I've had a bit of a tough end to my week. I don't think I can muster a links post.
You can still go to Wednesday's post, written before my week took a precipitous nosedive, and give me advice. No one is telling me which Twitter handle I should use if I do decide to start a blog about management (I think I'd write about both project and people management if I do this). Also, where are the witty blog name ideas??? Come on, people. I can't be expected to sort these things out on my own. It is the age of crowd-sourcing!
I'm still not sure what I will do. I may do nothing with the project management ideas except for bore my friends. I may start a blog. I may even end up doing some consulting on the topic. I just don't know.
I've been going through some career angst for awhile now. There are many aspects of my current career path that I genuinely love. But there have been some pretty large costs, too. I have worked in very male-dominated fields since college, fields where I am quite often the only woman in the room. This is not all bad- I have many wonderful male friends, and I have learned a lot from many male mentors. However, as I've acclimated to my extremely male work environment, I've developed different ways of talking and interacting with people. I project more self-confidence, even when I'm not feeling it. I am more direct, even when delivering difficult news. These traits make me less likeable to some women, so I try to leave them at work. Of course, I am not completely successful at that, and I recently had a reminder of that, which I am not going to write about in detail. This is not to say that I have no female friends- I have many wonderful female friends, too. Regardless, I am more likely to feel awkward in groups of women now, because the expected behaviors no longer come completely naturally.
At the same time, I have not completely transformed my behavior to fit in with the guys at work, and I occasionally get reminded of that, too. In fact, that is part of what made the end of this week so tough. I know that some of my colleagues think the solution to the problem is for me to just "adjust to their argumentative style of discussion" or whatever behavior is causing me issues at the time. And that might indeed make my work life better. But at what cost?
Already I feel like there is no place in my life I can be my full, authentic self. In fact, I'm not even sure who my full, authentic self is anymore, and that is making me feel very unsettled and strange. I'm not sure what to do about that, either.
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OK, that is a bit of a downer post for a Friday night. So here is a link to a video of bunnies jumping over things, because bunnies are cute. I am noticing a lot more bunnies on the internet these days, and I wholeheartedly approve of the diversification of the cute from just cat photos.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Cloud Asks, You Give Advice
I owe an Ask Cloud post on the basics of converting a C.V. to a resume. I was going to write that this week, but do not have the time to do it justice, and I want to do it justice, because from what I can tell, no one really helps academics write a decent resume for industry. Anyway, that is the only explanation I have for some of the awful resumes I see- I know these people are smart, so I assume no one is giving them the info they need to do a good job. I promise to try to post it next week.
Instead, I want to as you all for advice/opinions. I'm going to give you a real life decision I am trying to make and see what you think I should do. And then I'm going to go to bed and then disappear into an all day technical meeting tomorrow, about which I just tweeted:
And let you have at it in my comments section. I'll check in tomorrow night!
So here is my dilemma:
I have lots and lots of ideas about how to apply some of the project management techniques I have learned in software project management to lab work- particularly to research-y work, where people usually tell me that project management "won't work." I think a lab could take some of these techniques, experiment a bit to find the best way to use them in that particular environment, and get more productive, while the people worked fewer hours and were less stressed.
But I currently have no scope to explore these ideas at my job, and trust me- there will never be any scope for me to explore these ideas at my current job. That is fine, and not meant to disparage my job or my particular company, it is just a statement of how it is.
I've tried to put the ideas aside and just focus on refining my techniques for my current position, which involves developing scientific software.
But I can't. I want to tell the world about my ideas and see if they help or not. If they don't help, fine- but I really want to know that, and to think about why. What can I say? I'm a bit of a management geek. Anyway, I'm trying to decide how to get my ideas out there within the constraints in my situation, which are:
Instead, I want to as you all for advice/opinions. I'm going to give you a real life decision I am trying to make and see what you think I should do. And then I'm going to go to bed and then disappear into an all day technical meeting tomorrow, about which I just tweeted:
All day technical meeting tomorrow is likely to get contentious, in friendly but time-wasting way. Srsly considering printing up red cards.
— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) February 27, 2014
Two warnings for talking over someone else, then yellow card. Next infringement: red card and you have to suck on a lollipop for 10 mins.
— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) February 27, 2014
And let you have at it in my comments section. I'll check in tomorrow night!
So here is my dilemma:
I have lots and lots of ideas about how to apply some of the project management techniques I have learned in software project management to lab work- particularly to research-y work, where people usually tell me that project management "won't work." I think a lab could take some of these techniques, experiment a bit to find the best way to use them in that particular environment, and get more productive, while the people worked fewer hours and were less stressed.
But I currently have no scope to explore these ideas at my job, and trust me- there will never be any scope for me to explore these ideas at my current job. That is fine, and not meant to disparage my job or my particular company, it is just a statement of how it is.
