Geeky Mom

I’m tired because I was writing in my head again last night. Unfortunately I don’t remember what it was. I was thinking about sexism and motherhood and technology, so perhaps it was some version of the Stepford Wives. I don’t know.

I remembered the previous night’s writing and actually got the article down on paper. I’m writing a sort of general piece, something that might be appropriate for The Chronicle or a journal in Instructional Technology about technology and the liberal arts. If anyone has any ideas about that they’d like to share, leave me a comment or e-mail me.

I actually had a very good day yesterday. I was all worked-up about something and it got resolved yesterday. I was worked-up for nothing. I did some more work on CSS. I worked on the article. I did some reading for the grant I’m working on. At the end of the day, I met with a faculty member to work on his computer and help him do some video editing/dvd burning. It was quite productive. While we were waiting for the DVD to burn, we had a nice talk.

The morning is going to be filled with meetings but the afternoon is wide open. I’ve been ignoring a lot of my IT blogs lately and I’m hoping to . . . OOh I just remembered what I was writing in my head. I have a presentation on blogging to the board of trustees; right after that, I’m doing one on blogging and teaching writing. I was writing that in my head last night. Cool! So maybe that’s what I’ll do this afternoon.

At some point I’m going to write about some things I’ve been thinking about in regard to my particular institution’s culture. A few of the people at that institution read this, but I don’t think I’ll be writing anything risque. I’m finally starting to solidify some ideas about some institutional problems, some things I think I’ve contributed to, but that I can do something about–maybe.

How’s that for totally random?

I’m not going to speak intelligently here and I’m not going to link to Kevin Drum, who I think brought this whole thing up because his traffic was getting low and he was going to slide down a level in the Ecosystem–not that he isn’t really a slimey mollusk anyway–but I wish these people would just come out and say what’s on their mind. They’re not wondering why there are so few women in science or in the blogosphere, but they’re wondering why they’re there at all. Bitch, Ph.D. put it nicely in her metaphors about family values because that’s what it’s about. The women should be at home obsessing over their fucking color-coordinated party plates and leave the science and polticking to the men.

At least that’s what I read between the lines. And if I weren’t so tired from cooking dinner and doing laundry, I’d go hit them over their heads with a frying pan.

I think I’ll take a page from Jimbo‘s book and say that I’m in some kind of weird emotional state, a cross between manic and depressive, though I don’t think mine’s anything truly serious. I did not do much this weekend which should have left me feeling refreshed, but it did the exact opposite. I now feel overwhelmed somehow.

First, there’s money. Taxes are not looking good at all. I’m planning to take our forms that we filled out online to an accountant this week. I also re-filled out my w4 so this won’t happen next year. It’s also travel season for Mr. Geeky, who does not plan well, so we’re having to purchase plane tickets and hotel rooms up front which puts a squeeze on us until we get reimbursed. I tried to talk to Mr. Geeky about some belt-tightening, but he kept saying, “It won’t help.” Well, I happen to think it will, so I can’t make Mr. Geeky go along, but I’m tightening where I can.

Then there’s the writing, which is just silly to stress about because I don’t have to do it at all. However, last night, I was writing bits of project 2 in my head (I had worked on it quite a bit this weekend) and that kept me awake. Then I started writing an article that I’ve been thinking about for work in my head. That kept me awake longer. I think I’m stressed about this because these are the things that are really worthwhile in the long term, but I’m burdened by the nitpicky things which are keeping me from really focusing on them–especially the work article.

Speaking of work. I’ve had kind of a bad attitude about it lately. We had a small reorganization–which did not affect me at all–but others are a bit put off by it. I think that’s rubbing off on me. Plus I have lots of little things to do. Things I don’t like.

You remember Gulliver and the Liliputians? I feel like all these things are like the Lilliputians, tying me down, keeping me from my bigger purpose. And so the manic (a drive to get all the crap done) and the depressive (a feeling that it’s impossible to do so and that it might not be worth it).

I took the day off work today since the kids were off for president’s day. We had a pretty lazy weekend. I wasn’t feeling 100%. It was like the flu without all the full-blown symptoms. So I felt crappy without any real reason to. It was odd.

So there was a lot of sitting around, trying not to feel crappy. While I was doing that and Mr. Geeky was programming robots, the kids entertained themselves.

Geeky Boy went to a friend’s house (dribbling star) on Saturday. He went to another friend’s house on Sunday and then used his allowance money to buy some new video games. We never saw him again after that. He did take breaks to eat and to play a game of chess with his father.

Geeky Girl set up a book fair, using the many, many books we have around the house. She also created a couple of her own books. When I asked her if she wrote them, she said, “No, Geeky Girl did.” “Ohhhh,” I said. After the book fair, she turned her crayons (used to create the books) into people. These crayons/people ride in the bus/crayon box to school. Some of the crayons/parents go to work or run errands. This all takes place on the floor just behind Mr. Geeky’s office chair. She’s currently doing this. She did this for hours on Saturday and Sunday. She did a little bit of video game playing with Geeky Boy, but essentially, she’s been playing this crayon thing for three days! With no signs of boredom. I’m truly amazed by this. I also don’t know why we bother with buying toys when a $2 box of 24 crayons provides this many hours of entertainment.

I’m doing a little tweaking, so some things might get out of whack. Let me know what you’re seeing and what browser you’re using if it’s totally screwed up. I’m just trying to shift some content around.

Via Ancarett
I wasn’t going to post the results, but seeing how I have geeky in title . . . and this game below–QBasic Gorillas, I used to play it all the time. QBasic is probably the last programming language I knew anything about.

You are ‘programming in QBASIC’. This programming
language (of which the acronym stands for
‘Quick Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code’), which is so primitive that
it cannot easily be used for any purpose
involving the Internet nor even sound, was
current more than a decade ago.

You are independent, in a good way. When something
which you need cannot be found, you make it
yourself. In writing and in talking with
people, you value clarity and precision; your
friends may not realize how important that is.
When necessary, you are prepared to be a
mediator in conflicts between your friends.
You are very rational, and you think of things
in terms of logic and common sense.
Unfortunately, your emotionally unstable
friends may be put off by your devotion to
logic; they may even accuse you of pedantry and
insensitivity. Your problem is that
programming in QBASIC has been obsolete for a
long time.

What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I just posted this comment on Raising WEG. She has some really good posts on the Mommy Madness stuff with lots of good commentary.

I admit I’m burned out on the Warner thing too. It’s a losing battle really because it’s all generalizations. I’m just gonna be a mom the best way I know how and sometimes that means I’m gonna be lazy and blog when I could be doing housework. And maybe the kids won’t be stimulated by my presence sometimes. I don’t really care. I do wish it were cheaper and that they had some kind of prenatal counseling that warned you about all of this. Oh, and maybe some counseling for the dads. Cause mine’s good, but some of em . . . they need some laundry lessons.

I was thinking about this whole thing some more because, you know, I gotta obsess about something, but realized I was tired of thinking about it. I like what I’m doing with my kids. It works for me and it seems to be working for them; they’re happy, healthy, doing well in school, doing well socially. What more can I ask? Well, I’d like to get rid of the guilt, I guess. And that’s what the article raised for me, the ugly guilt I feel when I run into other moms who seem to be doing more. I also realized that I wrote about this a couple of times before. Even one of my earliest, maybe first?, posts has a little point about how I don’t fit in with the other moms. Obviously, it’s a sore point with me.

I’m tired of feeling guilty for wanting to have something for myself and have kids–and that’s what makes parenting and working hard. I’m doing it–all of it–and sometimes it stresses me out, because something always falls through the cracks. I’m okay with that. I’m just waiting until everyone else is.

Not all boys, mind you and not all the time. Mostly boys bug me in organized sports situations. I confess that I hate going to Geeky Boy’s sports games because I hate dealing with all the macho postering. Yes, it’s true. At nine, they’re already taking this whole sports thing too seriously.

Right now, Geeky Boy is playing basketball. I don’t usually attend the games because they play them in their tiny gym where there really isn’t room to sit or stand. You’re basically on the court. Last night was the game to determine whether his team would be 3rd or 4th. Yeah, they’re not that good. We had a mix-up on the times, so when I went to pick him up, he was actually just starting, so I stayed to watch.

First of all, it was clear from the practice that no one on the team is that great. There wasn’t a single boy who you just thought, “Wow, he’s got some talent.” On the other hand, no one was particularly bad either. Probably, if you put them at the free throw line and calculated their statistics, they’d be at the same level. But reality and perception are two different things. The team had basically decided that two boys were the stars. This perception was encouraged by the coach, a reprehensible thing in my book.

