One of the roles I least like in my family and one that seems to have been mine for many years is that of “keeper.” By keeper, I mean the person who keeps everyone on track, at both the micro and the macro level. I know, for example, when the first field trip is, and I know when the soccer games are and when back to school night is and when school is out for 1/2 day. I’m also the one who makes doctor’s and dentist’s appointments (obviously). I actually make Mr. Geeky’s appointments for him because if I don’t, an appendage is likely to fall fall off (no, not that one), or a tumor will take over his body. As an example, after months of watching him squint while reading and doing the arm telescoping thing, I called the eye doctor, because after prodding him to do it for months, I knew he would never do it.
On the micro level, I’m the one waking everyone up in the morning, making lunches, prodding kids to take showers and eat breakfast, gather school materials and find soccer socks. I try to get the gathering to happen the night before, but alas, it’s hardly ever successful. On the plus side, I don’t have to do this for Mr. Geeky, though I do have to remind him to eat lunch. Geeky Boy has actually taken to texting him when he goes to lunch.
All this tracking is exhausting. Periodically, I’ve tried to extract myself from tracking everyone, but when I have done this, it’s always an epic fail. A kid is late to school, forgets an important assignment, can’t go on a field trip, or only has milk for lunch. And when I was working, it totally pissed me off because I myself was in a hurry getting ready and getting ready for something I didn’t always enjoy so that I wasn’t in a good mood to begin with.
Yesterday, as I was downstairs making lunches (peanut butter and banana, fruit, and a bag of pretzels), I realized that Geeky Boy was not down for breakfast yet. So, I stopped in the middle of spreading peanut butter, walked upstairs, poked my head in our bedroom where Mr. Geeky is catching up on email and reading the news, and said to him, “You know, when I’m downstairs making lunch for the kids, you could make sure Geeky Boy is on his way down and poke him if he needs to be poked.” “Okay, okay, all you have to do is ask.” And this morning, I didn’t have to ask. A small victory.
After school is a similar scenario of checking on homework, requesting rooms to be cleaned, and asking for help with chores.
The thing is, I know that I don’t have to be the morning keeper. Geeky Girl needs no keeping. She sets her alarm in the morning and comes down to get breakfast on her own. She often eats in our bedroom, chatting with us while she eats. She gets dressed, gets her school stuff together and gets out the door to the bus stop without any prompting from us. She has a strict schedule–which she made up herself–for after school activities. First is homework, then violin practice, then soccer practice. Though I check in with her, I never have to prod.
I don’t know how I ended up in this role. I didn’t want it, for sure. It could be because I’ve always been the one with the 9-5 job and so kept a regular schedule. It could be that I’m more organized than the rest of my family. Or it could everyone else is lazy. I don’t know. But my goal is to ease my way out of this role. I don’t mind having to check on everyone with gentle reminders. What I don’t like is the feeling that I’m the only one thinking of these things. So, I’m going to do a couple of things in the next couple of days. One, I’m getting Geeky Boy an alarm clock. Two, I’m going to set him up with Google Calendar–which Mr. Geeky is using too and makes some of this tracking sooo much easier. I’m sure there’s more I can do. Ideas welcome!
As you play WoW, you collect gear, but you also collect a lot of stuff, cramming it into your virtual bags as you go along. Everything from weeds to boots to flowers to drinks and so much more. Some of that stuff is useful to you. You can wear it or eat it or drink it or use it to make things with. But a lot of it just isn’t. And it doesn’t take before you have bags full of things that you just don’t need. It’s a lot like real life, really. We had a garage sale this past weekend, putting out a lot of the stuff we’d accumulated in our lives, trying to make a buck or two off it. And we did, but we had a good deal left over, some of which we hauled away to charity and some of which we posted on Freecycle. I’ll say one thing, though, it’s a lot easier to get rid of virtual stuff than real stuff. No right-clicking on an old sofa to sell it to a vendor in real life.
So, back to WoW and organizing stuff. Like managing your time in WoW, managing your stuff can help you enjoy the game more and spend less time figuring out where that thing is that you need and more time doing what you really want to do (kind of like real life). The default in WoW is to throw everything into your bags willy nilly, not organized at all. And there’s not an easy way to sort through things. I can’t tell you how many times when I first started playing that I got to a quest area and needed to use a specific item and couldn’t find it. So annoying! Not only that, but you need to know what to get rid of and what to keep, and what might be worth selling on the Auction House and what can just be sold to a vendor. I have accidentally thrown out things that I needed and vended things that I could have gotten 10 times the gold for on the AH. Also annoying.