I've tried to put the ideas aside and just focus on refining my techniques for my current position, which involves developing scientific software.
But I can't. I want to tell the world about my ideas and see if they help or not. If they don't help, fine- but I really want to know that, and to think about why. What can I say? I'm a bit of a management geek. Anyway, I'm trying to decide how to get my ideas out there within the constraints in my situation, which are:
- No paying side gigs at my current job without executive committee approval. I am not kidding. I even have to get my children's books approved before I publish them, which amuses me so much that I may try to sneak something about drug discovery into a future story just to see what happens. I have an offer on the table to write about project management for another site, and I have been trying for months and months to get approval, and have not yet succeeded. I am beginning to think I may never succeed.
- However, my understanding of California law is that they can't really limit what I do on my own time for free, as long as I don't break any non-disclosure agreements I've signed. (Frankly, my understanding is that they are on shaky ground on #1, but I don't really want to find out in a court of law.)
- I make more than half of my family's income, and we cannot afford for me to just quit my job and pursue a new career in research project management. Anyway, there are almost no jobs in research project management in my area of scientific expertise- we don't tend to bring project management in until development phase.
- Try to line up a paying engagement as a consultant (in any capacity), then quit my job and pursue leads for consulting with scientists on project management. The downsides of this option are that my best leads for consultant work are people I know through my current job, and we are all skittish about me leaving my current job and going directly to one of them. Also, I am not at all convinced that any scientists would hire me to give them advice on project management- it has been close to 20 years since I was in a wet lab, and scientists tend to be convinced that only someone with recent experience in a field almost exactly identical to their own could possibly give them any ideas about how to run their research. I completely understand this impulse- a lot of people come in with no real understanding of how research works and make truly ridiculous pronouncements about "what scientists should do" and how are they to know I am any different?
- Start writing about my project management ideas here on Wandering Scientist. The downsides of this are that I don't currently associate my real name directly with this blog, and I'd like these ideas out there attached to my real name. Also, I don't want to stop writing about all of the other random things I write about, and I think that might dilute the project management message.
- Start writing about my project management ideas on a new blog. The downsides of this are that I think I could only manage to post once or twice per month, which might not be frequent enough to build an audience. Could I really keep THREE blogs going? I'm not sure, and I don't want to abandon this blog or Tungsten Hippo. Also, I'd need to come up with a new blog name and I suck at naming things. If I go with this option, I think I'd link to posts on New Blog here, much like I do with Tungsten Hippo. I don't mind having my name peripherally associated with this blog now, perhaps because I have stopped caring so much if the dudes in my industry decide I'm unhireable. This may not be the smartest thing, but it is true. I have no idea what I'd do about Twitter, though. I did snag a handle that would work for my real name way back before I even set up the @wandsci account. But I really don't think I want to try to run three twitter feeds, so maybe I'd acknowledge both blogs on @wandsci? Would I link to the @wandsci twitter feed from New Blog? I don't know. I find thinking through all the ramifications of this option a bit headache-inducing, really.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Earn It
I have a friend who is facing a frustrating situation at work. She is smart, competent, and extremely good at her job, but a couple of her colleagues are not treating her with respect, and their mutual boss is insisting that she just needs to "earn their respect."
This is, of course, impossible, since her colleagues have decided not to respect her, and choose not to see the awesome work she is doing. I do not know why they do not respect her, but it is probably a combination of gender bias and discipline-related arrogance (they are in a discipline that considers itself "harder" than hers). I ran into a similar situation once, early in my career, and I am still convinced there is no real solution, and that if you find yourself in a situation like this you should just start a job search. (If anyone out there has figured out how to turn a situation like this around, please share in the comments.)
This sort of situation, though, is my answer to the people who ask me why I default to respecting everyone. In general, I respect people and assume they are smart and competent until they thoroughly demonstrate otherwise. I know many, many people in science and tech who do the exact opposite: they assume people are stupid/incompetent until they prove otherwise. They do not understand my approach and think I am a hopeless Pollyanna, fated to waste untold hours on unworthy people.
This has not been my experience, but even if it were, I would stick to my method of requiring people to lose my respect rather than earn it.
The reason is simple. Who suffers in the case of a mistake? I would rather pay for my mistaken impressions myself, not project the cost of my mistakes onto someone else.
Also, although all of the people I know who insist that others earn their respect are sure that they are unbiased in the application of their rule, it doesn't look that way to me. They are blind to their own implicit biases, which include scientific/technical discipline as well as the usual gender, race, and sexuality biases. I see that people who are not straight white men usually have to work harder to earn respect, and that people working in disciplines perceived as "softer" or "easier" may never be able to earn the respect of their peers in the "harder" disciplines.
And that doesn't even consider the ways in which women and people of color are penalized in this respect-earning competition for behaviors that are completely fine- or even respected!- in white men.
It also doesn't consider the way in which having to continually earn respect can have a disproportionately discouraging effect on members of marginalized groups, who have probably been told all of their life that they aren't meant to be doing whatever it is they are doing. Trust me, the effect of having to constantly prove yourself is like stereotype threat on steroids. I recently joked to my husband that for a woman in tech, the message is: "you aren't as good as the boys, girls don't do this, you aren't as good as the men, you're good at this... for a girl, if you were really good we'd know, this is a meritocracy so if you aren't at the top you don't belong there, if you haven't been coding since you're 13 you can't be any good" until one day the message is "your problem is that you don't have enough self-confidence!" It is crazy making, and I want no part in subjecting anyone else to that nonsense.
I know myself well enough to know that I still have plenty of implicit biases lurking in my subconscious. It is far safer and fairer and just nicer to assume everyone is worthy of my respect until they do something to lose it. Also, I feel better about myself this way.
But of course, saying this is one of the things that makes some of the guys I work with respect me less. Because, of course, REAL scientists/tech people make other people earn their respect.
-------------------------
In other news, this week's Tungsten Hippo post is about steampunk, inspired in part by a recent incident in which a local steampunk group was asked to leave a mall. At first I thought this had nothing to do with today's post, but I actually think it is part of the same theme- it is better to give people the benefit of the doubt. And I'm going to do that and assume that the mall guards wish they had given the steampunk group the benefit of the doubt, and feel a bit foolish now that they know what steampunk is.
This is, of course, impossible, since her colleagues have decided not to respect her, and choose not to see the awesome work she is doing. I do not know why they do not respect her, but it is probably a combination of gender bias and discipline-related arrogance (they are in a discipline that considers itself "harder" than hers). I ran into a similar situation once, early in my career, and I am still convinced there is no real solution, and that if you find yourself in a situation like this you should just start a job search. (If anyone out there has figured out how to turn a situation like this around, please share in the comments.)
This sort of situation, though, is my answer to the people who ask me why I default to respecting everyone. In general, I respect people and assume they are smart and competent until they thoroughly demonstrate otherwise. I know many, many people in science and tech who do the exact opposite: they assume people are stupid/incompetent until they prove otherwise. They do not understand my approach and think I am a hopeless Pollyanna, fated to waste untold hours on unworthy people.
This has not been my experience, but even if it were, I would stick to my method of requiring people to lose my respect rather than earn it.
The reason is simple. Who suffers in the case of a mistake? I would rather pay for my mistaken impressions myself, not project the cost of my mistakes onto someone else.
Also, although all of the people I know who insist that others earn their respect are sure that they are unbiased in the application of their rule, it doesn't look that way to me. They are blind to their own implicit biases, which include scientific/technical discipline as well as the usual gender, race, and sexuality biases. I see that people who are not straight white men usually have to work harder to earn respect, and that people working in disciplines perceived as "softer" or "easier" may never be able to earn the respect of their peers in the "harder" disciplines.
And that doesn't even consider the ways in which women and people of color are penalized in this respect-earning competition for behaviors that are completely fine- or even respected!- in white men.
It also doesn't consider the way in which having to continually earn respect can have a disproportionately discouraging effect on members of marginalized groups, who have probably been told all of their life that they aren't meant to be doing whatever it is they are doing. Trust me, the effect of having to constantly prove yourself is like stereotype threat on steroids. I recently joked to my husband that for a woman in tech, the message is: "you aren't as good as the boys, girls don't do this, you aren't as good as the men, you're good at this... for a girl, if you were really good we'd know, this is a meritocracy so if you aren't at the top you don't belong there, if you haven't been coding since you're 13 you can't be any good" until one day the message is "your problem is that you don't have enough self-confidence!" It is crazy making, and I want no part in subjecting anyone else to that nonsense.
I know myself well enough to know that I still have plenty of implicit biases lurking in my subconscious. It is far safer and fairer and just nicer to assume everyone is worthy of my respect until they do something to lose it. Also, I feel better about myself this way.
But of course, saying this is one of the things that makes some of the guys I work with respect me less. Because, of course, REAL scientists/tech people make other people earn their respect.
-------------------------
In other news, this week's Tungsten Hippo post is about steampunk, inspired in part by a recent incident in which a local steampunk group was asked to leave a mall. At first I thought this had nothing to do with today's post, but I actually think it is part of the same theme- it is better to give people the benefit of the doubt. And I'm going to do that and assume that the mall guards wish they had given the steampunk group the benefit of the doubt, and feel a bit foolish now that they know what steampunk is.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Weekend Reading: The Great Links, No Theme Edition
I have some great links this week, but no unifying theme. So let's get straight to the links:
Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates both wrote powerful pieces about the Jordan Davis case.
The last line of Eugene Robinson's article is particularly poignant:
"We don’t just have to change laws. We have to change hearts and minds."
This is the work we white people need to do. We need to change the assumption that so many of us seem to have that a young black man must be up to no good.
And make no mistake, this is our work.
I was thinking of this when I read an article from Clementine Ford about what it means to be "decent." Which then made me remember the awesome take down of sexism from another Australian, which I have posted here before, but am going to post again because it is just that awesome:
The standard under which innocent young men can be shot for listening to loud music or walking home from the convenience store is not a standard I am willing to accept, so I can not walk past the lazy and incorrect stereotype of young black men as dangerous. I must confront it and change it.
I don't know what more to say.
I also don't know quite how to describe this short post about 2700 years of female silence, but you should go read it, anyway.
Greg Knauss wrote an app called Romantimatic and a lot of people apparently hated it. His reaction to that is awesome, and thought-provoking.
I really liked this HBR post from Jules Pieri about being an "older" entrepreneur.
I had a classic yak-shaving experience earlier this week when I set out to close one open story in our project, so this post on yak-shaving made me smile.
This also made me smile:
Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates both wrote powerful pieces about the Jordan Davis case.
The last line of Eugene Robinson's article is particularly poignant:
"We don’t just have to change laws. We have to change hearts and minds."
This is the work we white people need to do. We need to change the assumption that so many of us seem to have that a young black man must be up to no good.
And make no mistake, this is our work.
I was thinking of this when I read an article from Clementine Ford about what it means to be "decent." Which then made me remember the awesome take down of sexism from another Australian, which I have posted here before, but am going to post again because it is just that awesome:
The standard under which innocent young men can be shot for listening to loud music or walking home from the convenience store is not a standard I am willing to accept, so I can not walk past the lazy and incorrect stereotype of young black men as dangerous. I must confront it and change it.
I don't know what more to say.
I also don't know quite how to describe this short post about 2700 years of female silence, but you should go read it, anyway.
Greg Knauss wrote an app called Romantimatic and a lot of people apparently hated it. His reaction to that is awesome, and thought-provoking.
I really liked this HBR post from Jules Pieri about being an "older" entrepreneur.
I had a classic yak-shaving experience earlier this week when I set out to close one open story in our project, so this post on yak-shaving made me smile.
This also made me smile:
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Now That the Dust Has Settled: Post-Move Logistics Update
I think it is time to update my strangely popular series of posts on the day-to-day logistics here in the Cloud-Snarky household. (Hmmm... I should perhaps turn that order around and have it be the Snarky-Cloud household, and make Snarky Cloud the name of my next band...)
Anyway, I promised I'd update once we'd settled into a routine after my company moved. Well, my company moved in December, so I think it is time to acknowledge that this is my new routine.
First, the details of what changed:
My old office was roughly 11 miles from my home. Google maps tells me that it would take me 15 minutes to drive there right now, and that was indeed roughly what my morning commute was most days. Some days traffic would be a little worse, and my morning commute would take 20 minutes. On a really bad traffic day (i.e., rain, an accident, the stupid golf tournament) it could take 30 minutes. I do not think my morning commute ever took more than 30 minutes.
My evening commutes were harder, because the traffic getting out of the area in which I worked was truly horrendous. I dealt with this by shifting my schedule such that my commute home (after picking up Petunia from day care) was roughly 20 to 30 minutes and it reliably took less than 10 minutes toget to day care. On Thursdays, I did not pick Petunia up (Mr. Snarky did, so I could go home and exercise) and the drive was reliably 20 minutes. On a really bad traffic day (heavy rain, accident requiring lane closures, some jackass setting fires in the freeway median), the commute could be as long as 45 minutes- but that was rare.
My new office is roughly 15 miles from my home and requires more non-freeway driving. However (and this is the saving grace), there is not usually much traffic. After much experimentation, I have found routes that make my drive to and from work take 30 minutes most days. I'd estimate I get a 30 minute drive to work 4/5 days per week and a 30 minute drive home 3/5 days per week. The other days, something random happens somewhere along the route (today, it was a stalled school bus on the surface street I take from the freeway to my neighborhood) and my drive takes roughly 45 minutes. It has rained once since we moved to the new office (yeah, we're in a severe drought), and that day, it took me 1 hour and 10 minutes to drive home, even though I left a little early. Mr. Snarky cannot be relied upon to leave early when it rains, so he and Petunia also got home late- very late. Our entire routine was messed up and everyone was grumpy. It was a really rough evening. I think that if it had been raining the next morning, I might have quit my job.
The other thing that has changed in this new configuration is that my work is now nowhere near day care. Driving between work and day care takes roughly 20 minutes and is out of my way, so if I drop Petunia off, the drive to work takes an hour. Therefore, Mr. Snarky does most day care drop offs and pick ups and I take Pumpkin to and from school (which is 2.5 blocks from our house). On days when Mr. Snarky has an early meeting, Petunia watches TV until his meeting is done and he can drive her to day care. I am not thrilled about this, but it doesn't happen often, so I've made my peace with it.
So, with that long preamble out of the way, here is the new routine:
The Base Weekday Schedule
Both grown ups get up at 6:20, unless Petunia has woken up earlier. If she has, I get up with her most times, because by the time I wake Mr. Snarky up to get up with her, I am awake already. I use the time to catch up on blogs, so I only half-resent the early wake up. I'm staying up later at night for reasons I have not analyzed, so the old routine of getting up at 5:55 for a short run has been dropped.
Petunia almost always gets up as soon as I get up (another reason to drop my attempts to get up early). I wake Pumpkin up at about 6:45 if she hasn't gotten up earlier.
We all have breakfast, the grown ups shower, everyone gets dressed... the usual morning stuff. We all leave the house together sometime between 7:40 and 7:50. I walk Pumpkin to school. This takes me about 20 minutes, round trip, because although the gate to her school is only 2.5 blocks away, the room her before-school program is in is literally as far from the gate as it could possibly be, which is the equivalent of another block and a half. Also, there's sign in, etc., etc. But I like this 20 minutes, and driving her would only reduce it down to maybe 12 minutes... so now I walk. Mr. Snarky drives Petunia to day care. Since he works around the corner from where I used to work, I suspect it takes him 30 minutes or less (15-20 minutes to day care, 5 minute drop off- day care is far more efficient at this than the school program is, 10 minute drive to work).
We work/go to school/play at day care all day. I leave at 4:30, get home between 5 and 5:15, and walk to pick up Pumpkin. Then I make dinner. Mr. Snarky leaves at 5, picks up Petunia, and is home by 6, when we eat dinner. He refuses to time shift as much as I did (he likes his lunch breaks too much), so he spends more time in traffic than I used to.
I usually do work-related reading while I eat my lunch, and take a 20 minute walk most days at lunch time. One day per week (usually Tuesday or Wednesday), I have a short workout in the company gym instead of the walk. The new building includes a decent little gym. I wasn't going to use it (I am a manager, and female, and a little heavier than I'd like... and either you get why or you don't, maybe I'll explain further in a future post), but then they installed a really nice heavy bag and I decided "screw it, I want to hit that." So I spent roughly 30 minutes figuring out an acceptable work workout outfit (again, either you get this or you don't...) and now I go hit/kick the heavy bag for ~15 minutes once per week. With cool down, changing and showers, this takes 40 minutes. I may be able to shave that down to 30 with practice.
(Aside: I will someday write a post about the reactions of the men I work with to learning that I like to kickbox and/or to seeing me hit and kick the bag and realizing that I really meant kickbox and not cardiobox. But this post is already too long and I'm only up to lunch time.)
On Mondays, we both leave work a little early (4:15 for me, 4:30 for Mr. Snarky) and pick up our assigned kids for swim lesson. Mr. Snarky picks up Petunia, changes her at day care, and drives to swim lesson. I pick up Pumpkin, bring her home to change (it is on the way), and then drive to swim lesson. I drop Pumpkin off, and then drive home and make dinner. Mr. Snarky stays with the girls and they get home at about 6:20.
On Thursdays, I go for a jog by Mission Bay. Except for that awful Thursday when it rained, when I came home and did a dance workout in my garage. This is made possible by the fact that we pay our Chinese teacher to go pick up Pumpkin, walk her home, and give her an hour long Chinese lesson. Pumpkin loves this part of the new routine. The downside is that there is no flexibility- I get my workout time on Thursday, and if it is raining, well, I can figure something out. There is no just switching the workout to the next day.
On Fridays, Mr. Snarky leaves work at about 4:15, picks up Petunia, and takes her to soccer. They get home at about 6:30. I come home at the usual time, and make dinner. We almost always have Boboli pizzas on Fridays because I am just done with real cooking by then. Most Fridays, I have to give myself a pep talk just to make a green salad to go with the pizza.
If there is time after dinner, we play/read/fall down internet rabbit holes, as our fancy takes us. At about 7 p.m., the kids have bath. We alternate nights giving bath. The grown up not giving bath works/blogs/takes the trash out/does the finances/whatever.
After bath, I give the kids snack and make the next day's lunch for myself and part of the lunch for Pumpkin (Mr. Snarky makes the rest in the morning). I pack a snack for Petunia who insists on taking "lunch" and eating it as soon as she gets to day care.
After snack, the kids watch a show or we play a game or they just play- it varies. Then at about 8:15, Mr. Snarky gets their teeth brushed and we each get one kid to sleep. This involves reading stories, and if you are getting Petunia to sleep, lying in bed with your back to her while she "snuggles" (a.k.a. "gently kicks") your back. I read short stories or tweets during this time. Mr. Snarky sleeps. The parent who got Pumpkin to sleep (read her stories, kiss her goodnight, turn on music, spray "monster spray"- i.e., Febreeze- and leave) does the dishes.
Then the grown ups work, blog, read, watch TV, play video games... whatever.
I try to go to bed at 10:30, but usually don't get to bed until 11, as you'll confirm by checking the timestamp on this post. I have no idea when Mr. Snarky comes to bed most nights, because I am usually asleep.
Weekends
We continue to have Friday Night Beers. That is sacrosanct.
Gymnastics is now at 9, which sucks for me sleeping in (i.e., I don't get to) but is great for leaving us more family time in the day. I usually take the kids to gymnastics and Mr. Snarky stays home and does laundry.
Every other week, we also have a 30 minute Chinese lesson for both kids. That is sometimes on Saturdays after lunch and sometimes on Sunday mornings.
I sleep in (sometimes until 8! or 8:30!) most Sundays. If our schedule permits, Mr. Snarky goes for a run once I get up, while I sit around and drink tea and write. The kids play and interrupt me roughly every 15 minutes.
I do the grocery shopping Sunday afternoons. Usually.
We plan out our weekend during Friday Night Beers, and try to always include at least one "family fun" thing, which ranges from a trip to the park to a trip to Legoland to riding a ridiculous bike around Coronado.
We do a lot of chores on weekends. Or at least Mr. Snarky does, because he refuses to pay someone else to do our garden work. I haven't been able to determine if this is because he actually enjoys the gardening or if it is another one of his weird "I can do it so I shouldn't pay someone else to do it" things.
Mr. Snarky cooks dinner on the weekends. We usually have my sister around for dinner one night (or sometimes go to her place for dinner instead). We sometimes have other people over, too.
And that's it. The sick kid routine is unchanged. Petunia gets sick less often now, although she did just get sent home with a fever today. She is also more willing to let the grown up who stays home do a little work- particularly if that grown up is Mr. Snarky. She likes me to "snuggle" her on the sofa (which again means "let her put her feet on me") and I like to sit and keep her company, so I don't argue too much.
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So, what do I think of the new routine? I'm not sure. I love walking Pumpkin to and from school, but I miss picking Petunia up and watching her play soccer. I don't care for the longer commute at all. I know that it is not long by many people's standards, but... we sacrificed a bit on both space and neighborhood to buy a house in a location where our commute wouldn't be too long. Now I have the smaller house and the more boring neighborhood, and I still have a long commute. I'd be lying if I said this didn't annoy me. I also hate the ever-present risk of a much longer commute. I always allow 45 minutes for the commute, and I think that I'll need to allow at least 1 hour 15 minutes on rainy days.
I'm not sure what I'll do. I like my job, and I would not be able to find another similar job right now. So I am trying to decide how much, exactly, I hate the commute. It feels like I drive for such a long time, and it feels like wasted time. I've tried audiobooks, but I don't like them. There is not a lot of traffic, but there is some traffic, and I kept missing important bits when I had to focus more intently on the road. Also, I like to highlight while I read, and you can't highlight an audiobook. I might try podcasts next, but right now, I'm just listening to music I like and trying to enjoy the drive.
I dislike Mondays the most, because I leave work at 4:15, and don't get home to stay at 5:30, and must then start dinner almost right away. We're considering having me stay and watch swim lessons (which would be fun!) one or two times per month, and then going out to eat afterwards. This scrunches our bath/bedtime routine, so it is not without cost. But it might help make Mondays less unpleasant.
So what do you all think? Am I just being a commuting wimp? Anyone with a long commute want to suggest ways to make it less sucky? Other suggestions for optimizing my routine? Want to share the best/worst parts of your routine? Just say hi? Leave me comments!
Anyway, I promised I'd update once we'd settled into a routine after my company moved. Well, my company moved in December, so I think it is time to acknowledge that this is my new routine.
First, the details of what changed:
My old office was roughly 11 miles from my home. Google maps tells me that it would take me 15 minutes to drive there right now, and that was indeed roughly what my morning commute was most days. Some days traffic would be a little worse, and my morning commute would take 20 minutes. On a really bad traffic day (i.e., rain, an accident, the stupid golf tournament) it could take 30 minutes. I do not think my morning commute ever took more than 30 minutes.
My evening commutes were harder, because the traffic getting out of the area in which I worked was truly horrendous. I dealt with this by shifting my schedule such that my commute home (after picking up Petunia from day care) was roughly 20 to 30 minutes and it reliably took less than 10 minutes toget to day care. On Thursdays, I did not pick Petunia up (Mr. Snarky did, so I could go home and exercise) and the drive was reliably 20 minutes. On a really bad traffic day (heavy rain, accident requiring lane closures, some jackass setting fires in the freeway median), the commute could be as long as 45 minutes- but that was rare.
My new office is roughly 15 miles from my home and requires more non-freeway driving. However (and this is the saving grace), there is not usually much traffic. After much experimentation, I have found routes that make my drive to and from work take 30 minutes most days. I'd estimate I get a 30 minute drive to work 4/5 days per week and a 30 minute drive home 3/5 days per week. The other days, something random happens somewhere along the route (today, it was a stalled school bus on the surface street I take from the freeway to my neighborhood) and my drive takes roughly 45 minutes. It has rained once since we moved to the new office (yeah, we're in a severe drought), and that day, it took me 1 hour and 10 minutes to drive home, even though I left a little early. Mr. Snarky cannot be relied upon to leave early when it rains, so he and Petunia also got home late- very late. Our entire routine was messed up and everyone was grumpy. It was a really rough evening. I think that if it had been raining the next morning, I might have quit my job.
The other thing that has changed in this new configuration is that my work is now nowhere near day care. Driving between work and day care takes roughly 20 minutes and is out of my way, so if I drop Petunia off, the drive to work takes an hour. Therefore, Mr. Snarky does most day care drop offs and pick ups and I take Pumpkin to and from school (which is 2.5 blocks from our house). On days when Mr. Snarky has an early meeting, Petunia watches TV until his meeting is done and he can drive her to day care. I am not thrilled about this, but it doesn't happen often, so I've made my peace with it.
So, with that long preamble out of the way, here is the new routine:
The Base Weekday Schedule
Both grown ups get up at 6:20, unless Petunia has woken up earlier. If she has, I get up with her most times, because by the time I wake Mr. Snarky up to get up with her, I am awake already. I use the time to catch up on blogs, so I only half-resent the early wake up. I'm staying up later at night for reasons I have not analyzed, so the old routine of getting up at 5:55 for a short run has been dropped.
Petunia almost always gets up as soon as I get up (another reason to drop my attempts to get up early). I wake Pumpkin up at about 6:45 if she hasn't gotten up earlier.
We all have breakfast, the grown ups shower, everyone gets dressed... the usual morning stuff. We all leave the house together sometime between 7:40 and 7:50. I walk Pumpkin to school. This takes me about 20 minutes, round trip, because although the gate to her school is only 2.5 blocks away, the room her before-school program is in is literally as far from the gate as it could possibly be, which is the equivalent of another block and a half. Also, there's sign in, etc., etc. But I like this 20 minutes, and driving her would only reduce it down to maybe 12 minutes... so now I walk. Mr. Snarky drives Petunia to day care. Since he works around the corner from where I used to work, I suspect it takes him 30 minutes or less (15-20 minutes to day care, 5 minute drop off- day care is far more efficient at this than the school program is, 10 minute drive to work).
We work/go to school/play at day care all day. I leave at 4:30, get home between 5 and 5:15, and walk to pick up Pumpkin. Then I make dinner. Mr. Snarky leaves at 5, picks up Petunia, and is home by 6, when we eat dinner. He refuses to time shift as much as I did (he likes his lunch breaks too much), so he spends more time in traffic than I used to.
I usually do work-related reading while I eat my lunch, and take a 20 minute walk most days at lunch time. One day per week (usually Tuesday or Wednesday), I have a short workout in the company gym instead of the walk. The new building includes a decent little gym. I wasn't going to use it (I am a manager, and female, and a little heavier than I'd like... and either you get why or you don't, maybe I'll explain further in a future post), but then they installed a really nice heavy bag and I decided "screw it, I want to hit that." So I spent roughly 30 minutes figuring out an acceptable work workout outfit (again, either you get this or you don't...) and now I go hit/kick the heavy bag for ~15 minutes once per week. With cool down, changing and showers, this takes 40 minutes. I may be able to shave that down to 30 with practice.
(Aside: I will someday write a post about the reactions of the men I work with to learning that I like to kickbox and/or to seeing me hit and kick the bag and realizing that I really meant kickbox and not cardiobox. But this post is already too long and I'm only up to lunch time.)
On Mondays, we both leave work a little early (4:15 for me, 4:30 for Mr. Snarky) and pick up our assigned kids for swim lesson. Mr. Snarky picks up Petunia, changes her at day care, and drives to swim lesson. I pick up Pumpkin, bring her home to change (it is on the way), and then drive to swim lesson. I drop Pumpkin off, and then drive home and make dinner. Mr. Snarky stays with the girls and they get home at about 6:20.
On Thursdays, I go for a jog by Mission Bay. Except for that awful Thursday when it rained, when I came home and did a dance workout in my garage. This is made possible by the fact that we pay our Chinese teacher to go pick up Pumpkin, walk her home, and give her an hour long Chinese lesson. Pumpkin loves this part of the new routine. The downside is that there is no flexibility- I get my workout time on Thursday, and if it is raining, well, I can figure something out. There is no just switching the workout to the next day.
On Fridays, Mr. Snarky leaves work at about 4:15, picks up Petunia, and takes her to soccer. They get home at about 6:30. I come home at the usual time, and make dinner. We almost always have Boboli pizzas on Fridays because I am just done with real cooking by then. Most Fridays, I have to give myself a pep talk just to make a green salad to go with the pizza.
If there is time after dinner, we play/read/fall down internet rabbit holes, as our fancy takes us. At about 7 p.m., the kids have bath. We alternate nights giving bath. The grown up not giving bath works/blogs/takes the trash out/does the finances/whatever.
After bath, I give the kids snack and make the next day's lunch for myself and part of the lunch for Pumpkin (Mr. Snarky makes the rest in the morning). I pack a snack for Petunia who insists on taking "lunch" and eating it as soon as she gets to day care.
After snack, the kids watch a show or we play a game or they just play- it varies. Then at about 8:15, Mr. Snarky gets their teeth brushed and we each get one kid to sleep. This involves reading stories, and if you are getting Petunia to sleep, lying in bed with your back to her while she "snuggles" (a.k.a. "gently kicks") your back. I read short stories or tweets during this time. Mr. Snarky sleeps. The parent who got Pumpkin to sleep (read her stories, kiss her goodnight, turn on music, spray "monster spray"- i.e., Febreeze- and leave) does the dishes.
Then the grown ups work, blog, read, watch TV, play video games... whatever.
I try to go to bed at 10:30, but usually don't get to bed until 11, as you'll confirm by checking the timestamp on this post. I have no idea when Mr. Snarky comes to bed most nights, because I am usually asleep.
Weekends
We continue to have Friday Night Beers. That is sacrosanct.
Gymnastics is now at 9, which sucks for me sleeping in (i.e., I don't get to) but is great for leaving us more family time in the day. I usually take the kids to gymnastics and Mr. Snarky stays home and does laundry.
Every other week, we also have a 30 minute Chinese lesson for both kids. That is sometimes on Saturdays after lunch and sometimes on Sunday mornings.
I sleep in (sometimes until 8! or 8:30!) most Sundays. If our schedule permits, Mr. Snarky goes for a run once I get up, while I sit around and drink tea and write. The kids play and interrupt me roughly every 15 minutes.
I do the grocery shopping Sunday afternoons. Usually.
We plan out our weekend during Friday Night Beers, and try to always include at least one "family fun" thing, which ranges from a trip to the park to a trip to Legoland to riding a ridiculous bike around Coronado.
We do a lot of chores on weekends. Or at least Mr. Snarky does, because he refuses to pay someone else to do our garden work. I haven't been able to determine if this is because he actually enjoys the gardening or if it is another one of his weird "I can do it so I shouldn't pay someone else to do it" things.
Mr. Snarky cooks dinner on the weekends. We usually have my sister around for dinner one night (or sometimes go to her place for dinner instead). We sometimes have other people over, too.
And that's it. The sick kid routine is unchanged. Petunia gets sick less often now, although she did just get sent home with a fever today. She is also more willing to let the grown up who stays home do a little work- particularly if that grown up is Mr. Snarky. She likes me to "snuggle" her on the sofa (which again means "let her put her feet on me") and I like to sit and keep her company, so I don't argue too much.
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So, what do I think of the new routine? I'm not sure. I love walking Pumpkin to and from school, but I miss picking Petunia up and watching her play soccer. I don't care for the longer commute at all. I know that it is not long by many people's standards, but... we sacrificed a bit on both space and neighborhood to buy a house in a location where our commute wouldn't be too long. Now I have the smaller house and the more boring neighborhood, and I still have a long commute. I'd be lying if I said this didn't annoy me. I also hate the ever-present risk of a much longer commute. I always allow 45 minutes for the commute, and I think that I'll need to allow at least 1 hour 15 minutes on rainy days.
I'm not sure what I'll do. I like my job, and I would not be able to find another similar job right now. So I am trying to decide how much, exactly, I hate the commute. It feels like I drive for such a long time, and it feels like wasted time. I've tried audiobooks, but I don't like them. There is not a lot of traffic, but there is some traffic, and I kept missing important bits when I had to focus more intently on the road. Also, I like to highlight while I read, and you can't highlight an audiobook. I might try podcasts next, but right now, I'm just listening to music I like and trying to enjoy the drive.
I dislike Mondays the most, because I leave work at 4:15, and don't get home to stay at 5:30, and must then start dinner almost right away. We're considering having me stay and watch swim lessons (which would be fun!) one or two times per month, and then going out to eat afterwards. This scrunches our bath/bedtime routine, so it is not without cost. But it might help make Mondays less unpleasant.
So what do you all think? Am I just being a commuting wimp? Anyone with a long commute want to suggest ways to make it less sucky? Other suggestions for optimizing my routine? Want to share the best/worst parts of your routine? Just say hi? Leave me comments!
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