wrekehavoc – Page 73 – Wrekehavoc.com

Author: wrekehavoc

welcoming men to the mommy track

Posted on December 22, 2006 by wrekehavoc

meet two of my stay-at-home-mom friends. one has an MBA with hardcore financial credentials and experience. one has an MA in public policy and has run several local and regional political campaigns. both high-achievers are stuck firmly in the quagmire known as workplace re-entry — a scary realm formerly reserved for stay-at-home-moms only, a place where it didn’t matter that you ran the world prior to motherhood — a place where what have you done lately? is the scariest question around. powerful moms like this are very common here in DC, much more than are their male counterparts.

thus, it’s refreshing to see that stay-at-home dads are now quaking over how employers view their time away once they need to return to the workplace. will they be devalued by employers just as the stay-at-home-moms have been, or will they pave the way to a more useful conversation — a more global idea of how to allow flexibility in the workplace for all caregivers that includes mothers and fathers as well as children who must take care of their parents or other fragile family members? of course, there’ll be a lot of pissed-off women if the issue gets traction once men enter the picture.

so step inside our stacked heels and listen up. having a portable skill, say, accounting, helps speed your return. you could start your own business, like this guy did. of course, you could move to Australia, where a government program provides grants for parents re-entering the workforce. (of course, the wife and kids might have something to say about that.) mostly, though, set your expectations and testosterone appropriately (read: you won’t be hired as the CEO this week), don’t let them ask any of those pesky, illegal interview questions, and go get ’em, tiger.

oh, my nose!

Posted on December 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

with no apologies to marcia brady whatsoever.

yesterday, as hellboy was waking up from his nap, i came over to tell him that BS had put up a tree for christmas and that we were going to go and visit santa’s helper at the mall. we celebrate chanukah in this house, but we also help BS celebrate christmas, too, in a very secular way. (we’re probably more religious than he is.) he was so excited that he accidentally head-butted me in the nose. in short, i think my nose is broken. it hurt so damn bad that i was convulsed in tears for a solid two minutes. “go get daddy!” i told him. he bent over and kissed my head, which of course made me cry more because he was so sweet. “it was an accident – i know you didn’t mean it. go get daddy!”

eventually, he toddled off. i heard muffled voices, then i heard BC walk over and shout, “mommy’s crying, daddy!” yep. i’m sure in about 10 minutes time, jools would have worked his way over to “mama is hurt,” but no matter. BS, in an effort to keep order, told the kids to sit on the couch and watch TV. he assessed my nose in about 5 seconds, went away, and threw a bag of peas over, then promptly left to watch the kids or something.

so there i sat, holding a bag of frozen peas on my nose. not very dignified, huh. i eventually came out of there, blew some of the blood out of my nose (yes, i get prettier as this goes on), and looked at my husband for some sympathy. of course, at this point, he was knee-deep in christmas lights, which only means one thing: stay the hell away from BS. i tell him every year to just get a new set and avoid frustration — it is worth the $20 not to have him bark at all of us because the light in the very middle is out and taking all the other lights out with it. but no. so i sat with my kids, who were very sweet. jools was sad that he had hurt me, and so i of course went into “i’m really ok” mode. (a day later and my nose still hurts.)

so if anyone wonders why the hell i don’t care for christmas, you can put this down as one more reason. christmas is freaking hazardous to your health 😉

toys in the attic

Posted on December 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

that would be wishful thinking at this point. plenty of toys are scattered in the family room, in the sun room, in the kids’ own rooms. i feel like there’s no room for any of my stuff anymore unless it is something acceptable to people under age 8.

currently, hellboy, who gave us more fun than we ever could have wanted last night by hitting 105.2F, is scattering paper butterflies all over the place from his new elefun. of course, he don’t need no stinkin’ trunk to scatter them. he just took the trunk off and is currently littering the world with red, green, and yellow faux thingies. he’s pretending it’s a leaf blower, which, while not something the game makers intended, might make for an interesting idea next fall.

that assumes, of course, that it survives until next fall. if it’s anything like the easy bake oven that BC got for chanukah, it’s got a life of about, er, 1 hour. see, BC decided to shove the plastic spatula-type thing into it, only it had the pan in it simultaneously. and now, it’s stuck beyond hope. one call to the nice folks at hasbro, though, who tried to walk me through fixing it while jools kept blowing me with the elefun (remove all heads from gutter, please), resulted in the nice folks at hasbro shipping out a replacement part, i.e., the entire oven and spatula. gratis. of course, it is backordered, so she probably won’t see this until her 14th birthday, by which time i hope i will trust her with the real, honest-to-G-d oven.

ah, burger meister meister burger, we hardly knew ye.

three entries in one day! sheesh!

