Geeky Mom

A political link: Mea culpa–on the Iraq war via Crooked Timber

A parenting link: On how stupid Leslie Steiner Morgan is via Rebel Dad

Well, I got in about 3.5 hours of good work today. I’m going to read a couple of articles tonight before bed–probably another hour or so of work.

Not too bad. Unfortunately, whenever I’m working like this, I need snacks. So I went to the grocery store and loaded up on chocolate. So not good.

I have to get back to work on the diss, after about a week off, thanks to traveling and then recovering from the traveling.

So, today, unfortunately, will be quiet around here. But here’s some random thoughts and links as a send off. First, I very much liked New Kid’s post about writer’s block, especially given my own lack of writing lately. She offers some very good advice there. I posted my own writing schedule there, but I’ll elaborate here too, in case anyone else wants to try to write a dissertation while having a fulltime job and kids to raise. On the weekends, I try to work 2-4 hours, usually in the morning, from 10-12, with another stint in the afternoon. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I go away, usually to Starbucks, right after dinner and work for about 2-3 hours. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work at home, usually after the kids are in bed. I shoot for 2 hours, but often it’s only an hour or so. Friday, I don’t work. I sometimes am able to squeeze in an hour of source searching at work.

I also very much enjoyed Musey’s post on education. Those of us in education and/or those of us with kids in the system should really start thinking about the state of education and listening to some experts.

Finally, here’s my political link for the day. Read it and weep. It’s related to my previous post. How prescient I am.

Bob Casey is a pro-life democrat and the Democratic party’s choice of him to run against Rick Santorum represents all that I think is wrong with the Democratic party. They keep thinking that if they just move a little more to the right, they’ll get more votes and win. No! No! No! You get more votes by standing up for what you believe in, not polishing your image based on poll numbers and market research. The Dems are supposed to be the pro-choice party. They are supposed to help those who cannot help themselves. They are supposed to protect people from the expansive powers of the government. Increasingly, though, I can’t tell the difference between the Dems and the Republicans.

Unfortunately, primaries are not well attended. My vote for either Alan Sandals or Chuck Pennacchio probably won’t mean a thing. My little local committee has already made up their minds. However, I’m not going along with them. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine at work who happens to live near me too. He said he’s never felt welcome at any of the local democratic meetings. He described a meeting in which all discussion was shut down by a local politician. Hello? Anyone heard of a democracy? Last I checked, it was all about open discourse. I’m tired of these committees thinking that they know best and that they can determine who we should vote for and what we should think. I’m not wearing any “I’m pro-choice and pro-Casey” buttons. I’m not gonna stand by and let them try to enforce some kind of weird group think. And I’m tired of people telling me not to vote for someone because they won’t win. WTF?! Of course they won’t if you keep telling people not to vote for them.

This post was inspired in part by PZ’s defeatist post. I know how he feels and I’m trying to find a way to do something about it. I encourage you all to see who’s running in your primaries for Senate and House positions. Vote for who you believe in, not who you think will win. Otherwise, we really are defeated.

Memes! And I can finally do this–since Mr. Geeky got me a new iPod for my birthday. Yay Mr. Geeky! Actually, the real reason is that we finally have the internets working properly in my office. So here goes the iMeme:

1. How does the world see me?
“She loves you” The Beatles (cool!)

2. Will I have a happy life?
“Kids in America” Kim Wilde (what does that mean?)

3. What do my friends really think of me?
“Afternoons and Coffeespoons” Crash Test Dummies (a song about getting old; either they think I’m old or really relaxed)

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
“Three Little Birds” Bob Marley (huh?)

5. How can I make myself happy?
“The Perfect Girl” The Cure (yikes; maybe I’ve been in the closet?)

6. What should I do with my life?
“Express Yourself” Madonna (seriously! That’s pretty cool!)

7. Will I ever have (grand) children?
“The only living boy in New York” Simon and Garfunkel (that sounds like maybe one? a boy?)

8. What is some good advice for me?
“Window” Fiona Apple (odd)

9. How will I be remembered?
“You’re my thrill” Billie Holiday (I don’t know whether to be scared or happy about this.)

10. What is my signature dancing song?
“I don’t know what it is” Rufus Wainwright (not exactly a dancing song, but one of my favs)

11. What do I think my current theme song is?
“Torn & Frayed” The Rolling Stones (so true)

12. What does everyone else think my theme song is?
“Road to Nowhere” Talking Heads (okay, that’s bad)

13. What song will play at my funeral?
“Heartbreak Number 9″ Doyle Lawson (a good bluegrass song as a sendoff!)

14. What type of men/women do I like?
“But I might die tonight” Cat Stevens (does that mean I like people who live life to the fullest? I’ll take that)

15. What is my day going to be like?
“Asleep on a sunbeam” Belle and Sebastian (that sounds about right)

I think I like my new design, if I do say so myself. My flowers are coming in and once they do, I may include some pics of them somewhere. Thanks to Joe Calhoun for the flickr photo.

I’ve been reading Perfect Madness (almost done, real review coming!) and I just finished the chapter on husbands and then I saw Rebel Dad’s link to Leslie Morgan Steiner’s post. Steiner’s blog is really driving me crazy. But that’s another story. In Perfect Madness, Warner goes on and on about how the husbands pretty much check out of their family’s lives and don’t take on any of the housework or childcare and are basically incompetent. As I was reading that, I remembered that she was dealing with a pretty small subgroup of people and as rebel dad says, they’re not all like that.

