Mama insult

M's daycare is closed for 2 weeks while they give the teachers a holiday and then do some training and cleaning before the start of the new year.  This makes sense, and I'll all for treating the teachers well.  But it does kinda make it hard on parents, as we then need to juggle small child while we also try to work.

The first two days of this week Dh has been busy with a film crew for some documentary thing.  He does these a lot, and has an absolute inability to say "no" when TV is attached to the request...  but that's another story for another post.  And that's not what I wanted to tell you all about.

It was a guy on the film crew that annoyed the crappola out of me today.  I have shouldered all the child care yesterday and today, not to mention most of the time over the weekend so that Dh could do their stupid video, and Dh has been pretty verbal about this with them, from what I can tell.

I normally don't take M to my office but I really needed to work in my office for about 1.5 hours .  So, M came along with Princess and the Frog on the iPad (her recent favorite).  That was all good.  Then we were leaving.  The film people were all out in the hallway filming Dh and the main guy walking down the hallway.  They were setting up, so totally no big deal for us to walk by.  M was all excited to get to run after having been sitting still for the last 1.5 hours, and so she ran off to her daddy.  Then when it was time to get on the elevator to leave, she didn't want to, as running through the hallway is lots of fun.

Pause:  Have I mentioned how mama-clingy M is?  I mean, seriously?  Dh spent a day with her about 10 days ago and that helped a lot, but no one who spends more than 3 minutes with us would not pick up on the parental preference.  It is often so bad that I feel really awful for Dh's ego in front of other people.

Now, back to the story.  As M ran back to her daddy one more time, as I was nicely calling for her to come with me, this film crew guy says, "well, I guess it is really clear who the dynamic attractive personality is in your marriage!"

Oh my god.  Can you believe he would say that to me?  Is it just me, or is that ridiculously rude?  Granted, Dh can turn on the charm for the camera, but in the real world he is an absolute wall flower, and is usually ridiculously non-social to the point of being really, really rude.

I am trying not to take my irked-ness out on my thoughts of Dh.  But, geez, ow freaking insensitive.  They don't even pay Dh for all of this.  I lost SO MUCH work time because of these stupid film people.  Dh took about 10 hours over the weekend to work on a manuscript deadline that the filming interfered with, and now he argued that he needs to work at least half-days on Wednesday and Thursday because he lost these last 2 days in the office.  That is just not going to work for me anymore.  TV filming counts as his time at work whether he thinks it should or not.  Especially if the film crew is comprised of rude, insensitive jerks.

Tips

I was talking with a good friend the other day and she said that, despite being in her 40s, she had only just learned that a skin-colored tank under a white shirt is less obvious than a white tank.  That got us talking about girlie things and sharing tips that work for us.  So, I thought I'd share mine:

1) I have really furry arms, and I never liked them.  About 7 years ago,, after a few glasses of wine, I asked a somewhat random person how it was that she had such smooth arms.  She said that she shaves her arms.  Really?!  It had never dawned on me that you could do that...  I now shave my arms about once a week and stubble is not really ever noticable.  I am much happier with my arms.

2)  I really like these undies: comandos.  Yes, I really do spend about $20 on a pair of underwear, which is likely a crime against humanity.  But, they last a really, really long time (years) and I never worry about underwear lines.

3) Unfortunately, horizontal dancing is ridiculously infrequent in my life.  But for some reason (maybe it's the undies?), I do like to keep my bikini zone in shape.  I wax at home, as I might be willing to spend $20 on underwear but not on something that I can do myself in about 5 minutes at home for much, much less.  My preferred wax is this:  Moom.

4) A few months ago I started having this rash-like thing on my eyelid.  It was a littly itchy, very scaly, and felt weird and looked not too good (although only my daughter seemed to notice).  I tried cortisone cream and antibiotic ointment (I was in Africa, few options).  Nothing helped.  And then it started to be on my other eyelid.  Oof.  For some reason, I was compelled to ask the lady at the Clinique counter as I was walking through the department store with my daughter to get her a new pair of sneakers.  She suggested this amazing eye cream, and you know what?  Within days it was going away!  And now, it's all gone, 10 days later.  I am guessing that as we get older our eyelids get drier, or something like that?  Anyway, it if happens to you, eyecream.

5) I was thinking of buying this really cute leopard skin belt from Boden, but then when I was walking through Target yesterday, I bought almost the exact same belt for less than half the price.

Do you have any for me?!

Love/Don't love

Back at home now for a week, everyone is now in the appropriate time-zone and M has just one week left of day care before...  preschool.  How the hell did I become the mother of a preschooler?!  My head is spinning.

Things I love...

"Look mama, what do you think of my new ballet trick!"

Things I don't love...

In response to the "chores for rewards" program I instigated, with a Tiana dollie as the reward, she says, "No thanks.  I don't need another dollie, I have plenty."  Where do I go from there?!

Things I love...

Graduate student writes and says, "No need to read the manuscript I sent you last week.  I'm revising it so you should just wait and read the improved version."

Things I don't love...

Graduate student informs me that colleague/collaborator only sent us half the data he was supposed to have overseen the collection of.  It's a random half, suggesting that he just forgot to download batches of it as it was produced.  A year ago.  Did I mention that we had a short-term grant to cover that work and it's over and spent?

Things I love...

Dh offering to put child in pull-up when she wants to poop (as she strongly prefers to poop standing up, so uses pull-ups for pooping only).

Things I don't love...

While pulling child's pants off, child starts to walk away but Dh continues to remove pants from feet.  Child falls flat on her face.  Dh blames it entirely on her and so doesn't apologize or even say "sorry!"  Nice.

Things I love...

Getting back into the exercise groove.

Things I don't love...

Wishing that I could exercise but still have that 1.5 hours in my day.

Things I love...

The invitation to give a big public lecture despite not being a big name in my field.  And it has a $1,000 honorarium.

Things I don't love...

Knowing that now I have to put that lecture together.  And it has to be good.

Things I love...

I painted my toenails blue.

Things I don't love...

I wish it could have been a  pedicure.  I just love the idea of a pedicure.

Things I love...

I am back in the world of cocktails, my favorite these days being a manhattan.

Things I don't love...

I don't have any bourbon in the house so that ain't happening for me any time soon.

Things I love...

My excuse to turn down departmental service this year:   Do you remember my dean who told me that I don't have enough gravitas to chair a committee that I'm totally qualified to chair?  I've decided that for the next year or two I will turn down all but the bare minimum of departmental service, explaining that I am busy working on my "gravitas."  It makes me chuckle every time I think of it.  

Do you wanna build a snowman?

I have played Ana and Elsa much too much lately.

Heading home from seven weeks of work-related travel with three year old...  to sum up, it was well worth doing.

That said, I wanted to share a work-family balance thought.

When my daughter is with me, she is with me.  She talks to me or sits on my lap and wiggles all around incessantly.  For every meal she sits on my lap or beside me.  She's three. That means that she forgets to eat, so needs constant reminders or, she would prefer (I think), for me to feed her bites.  She drinks from a glass, but forgets physics pretty regularly, focusing only on the front side of the glass and not the back.  She needs to poop, I am by far the preferred assistant.  And I mean, by far.  I have a bunch of apps on my phone that she really likes (and over the duration of this trip she has learned sincere passion for my iPhone and the 15 apps I have downloaded specifically for her), but she is three, so she needs somewhat constant supervision with it.  And for some apps/games, that's like every 30-160 seconds.  It is just enough time for me to yearn for some mental respite of my own (like, listening to music on my iPhone, oops), but not enough time to actually get to do it.

All in all, it means that for the last three weeks I have been supervising my three year old 24/7, and trying to do a little bit of work, networking, collaboration-building, etc.  All of those things, those last three I listed?  It didn't work so well.  I am basically ok with that, as it worked out as I had anticipated might well be the case.  But, honestly, I am emotionally exhausted.  Work exhausts and rejuvenates my mental states in very different ways from being on mama-duty, and I really really need that infusion right now.

I find it fascinating that my dear husband doesn't seem to ever experience that constant distraction of little M's presence.  He can totally tune her out.  Of course, she knows this and that's why I am (at present) the strongly preferred parent.  I wish he would tune into it a little more so that I didn't get emotionally exhausted to the point where I have to explain to her that I am tired of playing "Frozen" and need some grown-up time.  I know it hurts her feelings, and since we decided to take her along on such an adult trip it isn't really fair to turn around and be resentful that we are her only playmates.  But I guess, as I randomly think through this, I wish it were both of us being playmates and not just me.

Oh, and I am really in the mood for a conversation with my husband that does not take place in front of my daughter.  I love how dh always manages to be too busy with email to talk for the few minutes between M's bed time and ours, and always manages to ask me if I am ok, or what my problem is when M is listening and turns to me to hear what the answer is.  Nice.

10 hour flight home tomorrow.  Tonight we are an airport hotel.  I took my laptop and said I'd be in the hotel bar with my first glass of wine in two weeks, leaving dh to play "frozen"...  my first break in recent memory...  I admit it, I am a much, much better mama when I get to have my adult time.  And wine.  Islamic countries during Ramadan were not conducive to my strong need for a glass of wine after hours of Ana and Elsa play each day...