10:50 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, Personal | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Ian's disabilities became obvious when he was about 2-1/2. He'll be 11 next month, so a little math here... I've been trying to find the right place for Ian both academically and socially for nearly nine years. And I'm a little burned out.
His perky new teacher who is straight out of college tells me that I should be reviewing Ian's homework with him every evening, instead of letting him work independently. (Can I tell you how much fun it is to get a parenting lecture from a 21-year old?) Uh, yeah, no. Instead, I'm researching appropriate summer camps and after school activities.
It's not easy to find the right programs for Ian. It's hard to find any activities that are geared to special ed kids. Often it involves a lot of driving and networking and phone calls. The fact that Ian is cognitively strong, but has a language disability, makes it even trickier.
It's hard to find the right activities that are geared to his specific type of disability. Some programs are aimed at kids who are extremely disabled and are much older. A few years ago, I enrolled Ian in an excercise program, and those huge kids - babies with the bodies of adults - were a little scary for Ian. One kid pinched him and he cried. Ian doesn't want to deal with kids who aren't cognitively at his level. Other programs are aimed at kids who have ADHD, who fly around the room, and the adults don't know how to talk to someone with a language disorder. Even among disabled kids, Ian is very unusual.
My desk is covered with applications and brochures right now. Time to make the donuts.
09:28 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, Disability Daze | Permalink | Comments (5)
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Jonah transformed into a teenager somehow in one snowy week in February. It wasn't a gradual change in personality. It was an abrupt change. One day he was a kid, and the next day he was an asshole.
His body hasn't caught up, yet. His eyebrows are darker, but his voice hasn't changed and his shoulders haven't grown. Right now, it's mostly about his personality. I'm slowly learning how to parent a teenager, but it's like learning a whole new language. I still don't have the hang of it, yet.
Last night, as I drove him home from soccer practice, I asked him how it went. He replied, "Terrible."
I said, "Terrible? Oh sweetie, what happened?" I was alarmed. Did he blow a goal? Did the other kids tease him? Would this put him into a funk for five days?
"Mom, it went fine. I got two goals," he said with an amused voice in the back seat.
Apparently, "terrible" really means "great" and "I really don't want to talk about it with you, because you're a grown up." Except when "terrible" really means "terrible" and "I really don't want to talk about it with you, because you're a grown up." There are many subtlies with the word "terrible" and I haven't yet figured out when "terrible" means "great" or "really terrible."
He announced that he had a lot of homework, when he came home. So, I told him that he better get to it and walked away to deal with other matters. I found him at 4:00 in front of the TV watching a soccer match and texting on his phone. I said, "Jonah! I thought you had a lot of homework. Why aren't you doing it?"
"I will!"
Okay, so let me translate "I will" for you. "I will" means "I will do it at some indeterminate point in the future, which might be never."
He doesn't want me to tell him to do things, but he still doesn't want to assume the responsibility to do things on his own and still expects me to nag him to do things.
Last month, I went to a town function where there were a lot of women with younger children. They jabbered away about nap times and nursery school options and playdates. And I had nothing to contribute to the conversation. I felt really old. Like all that was another life time away. I'm dealing with "I will" and "terrible" and long lectures about Internet security.
Last week, there was a minor town scandal, because some high school girls took naked pictures of themselves and sent them to boys via Snapchat, the website that enables people to send pictures that are immediately deleted after ten seconds. Well, the boys quickly captured the naked pictures using a screen capture function on their phones and then sent the pictures to everyone in the high school. The school district freaked out, because photos of underaged girls is considered child pornography. If those photographs were distributed through district e-mails, they would be liable. The media was alerted, and there was a big circus outside the high school.
So, this meant that we had to have a long chat with Jonah about what he should do, if someone sends him an inappropriate photo and the legal ramifications of all that. I immediately went onto Instagram to see what he was posting. Artsy selfies. Whew.
I will get the hang of this. I will. But I mean "I will" in the Jonah sense, which is "I will at some indeterminate point in the future, which might be never."
09:13 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, Parenting | Permalink | Comments (64)
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I have had 9-5 desk jobs only sporadically in my life. I successfully avoided that fate by hiding out in grad school and in academia most of the time. I certainly never did a job like Steve, which involves being glued to a chair for nine hours per day. Darling husband is a martyr to our mortgage.
