success. If we don’t have women like Sheryl to help us negotiate through our stagnation in progress, we won’t ever get that Latina leader.

I learned a lot from this well-researched book. For instance, pointing to that trouble breaking through to leadership, “A 2007 study of Harvard Business School alumni found that while men’s rates of full-time employment never fell below 91 percent, only 81 percent of women who graduated in the early 2000s and 49 percent of women who graduated in the early 1990s were working full time.” (Leaning in, Loc. 1458)

You don’t go to Harvard Business School in order to not work, but yet a majority of the women who graduated from this elite school were not working full time 20 years later. These are not women who always wanted to stay at home with the kids – these are women who WANTED to be titans of industry, and who were qualified to be. But they’re not there. Sheryl’s book illustrated why they aren’t, and gives personal and systemic advice on what needs to change so that more of the men who might want to be home with their kids and more of the women who might want to make a run for leadership can do so.

Here are my key take-aways, from the many useful insights I got from reading this book:

Don’t borrow trouble.
The whole title of her book is about women looking waaaaay forward and thinking that maybe if they get that promotion and then if they have kids then maybe it will be too hard for them to balance it all. So they don’t ask for promotions when they’re in their 20s because they’re afraid they won’t be able to make it work if they succeed. I recognize this pattern. It plays into the fear and self-doubt that many women wrestle with. “What will I do if this works?” can be a terrifying question to ask – in part because we don’t see very many role models of professional, leading women who live a life we want to have. (Aside: my CEO in a recent article said that his secret interview question is “Who is your role model?” This made me awfully glad that he didn’t interview me, because I can’t think of a woman in history who offers me a role I’d want to follow. Many of the successful ones were unhappy or tragic. The best I can come up with is Sacajawea.)

Anyway, this fear that success will compromise our long term happiness, families and marriage causes many women to “lean back” in their careers instead of leaning in. That would be bad enough if happened when women actually WERE trying to balance kids and work, but it’s made worse because the young 20-something women who just WANT marriage and families are already curtailing their careers, in advance.

Put up your hand.
So last time I talked to my boss’s boss, I talked about my desire to get Java training and to stay strong technically. Why do I want to stay strong technically? Because I want to be in a position to be a highly-respected technical leader in my company. I deeply value coming up through engineering, instead of the traditionally female-oriented fields like marketing or HR. So I want the technical chops to lead a development team, or even become a CIO some day. Did I tell my boss’s boss that second part? No. I just told him that I wanted Java training. He probably thought I was leadership-phobic and wanted to stay in the code trenches. (Many programmers do.) But I was afraid that if I laid out my ambitions I would sound, well, ambitious.

Sheryl mentions over and over again that women’s strategies of being excellent and waiting to be noticed are not working. Often, men put themselves forward for positions, while women work hard and hope someone notices. This is – straight up – less effective. She doesn’t blame women for their reluctance, though. She cites several studies where equally qualified women who behave in exactly the same manner as men are viewed much more negatively. Women quickly discover that being assertive is unpopular, with both men and women audiences. So instead she offers tactical, negotiating advice for how women can do this while not evoking negative stereotypes.

Another element playing into this has to do with women’s “by the bookness”. We don’t think we’re qualified, so we don’t try. “An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements.” So put your hand up even if you’re not sure you know the answer.

Ask for what you need.
This can be so hard. When you are the first lactating mother in the company and need room to pump, when you need to be home in time to pick up the kids every night, when you need to spend a week a month with your ailing parents… it can seem easier just to drop out or dial back than to assert that you are worth accommodation. I learned this one myself. My first pregnancy, I meekly accepted unpaid leave, and came back after two months, half-apologetic for having had a baby. I worked nearly two weeks after my due date, and only stopped coming into the office after my colleagues got too uncomfortable with my ticking-time-bombness. I felt like any weakness would be an excuse to disregard me. With my second baby, a few months before I was due I set up a 1:1 with the CEO. I told him that I was planning on taking three months this time, and that I would like for those three months to be paid. He said “Sure!” I didn’t even have to deploy the long list of reasons I had carefully outlined for why he should listen to me. I just had to ask him. But it is so terrifying to anticipate the “no”, that often we just skip the asking part and assume the “no”. Our bosses are not psychic. Often, they haven’t lived through the challenges we’re experiencing. If we don’t let them know what we need to be productive, we won’t get it.

A few things I didn’t have much trouble with…

I’m not pretending that I have a model career of supreme accomplishment, but I have made a ton of progress in the last three years. I’m now working in a very rewarding, stimulating environment where I’m respected, and where I provide significant value. I’m really happy at work – which has not always been the case – and it’s entirely possible that the key issues that I have inadvertently NOT had to deal with are a portion of the reason why.

