8 months.

65 resumes.

Interviews with 29 people (that I can remember at the moment).

2-3 hours prep for every interview.

10 hours creating custom writing samples at the request of just one prospective employer--for a short-term contract job (that I landed).

3 "I love you, but there are others who more closely map what we're looking for."

5 "I love you! It's not quite the right fit, but I passed your resume on to someone at X company."

1 "I'm sorry--we were writing an offer but corporate decided to move the position to Dulles, VA."

1 "I want to hire you, but I really think I need someone in Pasadena full-time."

1 offer that I, literally, couldn't afford to take.

Many friends and friends of friends who channeled my resume through their networks.

Lots and lots of freelance writing projects--all sizes.

Scores of notes and calls of encouragement to counter the negativity from the

Few who assumed I just wasn't trying hard enough.

A job offer at last?

Priceless.


My friends and my family? Not enough money or love in the world to say Thank You.

But truly.

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Dear, dear Facebook,

Please stop randomly changing my account settings. If I wanted a notification every time someone sneezed, I would have had one of my friends create that as an option. Also, for fun, fix chat and messaging, stop doubling the chat icons, don't arbitrarily change the "share" options when I post from my phone, let me delete stuff from my phone, and please, for the love of god, stop with the Kardashian shoe ads.

Yes, I like shoes. (OK, I love them.) No, I will never buy a shoe that has that name on it. I have marked these ads as offensive, uninteresting and I forget what else. Tacky? Slutty? Anyway. Stop. Please.

Also: I would have posted this on Facebook, but you don't like the long updates. Why is that? Let people have one or two long updates every week or so. Where's the harm? If it pisses off our friends, they can hide us.

Love,

Me

Dammit

All night I have missed them.

Some people tell me that it is a luxury to not have them all the time. That it will be easier to meet someone else without them. But. To me, it is a punishment. I want them. Even when Charlotte is tired and expressing her displeasure at increasingly louder volume. Even when she's screaming that she hates me. I know that it's not true. I know that she loves me. I know that she'll put her arms around me and kiss me and tell me that she's sorry that she yelled and that she loves me.

I miss them.

I miss talking to Hannah about her books and the latest song that she wrote and what she's doing in school.

I'm afraid that no one else will ever mean as much to me as they do. And I want to punch--repeatedly--anyone who says "It's a luxury to not have them all the time." Because I want them. All the time. And to me, the days off aren't a luxury. They're my babies, and I want them.

Am I Old Yet?*

Say you were at Trader Joe's and turned around to find a guy staring open-mouthed at you. And then he smiled. And then he tripped over his own feet. You assume that it's because you just left the salon. Everyone looks awesome then, no? (Well, everyone who leaves Suzy's salon does.) That probably made you feel pretty good. Put a little spring in your step and a sparkle in your eye.

Now say that the next day, while you’re in your car, you see a piece of hair on your face. It might take a bit of the wind out of your sails when you realize that the hair is attached. And black. And sort of thick. Just one, but there it is. A whisker. Yay.

* The correct answer is "no." :)

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

For the last couple of years, there's been way too much of this in my life:



and this:

and this:

and, OK, even a bit of this:



But nowhere near enough of this:




I want more of that. And who wouldn't?


Which is why, every week, I flog the local community in Redwood City to go to Comedy Monday Hosted by Dan St. Paul at the Little Fox/Club Fox Theatre. I can't be the only one who needs a laugh or 20 to get through the week, and I definitely don't want Comedy Night to go away for lack of interest. It's still pretty hit or miss, attendance-wise: some nights there are only a handful of people; other nights you can't find a table.

My friend Andi and I push the social media aspect relentlessly, reminding the host and manager when to post and where to post and how else they can promote the show. They're getting better at it. :)

It's not always going to be 100% funny, but it has never been even close to 100% suck, so if you're in town, please check it out. It's only $10 cover and they do have a bar. Even better, if you're in town, I'm designated driver.*



* Assuming I know you, of course. If not, I'll be happy to call a cab for you :)

Happy Pi Day

At breakfast this morning, Hannah was talking about Pi Day at school and said that, if you had signed up for the challenge and were able to recite your target number of digits, you would get a piece of pie. Probably apple. She wasn't sure, but someone told her that last year it was apple.