Luckily, there are a couple of addons that help. And sorry, there are no addons for real life. If there were, though, I’d totally get them. I use an addon called ArkInventory for managing my stuff. Instead of displaying your bags separately, it displays everything all in one big bag, organized into sections determined by how you configure it. So, I can put all my food in one area, jewelcrafting items in another, ore in another, and equipment somewhere else. I have never lost anything. ArkInventory also organizes your bank this way. Your bank is like the attic or the junk room in your house, where you store stuff you don’t need to use that often.
There are other addons out there that I haven’t tried, some of which tell you when you have all the materials to make things or what you’re lacking, etc. If anyone has opinions on those, please feel free to comment.
Another way I manage my stuff is by periodically going through it and ditching things I don’t need. But how to know what to sell where and for what price? For that, I use Auctioneer. I use this addon much more simplistically than I know some people do. You can track all kinds of things via this tool and price things very specifically. Mostly I use it as an easier and faster interface for selling things off. There’s an Appraiser tab that shows up when you’re at the Auction House and through that one can click on an item and Auctioneer will price it. If you have more than one of the item, with the click of a single button, you can post all those items for sale, even if they have to be posted one at a time and not in stacks of 5 or 10 or 20. That makes it really easy to clean out your bank and your bags. Auctioneer will also make recommendations about whether to post an item to the AH or sell it to a vendor. I’ve found that you have to take these with a grain of salt. It takes time, for example, to keep reposting an item to the AH, and if it’s a common item or something without much of a markup, sometimes it just makes sense to sell it off quickly to a vendor. I’ve gotten to the point now where I can usually take 10 or 15 minutes and get everything sold off.
Now if only I could be this organized in real life.
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Just as an example of the time suck that kids can be, I spent two hours with the kids at the dentist’s office this morning. And my schedule, such as it is, is all out of whack.
A couple of weeks ago, as I was lamenting the extra poundage I was putting on and my lack of motivation for getting in shape, I decided I need a higher purpose to my exercise routine than just my own vanity. So I signed myself up for 2010′s 3-Day Walk for the Cure. My stepmother is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer. This is her second time through the treatment process after being in remission for almost 5 years. The treatment is almost worse than the disease. I am hoping that I can do a small part to support breast cancer research, especially toward early detection. My goal is to raise $5,000, a high goal, I know, but like when I used to do the broad jump, I always aimed further than what I knew for sure I could reach. I almost always beat my previous record.
I have over a year to raise money. I promise not to nag my readers too much, but this is my first shout out, so if you’d like to drop a nickel in the can for my cause, please visit my page.
And while I’m shouting out for myself, I’d like to give a shout out for my friend, Alan Levine, who is running a marathon (running! imagine!) in support of diabetes research. Drop a nickel in his bucket, too, if you’re so inclined.
I was going to post something fun here today, but nothing floated to the top as worth it, and after I read Historiann and Dr. Crazy this morning, I found myself with a lot of thoughts to put down. Dr. Crazy’s post on speaking out as a non-parent on parent-related issues is excellent as are the many comments which dig into the topic further. What she and Historiann both marvel at is the defensiveness with which many of their parent commenters express in their responses. I feel that defensiveness pretty keenly these days in all kinds of different situations. It feels to me that no matter what choices I’ve made–to be a parent or not, to work or not, to mother a certain way or not–I’m criticized for them. I think many parents–mostly mothers, imho–feel they’re in a basically lose-lose situation. And I think Histioriann’s discussion of patriarchy is right on the money as to why this happens. Here are some of my humble thoughts, mostly based on my own experience, so, as they used to say in the old days of the Internet: ymmv.
1. Women in the workforce have a difficult time. They are still often perceived, even in places that are “family-friendly” as the primary caregivers. This leads to assumptions about how dedicated they are to their work and whether they’re going to up and quit because of a child. Unfortunately, many women do quit to manage family matters because they find they can’t once they realize there’s no (affordable) child-care, no (affordable) afterschool programs and their workplace isn’t flexible enough to provide time to juggle child-care and work. Even if their partner can take on part of this, they both need the flexibility to manage this and workplaces are often even less friendly to men who want that kind of flexibility to do their part as parents. And all this is systemic, having nothing to do with individuals as individuals who just react and make choices that make sense within that system.
