I'm hiding out in my office trying to stay out of the way of the glass repairmen. We're finally getting four broken window panes replaced. Next week, I'll call in someone to wash all the windows. We've got old fashioned windows. The only way to wash the outside is call in a window washing service with really long ladders. I found a place in those super-saver coupons that will do it for $5 a window.
The upside of being home is that I'm finally able to get quotes on window panes, cut coupons, and get the house looking nice. The downside of being home is that I'm thinking about window washing and cutting coupons. Boooooorrrring.
GeekyMom is struggling with many of the same problems that I'm dealing with. She wrote about trying to make effort to make friends in her community.
When you're working from home, you really need human contact during the day, but finding like-minded human contact is difficult. Cliques have already been formed. It can be hard to find common interests. (Note to self: Lots of people don't know what the public option is, have never used Twitter, and don't give a crap about Mad Men.) Not everyone gets my sense of humor. (Note to self: No jokes about the possible sexual orientation of the kids.) There are landmines everywhere, if people are insecure about their education levels or the prestige of their profession. Safe topics include the installation of sheet rock, kids' teachers, and proper methods for water-sealing one's basement.
GeekyMom is also working on a writing project while the kids are at home. The kids are at school for six hours a day. Six hours is a lot of time to get work done, but it isn't that much when you have to squeeze in cleaning up after breakfast, two loads of laundry, a meeting with a teacher, forty minutes at the gym (really, really need exercise if you're spending all day in the house), food shopping, and shopping for art supplies for the kids' book reports.
Some writing work has happened, but not enough to claim any victories. The victories have been elsewhere this month. I'm nearly done making the kids' Halloween costumes. I'm tidying up all the lose ends around the house, including the windows. I've been able to get Ian to two new therapy sessions during the week. His speech has really taken off this past month, and I'm going to take credit for that. I'm spending more time cooking. I learned how to make black beans from scratch (you've got to boil them for 2 hours!) and how to tenderize a flank steak.
I'm not conquering the world right now. I'm not getting that adrenaline rush after giving a good lecture. I spend too much time alone in front of the computer. But the victories are there and are real. I'm going to savor them.
Apt. 11d 
Can you move down here, so we can be irreverent soccer moms together? Things are slooowly getting better as I discover some of the moms here are not as snooty as I thought, but still, there’s no one I’m going to call up to go out with for a beer. I’d say right now, my two best female friends are two lesbians who are a couple. The soccer moms wouldn’t get that. But they live in the city, so we go far too long between seeing each other.
And the writing, it’s sometimes slow. This morning, one hour, 1.5 pages. And I can’t bear to read some of it. I try not to, saving that part for later.
But the kids, much better, and I feel very good about that–and I think we both have every right to claim those victories. I honestly believe that in the long run, it’s those little things, the kids things, that are really going to matter.
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Black beans are pretty good cooked in a slow cooker with a tablespoon or two of Patak’s biryani paste (plus the usual stuff you add to beans).
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“Things are slooowly getting better as I discover some of the moms here are not as snooty as I thought, but still, there’s no one I’m going to call up to go out with for a beer.”
I promise you, they’re out there. You just can’t tell by looking at them, the irreverent soccer moms. I’ve found some, in my case, through my children’s school. One of them is even an atheist (like I am), and you, know, that’s really tough to find out there in America. You wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at her, either.
I learned this in high school (you know, not judging a soccer mom from her cover), when through some common academic interests, I became friends with the president our student council/president of our class. From the outside they looked like every stereotype of the popular girls on gossip girl (parents who gave them cars at 16, . . .). Inside, though, they were people who could talk to me, and my standards were awfully high for conversation.
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They ARE out there. Hey, I’m OUT there. I hear you on finding likeminded WOTH ‘rents to banter with. Love the banter.
Sometimes the fellow irreverent soccer moms are hiding their delicious snippiness in order to not scare anyone else. It’s sooo like dating again – and like dating, it’s a numbers game.
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You could always try jokes about the possible sexual orientation of the kids’ teachers. I’d avoid the obvious (female P.E. teachers).
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“Sometimes the fellow irreverent soccer moms are hiding their delicious snippiness in order to not scare anyone else.”
yeah, you have to start slow, and then go to then consider the jokes about the sexual orientation of kids (though, mind you, that’s a pretty big mine field in many circles). But, I know that there are people out there who want to discuss the public option with you or educational reform or the state of your local government.
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Can you all move here? Can we start our own irreverent soccer mom island? Sandra, it is so like dating again, but somehow, this seems harder. Maybe because there’s no kissing involved. I mean kissing can really break the ice. 🙂
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It is hard figuring out exactly who you are dealing with, without investing some time. Over the past couple years, I’ve made some interesting discoveries. Here’s an incomplete list:
1. The pleasant blonde mother, who I discovered after many chats at ballet to be recently returned from six years of living as a missionary family in Sudan.
2. The rather crunchy math teacher who I didn’t really know before she came over for a playdate with her kids. They turned out to have recently returned from several years of missionary work in Morocco.
3. The very ordinary looking doctor’s wife who turned out to have spent all her years before college as a missionary kid in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
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I’ve checked. All my neighbors are really boring and remarkably bad about parking their cars.
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I live in Portland, OR where everyone is weird and lefty. I only wish I could stay home and enjoy it more. . .
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What’s your position on missionaries, Amy?
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Actually, I once had a boss who grew-up while his parents were on mission.
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“What’s your position on missionaries, Amy?”
It’s just a peculiarity of our area of Texas that it is to be crawling with Protestant missionary families who are between postings (we just had some missionary neighbors head back to Singapore after a short US sabbatical). In our area, these are the people who have spent the most time abroad, so I would naturally feel a lot of interest in them. There’s a very crunchy outfit (i.e. they use a composting toilet) a short drive from our town where they teach “sustainable agriculture” (for instance, bunny raising) to missionaries headed to impoverished areas of the world.
Of course, for Catholics, missionary traffic often runs in the other direction. Here in the US, many of the younger priests you’ll run into are Filipinos, Indians or Nigerians. The priest who runs our campus chaplaincy is Nigerian.
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I remember when my 3 year old daughter was a newborn and I made these mommy “friends”. Once we all got out of our “what the h*ll just happened/sleep deprivation fog”, I realised that we didn’t have much more in common than we had just reproduced.
Two bookclubs, one board membership on lefty/alternative nursery school later, and I am slowing putting my “tribe” together.
Funnily enough, one of the bookclubs is primarily modern orthodox Jewish feminist women – who are snarky/smartypants and fun.
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I just saw this and had to post it here. LOL!
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It’s the shortest distance between two puns, MH.
Is this one kind of snark Laura likes?
A Texas town crawling with missionaries is an interesting mental image. Are there many military people around who might have served overseas?
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Texas is different. I will say that I have seen the mission priests in U.S. churches, but not in Pittsburgh. My parents’ parish had a priest from India who told me that he had families in his parish who said that St. Thomas went to India and that their family had been Christian since then. He was dubious about the later claim.
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Doug,
We’re within range of one of the big military bases, but not in the immediate vicinity. What we are pretty close to is a sort of Baptist Vatican, if that is at all an appropriate term for a denomination which has traditionally shunned centralization.
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The Infallible Wikipedia(tm) has observations on St Thomas Christians and their traditions in India. Though of course one family’s history is harder to place.
Baptists have changed a lot just in my lifetime, and if there are “Baptist Bishops” these days, can a Vatican be far behind? Though I wonder if it will be the seat of a single supreme Baptist. Maybe more the seat of a lot of respected scholars; a Baptist Qom, if you will.
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