Trip Story: Houston and Galveston

Houston was our second stop on our Big Texas Trip. We found San Antonio and Austin to be easier cities to be a tourist in, but we still had a good time in Houston.

We started our touristing at the Natural History museum. They had a butterfly exhibit that we thought our girls would like- they are always excited to see a butterfly in our backyard. They had a really nice artificial environment built for the butterflies, with lots of pretty butterflies flying around.

Something about the butterfly environment freaked them out, though, so we zoomed through it and spent the majority of our time looking at the museum displays before and after it, which were about all types of insects.

Our second stop of the day was a bigger hit. We walked over to the nearby Herman Park, where we rented paddleboats and pedaled around a nice artificial lake. The kids really liked this, but the grown ups were both a little freaked out by the fact that there were no seatbelts for the kids. We were all required to wear life jackets, but apparently we were just supposed to hope neither kid decided to go for a swim. Or got freaked out by the big heads on sticks that decorate the lake.

I thought these were way freakier than the butterfly exhibit. My kids disagreed.

 OK, they were actually sculptures representing the signs of the Chinese zodiac, but I still think they looked a bit freaky. The kids liked them, though, and stayed in their seats, so all was well. We took several circuits around the lake, and then turned in our boat and grabbed tickets for the kiddie train ride through the park.

After the morning of fun, we grabbed some Tex-Mex for lunch at Lupe Tortilla- which, despite the promises made in our guidebook, was just a regular old Tex-Mex place with no playground. But the food was fine, and the margaritas were good, so I won't complain.

On the recommendation from a friend, we had our afternoon snack at The Chocolate Bar. It was indeed good- and watching Petunia tuck into the giant piece of red velvet cake she'd picked out was pretty cute. But we should have planned a light dinner for the evening, instead of heading to a burger joint! No one really enjoyed their dinner all that much, unfortunately- particularly Petunia, who bit her cheek and was miserable anytime she tried to eat for the next several days.

In between snack and dinner, we played at a park and visited the Beer Can House- which is exactly what it sounds like, a house completely decorated with beer cans.

Apparently, some guy just started decorating his house with his empties. It is quite a sight. We weren't able to go in, but I'm glad we took the detour to see it.

The next day, we drove out to see the Space Center, which was the reason Hubby insisted that we visit Houston on this trip. He definitely enjoyed the visit and the tour- and the kids seemed interested, too.The ginormous rocket (Apollo 18, which never went anywhere) was definitely impressive.

Big Rocket: Front View

Big Rocket: Rear View

 After the visit, Pumpkin announced that she was going to be an astronaut on weekends. (During the week, she is going to be a teacher.)

We visited the Kemah boardwalk for lunch. It is a nice boardwalk area, and I could see spending more time there, particularly in the late afternoon/early evening- i.e., when it wasn't so hot. As it was, we let the kids have one spin on the carousel (a two story one!) and then headed for the air conditioned car and drove on to Galveston. It was an interesting drive, with scenery very different to what we're used to around San Diego, including Texas City, which appears to be one giant refinery.

Since the kids were napping in the backseat when we arrived in Galveston, we took a little driving tour of the city. Hubby was really amused by the giant houses on stilts.

Once we decided that naptime could end, we parked near the Strand, and strolled around looking at the old buildings. We had ice cream for snack- I was hoping Petunia could eat that, despite her sore mouth. Petunia turned it down, but the rest of us enjoyed our first taste of the famous Blue Bell ice cream.

We also drove down to the beach and stuck our toes in the Gulf. Something freaked Petunia out, though (are you noticing a pattern?) and then she and Pumpkin both refused to touch the water again.

We had planned to stick around Galveston for dinner, but we just didn't feel like it, so we loaded the kids back into the car and headed back to Houston. This led to one of our most serendipitous discoveries of the trip: Woodrow's bar/restaurant. We got to eat pretty good Cajun food (and I got some yummy hush puppies.... mmmm... hush puppies....) and just relax without worrying to much about our kids, since (1) there was so many distractions for them that they mostly sat quietly, and (2) the hubbub was a dull roar, so no one would have heard them if they weren't quiet.

We had one more swim in our hotel pool before turning in for the night, ready to move on to Austin.

Surprisingly Profound Kid's Art: Get Well Ferdinand

One of my chores for this weekend is to finish organizing Pumpkin's room, now that we have her new furniture in it. I was working on that today, feeling pretty sorry for myself because it was lovely outside and I was inside cleaning a desk and it wasn't even my own desk (which is still a disaster), and then I came across an old Ferdinand greeting card that Pumpkin had found.

She had written a message to Ferdinand inside:

And then I realized I should stop feeling sorry for myself. Although perhaps I should teach Pumpkin how to spell "feels better." I might let her do her next round of Get Well Soon cards first.

