Years ago, when I was young, single and childfree, I was a big fan of the Friday Happy Hour.  Oh, how I loved the Happy Hour!  On Friday evenings, almost without fail, after 5 pm my friends and I would head out to one of The Places To Be in town, relax with our favourite beverages, have a great dinner, and often dance the nights away.  It wasn’t the alcohol that I found so intoxicating, either — at the time, I actually didn’t drink.  For me, the Friday Happy Hour was about forgetting the week’s stresses, spending time with other like-minded professionals, and enjoying each other’s company in celebration of the week’s end.

Fast-forward several years, and now I’m now married, with a young child.  Friday Happy Hours are now, for the most part, a distant memory: they’ve been replaced by Friday Movie Night, consisting of piling on the couch with my husband and daughter, a large bowl of popcorn and the latest fare from Pixar .  And while I wouldn’t trade my current life for anything in the world, I have to admit:  sometimes?  I miss the camaraderie and fun of Friday Happy Hour.  But spontaneous meetings with friends after work is often impossible, since Friday night babysitters are often hard to come by — often, they’re busy with their own Friday Happy Hours.

Enter the Weekend Brunch:  this past weekend, I made plans with several girlfriends, all moms with corporate jobs, to catch up over brunch at one of the really great restaurants near downtown Houston.  And I have to admit, it was damned near perfect:  here I was, forgetting the week’s stresses, spending time with other like-minded women, and enjoying the company of my friends.  Since it was late morning, my husband readily watched our daughter for the couple of hours that I was gone (and I returned the favour later that afternoon as he went trailbiking with his friends).  And even though the sun was blazing outside (unlike the cool moons of Friday Happy Hours gone by), there was still the carefree air of freedom:  freedom from daily stress, freedom from corporate responsibilities.

Now, obviously I won’t be doing the Weekend Brunch with the sort of frequency that I used to meet my friends on Friday evenings fifteen years go.  But the truth is that I kind of felt like Christopher Columbus discovering the New World:  here I was, on the shores of a brand new way to connect with other like-minded friends to decompress, should the need ever arise.  And even if I only meet my friends for Weekend Brunch once each quarter, I think the opportunity to continue to cultivate my friendships and get away from it all — even if it’s only for a couple of hours — will be priceless.

How about you?  What’s your secret to caring for and tending your relationships with your friends, independent of playdates?

Today I am heading out of the office to an all day team building event.  The VP of our organization invited the entire project team to her home for a day of kayaking on the Russian River.  We’ve all been working incredibly hard on this project. And I am thrilled that my VP is recognizing us with a day to hang out, bond, and spend sometime outside during work hours.  Pretty cool, huh?

We’ve all spent countless hours in front of our laptops.  We’ve all lost time with our families, nights, and weekends to ensure that we were successful.  It’s wonderful to get appreciated for the hard work.  It’s great that we get to go outdoors and do something healthy.  I’ve never had a VP who opens her home up, offers a bed for everyone to sleep in, homemade meals, and a relaxing time on a river.  It almost sounds too good to be true. 

I’m trying hard not to sabotage the day by feeling more pangs of guilt for missing another day with my son.  I’ve lost so much time with him over the last month due to this demanding project.  I’ve tried not to choke on the guilt.  So it’s a little hard to be totally excited about getting to spend another day with my team.  It only means another day without my son.  

I’m sure that when I’ll get there I’ll have a great time.  It’s moments like these that are the best for networking.  I’ll get lots of 1:1 time with influential people in my organization all wrapped up into a fun, informal day.   It would be downright foolish of me to pass up the opportunity. 

I know that participating in today’s events that I am doing what’s best for my career today.  But it’s hard not to question if what I am doing is right for my family…   Mommy guilt is like toxic waste.  It’s going to do its best to try to ruin my day.  And I’m going to do my best to ignore it.   Nothing is going to stand in the way of my good time.

Except for my terrible kayak skills.  But I only have myself to blame on that one.

I have a confession.

I’m not one of those supermoms who kicks ass in corporate pumps all day, just to come home and construct a perfect princess castle for my adoring four-year-old with nothing but glitter and love in the evening. I’m not that friend who brings home the bacon, fries it up in a pan, and neverevereverever lets you forget you’re a man. Seriously, I’m not.  The truth is, I totally cheat.

Oh, I don’t mean to insinuate that I’m doing anything dishonest.  I’m just suggesting that for me, “doing it all” means getting help.  In my case, the cheating comes in the form of a housekeeper.  Once a week, I have someone who comes to clean my modest home, and I admit to a thrill of coming home to almond-scented floors and sparkling sinks.  I know that tradition and society says that I should be the person who cleans my own house (and for most of the week, I do keep the house in order and tidy), but after working 9-hour-days, and coming home to take care of my daughter and husband in the evenings, the thought of spending my weekends cleaning the house sort of galls me.  So … I cheat.

What about you — do you cheat?  How?  Do you get pre-made meals?  Frozen dinners?  A laundry service?

Come on, you can share.  I won’t tell.

When I was a child, I was a major morning person.  I was almost always up before my parents.  It helped that I was incredibly independent too.  Before my mother even opened her eyes, I would have been up for a couple of hours - teeth brushed, hair combed, tummy full with Cheerios, and maybe even a little extra time watching Romper Room. 