Pick the right partner.
Sheryl says the #1 most important career choice women can make is in their partner. I think she may very well be right, and I think I picked very well indeed. My husband and I have always had a “we both win” competition to see who could earn more. This was probably more on my side than his but… we should earn about the same amount. We are in the same field, educated at the same institution to the same level, with similar work experiences, relatively similar skill sets (they’ve started diverging in the last three years), and similar work ethics. I was a year behind, so I did start at a disadvantage, but that should have evened out after a few years. Instead, it took me nearly 11 years to catch up to him. Then, in the 12th year, I passed him. There are men for whom this would be a threat to their identity, where in order to keep peace in the marriage a woman would have to earn less, or pretend she earned less, or … something. But because I picked the right partner, he was like, “Rock on! Does this mean I can stay at home now?” (Well, not really. He loves his job too.) But my husband would move for my job (if the opportunity was right), dial back on his schedule, pause his growth… in order to let me excel.

So far, we haven’t had to pick primary vs. secondary careers – we’ve been lucky. But I was able to interview for a promotion once because he said that he would do what was needed in his career to facilitate mine, even if that meant moving to Germany. (I didn’t end up getting it. But I think I was seen more positively because I tried for it!) If I am successful in my career, it will be in large part because my husband has my back.

Sit at the table
I think I missed the cultural gender education on this one. I’ve always sat at the table – preferably at the front. I’ve always been incapable of staying silent during a heated discussion. I’ve rarely been shut up because someone interrupted me. I think my life-long interest in male-dominated occupations has required me to give up this deferential attitude: you can’t hang back when you’re the solo trumpet player. I’ve experienced less of the negative side-effects that Sheryl says accompanies women who sit in the front. Or perhaps I just experienced them early (band and wood shop were not what you would call idyllic for me from a social perspective). I sit at the table every time. And perhaps that has helped – just a little – get me where I am today.

Be well-liked AND respected
There are lots of studies that say highly qualified, assertive women are considered unlikeable and hard to work with. I am highly qualified and assertive. So following this logic, I should be unpopular at work. But, well, I’m not. I just had my annual review, and it was called out explicitly that I get along well with others. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this. Maybe I work for an exceptionally progressive company? Maybe some element of my personality has mitigated this effect? Maybe my real interest in and enjoyment of other people makes it hard to not like me? (It’s harder to dislike someone who likes you!) Or maybe that qualified and ambitious part of me is well hidden. I don’t think I have any advice on this one; only a grateful shrug of the shoulders that this stereotype has so far passed me by.

To sum up:

  • Thanks, Sheryl, for writing this. Let’s lean together against the doors and open them wider so more of our sisters can join us in board rooms, and more of our brothers can join us in the PTA.
  • You should read this book. If you are a woman, you should read it to better understand the choices, motivations and precedents so that you can make informed decisions about your career and life. If you are a man, you should read it to better understand YOUR decisions as well, and to have more insight into the challenges that face the women you work with (and live with). If you do not work with women, you truly truly need to read it because you have a problem you need to fix. You are missing 50% of the talent you could have.
  • Sheryl’s goal, that I think most of us can get behind, is for all of us who HAVE choice because of our background and education, to truly be able to choose the route we want to take, instead of the route prescribed to us by our gender. It is worth calling out that we also need to ensure that a larger percentage of people HAVE a choice. For many people, there is no career and no “should I stay home or should I become a manager” decision, there is only unremitting labors to get food on the table every day. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we ALL had choices, and could all pick the best path based on our skills, desires and aptitude?

    • March Snow

    10 Sunday Mar 2013

    Posted by in Daily living

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    If there is anything a New Englander can learn about March, it is that suffering is finite. Here we are, in the middle of Lent, and the skies opened and dropped 16 inches on us Friday – a far cry from the predicted tally. It was a stark contrast to the “Shut everything down a day in advance” that we experienced with Nemo, though. My son’s school was closed. But Boston schools carried on. We all shrugged and went to work and pulled out our well worn shovels and started shoveling. But not the frantic, precise shoveling of January, where every snowflake promised a near-permanent constraint of movement for the remainder of winter. But a lackadaisical, good-enough attitude far from the typical dour perfectionism of New England.

    Not long after the last flake fell, the melt began. No matter how well or poorly you shoveled, the heat of the nearer sun wipes away the sin of a bad job like grace at Easter. The shlump of heavy snow falling persists. My sons wander around in shorts and tshirts to our various engagements, and I let them because it’s downright warm! Like 45 degrees! No matter the high drifts to left and right.

    Death, thou shalt die. And snow, thou shalt melt.

    In less existential news, I have been following the Four Hour Body diet with near-religious adherence for four and a half weeks. Many days, not so much as a stick of artificially flavored gum has passed my lips. I have waved away carbs and fruit. I got a gym membership, and have worked out with unusual consistency for me. I have eaten eggs and beans for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner.

