Silicon Valley Moms Blog

A House Dress in Brown, Perhaps?

Can you hear that? The rumbling? No, it's not the bass sounds booming from my husband's subwoofer. It's my new household UPS mini-truck. I drive it from kitchen to bedroom, returning bedding to its rightful spot. Then I drive it to the garage to put a hammer back in the toolbox. And, in treaded tractor mode, I drive it to the basement to put DVDs near that subwoofer. I play in-house delivery person at least a half hour per day.

At 365 days per year, I calculate I've spent the equivalent of four and a half work weeks putting my lovable slob family's crap back where it should go. Some people say every dollar they earn through April goes to the IRS. My slob house equivalent: if I could do all the picking up at once, I'd spend every work hour through February moving objects from one place to another.

OK, so I don't really have the truck, but you can tell I'm a little pissy about this whole thing. I've taken pains to organize our house around point-of-use, but it's beyond me why I find can openers in the family room and embroidered linen hand towels - covered in grease - in the garage.

Trophy Kids

There's a new term in town: participation trophy. Apparently, it's now standard to give kids trophies for playing non-competitive team sports such as basketball and baseball. I'm talking about teams with kids so young that there is no score-keeping, no winning, no losing, and no Most Valuable Player. If your child is on the team roster, they get a trophy at the end of the season.

It struck me as odd, but as I polled other parents about it, I found out I'm in a lonely minority of parents who wants to Heisman* the whole trophy thing.

Other parents say trophies are a great memento of the season and of their teammates. They also say it makes each child feel good. True, I agree with that. And, most said as long as they only cost a few dollars, then why not?

Well, I must be next in line for Andy Rooney's job on 60 Minutes, because I'm finding myself annoyed with the whole trophy business. Here's why.

I grew up a competitive swimmer. We coveted trophies as rewards for working hard enough to win first, second, or third place. I wasn't the best swimmer. In fact, I only won backstroke trophies at the end of the season because no one else wanted to do that stroke. I did get participation ribbons when I lost, which was more often than not. Ribbons for participation in a competitive sport still strike me as fine. But, even in competitive sports, kids who competed and lost didn't get shiny 3D participation trophies.

Eighteen Years of Undiagnosed Lyme Disease, and I'm So Happy

Eighteen years ago, I found a raised pink rash on the inside of my hiking sock. After returning from a six hour hike, I peeled down the sweaty sock and thought Wow, some grass must have irritated my ankle. I figured it was an allergic reaction. The rash went away but I ran fevers the rest of that summer. Undaunted, I went out with friends and drank TheraFlu while they drank beer. Getting swine flu would probably have been better than what happened next.

I was athletic. I was a pro at burning the candle at both ends (To wit: TheraFlu at the bar). But I began to accumulate symptoms. Not just one or two, but a couple dozen life-limiting symptoms. Fevers came and went. I began getting frequent sinus and bladder infections. But I managed. Then, a few years after earning an MBA from a top business school, I became nauseated all the time, like I was about to throw up. At age 27, I had arthritis that forced me to stop running for exercise. I acquired a permanent migraine headache. My digestive problems were out of control. I was exhausted. Doctor after doctor said, "I don't know," or my personal pet peeve, "You're just under a lot of stress."

I got a great job in high tech after graduate school, but it became impossible to keep it. I was 30 and had just been promoted to acting manager of a worldwide research group. When I did make it to work, I came in late, returned a few emails, made a few phone calls, spent a half hour in a bathroom stall, went to the parking garage, slept an hour or so in my car with the driver's seat cranked back, and returned to my desk.

My Calendaring Orgasm

Usually I have an asexual relationship with my Outlook calendar. It's utilitarian. I've done electronic calendaring since I worked in high tech in the early 1990s. There's no going back to paper. When I married and had kids, the calendaring seemed to get out of control.

I had a moment of enlightenment at the beginning of my kids' school year: "Geez," said a savvy mom friend, "I feel like all I do is go from email to iCal and back." I realized I was calendaring for upwards of an hour each day.

Every time I made the kludgy switch between the two applications, it started to bug me. What a huge time sink, I thought. Why couldn't I go back to my high tech group calendaring days? Maybe people could just put everything in Evite. Evite gives you the handy "Add to Outlook Calendar" or "Add to iCal" instant calendar item. Pure calendaring joy!

Hugging Mom Butt Near You

It began in my Bikram yoga class a few years ago. Standing behind me, the beautiful Michelle Pfieffer was styled-out, but you'd expect that. Women's rear-ends, known as yoga trophies, looked tighter. Women who were flat-chested last week suddenly had cleavage. Men even had the little flashing Omega sign on their yoga shorts. (Or is the logo a woman's head with a bob and flip haircut? I can't decide.)

Lululemon is taking over yoga classes in Palo Alto. The stylish yoga-wear is slowly making a bigger appearance at our elementary school, too, as moms arrive for pick-up and drop-off looking as though they are fresh from a yoga class. Sometimes that is the case, but there is more than meets the eye. According to my friend's husband, "No mom's butt looks bad in Lulu." True. So true - and this is the key to understanding the Lulu phenomenon. It's like wearing Spanx on the outside. Nary is there a dimple, jiggle or wiggle that Lululemon doesn't take care of. We know it, so fewer of us are swapping our yoga pants for jeans before making the trek to campus to get the kids. Why make the effort anymore?