Hannah didn't sign up for the challenge—memorizing at least 30 digits past the decimal for third graders—but she was trying to remember them all, anyway. She got to, I think, 17, when Charlotte cut her off, announcing that she'd rather have cake, thanks. Preferably chocolate.

Untitled, Because I Couldn't Think of Anything That Worked

A couple of weeks ago, the girls met their father’s girlfriend. He told me that the introduction went well and the girls had seemed to like her. They met at California Academy of Sciences—an excellent choice, as it’s one of their favorite places to go—and they told me that she was really cool and pretty and nice, and we agreed that it was good that daddy was happy.

But the girls were also . . . clingy. And more emotional than usual. Not in the vein of Charlotte’s epic temper tantrums—we seem to have finally outgrown those—but just more emotional. Weepy, almost. And, since then, they’ve slept in my bed every night they’ve been with me.

About a week ago, I thought that I had finally figured it out and, as Hannah and I sat on the floor playing with Lego’s, I said, “You know, it’s OK if you like her. It doesn’t mean that you love me any less.”

The look of relief on her face made me both happy and horribly sad: happy, that I’d figured it out and had managed to set her at ease, but sad that she had felt that way at all, and for almost a week. So I also told her something that a very good friend of mine once said, “Having another person who loves you can only be a good thing.”

I thought it was an excellent way to look at the situation and, happily, Hannah agreed. But she then added that she worried about me when she and Charlotte aren’t with me. So we had a long talk about how she is only eight and gets to be the kid and how I am a grown up and I have friends and work and I go out now and again and that I have fixed almost everything around the apartment that needed it and that she really, truly, doesn’t need to worry about me.

Last Spring, a friend sent me a link to a Gawker column about the novelist Justine Musk. The gist of the article was that, while Ms. Musk did blog about her protracted and somewhat messy divorce from Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, she did so without rancor and without getting nasty, something I can totally appreciate as I have tried to do the same with my few divorce-related posts. But that wasn’t the part that struck me. The part that got me was the mention about her meeting the new girlfriend, Talulah, and how she had handled it, telling her in an email:

“I would rather live out the French-movie version of events (the ex-wife and new fiancee become friends and various philosophies are pondered) than the American version (one is 'good' and one is psycho, there's a big catfight sequence and someone gets thrown off a balcony)—the latter of which seems vastly overrated.”

This approach seems completely logical to me, particularly when there are children involved. Because, just as it can only be good for them to have one more person who loves them, it can only be dreadful to have more tension and more people arguing and saying nasty things to or about one another.

And so, while I don’t believe that she and I will be out shopping together for a dress for the Father/Daughter dance next month (Hannah’s suggestion), I don’t bear her any malice. There were problems in my marriage long before she arrived on the scene, problems that had nothing to do with her. Contrary to rumor (and some of my own posts :), I am actually pretty sane and, when the occasion demands, rational. And I would do anything for Hannah and Charlotte.

I just wanted everyone to be happy.

Random post

So I found this god awful wig in a New Orleans hat shop during Mardi Gras a few (OK, many) years ago. Whadda ya think? Should I go red?






(Psst: The correct answer is "no." :)

Insomnia

I haven't slept for more than two hours a night for the last five nights. Right now I'm basically running on naps (since you can't really call a combined total of two hours a night anything else) and caffeine. And, before you ask, yes, I do stop drinking coffee well before bedtime. Before lunch, even.