    For my pains, I have… not lost any weight. It’s hard to tell, of course. There’s so much signal and noise with weight. Drink a huge glass of water, and you gain almost a pound. Weigh yourself in the morning and you’re down two pounds. But on my “cheat day” I weighed myself and my weight was back where it was when I started. After a full month, I consider this a sign that this diet does not work for me. Any of the modifications to the diet that I might try come back to calorie restriction PLUS food type restriction. In studies, 10+% of compliant participants fail to lose any weight. I suppose I simply have to acknowledge that I am in this minority and change methodologies.

    So I have to decide whether I really want to lose weight, and if so what different methodology I should use. I’m thinking pure and simple calorie restriction is probably the best choice.

    I’ve been travelling what feels like a lot for work lately. I was in Minnesota for two days last week. I found it particularly moving to watch the snow fall from a 20th story corner room. The city appeared and disappeared as the snow picked up, and the winds moved white drifts between the buildings. I found it hard to turn off the lights, remove my ability to see (contacts) and shut my eyes. It was fun to see the same storm twice.

    I’m headed out again for almost three days in another week. I’m hoping that’s it for a while! At least the next trip is training, and in Tampa.

    In other news, one son is reading. One son is building beautiful things with magnetic shapes. We have rejiggered our dining room to look like we live here and are not squatting in someone else’s house.

    And it is March. Both Easter and Spring will come soon, and wipe the snow and cold away. And we will walk with bright hearts under a hot sun again.

    Basketball

    02 Saturday Mar 2013

    Posted by in Deep Thoughts, Memories

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    My home jersey number was 12.

    My home jersey number was 12.

    I’m sitting on the wooden floor of a gym right now, listening to the distinctive percussion and squeaks of a basketball practice. The practicees in question are between 6 – 8 years of age. For many of them, it’s their first time with a basketball. Others can, with calm collection, make actual baskets on full height hoops. This is the tenth and final session – I’ve signed Msr. Grey up for another basketball session at the Y next session. But already I think he’s better than I was in Jr. High. He can dribble (kind of), pass (kind of) and shoot (kind of). He doesn’t know the rules of the game, but that will come.

    Depending on why, how and when you know me, it may come as a vast surprise to you that I played basketball. In fact, not only did I play basketball, I played at the State level. (A Very Big Deal, in case you’re from a more urban or non-American childhood.) I started Jr. High as a three sport “athlete”. I played volleyball, basketball and track – in addition to my rather extensive musical activities. With volleyball, I only lasted through jr high, although I was a line judge through high school – respected enough they brought me along when they went to state. With track, I ran the mile, the 100 meter high hurdles, the long jump, the triple jump and the relay. I was terrible at the running, and middle of the pack at the jumping. I lasted to sophomore year of high school. I was part of a state relay team, and was part of the handoff that dropped the baton. I took full responsibility.

    But I lasted longest in basketball, and liked it best.

    Lest my litany of athletic accomplishment make you think you have misjudged me, I promise you haven’t. I was a TERRIBLE athlete. None of it came naturally. I had no prior exposure to sports. I didn’t know even the most basic rules of sports games. Things that were part of the culture and nature of my peers had passed me by. I recall in a certain little league game, I skipped third base on a good hit because it seemed more efficient to run straight home. And although I was healthy and somewhat active, I was not at all athletic. I still am not at all athletic.

    But I think athletics taught me some of the most important lessons I learned in high school. First, it taught me how to be terrible at something I tried hard to do. I mostly did things that came easily to me. Academics were never my problem. Like most people I focused on things I was good at and convinced myself that things I was bad at were less important and less valuable. I think it’s very easy to put your head down, focus on your areas of competence and ignore your areas of weakness. It helped that a certain segment of society agreed that academics were more important than sports.

    But because my school was so very small (There were fewer than 120 kids in the high school. My graduating class was HUGE with 42. Two years prior, we’d graduated 28.), and so very athletic, there was somehow enough peer pressure or something to convince me to attempt to challenge my weakness, and study an area in which I was not interested. But with basketball, I was terrible. I had no natural advantages and several significant disadvantages. I couldn’t shoot, had ball handling skills worse than several of these kids I’m watching now, got tired running and generally struggled.

    But I practiced, and practiced. I played with the boys at lunch (to their vast chagrin). I ran the lines hard. I tried to force my uncompliant body shoot from the knees, follow-through, know the ball. I got playing time because the school was so small that everyone got playing time. I progressed from the worse player on the team to only the second worst player on the team. Despite my massive incompetence, there was a lot of pressure to sign up for the the team because – truly – we were on the edge of not having enough players to HAVE a JV team. My coaches went from annoyed to bemused to fondly affectionate as the years clocked by. Over six long years, I became a part of the team.