Get Well Ferdinand
Artist: Pumpkin, age 5

Weekend Reading: The Random Good Things Edition

Today was a much more invigorating day at work- solving technical problems in the morning (in collaboration with my team), pushing through the pre-plans for this weekend's work... good stuff. So I'm feeling much more upbeat today. I don't know whether I should be happy or sad that work has such a strong effect on my mood.

Anyway, you didn't come by for more naval gazing. It is weekend reading time! I could not come up with any sort of coherent theme this week, so I've just got a bunch of unrelated good things:

First up, courtesy of @Aubergine_Kenobi, the science behind my dislike of most green veggies. (For the record, I'm fine with tomatoes.)

Next, GeekMom explains why it exists, and doesn't just merge with GeekDad into GeekParents.

Sticking with women in tech for awhile, this is an interesting interview with Margo Seltzer, a Comp Sci professor at Harvard.

I don't get political here very often, but some of the comments on Scalzi's call for comments from people still undecided about how they'll cast their vote for president are really interesting.

In honor of Andy Griffith: My Mom is a huge fan of the Andy Griffith show. This post from another woman whose Dad is a fan is interesting, and might make you think a little more highly of the show.

This post from Tragic Sandwich is just a great story. My wedding also had a project plan!

I found this really interesting post about the book Overdressed and how shopping has become entertainment via Bad Mom, Good Mom's reaction to it.

Happy reading!

Last minute addition, found thanks to my girls' sudden fascination with Riverdance- a Riverdance flash mob in Sydney:



Is there a chance for a dance in Sydney?

Suboptimal Spacing

I think I made a tactical error yesterday, when I decided to spend the majority of the day putting Ikea furniture together and shuffling things around in the kids' rooms rather than just goofing off. In my defense, the weather was decidedly unsummerlike, which quashed my idea of having an extended lunch outside with Hubby and I relaxing with beers while the kids ran around and played in the yard. Instead, they played inside while we sat in the dining room and tried not to notice the havoc they were creating in the living room- two rooms which in our house are about two steps apart.

Still, it wasn't a bad day. We had fun playing with the kids. But both kids seem to have arrived at a difficult and defiant phase at the exact same time, and by the end of the day my patience with small blonde girls yelling "NO!" at me was pretty much gone.

And yet, going back to work today was not the respite it sometimes is. I have a system outage to manage this weekend (we need to do some maintenance), and a production system roll out planned for Monday- the actual work is mostly being done by other people, but I am "quarterbacking" both events, i.e., making sure that everything that needs to be done gets done when it needs to be done, and I'm handling all communications with the rest of the company. And of course, there are roughly 4-5 other projects that are running and need varying amounts of my attention to keep them on schedule. None of this is unusual, but it isn't exactly restful, either. Neither is it particularly invigorating- my favorite stages of projects are the very beginning, when I'm figuring out how to make all the pieces fit together, and the very end, when I get the satisfaction of seeing something completed. In between, the work can sometimes feel satisfying, and sometimes feel like a slog. This week, it was the latter.


As I mentioned last week, it seems like work and home are ganging up on me these days. I am not sure whether it would be better to plow ahead and concentrate on getting things crossed off my various to do lists or to just put off as much as I can and spend some time relaxing with a book.  All I know for certain is that I don't have the energy to write the things I want to write- I have two or three half-finished posts in my drafts folder, which is unusual for me. I usually just write one post through to the end. I have a half-finished guest post for A Gai Shan Life sitting in my Google Docs (I'll get it done soon, Revanche! I promise!) And I have a longer writing project stuck at roughly 90% complete. Usually, these writing projects would invigorate me, but for some reason, right now, I'm struggling to finish anything. Except rambling self-pitying posts about how burned out I am, I guess!

I think I need to convince my husband to have a bonus Thursday Night Beers with me tonight, and just chill out.


So, in lieu of any actual interesting content, I give you two blonde girls, roughly one week before the advent of the yelling "NO!" phase:

The picture is from last week's trip to the fair. I have no idea what they are looking at- it was a pretty lame ride. The trucks were waaay better. It is hilarious how putting a steering wheel in front of a small child convinces her she is driving. The look of glee on Petunia's face while she "drove" her truck around the track was worth the price of admission- and then there was the cotton candy (for Pumpkin), ice cream (for me and Petunia), and "Australian Battered Potatoes" (a.k.a potato fritters, for Hubby). So even though last week's fair outing was part of the work-life pile up that is leaving me in need of some recuperation, I'm glad we went. That is part of the problem, really: all of the things that are exhausting me right now are good things, which I want in my life. I just need to get them to space themselves out a bit better!