I’m going to speak from personal experience since that’s all I’ve got and anecdotal evidence seems to be all the rage anyway. Basically, I married the only guy I know who doesn’t cook. Seriously, all my friends’ husbands, gourmet cooks. To make up for that, Mr. Geeky cleans the kitchen. He also does laundry and grocery shopping. He often asks if I need him to pick up anything at the store. Now he hates grocery shopping because the placement of products is a mystery he’s never figured out, but he manages. Most of the husbands I know, including Mr. Geeky, are very involved in their kids’ lives. They go to parent-teacher conferences. They go to soccer games. They take their kids to lunch at the pizza joint. You see them at parks and playgrounds together or just hanging out in the back yard.

That doesn’t mean I don’t know a few husbands who seem to be completely uninvolved, but really, it’s rare. I feel Rebel Dad’s frustration. Stereotypes are bad for everyone.

Today’s my birthday. I’m 38. Most of the time I feel about 30. At SXSW, I felt ancient, for lots of reasons which I’ll go into in another post.

I’ve seen lots of people out there with birthdays lately. Do you feel your age?

Laura has an excellent post with equally excellent comments on the issue of quality daycare. We have been through the daycare ringer. When Geeky Boy was born, we lived in a state with good state regulations for affordable day care. He ended up in a multiage, home-based (and state regulated) daycare with a woman who’d raised six of her own kids. She babysat for us on the weekends sometimes and we really considered her part of the family.

When we moved, I stayed at home for a while. For a year. I lasted only a couple of months without any care whatsoever. I put Geeky Boy into a Mother’s Morning Out program that was quite similar to the home day care he had been in before. It was quite often that I’d drop him off and there’d be a couple of mothers breastfeeding their babies just once more before they left. I liked it there.

Then I went back to school. The plan was to go part time, but they offered me a full ride assistantship, so I jumped at the chance and then had about a week to find day care. Geeky boy was two. We went through a couple of really bad daycares. The biggest barrier for us was money. Mr. Geeky was on an instructor’s salary and I would be making about $800/mo. on my assistantship. Our housing costs were pretty high and we had student loans, credit card debt, the usual just-out-of-grad-school financial crises. Finding day care that we could afford was difficult. I don’t remember which bad option came first, but one was one of those chains of daycares and it was awful. It was like taking your kid to the mall and dropping him off and hoping for the best. I would go pick him up and I literally felt like I was navigating the food court or the school cafeteria. I would navigate through room after room filled with tables and tiny plastic chairs with metal legs that scraped the floor. One day, there was actually a fire there. That place only lasted a month.

The next horrible place was less institutional and closer to the school. Also, the teacher for Geeky Boy’s class had been around for 20 years. You don’t see that much in day care settings. Things seemed fine and dandy for a few months. Then, the teacher quit and they went through a string of teachers. It seemed like every day, we’d walk in seeing the director instead of the teacher and she’d have to tell us that she’d lost another one. Then there was the lice infestation that caused us to have to shave Geeky Boy’s head. The last straw was the director of the center hitting Geeky Boy. You see, Geeky Boy had a bit of a temper at that age. He got frustrated and then, he kind of got in your face. It didn’t happen often, but it was quite infuriating when it did. So, apparently this happened at school while the director was tending to his class and she hauled off and slapped him in the face. To her credit, she reported herself and she filed a report with the state and everything she was supposed to do, but still. That happened two weeks before the end of the semester. We left him there until semester’s end and then I stayed home with Geeky Boy during the summer and looked for day care again.

We finally found great care at a small center that was non-profit. The parents were required to pitch in and once a month, we all gathered at the center to do chores. Geeky Boy was there for two years. It was a wonderful place and best of all, affordable, at around $350/mo.

Moving again, we had to find day care again. This time, I knew not to go with cheap. You really do get what you pay for. However, the costs had skyrocketed. Now, for a similar day care to the one we’d had previously (this time for Geeky Girl), we had to pay $900/mo. And we did like it. Geeky Girl stayed there for 4 years. I credit them with her early reading ability and her good social skills. They treated summer like camp, taking them to plays, for swimming lessons and trips to places like the zoo and the fire station.

Depending on where you live, good day care can be out of reach. I always tell people what I pay in day care because I do think, as Katherine said in the comments to Laura’s post, people think you’re only paying $300 or $400/mo. at the high end. While there might be some places where that *will* get you good care, at many others, it won’t.

I know quite a few moms who stay at home because they can’t find good, affordable care. And it’s not that they don’t want to stay at home, but they would certainly weigh their options differently if it only took $350/mo. to get them excellent care.

The thing is, good day care is hard to find. Just knowing where to look can be difficult. Most of the time, it’s word of mouth.

I’m at a point now where I don’t feel guilty at all for putting my kids in day care. There may have been a few rough spots along the way, but we all learned something from them, and I never felt like my kids’ safety was at stake. That said, I have had people directly criticize me for it at a time when I felt uncertain about the choices I’d made (which really weren’t choices since at the beginning, I was the one with the salary while Mr. Geeky was writing a dissertation). I’ve come to a place where I really think it’s an individual family’s decision about what kind of care they feel is best. The media’s constant spinning of this issue as having a right or wrong answer leads parents to buy into that in the early years. How can you possibly know when your kid’s six weeks old all the various permutations that have worked out just fine? You’re just beginning to add your own.

It very much feels like to me that all us parents out here in the blogosphere are very respectful of each other’s decisions. Of course, that’s not a good headline, is it?

The bad thing about returning from a trip mid-week is that you have to jump right into work. Luckily, it’s pretty quiet around here. There are a few loose ends to tie up, things to work out, emails to send, but nothing major right now.

I’m looking forward to a home-cooked meal (though I did have some good food in Austin). I’m looking forward to a bath and a good night’s sleep.