Posted on December 15, 2006 by wrekehavoc

so i’m wrapping chanukah prezzies this afternoon, and i decided to take myself away from the smiths (who are singing great words for a day like this: “love peace and harmony/are very nice, very nice very nice/maybe in the next world”) — and i had a brainstorm that has me in euphoria at the moment…

i found on rhapsody…

PATTI SMITH!!!

yes, the same chick i adored in high school (and none of my friends had ever heard of her, which shows i was a little freakish back then)… and i am now listening to probably one of my favorite albums of high school, Wave. and i’m listening to what must still be in my top ten favorite songs, dancing barefoot.

ok, i promise. radio silence for the remainder of the day as i return to wrapping hell. but i’m smiling 🙂

it's 80's week on the 4:30 movie!

Posted on December 15, 2006 by wrekehavoc

just kidding (though those of you who grew up watching WABC-NY will understand the title.)

but i am deep in reveries this week. and while the production values are laughable, in finding this bit from my favorite kiwis, all i can say is: i **heart** the finn brothers.

of course, i have a soft spot for the wiggles when they covered this little wacky gem. i decided then and there that the wiggles were a step up from barney. if only a slight one 😉 admittedly, i still get choked up when the enz sing: “aw, c’mon all you lads. let’s forget and forgive. there’s a world to explore; tales to tell back on shore.”

and not many lyricists are secure enough to include the word Aotearoa.

one word versus fade to grey

Posted on December 15, 2006 by wrekehavoc

thanks to the magic of youtube, i can actually show examples of why i get so annoyed by musical ripoffs.

exhibit one: a not-so-interesting ’80s song by the group visage entitled fade to grey.

exhibit two: a copycat song and video by kelly osbourne (no, not my friend kelly o but ozzy’s progeny) entitled one word.

i’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again — there is no such thing as a completely original musical idea — people always grab snippets of something else. but this is a little above and beyond the call of duty.

why i care, of course, is a mystery. but these things drive me batty.

waxing poetically

Posted on December 14, 2006 by wrekehavoc

as i alluded in an earlier post, BS is addicted to LaLa; and now, pusher that he is, he’s got a friend of our’s addicted, too. among the CDs i now possess thanks to Lala is Strangeways, Here We Come, which contains probably my personal theme song, Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before. after listening to it ad infinitem, i decided to pull out some other smiths. and it brought me back to college, especially when i heard The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, a song i always associated with a former friend of mine who has pretty much decided he wants nothing to do with anyone who knew him before, i dunno, 1993.

it’s sad how people sort of mean something to you in your life and then sort of evaporate. but that’s what they want, and you have to be respectful of those sorts of wishes, i suppose. what a sad song. i hope it isn’t applicable now, years and years later.

another xmas, another layoff

Posted on December 14, 2006 by wrekehavoc

as a former AOL employee. long ago and far, far away, i was amused (and saddened, of course) by these t-shirts. i remember living through a thoroughly painful layoff or two; and i even was restructured one time (i love that term — it makes me feel like they rearranged my molecules) when my job in a now defunct part of AOL was going away and a wonderful, wonderful former boss of mine apparently went to bat for me and helped me find a home in a new and interesting group there.

gee. just makes me want to make that commute again out to dullest. not. though i love the gyms there, and the cafeterias were pretty good. and i laugh now remembering how we fought for child care that i never, ever was able to actually use. ah well. it’s nice to know that others have the opportunity.

i'm a homosapien, too. yeah.

Posted on December 13, 2006 by wrekehavoc

so missus is practising her dance routine she’s choreographed herself for Brownies tomorrow. she can’t decide whether she’ll dance to “mickey” or “kids in america,” both of which are fortunately on a rhino compilation CD i have in my happy possession. we’re having a lot of fun, especially since we started dancing to “i love a man in a uniform.” but she just changed the CD over to “homosapien.”

mama, she asked, what’s a homosapien? now, i can answer this question in a scientific way with perfect validity. why, it could start up a conversation about science, about evolution, about all things lofty and good. but i don’t think that is at all what pete shelley had in mind.

but that’s ok. only a few songs above it is something even better. i dodged a super-duper sized bullet when she asked “mama, what’s a sex dwarf?”

“uhm, that song sucks, honey,” i replied. “let’s listen to kids in america again, k?”

yep. if you’re still counting, i am one step closer to bad parent hell.

comic relief

Posted on December 12, 2006 by wrekehavoc

there’s no need for people to get completely bummed out just because i am having a sulk about my health (or current lack thereof). DH has created a LALA radio station that plays some of the things our kids like to hear. give it a listen and enjoy some selections that Barney would probably not sing.