Twitter: Destroying productivity since 2007

by CountryFriedMama on March 10, 2010

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I love Twitter.

I love that it can connect me to smart, interesting people like Queen of Spain who  send me off to read something like this piece about moms who work, which was written by Jaelithe at The State of Discontent and has me sitting at my desk crying when I should be drafting blog posts for a client.

Without Twitter — and Queen of Spain and Jaelithe — I would just be a woman sitting alone in a tiny home office, wondering what my small children are doing right now at school and whether I will someday regret my eagerness to get back to work.

I do not work full time.  I do not work outside the home (unless the corner table at Starbucks counts.)  But I am working enough that I cannot manage to do it with the girls here.  Miss D. now goes to school five mornings a week.  Her sister joins her on four of those days.  It’s a big change for us.  Overnight, seemingly, our time together went from vast, unending hours to packed days and rushed transitions.

Wake, eat, dress, drive, drop-off, work, work, work, pick up, nap, play, cook, eat, bathe, bed.

Repeat.

The weather is finally turning here.  It’s time to go outside again after a long, strange Southern winter.  A friend invited me and Belly to the zoo and out to lunch last week, and I declined.  Belly had school, I had work, and neither of us has the lifestyle right now for mid-morning, weekday zoo dates.  It made me sad.  Later, when the same friend e-mailed me to talk about alternate times we could get together, she noted that perhaps while I might one day regret how quickly my stay-at-home-mom status evolved, she might regret how slowly hers did.

There are plenty of choices for us.  Sometimes, they all feel wrong.

I love the work I’m doing now.  I am so, so grateful for successful friends who thought of me when they needed a writer.

Still, Jaelithe’s shout out to the working moms has me struggling to gain my composure this morning.

Which I will do.

Quickly.

Because there’s a long to-do list, and it’s almost time for me to go pick up my babies.

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Meanwhile, at the bookstore…

by CountryFriedMama on March 5, 2010

I’m over at BirminghamMommy today, where I’m discovering — again — that my children are not miniature versions of myself. It shocks me every time.

I hope you’ll come by and leave a comment.  Have a good weekend!

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Dreaming big at the butterfly conservatory: a hunting expedition

March 4, 2010

Somebody, at sometime, told Miss D. that when a butterfly lands on your finger, you get a wish.
I never heard this particular law, or I would have been out hunting butterflies a long time ago.  (Mama wants a shiny, new housekeeper!)
Anyway, Miss D. was pretty excited last week when I told her we were going [...]

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On writing well in the blogosphere

March 3, 2010

My rabbi wants to start a blog.
I met with him this morning and said a few things about blogging that were probably unhelpful and possibly overwhelming.  We talked about Blogger vs. Wordpress, about Twitter and Facebook, about podcasts and plugins and RSS feeds.
I didn’t share with him the 5,000 things about blogging I still do [...]

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Danica Patrick had a chance to hook me — and my daughter — on auto racing. She blew it.

March 2, 2010

You can find me at Work It, Mom! today, where I’m guest blogging for Aliza Sherman.
In my piece in the featured blogs section, I’m busy pretending I know something about auto racing and ranting loudly about the missed opportunity of a certain female stock car racer to set a good example for Miss D.
I hope [...]

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S’mores recipe: Mmm, mmm, memory

March 1, 2010

Perhaps this post should be titled, “embarrassing story #43.”  When I get to #100, I’ll consider this little blogging project complete.
I went to overnight camp during a couple of summers when I was a kid.  The first year, I went with a friend.  I didn’t know any of the other girls there, but loved it [...]

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Our morning routine: changing the things I can control, trying desperately to let go of the rest

February 26, 2010

I should be doing 16 other things right now.  The to-do list is long, and it is ignored.  But I am frozen in a chair at the kitchen table listening to Belly shriek in her crib, and I am pleading with whatever gods manage naptime to please, please, please let this child go to sleep [...]

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Healthy habit #1: Avoid toys in the pediatrician’s waiting room

February 25, 2010

Belly and Miss D. are sounding a little bit like two-pack-a-day smokers these days.
We were all pretty healthy when we went in for Belly’s 18-month check up a few weeks ago, and we all walked out with the crud.
I blame the toys in the doctor’s waiting area; they practically glow with nasty germs like some [...]

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A blog review scarier than Scary Mommy, and two thumbs up for happy stories

February 23, 2010

When I taught high school English, the most frequent question I heard from students after “Why do we need to know this?” was “Why do we read so many depressing books?”
My answer to the first question was — I’m sorry to say — often a rolling of the eyes.
My answer to the second question was [...]

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Hamantashen recipe for Purim: Mmm, mmm, memory

February 22, 2010

Purim is coming up, and I feel it is my civic duty to give y’all a rundown of what this holiday is and why it is awesome.
This is another example of a Jewish “They-tried-to-kill-us-but-we-won-let’s-eat!” kind of holiday, but I like this one in particular for its female heroine, costumes, noise makers and extremely sugary cookies.
They [...]

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