2. On the flip side, when mothers who work find themselves among mothers who don’t, they’re often treated as if they’re not being good mothers. They’re leaving the kids with less than ideal care (ideal being a parent). Also part of the system.
3. Mothers who don’t work feel awkward among mothers who do because again, they feel they’re being judged. As one commenter noted, and as I myself have experienced, some women will expound on the “anti-feminism” of the sahm. I’ll admit to having had those thoughts, but would never say them out loud. And now, I think that some people are sahm’s because they are persuaded or caught up in certain social norms that stem from patriarchy, mostly having to do with appropriate gender roles. And some are sahms because they get forced out of the workplace, which as I said in #1 functions under these same social norms.
So, here’s the thing. This was my first week at home after school started. The kids aren’t here from 8-3. For the first time in 13 years, I am making absolutely. no. money. It feels very, very weird. I feel all at turns useful and completely useless. And yes, sometimes defensive. When I was working at my polling place a couple of years ago, my across the street neighbor came in and one of our other neighbors, a man in his 50s, started talking to her, and she explained that she’d quit her job to stay at home (her kids are older than mine–oldest is a senior, youngest is in middle school). He said, “Good for you. As it should be.” That has stuck with me, and just the other day, when I was standing at the bus stop, a neighbor said to me, “Hey, don’t you teach too?” And I stumbled a bit, and said, “Not anymore. I quit my job last fall.” And he said, “Good for you.” And I heard “As it should be” in my head. And that does not feel good–at least not to me.
There are subtle messages that we get as parents about how we’re expected to behave. Those messages are often different for fathers than for mothers. One would think the easy path would be to meet those expectations, but most of the time, we end up trying to overcome those expectations. A working parent often has to prove to her workplace that she’s not a slacker and prove to the mothers at the soccer game that she’s a good parent. I’m getting a nagging feeling all the time that I should be working, but then I realize how much work it would be to manage the house and kids and I cringe, thinking about putting in a 40-hour week plus god knows how many hours juggling the home front. And I don’t feel comfortable at all running around with the PTO crowd, some of whom have literally said they put their children’s needs ahead of their own. I’m not even doing that now, as a sahm. I quit work for myself, for my own mental and physical health and to give myself some time to work on some projects that may or may not make any money, but I feel like I can’t say that.
So what am I saying? I guess I’m just saying that it’s complicated, but I’m very glad that the conversation is happening. And I think we should all be observant of the ways in which we might be participating in a system that reinforces stereotypes, one of which might be that parents need extra “perks” as Dr. Crazy suggests is the norm at her school, but another of which might be that non-parents have all the time in the world, which is equally untrue. Those stereotypes are damaging to us all, put us all on the defensive and make it so we can’t work together toward viable solutions, which might be local, but which might also be part of a larger policy goal related to working conditions.
Image by lorda via Flickr
I’ve been hiding something for years. Upstairs, on the third floor, in what used to be an attic, are my kids rooms trash heaps. I’ve been trying to help them clear them out over the last couple of weeks, but it’s overwhelming. I’m soldiering on, but with every wrapper I throw away or cup I haul back down to the kitchen, I keep thinking, “How did we get here?” And the answer to that question, it seems, points to me.
You see, I’m not the kind of mom who goes and straightens the kids’ rooms. Hell, I don’t even put their clothes away for them. And it’s been that way for at least five years. My own room is no palace of neatness, but I don’t have candy wrappers strewn on the floor (new rule: no food on the third floor). So I’m not setting the best example either. In addition, their rooms are still filled with toys they received five years ago. So there’s clutter and there’s archaeological piles.
Geeky Girl dug into cleaning her room with gusto. In just a couple of two-hour-long sessions, we had her room in tip-top shape. All that’s left to do is go through a set of drawers and a small basket of toys, easily done in another hour session. Geeky Boy, on the other hand, being a teenager, will not be moved. Two days ago, I asked him to start digging out, letting him know that I would be working on it some myself over the next couple of days. He made a pretty half-assed effort. I don’t even want to describe some of the things I found in there! Okay, I will ’cause I know you want to know: chewed up gum, moldy cups, rocks, single shoes, what looks like lost homework from years’ past, smelly socks, lots of random coins. Bleh.
Once Geeky Boy and I dig this place out, I’m holding hard to the rule of having a clean room before anything can be done. It’s a standard I hold myself to–doing laundry or cleaning before watching tv or playing on the computer–so I think it should apply to my kids. Plus, they get allowance for helping out around the house and their rooms are still part of the house.