Friends have suggested everything from a hot shower at bedtime to meditation to magnesium supplements to wine to Ambien to Ambien and wine (um, no). Meditation doesn't work because the only topic I can get my mind to focus on is that one that is keeping me awake. The hot shower resulted in one solid hour of the two hour per night thing. The wine? Tried a glass with dinner last night—it made me sleepy, but not enough to actually stay asleep. Wine AND Ambien? Not going there. Ever. I learned the hard way to not mix any kind of pills with alcohol of any type. Once was enough, thanks.

But the lack of sleep is starting to show:



Fortunately, someone invented makeup and, a few months ago, a nice man at Nordstrom showed me how to use it. It helps a bit, I think:


Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for a nap. Ha.

Random Observation

I was told recently that I was dehydrated.

I don't see how that can be. My coffee maker holds about a gallon of water and I go through that every day.

:)

Who Says Economists Don't Have a Sense of Humor?

I found this fun little nugget o' goodness whilst reading Infectious Greed, Paul Kedrosky's blog on Finance & the Money Culture. Now, I don't actually have access to the full paper, and you probably don't either, so I don't know if the "inconvenience cost" includes having to get the dog/cat/kids out of les toilettes 10 times a day. But, as Mr. Kedrosky notes, it's good to know that not all economists are unduly worried about, well, the economy. Or jobs. It's also good to know that they can put that fancy degree to work to win an argument. Next up: The Economic Costs of Sleeping on the Couch.

Up Or Down? A Male Economist's Manifesto on the Toilet Seat

This paper develops an economic analysis of the toilet seat etiquette. I investigate whether there is any efficiency justification for the presumption that men should leave the toilet seat down after use. I find that the “down rule” is inefficient unless there is a large asymmetry in the inconvenience costs of shifting the position of the toilet seat across genders. I show that the “selfish” or the “status quo” rule that leaves the toilet seat in the position used dominates the down rule in a wide range of parameter spaces including the case where the inconvenience costs are the same.

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

Six years ago today, after six weeks of bed rest ("Make sure you stay on your left side, please!"), what seemed like countless shots of terbutaline (actually I think it was six), several bags of magnesium to stop labor, a heart medication to prevent contractions and a combined total of two weeks in the hospital, the most amazing, stubborn, beautiful, funny, wicked, smart, confounding and astonishing little person was born—six weeks early. My Charlotte, one of the strongest kids I've ever met.

She refused to stay in the womb. Born weighing three pounds, 11 ounces, she spent two weeks in the NICU to get her weight up to four pounds, but didn't need any other intervention. It took almost three months to get her to eight pounds, two years before she could walk and three years before she could talk. She had almost 200 signs at one point, but once she discovered the joy of the spoken word, she ditched the signing. Of course, the joy of the spoken word soon gave way to the absolute bliss she seems to find in shrieking, but that's another post. Or 20.

She has endured visits to neurologists, ophthalmologists, audiologists, orthopedists, physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists. She's had several EEGs and two MRIs. She takes medication twice a day, every day to prevent seizures. She has a high pain tolerance, once walking through a rose bush bare foot, in shorts, only really noticing a problem when she began to bleed. And when she cut her head two years ago, she didn't cry while they put in the four stitches it took to close the gash. In stark contrast to Hannah, Charlotte has never cried while getting shots. (Hannah once told me that it was because she cried enough for the both of them :)

When she's not yelling—which really isn't all of the time, though it may sometimes seem that way—Charlotte is a delightful, hysterically funny little kid. She can be shy, but once she knows you, she will do anything to make you laugh. For her, a day without dancing and singing might just be wasted time. She adores her friends, especially her BFF, Sofie. She loves kindergarten and Mrs. Baldini and Mr Danny G. She never met an animal she didn't want to hug (even though cats make her sneeze), a rule she didn't want to break, or a last, frayed nerve that she didn't want to swing from.

She is exasperating and charming and exhausting and exhilarating and I adore her. I can't wait to see her grown up, but I am afraid time will go too fast and I'll miss all the in-between parts. So thank god (or, in this case, Steve Jobs) for video so I get to capture—and share—at least some of her.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl!