Happy Halloween!

...from this little pirate to you.

What are you up to tonight? We're passing out $40 worth of candy (we always get a ton of trick-or-treaters) while drinking wine and watching Orange Is the New Black. I can't wait. Enjoy! xo

Work-Life Balance

{The gateway drug}

Flavio and I are leaning more in the direction of having kids - though we're not 100% sure we will, or if we do, when. It's exciting and scary. I know Flavio would be an absolutely amazing father and as I wrote in this post, parenting Guiri has been the gateway drug that's gotten us thinking about the rewards of children. One of my biggest reservations about parenting, though, is how to maintain a work-life balance after children.

When we were visiting my parents this summer, my mom told me she'd always struggled to find a healthy equilibrium between her personal and professional lives. When my brothers and I were young, my mom worked more than full time as a very successful administrator. I have always had so much respect for her - she is still at the top of her field and is a smart, hard-working woman. My dad is a very successful engineer who owns his own business and who spent much of my childhood traveling for work. My brothers and I had a longterm Irish nanny named Finola who was basically our second mother, and the three of us were in every afterschool program and extracurricular activity one could imagine because my parents were both working. I always knew my mother loved her work, so I was surprised to hear her recent confession that she wished she would have worked less, and instead, had lived more.  Profound words, no? She described the excitement of moving up quickly in her field, but said her advancement was always clouded with the sadness of missing some of our childhood milestones and family time.

So here's my dilemma: I love working and am afraid if we have a baby, I'll be unhappy staying home. But, I can barely leave Guiri home alone to go to work, and I know I wouldn't be happy leaving a tiny baby in daycare. After reading numerous studies on socialization and nurturing, I think the mother should be home with the baby for at least the first two years, if possible. And after, there is great value in daycare and preschool for young children. But, teaching higher-ed is so competitive in San Diego and I'm afraid leaving my job for a couple years would be professional suicide. So, true to nerdy form, I've been doing some research. How do women in the US do it? Is staying home for more than the measly six weeks of maternity leave professional suicide? Would I be unhappy and bored as a stay-at-home mom? I started googling and found this fascinating article/study on working women who opted out of the work force to stay home with their children. Ten years later, the sociologist checked back in with these women to see if leaving the workforce in favor of maternity had been the right choice for them. Most of these women eventually went back to work for varying reasons, and the article, citing various studies, sadly confirms that US women still can't "have it all"in terms of simultaneous employment and motherhood. Women who choose to leave the workforce to take care of their children are mostly shut out of high-powered jobs and upward mobility. Women who choose to stay in the workforce miss out on time with their children. Bah, it's all so depressing.  I think I'll have to move to Norway, with its 10 months of maternity leave at 100% pay, if I want to "have it all." The article did offer a glimmer of hope, though, as it seemed to reveal a formula for happiness and balance that struck me as a possible answer. The author writes:

 " ...Not a single woman I spoke with said she wished that she could return to her old, pre-opting out job -- no matter what price she paid for her decision to stop working. What I heard instead were some regrets for what might have been -- more time with their children, combined with some sort of intellectually stimulating, respectably paying, advancement-permitting part-time work."

Part-time work: Is that the key to balancing work and life as a mother? Certainly my career would suffer as there are plenty of other instructors chomping at the bit to get into the college system, and financially it would be tough, but maybe we'd be happier that way. It's a formula to think about, at least. As is moving to Scandinavia. :)

Not really related, but I found this article while researching and it's fascinating! American parents seem to no longer believe kids should do chores.

This Imperfect Life

I have been tired and stressed and really hard on myself this week. I was crying to Flavio last night about feeling overwhelmed and spread thin, drowning in prep and grading, making mistakes, even missing a meeting, because I'm tired and overcommitted. I was feeling sad that I don't really have the time to do the non-work activities that make me happy and when I do fun things, I feel anxious because I know I have a mountain of work waiting for me. So Flavio, as he always does, talked me off a ledge, and encouraged me to schedule in at least a little bit of time for fun and relaxation, because work will always be there, and I'll be less burned out if I take a little time to do the things that bring me joy. Plus, he reminded me, this feeling of being overwhelmed is temporary, which is true, and really helpful to keep in mind. (Dear god, I will never take on 7 classes again. What was I thinking?!) Anyway, one of my favorite relaxation activities is reading before bed so I decided to pop on Amazon and see what looks good. I think knowing I'll have a fun book to read at the end of my long days will be one little way to keep my spirits up. To my delight, Amazon recommended a new anthology dedicated to one of my favorites, Nora Ephron, expected to come out next week. In it, Ephron was quoted as saying:

"When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you;

but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel,

it's your laugh."

How true are these words? I'm in love with all things Nora Ephron because her legacy reminds us to lighten up, to laugh at ourselves, to embrace our insecurities, frustrations, and mistakes, and to find humor in the difficult. Not in a self-loathing way, but in a way that helps us see we're all in this same crazy boat, we all face the absurdities of life, so we might as well laugh at them, and tell about them. Maybe it's these imperfections that make for a life worth sharing with others.  I wondered if I should write about my gloominess in my blog, but decided to go for it because your banana peels are my banana peels - we all go through difficult times, so I'm going to embrace my hardships, and tell about them here when I'm feeling them, because that's what's going on with me right now, and writing about it helps me see it's not the end of the world anyway. After all, Ephron credits her success to "a sense of the absurd that makes it difficult to take many things terribly seriously."

Speaking of absurd, here are our pumpkins from last year. One by our friend, one by Flav, and one by me. Any guesses on which one of these is my handiwork? Clue: it's the frilly one. :)

{Pumpkina}

Wishing you a silly weekend.

Throwback Thursday

We're exactly one week from Halloween and I still don't have my costume. Eeks! I've got some major work to do this weekend. Maybe I should dig up my 2006 Alice in Wonderland costume, and Flav can go as Alice's cholo boyfriend again...

We look so young!

words to use more often

Swell. :)

{via pinterest}

Weekending

We lived it up this weekend. On Friday night my friend rented out an Italian restaurant in La Jolla for her fabulously over-the-top birthday party, complete with bottomless bubbly, dinner, and dancing. Flavio and I reintroduced a whole lot of delicious booze, bread, cheese, and cake into our diet and had a blast celebrating Kelly. It was nice to be up in gorgeous La Jolla for the evening - full moon, ocean breezes, and lots of 80s music!

Saturday morning I baked this pumpkin bread - it's been almost 80 degrees here so I'm trying to coax fall with seasonally appropriate foods. We spent the afternoon with my friend Katie and her dog in Coronado, and Katie took the sweetest photo of Flavio and me. Check it out!

Such a tender moment - a total framer. She also took a couple more, including one that I think will be perfect for Christmas cards. So thrilled, and impressed by her talent. Thanks, Katie! If you need a photographer, she will work for pumpkin bread. ;) We all had a blast, including the pups.

Saturday evening our friends hosted a dinner party that included Jager Spice shots and hookah by their bonfire. We agreed we are far too old for Jager, but it was fun to relive our college days. Lots of laughs, and great night.

Today we made brunch, and did some paleo cooking for the week, errands, etc. This evening we spent some time trying to get into The Walking Dead.  People, I don't know what the fuss is about. The acting is terrible and the storyline sucks. Halfway through the first episode I started writing this post and spotted Flavio playing on his phone. Needless to say, we turned it off and now we're watching the new season of Parenthood. I know people think Parenthood jumped the shark, but I still love the Bravermans.

We packed so much fun into this weekend and I'm not ready for it to end. I'm teaching an 8-week intensive Soc. class with 45 students and it starts tomorrow.  Overall, the next 2 months will be a very busy time at work (seven classes + co-advising the Sociology Club) and I'm feeling anxious tonight. I'm trying to do some deep breathing, and sipping chamomile tea. December 20 isn't that far off, right? It's one day at a time, I guess.

Looking over these other weekend pics is making me happy...

{Kelly is 30)

{Tanina's ricotta-lemon cream puffs}

{Coronado - by Katie}

Hate the same things.

Made me laugh.

So true. I knew Flavio was the one for me when I discovered we both hate parades, street fairs, county fairs, zoos, Disneyland -- most any place where there are crowds of oglers and sweaty tourists. He is the yin to my curmudgeonly yang. :)

We'll be avoiding the crowds this weekend, thank goodness, but lots of fun things happening. We're off to a friend's birthday dinner this evening, costume prep then a game night tomorrow, maybe some baking, perhaps some brunching, possibly some beaching - it should be 75 degrees and sunny. We'll see how it all goes.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. xo