    In my final basketball memory, we were in Spokane at State (where the Morton/White Pass girl’s and boy’s basketball teams are right now, as a matter of fact). It was our third game. After having won the first two, we were against a local team and I don’t mind admitting that the refs were horribly biased. It would have been a tight game anyway – they were good – but after our top scorers* fouled out we had no chance. You are allowed to bring 12 girls to the game. Our team only had 11. So I was there – at the bottom of the bench – living and dying with every pass up and down the court. My grandfather and dad were there – my grandfather actually put my paralyzed grandmother into respite care for a weekend so he could be there, for me, at the state tournament. And Mr. Henderson and Mr. Coleman – losing one of the biggest games they’d coached – grinned and looked at me and told me to get on the court. There were 1:47 seconds left, and in that time they ran all the plays around getting me a shot.

    I missed one and committed a foul and am IN THE BOOKS at the state tournament. I had earned (and been given) a place where I was not gifted, capable, advanced or impressive. I had conquered my weakness, ignorance and inability with great effort in order to accomplish medoicrity. I would never be GOOD. But I was there, and it was good for me indeed.

    It may be that I am taking that experience of being terrible away from my son with these early lessons. He’ll never feel quite as out of water as I did, and in his image of himself, he is athletic. But I can’t say enough about the importance of trying really hard to do things you’re terrible at – so that you can understand what can be accomplished by hard work, and what you were given as a gift. I had spent years feeling smug in classrooms as the kids next to me struggled with things that came easily to me. I needed the gift of humility that came with then going to practice and struggling with things that came easily to them.

    *One of the very best – well top three – of the basketball players on that team was Brandy Clark. I remember her primarily as an astonishingly good 3 point shooter. She could get 7 of 10 from the three point line, even under pressure. She was an awesome weapon – with a thick ponytail and a big smile. I didn’t even know that she PLAYED guitar. To me, she was primarily a great athlete and nice person. Her song Better Dig Two just won a Country Music Award and is topping the Country Music Charts.

    Another of the great players on that team – Sarah – was an astonishingly gifted all around player. She was fast, tall, had amazing hands, and could really shoot. I’ve since seen pictures of her on Facebook with another Morton Grad… at the White House Christmas party standing next to Michelle Obama. I remember Sarah thanking me, my senior year, for helping her see “brainiacs” in a more sympathetic light. She told me she respected me. It meant a lot.

    I sometimes ponder how incredible and lucky it is that I have spent so much of my life surrounded by such incredible people, even if we didn’t know it that winter in Spokane when we were 15.

    Yes, kind sir, she sits and spins

    16 Saturday Feb 2013

    Posted by in Health

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    I find myself at an odd confluence of events today. I hope that you know me well enough by now to know that although I pay attention to my body and appearance, I’m far from obsessesed with the Western standard of beauty for women. It helps to have realized it is unobtainable for me.

    However, I am starting to think that the pregnancy weight I put on with Thane will not actually come off by itself. Call it a hunch. I would like my maintenance weight to be the weight I was before I started procreating lo eight years ago. This is a matter of 25 pounds. I believe this is achievable, having worked my way back to it before between the boys. So when my husband asked if I would join him in this diet he’s done a ton of research on, and which he has found efficacious before, I figured this was a good time to attempt the challenge again.

    The diet is a called the Slow Carb Diet and is more or less a geek’s attempt to optimize weight loss. In some studies, it’s been shown to be more effective than other forms of diet. My husband did a ton of research on it. The basic concepts are this:

    1) Eat all low glycemic index foods: lean meats, vegetables and legumes
    2) Eat no high glycmeic foods: any form of carb, fruit, diary, sugar, sweetener. Any food that “comes in white” is right out. (With exceptions).
    3) Take one cheat day in seven and eat all the carbs you want (to prevent other cheating, and to prevent your body from going into starvation mode)

    In practice this means that breakfast is eggs and beans (breakfast is the hard part). Thank HEAVENS I drink my coffee black! Lunch is dinner leftovers. Dinner is a compliant meal like split pea soup, cassoulet, black bean casserole, morrocan chicken, lentil soup…

    Snacks have been the hard part. I’ve probably had more nuts than I should. Hard boiled eggs are great for this. Veggies with hummus become the culinary highlight of your day. My husband says the hardest part is that you get absolutely not taste of anything sweet with this diet. It’s true. Even artificial sweeteners are out. He says the flip side is that you “reset” your perception of sweet, so that a glass of milk or an apple seems deliciously sweet.

    I’m on day three, and so far I’ve been compliant. We’ll see how it goes. I figure that an attempt is better than no attempt, and that the possibility of success is motivating. My weight is pretty stable, so once I’ve lost the weight, i believe I will be able to keep it off using more normal dietary constraints.

    If you’re curious, here is some other information on the diet:

    http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/07/12/how-to-lose-100-pounds/

    http://gizmodo.com/5709913/4+hour-body-+-the-slow+carb-diet

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/10/160757730/low-and-slow-may-be-the-way-to-go-when-it-comes-to-dieting

    A few weeks ago, I had finally decided that my knee was far enough from right — nearly 18 months after massive knee surgery — I was not content with the condition of my knee. I can’t cross it. I can’t kneel. It hurts with the weather. And most importantly, the differences in strength between repaired left knee and normal right knee are more than obvious enough to be seen in my legs. They’re still working differently, and my body is pulled off center. Like weight loss, I’ve concluded this won’t fix itself. So I went to my orthopedic surgeon – expecting a PT prescription.

    Instead, he gave me a prescription for spinning class. Greaaaat. Now, I believe that when you ask for medical help and advice you should consider it, and assuming it passes the sniff test, you should implement it. I suppose I shouldn’t have needed an orthopedic surgeon to tell me that I needed exercise for my knee, but apparently I did. Having gotten that advice, I treat it as sacred as a PT prescription, and decided that logistic impossibilities aside, I needed to comply.

    In truth, I am really feeling the need for exercise. I don’t feel strong, or flexible, or powerful. I feel weak and fragile. My two mile a day walking simply isn’t enough, or the right kind of exercise. Of course, the flip side is that I truly do not know where I can find two hours a week to go to the gym. I will simply have to be opportunistic about it. But that is no excuse for not trying.

    So I have signed up for a froo froo gym with a gazillion classes* and exercise equipments and the kind of strutting gym rats that have provided disincentives for unathletic, pudgy geeks like me since the gym was invented. Fortunately, I’m no longer 22 and do not care for their disregard.

    So here I am, in February, with mounds of snow on the ground, on a wacko diet that means I can’t have Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast and the kind of gym membership that everyone has and no one uses.

    I’ll let you know how it works out!

    *Critically, it has about 16 spinning classes a week and child care and is less than 5 miles from my house.

    State of the (Marital) Union

    12 Tuesday Feb 2013

    Posted by in Deep Thoughts, joy

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    My true love hath my heart

    My true love hath my heart

    I’ve been very happily married – to the same man, no less! – for twelve and a half years now. If you count the time we dated before marriage, I’m perilously close to having been with my beloved husband for as much time as I was alive prior to meeting him. In that dozen plus years, we have developed something of a tradition that I have found extremely useful and – as it is topical – I thought I would share our “State of the Union” dinner with you.

    Adam and I communicate well with each other. We both understand the other’s preferred form of communication and know how to adapt our language to reach each other. In addition to talking well when we’re together, we’ve developed a family toolset for managing the logistics of a two kid, two job family: the sacred Google calendar, the text messages and the emailed reminders. Basically – we have no problems with tactical communication. But just as in a company or a career, it’s not enough to be tactical in your relationship. You need to be strategic too. Otherwise, you drift and find five years later that both of you were doing something because you thought it was important to the other person… and neither of you actually wanted to be doing it at all. Drifting is no better in marriages than it is in other endeavors.

    So every year, after Christmas is accomplished, we go out to a very fancy dinner at our favorite restaurant. We dress up. We hire a babysitter. And we have our State of the Union dinner. This started around the time our youngest was born, when the opportunities for casual deep conversation became more limited, and we found ourselves practically bullet-pointing conversations to get all the critical information out. We were in crunch, and it was very difficult to step back. There’s nothing like Melissa’s lamb shanks to help you take a long look at life.

    Whether you have a fancy dinner together, take a long weekend, or just catch up over breakfast – the things we talk about are worth conversing with your partner with on a regular basis. You might find that even more often than annually is fruitful.

    Finances:
    I’m the keeper of the book in our family. I’ve made sure to document things so that if I was unable to advise Adam, he’d know where everything is. But as a family gets more busy and division of labor gets more critical, we can’t duplicate the job of bookkeeping. But it is critical for the health of a family to know how things stand in the moolah department. Some years I’ve actually generated a full report of where we stood: assets, liability, concerns, run rates etc. Other years, I just give him a high level overview. Some questions to discuss on finances are:
    - Are we cashflow positive or negative (eg. are we getting into debt, getting out of debt or building on our savings)?
    - If we are cashflow negative, why, and what can we do to stop it?
    - If we are cashflow positive, how are we allocating our funds? Are they going to the things that are our top priorities?
    - Do we anticipate any major changes in the money situation? Eg. do we think we might have a change in job, huge expenditure, inheritance or other looming event that is going to change the way things are?

    That leads to the next conversation….

    Jobs:
    Does your boss know more about your career objectives than your spouse? Are you angling for a particular promotion? Are you becoming increasingly unhappy and daydreaming about a career change? Is your company facing shaky finances, or opening a new headquarters? We often talk to our spouses about day to day events, but it’s even more important to understand the larger context of your employment together. Adam and I talk about our relative happiness with our jobs and careers (two differently things, by the way), what we might need to do to fulfill our next-step ambitions, whether we need training, education or a new opportunity, etc. This has the advantage of causing us to pause for reflection about what it is we want – together – in our careers. It also means that shifts in employment are not the first you hear about a possible issue.

    Kids:
    We talk about our kids a lot. All the time, in fact. But this is a good chance to compare notes on how we think the boys are doing, whether they’re getting the things they need or if we need to adjust our parenting strategies. This year, I raised ideas like sending Grey to an overnight summer camp, to see what Adam thought. We probably need a check in less for kids than other topics, but it would be hard to imagine a serious discussion about our lives not including them.