What do you all do to with your kids’ rooms? Do you have a hands-off philosophy or a set of rules? How much do you get involved in cleaning their areas?
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Really? I can’t really believe this article proposing that we charge for public school. Um, I already pay over $2k/year in taxes that specifically go to the school district. Should schools have more money? Absolutely. But charging tuition is not the way to go.
This is actually not about managing time in terms of managing play time, but about managing time within the game. When your WoW time is limited, you have to make decisions about what to spend time doing. There are literally thousands of things one could do in game: quests, dungeons, raids, achievements, gathering materials and crafting things from those materials. All those things take time but have certain rewards.
I now have 3 characters to play with. The one at the left is my main character, the one who’s at the top of her game (though she can always use more gear). Her skills are maxed out. Many of her faction reps are maxed out. With the exception of one top-level raid, she can pretty much do whatever she wants. What I’ve been doing with her lately is simply running her through a few dailies. When a good dungeon run opportunity crops up and I have the time, I will run that as well, since the rewards are tokens for good gear. On any given day, I can spend less than an hour on her and she won’t really suffer much if I don’t play her at all.
My other max level character is Zamar, who I just moved from another server and who has such bad gear that what she can do is limited. She needs to run dungeons, but she’s not geared enough for some of them. She needs faction rep to obtain gear and that requires quests (some daily, some long series of quests), which can be quite time consuming. And then I have another low-level character that obviously needs a lot of work. So, if I only have an hour or two to play, I have to prioritize what I do, especially with these lower level characters. This occurred to me the other day as I was standing in the middle of a city, trying to decide which direction to go. And then, I thought, hmm, this is a dilemma most people have in real life. How can this transfer?
When I log into WoW, sometimes of course, I’m just planning to goof around. I play as a respite from work. But sometimes, I have goals, just like I do in my work. I go through a series of questions as I try to determine what to do. And I think this series of decisions might be a good thought process for any decision. So, here it is:
1. What is most important for this character right now? What is he/she most lacking?
2. If the character is not lacking anything, what is a good reward for him/her right now?
3. What task will get the character closer to the need/reward?
4. How much time will that task take?
5. If the task time > allowed game time, what is the next priority or can a part of the task be completed in the allotted time? (Then jump to 4).
6. If the task time < allowed game time, go do task.
This is pretty much the same decision tree I use in real life. I often have a list of priorities and I simply decide which one gives me the most bang for my buck in the time I have at hand. The hardest decision is the first one, deciding what’s most important. In the game, it doesn’t much matter. In life, there can be some unpleasant consequences. For example, if I were to prioritize gameplay . . . .
I’m continuing my obsession with trying to eat better, and it’s been challenging, but not impossible. I’m not worrying too much about produce for the moment. I’m buying most from the farmer’s market, but have picked up bananas and avocados, which are obviously not local. The kids and the husband are giving me some grief about this whole project, but since I’m the one who buys and prepares the food around here, they’re stuck with it. As I mentioned before, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve been able to pick up at my local store. But there are still some things that are hard to find. Cereal, for example.
Last week, I bought the store’s organic brand, which met all my real food criteria. Today the first morning anyone ate it, and no one likes it. I’m not really a cereal person, so if I have to forgo cereal, I’m good with that. But the kids and the hubby, they live on cereal. Almost all of it has crap in it, mostly sugar. Luckily, my kids have never been into sugary cereal. We have binged on occasion on Frosted Flakes, but literally, that’s like once a year. I grew up on Sugar Corn Pops myself, but can’t stand it now. It’s like having dessert for breakfast. Bleh. So I broke down and bought Multigrain Cheerios, which happens to be their favorite and aside from some monoglycerides, have natural ingredients. (In case you’re wondering, monoglycerides are emulsifiers commonly used in baked goods to add volume and smoothness.)
So I’ve added another rule to my list. We have to like it. The whole point is to enjoy eating, and by all accounts, it’s healthier to enjoy what you’re eating and to enjoy it in the company of others.
A rule Pollan mentions that I didn’t bring up before is not to buy food with announcements about how healthy it is for you and most cereal has those: things like “made with whole grain” and “heart healthy.” And now there are about to more such labels, according to this article (hat tip: Mike Smith at Change.org) The reason to ignore such claims on the front of packaging is that front of packaging labeling is not well regulated and the guidelines are set primarily by the food industry itself rather than a completely disinterested group of people. The food industry doesn’t always have consumers’ best health interests in mind. That Fruit Loops can get a “Smart Choice” label should tell you something.
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