One little thing every day

Elmo is over

Two things with Grace: This week she stopped asking me to carry her to school, which is one block away. She does this funny kind of skip-gallop-prance walk while holding my hand. It made me a little sad, but after all, I'm the one who hoists her up and says, "Someday you're going to be too big and Mommy's not going to be able to carry you to school." Maybe that day came. I don't want to think about a time when she doesn't bear hug me in her towel when I lift her out of the bath, or when she stops putting her little arms around my neck to try to get me to stay a little longer when I put her to bed, or when she no longer sighs a sleepy breath when I climb in next to her and hold her hand, her tiny fingers curling around mine.

Last night, as we were cleaning out drawers of clothes she's outgrown to give to her friend Piper. Grace held her Elmo doll for a moment, and then put it on the pile of clothes. "It's Piper's turn to have Elmo," she said. "Are you sure?" I asked, "Elmo's been a great friend to you." "Yes, I'm sure."

Elmo is over.

***

I bought a tiny rosebush with small buds, some open, at Trader Joe's tonight and the girl at the checkout asked me if I was buying it for myself. I nodded. Then she told me, "Pay attention to the open ones." And then she looked deeply into my eyes. We had some kind of momentary connection, and after I paid she shook my hand and said she hoped she'd see me again. I am not sure what that means or what the metaphor is here, but, OK, I will pay attention to the open flowers.

***

After Trader Joe's, I went to an event for a super cool and funny writer named Cindy Chupack. She worked on a couple little shows you may have heard of, like Sex and the City and Everybody Loves Raymond. She wrote some books. As she signed mine, I mentioned to her that I just had a piece published in Motherlode about Grace's birth parents moving in, and that I was so inspired by her talk and wanted to figure out how to keep that momentum up. And she asked me to send her the link. Which made me really, really happy. I decided in the parking lot on the way out that every day, I will do something, even if it's a little thing, to move my work forward.



On the drive home, I missed my dad and wished he could be around to read my stuff, to tell me to fight for better contracts, to give me the hug I haven't had for 10 years. As I got off the 2 to the 134 West, I realized I'd absently had been holding my fist up, curled around my dad's fingers, which I imagined coming from somewhere above.

***

Tomorrow I go blonde.

Work: Sometimes you have to pee in the pool

I had an eccentric Great Aunt Vida, who lived in a sprawling home that slinked around a prime piece of Hood Canal coastline in Washington state. She was a bit formal, had married well and widowed young, and was in no way comfortable around children. When my cousins came to visit, she gave them the standard speech as they prepared to jump into her indoor pool: "I have a special chemical in here that turns red when you urinate, so don't, or I'll know it's you."

The kids, in their elementary years, solemnly nodded and proceed to jump in the pool. After several minutes of splashing about, the youngest, Liam, yelled out, "Aunt Vida? That chemical? It's not working!"

I love this story because mostly when my Aunt Corinne (Liam's mom) tells it, it's really really funny, each and every time. But I also love it because it makes me think about how brave and bold Liam was as a little kid, completely unaware of his own vulnerability as he spoke a truth that he thought would be helpful. Not sure what Vida's reaction was, but it likely involved a thimble of sherry to soothe her nerves.

I recently watched this Brené Brown TED video on vulnerability, and it has made me think a lot about the offer-reception dynamic of ideas. In order to have a truly innovative idea, you need to risk failing, because it hasn't been done before. You are putting the work of your mind and heart in the hands of others who will help it succeed -- or not. How the idea is received is just as critical. Nearly every organization or manager will tell you that failure is treated as a learning opportunity ... but how that is actually handled will vary greatly. I've worked for some bosses who have been so enthusiastic and welcoming for my ideas that I couldn't wait to fail for them again, if it meant having excellent feedback and the chance to build an even better rocket ship. I've had bosses who've sent such cryptic, critical emails that I spent entire weekends downing Ativan to keep a panic attack at bay, certain I'd be fired Monday morning, but then nothing was ever mentioned again.

I've been fortunate enough to have a career based on ideas, where my creativity has funded my home and car and makes me look good on paper for government bureaucrats. I've also been lucky enough to help develop ideas from others and collaborate to make them into real things. Because of that, I offer this:

If you're proposing your idea -- whether its a better way to clean the coffee pots at the wait station, a rerouting of the entire metro transit system so it runs more effectively and efficiently, or handing over your life's work, laced with sweat, tears and a little merlot -- these approaches may help:

1. Find a good time to propose your idea -- when the recipient has space to hear you, and is in a good mood. Also, think about your format. Is it scrawled on a napkin, or did you go to the trouble of making a trailer for it? 
2. Preface your presentation with what you hope to accomplish, and how far along you are in your idea. If it's just an initial draft with lots of flexibility for change, or if it's pretty much baked as is, let the person know. 
3. State exactly what you want. Is it an approval to take it to another level of management? Are you looking for collaboration? Do you just want some feedback on a particular angle?
4. Really understand what the response is. So if the person said, "I love the idea but I'm wondering if you can make it puppets instead of real people," and you heard, "Your idea stinks, go away," you may miss an opportunity to make your idea happen ... just not exactly as you'd planned. Sometimes puppets are better. 