    This is also a great time to talk about whether your family has the desired number of children. You might discover that since your last heartfelt discussion, your partner has been taken with baby fever. Or it might be the impetus to schedule that surgery that indicates your family is complete as-is. Or, perhaps, you collectively decide not to make any decisions yet.

    House:
    By the time you’re cleaning your plate, it’s a good time to figure out whether you’re still living in the right place. Is your house still the right size, with the right number of rooms? Is your commute killing you? And assuming you’re not inclined to move, then what sort of home improvements – if any – would you want to prioritize for the coming year? How will you pay for them? What’s bothering you about your living situation?

    Finally, you get to the dessert topic of the dinner…

    Vacation:
    It was at one of these dinners that we conceived the plan to go to Istanbul for our 10th anniversary. It was – obviously – the sort of thing that required months advanced planning. But it was a memory for a life time. Many of these kind of memories require advanced planning. If you sit around and wait for vacations to happen, well, you end the year with two weeks paid leave and a bad case of burnout. This is the time to figure out what you (collectively) want, and what it would take to make that thing happen. Bonus: I can usually send my boss my entire year’s vacation schedule in February.

    Schedule review:
    As we linger over the last cup of coffee, staring dreamily into each other’s eyes, we went through every single recurring event on our shared weekly calendar to make sure it still deserved its place. Is the weekly gaming just a habit, or is it a meaningful event in our life? Does Aikido still fill the need it was meant to fill? Does our worship life at church reflect our call to serve God? Are guitar lessons still gusting me? We didn’t end up changing any of our recurring events, but it was really liberating to consider our days as completely free – to be filled with the things we most value. This exercise affirmed our choices, and made them choice instead of tradition.

    You might think this sounds incredibly unromatic. In fact, it might sound a bit like a running a family as a business. I mean, a meeting agenda for a romantic dinner? Really? Has it come to that?

    In the history of marriage, the institution has never been JUST about love. Love plays a tremendous role as initiator, motivator and facilitator within marriage. But marriage has also been the way we organize the work of our days (especially for women), decide where to live, how to spend our time, organize our money, and raise our children. I think it’s much easier to enjoy your shared love when you also have a clear vision of what your spouse hopes for, what’s bothering them, and what they’re thinking about. When the participants in marriage have clear, shared goals for their lives, it cuts down tremendously on uncertainty and conflict and increases joy.

    So that’s part of how my family deals with the complexities of being a family in the 21st century. (I must admit, I’m tempted by the Agile/Scrum family meeting concept in the article above!) How does your family make big decisions, and talk about big issues?

    And I have his

    And I have his

    Nemo Finale

    10 Sunday Feb 2013

    Posted by in Adventures

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    Looking down our street

    Looking down our street

    This morning we woke up (late) to a bright, sunshiny, monochromatic world. And a house with no heat. But the bright sunshiny world and temperatures in the upper 30s made today a much better day to have the furnace on the fritz than any other day of the storm. We’re actually not sure what the issue is – the furnace spontaneously began working again about 15 minutes prior to the arrival of the furnace guy. But all this was minimally inconvenient – the sunlight streaming in kept some rooms warmer than the furnace does!

    Adam stands on the drifts on the house-side of the driveway

    Adam stands on the drifts on the house-side of the driveway

    So where did Nemo leave us? According to the National Weather Service, our friend dropped 22 inches of dry powerdy snow on Stoneham. 65 mile an hour winds sculpted those inches in to massive drifts and clear-swept sections – an inequal distribution that was exacerbated by the labors of homeowners with shovels, the suddenly popular owners of snow-blowers and the profiteering-but-slightly-lazy shovel wielding teens.

    I thought, as I luxuriated in bed this morning (the covers being even more enticing when there is no heat in the room) that today would be a nice, quiet, peaceful day. We were snowed in enough to intimidate us from making the 20 mile trip to church. But then the furnace happened. Once that was resolved, I had to go grocery shopping. That was epic. The produce section of the store looked as though locusts had descended upon it. I’m guessing that bit didn’t get restocked. Either that, or everyone else in Stoneham also found a pressing need for bananas. This was even more epic because, starting on Ash Wednesday after service, I’m going to join my husband in attempting a Slow Carb Diet. I’m rather unconvinced of my ability to stick to this. Cutting out carbs and dairy is like, um, cutting out bread and milk from my diet. So while at Stop & Shop, I attempted to find slow-carb-compliant foods so I can at least make it a single week. We shall see.

