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economy

Eff You Economy.

by Myg on November 12, 2009

This blog. Ah.

My boys are 9 months and 3 weeks old today. They are in a magic phase where every mundane little thing sparkles, boo boos can be healed in seconds with a kiss and a hug, and little arms start to reach for me when I come into the room in that heart exploding “I want Mommy” way. I know every developmental phase has its perks, but this one I think is really special and will stay with me in a way that the newborn phase or the six month old phase probably won’t.

And all that is to tell you, I just don’t want to work. I want to be home with them so badly it just hurts. That’s what we planned on, it’s what I said I was going to do months ago and it’s what I always intended, but it is not what is.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about my career in the past few months. I’ve been beating myself senseless over my lack of direction, focus and commitment. I’ve hit a professional ceiling, not because I’m at the limit of my skills or abilities. I’m stuck because I’m doing something I just don’t want to do right now. But I have to.

It’s a strange problem, you know? Pick a career path you think you’ll love. End up not loving it. Have babies in the middle of an economic melt down.  s/s Be grateful you can go back to it so you can keep the family afloat. Resent it. :| | (D.S. al coda to the be grateful part through the resent it part. Repeat daily forever and ever.)

I don’t feel well. I have a cold. And I am upset right now about all of this.

I want to be home with my kids. My husband wants me to be home with my kids. But I just can’t be right now.

And that really sucks. EFF you,  economy.

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This and that.

by Myg on June 1, 2009

Among the items that were significant enough in my consciousness to warrant a blog mention today are:

1. Is Doot beginning to teethe? Oh, please God please God no – not yet, not like this. Why am I concerned he may be? Intermittent screechiness accompanied by voracious gnawing on fingers and copious amounts of drool for about two days. Wait, let me answer before you ask. No, he’s not just hungry. No, he’s not running a fever. And no, I can’t feel any little tooth buds nor are his gums red or swollen or perceptibly sore to the touch. He’s got no symptoms of an ear infection, cold, or any other physical malady that I can tell. I guess that leaves infant schizophreniform as the only logical possibility aside from mo’fo TEETHING.

2. Wednesday morning we’re leaving to go visit my mom and my beloved-but-not-seen-enough-family-from-out-west! And some family from close by who I never see too, still beloved, but just on the same side of lazy as we are. Said reunion is taking place at my mom’s farm in Virginia. I’m truly edge of my seat excited to have everyone meet the brothers. But man, if that teething thing is really starting, it could turn the baby drama up to a whole new level. Imagine 15 members of an Italian-American family and their dogs all under one roof for six days. If you can’t imagine it, imagine the Sopranos in the country without semi-automatics or peach everything interior design. I’m bracing myself for lots of unsolicited parenting tips. My plan? I’m going to smile politely and pretend I’m interested. My problem? Things never go the way I plan them. (And if you’re related to me and reading this now, of course, of course I don’t mean you. I mean those other relatives who always give unsolicited advice. You know the ones.)

3. This list isn’t in order of any kind of importantness (which, for the record, isn’t really a word. I know that.)

4. [REDACTED]

5. My job, the one I was leaving? It got funded for another year when nobody was looking. In a state where the economic downturn has struck so hard that full time state employees are forced to take unpaid furloughs in lieu of layoffs, how does one accidentally get a state funded grant for $50k?

6. Sometimes I think Flash™ wants to make me its bitch.

7. I will never, ever lose the additional 30 lbs I want need to lose as long as Obama allows peanut butter cookies to roam free. And that goes for ice cream and snack chips too. All kinds of snack chips. Snack chips FTW™!

8. Four days as a new mom with very short hair and my internal Stacy and Clinton™ say, “FAIL.” They don’t like how it looks. Of course, they also convinced me to buy that hot pink sweater with the short poofy sleeves that makes me look like a middle aged cheerleader on a date with the gout. So, I’m not saying in the abstract my hair actually looks bad. But I am saying that somehow that lack of hair really points out the excess of flesh in my midsection. Okay, in my ass, arms and thighs too. Don’t know how. Haircuts are magic I guess.

9. [REDACTED]

10. And the cutest thing in the world is this:

IMG_1204

and various variations of this:

IMG_1211

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The fine line between bravery and stupidity

by Myg on May 13, 2009

So, I am thinking that I will tell my boss tomorrow that as of the end of the summer, I quit.

It’s something that Alex and I have long discussed. It’s something I really, really want to do. Only problem is, my job is our only reliable income right now, and our means to health insurance.

See the problem?

Alex has taken the teaching certificate exam and has applied to about every school district in the county for a position. He’s working to get his thesis finished so he’ll have his MFA in the fall. But he’s got no actual job leads as of yet and hiring season for schools ends somewhere around the end of June. That’s just a few weeks away.