Basically, the two stars have developed a cool sports “attitude” which is why I think the team considers them stars in the first place. They play aggressively; they’re willing to take some chances. They’re in it for the coolness factor. Neither of them pays attention to form or to what might be the best play or who’s open. Their goal is to pass it to each other. The other kids might be wide open and they’ll pass the ball way over their heads just to get it to the other star.

One of the stars’ key strategies is simply to dribble the ball down the right side and hopefully take a shot. Inevitably, every time he did this (and he did it on almost every drive) he got trapped in the corner and couldn’t even pass. The other star’s strategy was to run down and stand under the basket and hope that someone would pass it to him. If he was covered, he did not move.

One of my favorite plays of the game was when dribbler star dribbled down to about the free-throw line and then stopped but was too heavily covered to shoot. There were no teammates down the court yet, so he pivoted around and my son was right there, completely open. It would have been a quick and easy pass; he could have moved into position and my son could have passed it back. He didn’t want to pass to Geeky Boy. So he keeps pivoting and looking for shooting star, but he’s not coming. While he’s looking back down the court, he shifts the ball behind him and someone from the other team comes up from behind and snags the ball. I smirked a little at that, thinking, “Ha! That’s what you get for being a ball hog.”

At the end of the game, shooting star cried, because of course they lost. He is not a good sport. I caught the end of their last game and he threw a fit, saying that the other team didn’t play fair.

I wasn’t at all feeling sorry for my son because no one was throwing him the ball. Instead, I was simply irritated with the boys who were being coached already that winning is the most important thing and that there’s always going to be a star and the rest of the team is there to support them. Thankfully, my son doesn’t feel that way and the sports he loves the most–soccer and lacrosse–don’t foster the same attitude.

Alliteration is great, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking a bit more about the mommy madness thing and reading a few posts here and there and of course, haven’t come to any grand conclusions. Something Purple Elephant raised was the class issue and I think that’s a big one. Elizabeth at Half-Changed World also raises the issue of the difference between the women who are struggling to just get the basics done and those who are trying to cram in way too much (whether at home or working). The Newsweek article in particular focuses on women who are decidedly upper middle class. Though specifics about the spouses combined incomes and work schedules were left out, one got the distinct impression that their combined incomes were above that magic $200,000 level. One woman was a tv news anchor; that’s gotta pay pretty well.

What’s interesting to me are the people who react to the article so negatively (there are more but I can’t find them right now) and say that we can’t expect “society” to fix this and that it has nothing to do with culture. While I think they have a point in that the article obviously focuses on a group of women who may be creating this situtation through their own sense of perfectionism, there are an awful lot of women out there who are disappointed with the culture that makes raising children more difficult.

No one seems to be looking at the way tv, print media, and movies shape what we think mothers should be. What about all those laundry and cleaning product commercials where they never show men cleaning? What about the sitcoms where the dumpy man sits in the recliner drinking beer while his svelte wife deals with the kids, cooks dinner, and folds laundry and she’s been at work all day? Isn’t this a way of sending women a message?

I’ll agree that maybe there isn’t a government program that’s going to save us from this problem (if it is a problem), but I think we need to question the values that are being pushed at us from all directions. So maybe the upper classes have Martha Stewart in mind, but I guarantee you that those who can’t afford everything she has are trying to or they try to create that same perfection with less.

And all that family values talk that comes around all the time. There’s always a message in there that women should be doing something different–not working usually or homeschooling or something. It’s never good enough.

I’m not sure we can say that it’s society’s fault, but as someone who believes that we are shaped by subconscious cues given to us by society, I have to believe that society/culture has played a role.

I have a long post about money but I’ve rambled on long enough, so I’ll post that one later.

Here’s the More: Everything on my list, I got done. Did the thing for the prof. Had a good wine and cheese (over 30 people showed up!). Good off-campus meeting. I’m feeling much less like an indentured servant after having some really good conversations with faculty at the reception. Hugged and kissed the kids, who decided to put themselves to bed tonight. And tomorrow’s Friday!

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Here’s mine from Organizing Plain and Simple:
“Or find a way to make it more pleasant.” It is bill-paying. How apropos!