Declaring My Neutrality

Back during an earlier round of this summer's seemingly endless "mommy wars," FeMOMhist had an excellent tweet, in which she declared her neutrality:

I loved it then, and I still love it now, during our latest round, in which we're debating whether or not women can "have it all," spurred on by the Atlantic piece written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, the title of which declared that we could not have it all even as the content argued that we should change our systems so that it would be easier to combine career and family, and even though by almost everyone's definition of career success, the author is a star.

I liked the article, but truly hated the title- and I was not alone in that reaction to the title. It has occurred to me, as I watch the back and forth and find myself agreeing with much of what people on both sides of this particular debate say that perhaps part of the problem is generational. As Slaughter herself discusses in her follow up piece in the Atlantic (which I found via this article, tweeted by @bluemilk), for her generation, "having it all" was a rallying cry. For my generation, it is more of a bludgeon, used to beat women who dare to try to have great careers and full family lives back into our kitchens. How unreasonable of us, to want "it all." How very selfish. When we talk about the societal changes that would make our lives a little easier, we're often told that our problems our own fault, brought on by trying to "have it all," which, of course, is impossible, so why should anything change?

And still, some of us are doing it. When I hear someone say that women can't "have it all" I think that perhaps the person saying that thinks that women like me don't exist. Or maybe he or she thinks that I am not succeeding in my career, or as a mother. Or maybe we're just defining "it all" differently. The phrase is useless at best and demeaning at worst. So when I read the Atlantic's headline, I groaned and thought "here we go again". The title felt like purposely inflammatory link bait, or at least extremely tone deaf.

Slaughter seems genuinely surprised by the almost visceral reaction so many of us had to that title. Her response is gracious and balanced, and I do think that she and I want the same things. I also think, however, that she isn't quite getting the full point of responses like Dana Shell Smith's excellent essay about how she manages to have a very demanding career and a full and happy family life. I liked Slaughter's original article, but I loved Shell Smith's response, due in no small part to the fact that as I read her words, I felt like I was reading a description of my life in a parallel universe, in which I work for the State Department and live in cool foreign cities. Shell Smith argues what I argue- that you can have both a great career and a great family, and be happy, albeit rather tired, doing it. She tells her story openly and honestly, describes the trade offs she's made and explains why she doesn't think they are undermining her career or her kids.

But if I take Slaughter at her word, she agrees with Shell Smith, too, and thinks they have arrived at the same result via a different path. And here, I think my generation should cut Slaughter and her generation a little more slack. The way Slaughter frames the issue is different from how we view it at least in part because she has fought different battles than we have, and has different scars. While the approach Shell Smith outlines seems obvious to me, I should acknowledge that this is because I do not have to deal with the overt sexism of yesteryear, when ambitious women were advised to hide their families and never turn down an opportunity. I, on the other hand, am completely open about the fact that I have kids, both at work and in job interviews. I figure I don't want a job at a company that has a problem with me having a family. I can do that because I am confident that I can find other, more family-favorable opportunities if necessary. Women of Slaughter's generation could not count on that, and the fact that I can is due in no small part to the fact that they were willing to do what it took to break down barriers. I should thank them for that, not snark at them for having a slightly different view of work-life balance than I do.

And I am also grateful to Slaughter for moving the discussion back to include the adults' needs, not just the children's. So much of what is written about women's choices tries to justify one choice or another based on what is best for the kids. That is, in my opinion, crazy. Children need love, shelter, food, water, stability, and adults who will help them learn and grow to find their place in this world. There are as many ways to meet those needs as there are families. Children can thrive in all sorts of family configurations. This debate is not about what is good for children, as much as some people want it to be. It is about whether or not society should support families in finding the arrangements that work best for all of their members. There is no universal right answer, only the right answer for each individual family.

I do not want to convince everyone to choose the arrangement my husband and I have chosen, only to convince them that it is a valid option. I also see many other valid options- from cutting work hours back, to finding more flexible jobs, to deciding to leave the workforce altogether for awhile. None of these choices should automatically derail a career. I hope that one day my daughters will be as puzzled by my strident assertion that I can have both a career and a family as I am by Slaughter's apparent belief that leaving one great job after two years to return to another great job is scaling back her career.  I take as a given Slaughter's argument about the need to view careers over the long term, and expect them to accommodate some ebb and flow as family needs change- and I can do that because Slaughter and her generation have shown that to be true. I want to build on that for my daughter's generation, so that they can take as a given the idea that every woman has a choice about how to arrange her life.

I do not need to belittle anyone else's choice to do that. In fact I want to celebrate the many different paths women take to find fulfillment in their lives. So I am officially declaring my neutrality in the mommy wars, and heading off to find some chocolate. Who wants to join me?