    Post Nemo: Locusts attacked

    Post Nemo: Locusts attacked

    And then more shoveling. Hours of effort yesterday + a borrowed snow blower + a pair of neighborhood teens got the first car unburied and the second car half unburied. Another 2+ hours of snowblower + shoveling and we can use our entire driveway again. These are things you don’t think about in October when you buy a house: where are you going to put the snow for your driveway? When it’s nearly two natural feet plus massive drifts, this becomes non-trivial. Two years ago, I had to walk each shovel full across the street. Fortunately, the next 7 days have highs above freezing, so we should lose a lot of the snowmass. As it is, it’s very difficult to turn corners driving due to lost visibility with the drifts.

    If I had to rate this blizzard, I would give it an A for the following reasons:
    1) Life time memory: the “boys” spending hours sledding down our street, followed by pancakes at midnight. These are the times you remember in your nursing home.
    2) Actual vs. predicted snow: absolutely on target. This snow storm came precisely as billed
    3) Loss of life: while there were a few tragic losses, there were fewer than usually accompany weather like this. Partially this is due to the precautions (draconic as they were) taken by our elected officials to shut everything down for an extended period of time.
    4) Fellowship: I spent so much wonderful time this weekend with my neighbors and friends – all a stone’s throw from the house – that it was a joy. We played, ate, shoveled, laughed, watched movies, and enjoyed our time together. This is one of life’s great blessings.
    5) Inconvenience: we kept power and only lost heat after it was no longer critically needed. It was a liberating inconvenience for us.

    So Nemo: would recommend and do it again!

    I give persective to the wall-side drifts. A "Before" picture would have shown the tips of the wipers as the only visible parts of the cars. (Due to drifting)

    I give persective to the wall-side drifts. A “Before” picture would have shown the tips of the wipers as the only visible parts of the cars. (Due to drifting)

    Nemo Day 2: Nemo’s revenge

    09 Saturday Feb 2013

    Posted by in Adventures, Wider world

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    Having chronicled my escapades in snow yesterday for you, it seems unfair to keep my breath-bated audience from finding out – as Paul Harvey would say – the rest of the story! As we return to the snowy streets of Stoneham, our heroic crew woke up a little too early after last night’s sledding-and-pancakes extravaganza (well, the masculine parts. The feminine parts lollygagged in bed for another few hours.)

    The site that met the eyes upon awakening was a vast expanse of snow – still falling hard at mid-morning. It’s difficult to gauge the amount on the ground since the blizzard gales have sculpted and rearranged it, but I’d guess we have at least 18 inches – possibly more – of blizzard-spawn. The brave pancake eaters and street lugers from the dark have now been converted to studious snow-blowers and shovelers. The children – talking big talk about how much they want to build snow men just like Calvin – remain in their pjs.

    The next planned activity is The Princess Bride!

    Breaking Nemo News: from the front lines of Stoneham MA

    08 Friday Feb 2013

    Posted by in Wider world

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    This fall, your brave correspondent risked life, limb and coffee to bring you hourly, real-time updates about the ravages of Hurricane Sandy in Massachusetts (as seen through my windows). Trash cans fell over. Branches swayed. It was epic.

    Now that we’re ACTUALLY going to be in the middle of a storm that might even AFFECT us, I thought there was nothing for me to do but put on my galoshes (or fuzzy slippers – whichever is more convenient) and continue that fine reporting tradition. Come back all day to find out what’s happening in Stoneham during this Epic Winter Event! You can also follow this on my twitter feed, Facebook page and G+ pages… until such a time as I get too lazy to update in four locations.

    #Nemo 10 am: Actual snowflakes have been spotted in Stoneham, MA. I would get a head start on shoveling, but it’s not sticking yet.

    #Nemo 11 am: Trying to figure out if we should expect two feet of snow or three. Turns out the scale maxes out at 24″ – which is shown as white. SOMEONE is getting clever!

    Nemo snowfall predictions

    Nemo snowfall predictions

    #Nemo 12 noon: The snow is starting to thicken. Unsalted surfaces have started to look whitish. School was announced closed on Wednesday – starting to think they could have made it until the 2:20 closing time. Daycare closes in half an hour: prepare for influx of children!

    #Nemo 1320: Roads closed. Children home. Mass transit shut down. Snow accumulation at nearly an inch. Proactively eating chocolate to prepare for possible future starvation.

    #Nemo 1400: Snow day pirate map comics while we wait for enough snow to play in.

    A productive snow day!

    A productive snow day!

    #Nemo 1420: BREAKING NEWS! My husband just brought me warm-from-the-oven cookies! And you were wondering why people always stock up on milk before snowstorms.

    #Nemo 1500: Three hour long conference call complete. Snow now covering most surfaces outside and falling at a moderate rate. Pirate-comic completed and AWESOME.

    Buried maternal treasure

    Buried maternal treasure

    #Nemo 1600: As the blizzard begins to bliz with increasing seriousness, I am preparing the emergency survival plan for my family. As night falls in New England, I have laid careful plans for gumbo and The Princess Bride. I may be so consumed by these dire tasks that I am unable to make updates for an hour or two, so do not send the Sherpas out for me until at least 2000.