If you are on the receiving end of an idea:

1. Realize the person offering may have invested a lot of hope and love in this. Treat it accordingly. It's hard to be creative, like handing over your fragile little heart in a paper cup, hoping someone else will help it keep beating.  
2. Take a cue from improv: Don't shut down another actor. Say, "yes ... and ... ." As in: "Yes, I think you are really on to something, and I'm wondering if there's a way we can include puppets because I know that's what the network is looking for and we'll have a better chance of making this happen." 
3. If you love the idea, be a champion for it. Be brave, it makes people like you better. If you don't like the idea, find a way to make it better. There might be a seed in there somewhere. 

Sometimes it pays to pee in the pool, just to see what happens.

Packing the Spiritual Pickup Truck

I want to say that I've spent the last month doing something incredible, like composing a concerto for violin and washboard, or knitting booties for poor babies in cold parts of the world. But I haven't.

Instead, we've re-homed Cinco the Chihuahua, who was deeply depressed without his Lucy and cried every day, and then snapped at the baby. There were tears but no scars, and we sent him to our wonderful dog-devoted friends in Northern California, where he will be much happier. He has a backyard, three dog siblings, and new parents who completely adore him.

I have also caught up on all my back episodes of 30 Rock and The Office.

And have enjoyed every second of my baby girl, who has terrible sleeping habits because I don't want her to cry, and because I have tried to breathe in her sweet scent every possible, including the late nights and early mornings we semi-sleep, tete-a-tete, in our big bed with Steve snoring way over on the other side.

I went to a funeral yesterday for a neighbor who was in excruciating pain from rheumatoid arthritis, and in the sitting downs and standing ups and rote chanting of the mass, the priest said something that stuck with me. He explained how hard it is for each of us to pass from one phase of life to the next -- from womb to world, and then the world to the next place. We get comfortable in however it is we are living, we don't embrace the changes that must happen. But they will happen. I have become comfortable in my life. Which makes me uncomfortable.

I used to always drive a pickup truck because it meant I could leave whenever I needed to. Up and out in one night. Then I stopped breaking up (and moving in) with people and became a person who would stay no matter how ugly or toxic the situation was, to show that I could.

But here is something about 40licious: If we want to be something or do something for the rest of our lives, we should start now. Right now. We need to load up our spiritual, emotional, and intellectual pickup trucks and bring them to the next phase of our lives, or we will be paying for storage of things we will never again use.

Work: How to Balance Career and Family (Hint: Maybe You Can't)

We were raised around a bunch of women who were tired of being directed to secretarial school when they expressed career aspirations. They were tired of having their fannies slapped. They were tired of of biology getting in the way.

So they worked really hard AND raised families. They demanded to wear pants and went on The Pill. They indoctrinated their spawn with "Free to Be You and Me," an all-star tribute to equality and genderless capability.

And so I thought I could have it all, and that everything would just glide into place when it was time. My career path has wended its way through streams and around mountains and on rutty side roads; It didn't get on the Interstate until I moved to California six years ago and took a corporate gig.

And then, lo, the husband came at the relatively late age of 42, and exactly nine months later, our precious angel baby showed up. And after nine weeks of sticking to each other like cling monkeys, it became time for Baby Grace to go to daycare with lovely grandparent types in their comfortable home, and for me to return to work.

I am jealous of the women who can stay home. On maternity leave I did the math over and over again to see if I could get someone to come in and clean a few times a week so I could just nap and mush up with the baby all day and take her to Anthropologie. I wanted to have quality time during our limited days, not endless shit-tons of laundry. Some days the height of my productivity was unloading the dishwasher. I certainly didn't get my book proposal done. (In my pre-baby delusion, I'd chirpily announced to my therapist that during maternity leave I'd have time to write it WHILE SHE WAS NAPPING. Which is about 40 minutes a stretch. Fool.)

Now when I'm at work I'm a little raggedy from a 4 a.m. wakeup. This morning some last-minute spit-up forced alternate outfits for both me and Gracie, and tacked on another 20 minutes. I work like a steam engine, chugging through, skipping lunch and small talk, so I can get out and hold my baby as soon as possible. As regular as a Japanese train, I start getting anxious to see her on the 10 freeway just before getting on the 5.

I was just invited by the EPA's ENERGY STAR division to make a presentation at their annual conference in North Carolina in November. Normally I would have jumped at the chance to do this, and figured out logistics after. It's huge props for me and for my company. Then I talked myself into going for just a day and turning around on the red eye and coming home. Then I looked closely at the invitation and saw that they'd want me to present three times, on three consecutive days. My heart sank. I can't imagine going that long without inhaling the sweet baby smell, bouncing her on my knee as I eat dinner, snuggling in bed with her and slipping off into a dream together after the 4 a.m. feeding. I still don't know if I'll go. It's a broken heart either way.

My friends Shannon Kelley and Barbara Kelley over at Undecided have become the experts on the impossibility of having it all. At this point, I'm not sure I want it all. I just want enough.