Working from home has its advantages, but it also involves a great deal of discipline and internal rules. Deviate from those rules, and it's a slippery slope down to crazy-land.
One of my rules is that the paying gig comes first. I write best in the morning, so now that Ian's gray van has picked him for school and Steve has driven Jonah to school for extra math help, I really should be working on the freelance article.
I dashed off 500 words yesterday about the impending cuts in education. The article really demanded some fucking pie charts, but I sent it off without the fucking pie charts and a note to the editor to tell me if wanted some fucking pie charts. He wants the fucking pie charts. I spent an hour searching the web for some pre-existing pie charts and couldn't find anything that was accurate, so now I have to put some numbers in Excel and make my own fucking pie charts.
I'm stalling here. And violating one of the rules, which is the paying gig comes before blogging.
Other rules that have developed over time include no reading novels during the day, no TV watching, no video games other than really dumb ones that only take up five minutes here and there. All writing and Internet surfing must end up noon. The three hours before the kids come home are for the gym and chores. Once a week, I must have lunch with my sister or friends, because you need interaction with real people, so you don't end up in crazy-land.
I've been doing a lot of rule breaking lately. Yesterday, I read Angela's Ashes all day. I haven't been to the gym in several days.
I need to get myself together here and make the fucking pie-charts.
08:16 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, Lifestyle, Personal, Writing | Permalink | Comments (14)
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This weekend was terribly exciting. What did I do? Well, I cleaned three toilets that were ravaged by two boys. I listened to teenage angst. I went to a fund raiser for Ian's autism program, where Steve won an autographed picture of John Travolta. I went to the gym to work off the winter pudge. Damn, Laura, you live a goddamn awesome life!
We also made a major life decision. We bought a big-assed TV.
Downstairs, the previous owners put an extension on the house. The wife needed an art studio. It has a large closet that was set up as a drying rack for her paintings. Because it was an art studio, the room isn't anything fancy. The linoleum floor is cracking.
We set it up as a playroom for the kids, when we moved in. Some crappy hand-me down furniture and IKEA bins of Lego. I didn't do much more than that. The wall is dotted with holes from old painting hooks, and one wall has some cheap shelving.
In a house that needs lots of TLC, we decided to put our energy into this room. We wanted to set up a teenage zone for our teenager, who is having a tough time. What does a teenage room need? A big-assed TV.
We never thought we would be the big-assed TV family. It was a lifestyle choice. So, this purchase was a major reversal for us.
We went from this....
And this...
To this....
We will need several more weekends to get the room looking awesome. A new floor isn't going to happen soon, but we will slap on a coat of paint and fix the cushions on the sofa that we picked up at the yard sale. Maybe we have someone flatten out that back wall for us and mount the TV on the wall. In the meantime, the teenagers have their big-assed TV. And so will we.
08:31 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, Fashion Victim and House Porn, Lifestyle | Permalink | Comments (11)
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Marissa Mayer's decision to cut back on Yahoo employees working from home has created quite a stir. This morning, Maureen Dowd pointed out the hypocrisy of Mayer putting in a nursery in the office for herself, while she made it more difficult for other parents who are lower down on the corporate ladder to juggle parenting responsibilities and work.
Dowd is right. Mayer isn't the only hypocrite. Sheryl Sandberg who exhorts women to stay in the office, also doesn't recognize that her huge salary and boss-like perks enables her to manage a job and still be home for dinner at 5:30. I don't want to hear any work-family advice from people like Mayer and Sandberg.
Now, let's talk about working from home. The basic issue is trust. Do you trust your workers to really work when they are at home? If your workers have to process 50 reams of paperwork in one day and they get it done while wearing their PJs at home, it should be fine, right? But it doesn't work that way.
When Steve first started working his Wall Street job, there was a lot of talk about workplace flexibility. He attended training sessions on workplace flexibility. A few of his co-workers negotiated arrangements where they were at home for three days a week. Steve only worked from home one or two times a year, but it was a nice arrangement for emergencies. He said that he got more work done at home, because there were less distractions.
And then the recession happened. The workers who worked from home regularly were fired first. When Steve asked if he could work from home one day (the first request in two years), he was actually yelled at. The trust was gone. Fewer workers were doing twice the work, and their bosses felt that they needed to be monitored at all times.
Truly, this move by Mayer has nothing to do with creating incubators of ideas or the particular needs of Yahoo. It has everything to do with the erosion of trust between workers and management in a crappy economy. This move is one of hostility towards working parents, no question about that. But it is also a hostile move towards ALL workers. Terribly disgusted.
UPDATE FROM THE COMMENT SECTION:
I come from the academic world, where working from home is the norm. People go to the university three days a week and then work from home two days. They have plenty of flexibility. Some work better in the morning; others work better in the evening. Everybody gets their shit done eventually. There is still plenty of face to face time to network and all that. It is totally weird for me to see workplaces that expect that a butt is glued to one chair for 40 to 60 hours a week.
As I said in my last blog post, my kids have been sick on and off for two and half weeks. Plus, they had a whole week off from school. This is the first day in ages that I haven't had a kid in the house. This is why I'm slogging away at the freelance writing career, when I could be making better money elsewhere. I am unemployable in a Marissa Mayer world.
08:37 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, Family Politics, feminism, Parenting, Politics, General | Permalink | Comments (39)
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We've been passing around various winter bugs for 2-1/2 weeks now. Jonah has been the most sick. His immunity system has totally crashed, so he keeps getting new awful things every three days.
He started projectile vomiting on Saturday night. He said that half chewed ravioli shot out of his nose. We were up the whole night with him. I cleaned vomit off the carpeting at 2 am. He was so dehydrated yesterday that I thought we were going to have to go to the emergency room. A couple hours ago, I drove him to school even though he was still very sick, because I thought that moving around might be good for him.
Twenty minutes until his bus pulls up. I hope I did the right thing.
Gotta get back to cloroxing the kitchen and bathrooms again.
02:52 PM in Adventures With Jo and E | Permalink | Comments (5)
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Italian-Americans don't really eat a proper Mediterranean Diet. They do eat lots of vegetables and olive oil, but the diet has too much cheese and pasta. A big plate of baked ziti with a side of iceberg lettuce is not proper Italian food. Over the years, we've tossed out some bad habits from the Bronx Italian days and gone back to old school cooking.
Here are some tips:
1. In order to concentrate on cooking lots of vegetables, I simplify the meat dish. I make something that takes ten minutes to heat up, like sausage, some ham or a piece of fish that only needs salt and pepper. Or I'll buy a rotisserie chicken.
2. Buy the gallons of olive oil and store it in a dispenser like this one. Do not get one of those mister oil dispensers. They get all gummed up and you really need more oil than a mist. Never use vegetable oil or butter.
3. Always have garlic at home and store it in a special jar in your cabinet, like this one. Own a garlic press
, but don't be afraid to simply slice up the garlic in slabs and fry them up before you add your vegetables.
4. An essential pantry: dried red pepper flakes, cumin, curry, oregano, bay leaves, various pre-mixed FRESH spice combos (not McCormick crap), garlic powder, tons of cans of Italian (not Hunt's) tomatoes, jars of red peppers, jars of artichoke hearts, jars of sun dried tomatoes, cans of beans, boxes of chicken and beef broth, pasta, rices (not Uncle Ben's or any bleached white stuff), couscous, tuna.
5. I always have the following items in the fridge: onions, peppers, carrots, celery, lettuce, olives, and potatoes. Then I fill up the fridge with whatever fruits and vegetables and fresh herbs look happy in the supermarket. Right now, everything looks a little sad, so I drive to Whole Foods and get their frozen versions of vegetables. I especially love their frozen kale and collard greens, because it's already cleaned and chopped.
6. OK, back to the cooking part. Let's talk about the carbs. I always have a side of carbs (pasta, rice, couscous, or potato), but they are never stand-alone dishes. I mix them heavily with herbs, spices, and/or vegetables.
For example, I'll make a box of plain couscous. Maybe I'll throw in half a brick of bullion to add a little flavor. I'll serve the plain stuff to the kids with a little parm cheese. Then I'll saute onion and garlic in olive oil, add zucchini, add spices, add a can of beans, and then mix the rest of the couscous with that.
Another example. I'll peel a potato, chop it into big chunks, and then boil it. I'll add a little butter and some parsley to half of the potatoes for the kids. Then I'll spice and vegetable up a version for Steve and myself.
7. Always have a salad and a cooked vegetable. My mom did that. I do that.
8. This is very time consuming stuff, but that's the way it is supposed to be. Dinner is about more than shoving fuel down the gullet. It's family time. There are no shortcuts.
9. One of my biggest changes in the past few years is the types of cheese that we consume. I stopped buying mozzarella, except for the hand-made stuff as a treat. I stopped buying cheddar and swiss. I go for little nuggets of highly flavorful stuff like blue cheese or feta. I sprinkle that stuff liberally on salads, vegetables, and carbs. I'm not making foods where the primary component is cheese, like lasagna or Mexican stuff.
10. I buy desserts for the kids that I don't like. Ice-cream doesn't do anything for me, so that's what the kids get after dinner. If I remember. Mostly, we forget to give the kids any dessert.
11. Learn how to cook vegetables. I think most people hate vegetables, because they cook them badly. They are too droopy or under seasoned. By doing easy meats and carbs, I've concentrated my efforts on the vegetables. Thanks to my CSA, I was forced to learned how to deal with the beet this summer. Now we love them.
Anyway, we eat like this, because it tastes good, not because we're on a diet or anything.
It is very time consuming, and I certainly couldn't do this if I was getting home at 8 every night. I suppose it is a luxury in this day and age. But I am home at the moment. I've got the kids doing homework in the kitchen, so I'm cooking and doing homework assistance at the same time. Working friends cook like this by spending an entire Sunday preparing meals for the week.
09:03 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, food and health, Lifestyle | Permalink | Comments (36)
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Four days a week, the boys bring lunches to school. On Fridays, they order pizza for lunch. We got into that habit years ago, because Ian's school doesn't have a proper cafeteria. The PTA moms order fast food for the kids instead. Jonah's old school had a terrible lunch program with lunch entrees that consisted entirely of carbs and cheese -- mozzarella sticks or chips and cheese.
So four nights a week, Steve makes sandwiches for himself and the boys. And he's pretty damn good at it. On Sundays, we shop for the ingredients: sliced turkey or roast beef or Virgina ham from the deli counter, a local bakery's loaf of panella with only four ingredients, lettuce, and other goodies. Later, he toasts the bread and piles the sandwiches high with lettuce, meat, cheese, peppers and whatever is in the fridge.
Steve's sandwiches are so good that Jonah's classmates "call dibs on the lefties." Or sometimes they will steal it entirely, if he walks away for a moment.
Over dinner, we will sometimes fantasize about operating a sandwich truck outside the local schools. We'll make a million selling Steve's Awesome Sandwiches! No. Not really. But it is fun to plan things out.
The New York Times Magazine article on addictive junk food is a MUST read. Loved it. Loved reading about how quants revolutionized the junk food industry. And loved learning about those damn Lunchables.
Yes, we do make homemade, nutritious meals for our kids, but we're not Nazis about it. We do let them have some junk, too. I always drag the kids to the supermarket with me and as one of their rewards for good behavior, they're allowed to pick out something special. What do they always go for? Those damn Lunchables.
Lunchables are little chunks of highly processed bologna (not even the good stuff), cheese "food" (not real cheese), sugary drinks, and candy arranged in sweet packaging. It's pretty wretched stuff, but I do admit the packaging is awesome. I would have loved it, I know it.
The article talks about how this idea for pre-packaged lunches came out of focus groups with working moms, who were strapped for time. Later, they tapped into the kids' desire to have control over their meals. By swallowing up other companies and working with products that were too chemical ridden to spoil, they created a billion dollar product.
I think that kids would eat something that had much less fat, salt, and chemicals. A healthy version of a ham and cheese sandwich. It doesn't have to be kale and beans. Steve does it every night. But I don't think it would have a long shelf life. Steve's natural bread only lasts for four days before penicillin starts to form on the outside.
Perhaps local supermarkets could package up lunch kits for parents. Instead of hunting through the whole store for bread, fruit, juice boxes and cookies, it could be all in one place. Rather than waiting for 30 minutes on the deli line, the good cold cuts could be all ready in the same area. Not the packaged Oscar Mayer crap, but good fresh stuff that was sliced that day. They could sell lunch boxes and ice packs in the same area. Maybe carrot sticks, too. Maybe grapes and apples could be washed and in baggies.
I still think that there's a way to make nutritious foods more profitable and faster. The quants need to get on it.
11:58 AM in Adventures With Jo and E, food and health, Ideas, Lifestyle, The Economy or Money Stuff | Permalink | Comments (13)
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03:42 PM in Adventures With Jo and E | Permalink | Comments (7)
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