    #Nemo 1820: actual blizzard has arrived. There is probably six inches of snow, hard winds, and more falling. The only moving vehicles I’ve seen in three hours are plows. So far, so awesome!

    #Nemo 2130: there are currently five dads and a dog sledding down our street. Wouldn’t the kids be jealous if they were still awake!!

    There was no chance of this picture coming out as seen by the human eye

    There was no chance of this picture coming out as seen by the human eye

    #Nemo midnight: I have a table full of men eating pancakes and discussing Superman movies – after 2 hours of sledding. The snow is taller than the top step and falling fast. The windows are opaque with blown snow and ice. The wind is howling. The children are sleeping. Life is very, very good.

    Men. With pancakes.

    Men. With pancakes.

    Mastermind and Minion

    05 Tuesday Feb 2013

    Posted by in Children, Culture

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    My eldest son snitched the “Essential Calvin and Hobbes” from next to my bed when he was five years old. I caught him poring over the adventures of the older boy and his striped companion, and loomed over him with mixed feelings. On the one hand, yay love of reading! On the other hand, Calvin is not an ideal role model. On the third tail I’ve always promised myself that – like my parents – I would only make access harder to books that really do damage. I simply hadn’t planned on my non-censorious resolve being tested before my son started first grade.

    But there was my spiky-haired son, putting on his best space alien accent and saying “Dat darn Kalfin! He stole ma space chip!” I forked over the complete collection.

    He was quoting this tonight, and I swear I hadn't mentioned it.

    He was quoting this tonight, and I swear I hadn’t mentioned it.

    When you think about Calvin (as a grownup who may or may not spend too much time thinking about Calvin and Hobbes), you think of a kid who drives his parents nuts, does poorly in school and has behavior problems. But when you return with fresh eyes and see what Calvin DOES in the panorama of his time and tale, you begin to wish your son was – and could be – more like Calvin. Calvin has *time* and freedom. He wanders the woods with only a fearsome predator for company. He has long leisurely afternoons for the creation of mutant snow goons. He exercises his vast and untrammeled imagination in a whole panoply of joyful childish pursuits, many of which my poor son is forebarred from by shifting culture and a mother who works. There is no circumstance under which my seven year old would spend a whole afternoon playing with a little creek running through mud. He doesn’t have that much free time, and I am more constrained to periodically check on him.

    The book was next to my bed, which explains the odd lighting.

    The book was next to my bed, which explains the odd lighting.

    But Calvin is teaching Grey what it could mean to be a little boy, and fires his imagination. Grey considers his circumstance, and finds his own way to be, well, an Evil Mastermind (of the amusing, kind, relatively-well-behaved type).

    This Calvinic mischief was brought to mind the other night. Grey has a tremendous advantage over Calvin. Although entirely lacking in feline company, Grey has instead a little brother who is his willing and eager minion in acts of creative mischief. How joyful are those two boys in their shared universe! Anyway, the other night the boys were doing their usual delaying song and dance regarding sleep. Basically, it was part of our intricate tradition of them not going to sleep when I’ve told them to go to sleep already. At one point they came downstairs and demanded that I set up a tent for them to sleep in. (In truth, my actual challenges getting Grey to sleep are worthy of a serious post. But it’s funny in small moments.) This demand arrived at the point at which I had HAD ENOUGH ALREADY JUST GO TO BED AND IF YOU DON’T YOU’LL BE SLEEPING IN THE BASEMENT NEXT TO THE WORM BIN!

    There was thumping upstairs after my chastened (so I thought) sons went back, but no more demands were lobbied by the prepubescent set, so I declared myself satisfied.

    When we went in to kiss them good night, however, an astonishing feat of architecture met our eyes. Sadly, I could find no angle of photography that would take in the full glory but imagine this.

    You walk into the room, and the wall appears suddenly several feet nearer, and covered in blue stars. You realize that blessed children have stood Thane’s mattress on it’s side. (I swear this is why I won’t buy either of them a proper bed.)

    Wall of bed

    Wall of bed

    You are convinced that shortly your children will be squashed by said mattress and tiptoeing up you check out the situation. The brothers – the Lego Mastermind and his brother the Builder Minion, have used the kiddie chairs in the room to ensure their sleep remains unsquished. They lie in opposite sides of the “fort”, in a stuffed-animal-and-blanket filled enclosure.

    The Minion, in Scooby Doo PJs, protected by the Green IKEA chair

    The Minion, in Scooby Doo PJs, protected by the Green IKEA chair

    Isn’t this what childhood is all about, my friends? The problem solving? The rule-breaking ingenuity? The ability to sleep on a pile of stuffed animals right next to your brother? Perhaps Calvin taught my son a bit of what was possible. I can’t regret it. And I can’t wait until Thane is old enough to read it too.

    The Mastermind, with fuzzy dinosaur blanket and Puppy on a white chair.

    The Mastermind, with fuzzy dinosaur blanket and Puppy on a white chair.

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