Note to Self: Shut Up!

I say and do things daily that I vowed I would "never" do as a mom. In the 1980s, my sister played varsity tennis for our high school. At some point in the season, parents were banned from attending tennis matches since they argued line calls from the sidelines. Banned! That's pretty extreme, but the behavior must have been equally extreme. I decided I would "never" be that type of parent.

Today, this behavior might be termed "helicopter parenting." Wikipedia defines it as "parents [who] rush to prevent any harm or failure from befalling [their children] and will not let them learn from their own mistakes... They are so named because, like helicopters, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not."

I've known what a helicopter parent is since the 1980s and I'm not one of them. I would not be the parent calling out strategies, over-the-top words of encouragement, or arguing about whether a ball was "in" or "out." Not me.

Kids Who Want to Go to School and Refuse to See Movies

I heard the stomping getting closer to my bed. My hair and pajamas were sopping wet from sweat. My pillow felt moist. I'd been sick for five days. My first grade son, brandishing his angry eyebrows, appeared in my line of sight and demanded: "Mom! Take me to school right now! I'm going to be late!" Clearly, he was feeling better.

I never thought I'd hear those words. He wanted to go to school and he was worried about being late. What was going on in our house? The whole family got one nasty long-lasting virus.

My husband was sick, too, and already at work so I dragged my sick-as-hell body to the kitchen and nicely told my twin first graders to get their own breakfast. I then lied down in the fetal position on the carpet and waited. They actually got their own breakfast. They even got a stool to get to the high cereal shelf. I was amazed. No complaining. Wow, I thought, they are much more capable than they make themselves out to be.

Hey Summer Camp Directors, You Owe Me Interest!

Just crossed-off from my to do list: Christmas thank you notes. Next on the list: summer camp sign-ups.

It will be eight months before my almost seven-year old twins enjoy their camps. I think summer camps should pay us interest on these big fat loans - some of these programs cost upwards of $400 per week per camper. I'm keeping those to a minimum, but still, camp will cost our family at least $2,000 per month this summer.

I wish I could sign my kids up for a general camp that would run the whole summer, but my kids' favorites don't run all summer. My kids complained about some of the general camps but have raved all year about "topic camps" like Camp Kinetic and Pirate Camp. These favorites only run for a week, so all other camps need to be scheduled around them.

Scheduling eleven weeks of summer for two children is more difficult than solving an advanced Sudoku puzzle. Summer camp sign-ups have forced this electronic calendar mom to go back to paper. I mapped out which camp runs in which week, noted start and end times, and tripled-checked camp locations so I wouldn't be commuting thirty minutes between camp pick-ups. After a few days of research and charting, I'm gleeful to have an idea of which weeks my children will be where, assuming we can actually get into the camps we want.

The Whizzing Bunny

While volunteering in my daughter's first grade class this morning, one of the boys - who was trying not to do his workbook - penciled an illustration on the cute bunny on his page. Peter Rabbit suddenly had a penis, complete with pee going into a big puddle. I had to stifle a laugh and try not to smile.

It's not a laughing matter because this particular boy rarely gets any work done when I'm volunteering, but my sick and twisted sense of humor was touched. I didn't let on, however, and immediately told him to erase it in a very stern voice. I didn't even comment on what was on his paper.

I'm stymied and feel out of control when I'm volunteering at a table with only five children. It seems as though every classroom I'm in, almost half the kids don't get much done. They goof off, look into space, begin to write a letter then seem to forget what they were doing, deliberately write messy letters (my daughter), and some just plain don't get what's going on. I (and presumably other volunteers) have to ask the kids to erase stray marks and messy letters so much that the pencil erasers are all rubbed off.

The teacher and aides are more than wonderful and I have nothing but praise for them and their curriculum, but the chaos at the group tables is overwhelming to me.

A Deathly Reminder for Drivers to Slow Down

I'm disturbed. The story of Phyllis Seidman, who was hit by a car only blocks from my house, haunts me. Maybe it's because the woman was wheel-chair bound due to MS. Maybe it's because my kids and I ride our bikes on the same streets. Maybe it's the flowers a couple people have left near the accident scene. Maybe it's that there are only two bouquets of flowers there, and not more.

Maybe I'm bothered by the street itself which police spray painted to depict what they believe to be the sequence of events. I wonder if the marking next to the number "1" is where Phyllis Seidman originally was when she was struck. I wonder if the end of the markings means she or her chair were pushed a long distance before the car stopped. I drive by it every day and think about this woman whom I didn't know.

When the Palo Alto Weekly first reported that a woman in a motorized wheelchair was struck and killed by a car, Phyllis Seidman's image popped into my mind. I hardly knew her, in fact I didn't even know her name, but I saw her pass by my house almost weekly. I thought, gosh, I hope it wasn't that nice woman with the dog. Then my heart sank when I saw the published photo of her with her white Samoyed, a fluff-ball of a dog that was her constant walking companion. I learned her name from the article.