Right about now, you may be wondering why I don’t just keep my job until he finds one, and then quit.

The reason is that I work on grant-funded projects. That means when there’s funding for the grant, there’s a job. These grants happen to come from the State of NJ, and the State of NJ is in deep trouble with its budget this year. My grants run out at the end of August. To get my funding renewed in September would take no small amount of maneuvering by my boss and my state contact.

I really, really love my boss. She’s a great person aside from a great boss, and she’s already stressing out over finding me enough work to keep me on staff so I keep my salary and benefits. And so far, I’ve just been all, “Uh huh, yeah, I plan to keep working. I need the money. I need the health insurance.”

But deep down I feel guilty, because I’ve known all along that if Alex gets a job, I’m going to quit. And if I quit, finding someone to do what I do will not be easy, because it’s a super tight niche kind of job, and not a ton of people want to work part-time, like I do. So telling my boss I plan to stick around and then ditching after she’s gotten a grant would be bad form.

So then, why don’t I just work and if Alex finds a job, stick the kids in daycare for three days a week (the days I work)?

Do you know what it costs to put 8 month old twins in daycare for 3 days a week? About $450 a week. That’s about $1800 a month. That’s a mortgage payment. I’d be working 70% of my hours for health insurance and daycare alone. That would just piss me off.

So then maybe Alex should forget teaching and be a SAHD? The thought has crossed my mind.

But.

Alex is trying to launch a new career right now, and he did not go through graduate school to stay home and change diapers, not that he minds doing that at all. In fact, he’s doing it right now as I type this (from work, my bad) and he’s doing a phenomenal job of it. But, my god we went into a ton of debt so he could do this graduate program. And he put all of that time and hard work in so he could be out there doing something he loves to do, largely so I could be home raising our kids. Because that’s what we both wanted.

I have a career, but I don’t give much of a rat’s ass about it anymore. It is a perfectly nice career, don’t get me wrong. With it I’ve been the primary breadwinner and at times the sole income provider. I’m proud that I’ve kept us well enough provided for. I can keep going. I can keep working. I can keep this job going, or go back into private practice, and/or ramp up my training/consultation business. I can make money, yes, I can, even in trying economic times.

But.

My boys are babies now. They need me now. They’re growing up so fast, and when this time in their lives is gone, it’s gone forever.

So here’s my dilemma.

We are in TRYING ECONOMIC TIMES, right? (See previous mentions of “clusterfuck of life timing” here and here.)

If one were so very lucky enough to have a great part time job with full benefits, vested pension, make-your-own hours that was 15 minutes from one’s home, that could possibly continue with some maneuvering, and if one loved one’s boss on top of it, why oh why would one even consider leaving?

Especially when

a. one lived during TRYING ECONOMIC TIMES

b. one had an unemployed spouse

c. one had new twin infants and was in dire need of health coverage?

God, when I lay it out like that it seems INSANE to quit.

But. It bears repeating.

My boys are babies now. They need me now. They’re growing up so fast, and when this time in their lives is gone, it’s gone forever.

Forever.

And it’s that forever part that makes me think, yeah.

I’m going to quit my job tomorrow.

morning

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Pregnancy in the time of corporate bailouts.

by Ms. Myg on October 2, 2008

You know what’s funny? Being pregnant during the great economic disaster of our time. No wait, did I say funny? I meant it’s suckass.

Things have been bad for awhile, I realize, and always getting worse. Home values falling, foreclosures, gas and food prices rising.  Even so, I consciously decided I would do whatever I possibly could to get pregnant. I’ve been trying for years and seeing the potential for tough times ahead wasn’t going to stop me. Let’s face it - besides the economic disaster there are two wars afoot, tensions around the world are rising and then there’s the incredibly scary reality of global warming. Things don’t look rosy on the global scale, for sure.

On a personal level, hard economic times have resulted in me having my hours slashed at work and as a result my healthcare is about to be cut off. I’m the primary breadwinner, so we are fairly strapped for cash as my husband is trying to finish up graduate school.  Talk about a clusterfuck of life timing.

As strange as it sounds, I feel better when I consider that my in-laws were born during the Great Depression. My mother-in-law can tell stories about growing up on a farm in Nebraska, a busy happy life but one so devoid of excess, she and her four siblings sometimes had to even share one towel or one tub of bath water. 

My father-in-law always used to say, “I never knew I was poor, because everybody else was too.”  He didn’t have a sucky childhood because of the Great Depression. I guess that’s because kids don’t need money or things. Or at least they don’t understand that they need those things. They just know that they need parents.

And whatever else happens, I  know I can give my kids that.

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