In high school, I started to lose my early bird ways.  Having a part-time job that didn’t finish until after 10pm and a boyfriend who I just always had to call before I fell asleep translated into rushed mornings to get to school on time.  Don’t tell my mother, but my senior year in high school I was tardy to my first period class over twenty times in a single semester.

By college I had lost any notion of being an early bird.  Late night parties, hanging with friends, midnight movies, and all night raves made sleeping in until after 11am a standard occurence (ok and there was some studying in there too).  Whenever my dad would call around 9am on a Saturday morning, I tried my best to hide the fact that I only went to bed a mere three hours before.   

But it wasn’t until I became a mother that I became a bona fide night owl. 

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Work has been exceedingly stressful for me lately: my boss recently quit his job, leaving the law department at the company where I work woefully understaffed.  It is therefore with no small amount of excitement that I begin a quick holiday today.  My family and I are flying out to San Francisco tomorrow, to connect with my sister and her family, as well as reunite with many, many friends.  I can’t wait.

Thing is?  While my days will be chock-full on my holiday, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how connected I plan on being while on my time off.

On one hand, I’m leaving my coworker (the only other attorney at my company), alone for the next three days — which necessarily means that when a lawyer is needed and employees can’t find me, they’ll hound her for attention.  And since we’re short-staffed, it seems unfair to leave her twisting in the wind.

On the other hand, dammit, I’m entitled to this holiday.  It’s part of my compensation, for heaven’s sake!  How fair is it to commit to spend time with my family and friends, all the while running to log on and see what I’m missing back at the office?  And besides, why should I work on my vacation, when the entire point of a vacation is to rest, relax, and return to work restored?

Ultimately, I’ve decided to leave my laptop behind, but keep my blackberry close — it seems like a fair compromise.  Sort of.  Admittedly, I’m still a bit bitter.

How about you?  How connected do you stay when you go on holiday?

Whenever I tell my coworkers that I cook dinner everyday, I am often met with shock and awe.  It’s as if I get to be “Mother of the Year” by being a full-time working mom that can cook a meal.  And while I don’t mind getting total respect for being SuperMom, it’s an overstatement.  I do cook a meal nearly every night (I throw in a couple of left over nights to ensure that we are not wasteful).  For me it is cheaper AND faster to cook at home than eat out.  

It’s not like I am cooking 5-course meals every night.  Dinner is not fancy or gourmet.  I cook simple, wholesome foods.  My only requirement to a dinner recipe is that it is balanced and takes less than 20 minutes to prep, cook, and get on the table.  After all, the whole family is hungry when we walk through the door at the end of the day.  None of us had much patience or enough blood sugar left to wait for a meal.  I do save my longer-to-prepare meals for the weekend or weekdays when I work from home.  Instead of cooking veggies or having a salad, I keep cut-up veggies in containers in the fridge and throw a few varieties on a plate.  Served with home-made Ranch dip and we all eat a ton more veggies than we would if I cooked ‘em. 

My 20-minute meals have become my comfort go-to meals.  Periodically, I’ll share one of my favorite recipes.  Be sure to share yours in the comments.  I’m always looking for new ideas. 

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In preparation for writing this post, I decided to google “tips for balancing family work” — a pretty precise search string if I do say so, myself. Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the results: while “let go of guilt” is certainly a goal to which one should aspire, I would hardly call that a “tip.” I was looking for concrete examples of how to make a frenetic work schedule move seamlessly with a chaotic home life like a tango on the Recoleta, but instead, I got bupkis.

So, instead, I thought we could just share with each other the best home/work balance tips that we employ to make our lives run more smoothly. I figure if we do this right, we can actually come up page of practical tips that anyone who is just starting out with managing their career with kids can come to for advice. We’ll consider it our public service to working moms everywhere.

Ready? I’ll go first:

I’m pretty much a Nazi when it comes to schedules — my daughter has a strict bedtime of 7 p.m., from which we rarely stray. Our evenings usually go like this:

5 p.m. I hang out with my daughter, while my husband makes dinner.

6 p.m. We sit together an eat as a family. In general, we eat the same meal (more or less — I don’t eat meat, but my husband and daughter do), but even if, for some reason, one of us isn’t hungry, we all sit together and keep each other company.

6:30 p.m. Bathtime. My daughter goes off to get ready for her bath, my husband fills the tub and keeps her company. While he’s doing that, I clear the dishes and clean the kitchen.

6:45 p.m. Bathtime’s over. I take over from my husband, dress my daughter, get her into bed, and read a bedtime story.

7:00 p.m. Lights out. My husband comes in to give our daughter a kiss, and the evening is free for us to do whatever errands need doing — get things ready for the morning, run to the grocery store if necessary (easier to do without the four-year-old) or just chill.

For me, life just works better with a schedule (and admittedly, a husband who’s willing to shoulder the parenting responsibility 50/50) — and because Alex knows what to expect, we rarely have any issues with her not wanting to go to bed, or not taking her bath, or whatever. This is the schedule we’ve stuck to since she was born, so there’s no reason for her to change it.

How about you? What tips or tricks do you follow to make your work/family life easier?

On Sunday night between dinner and bathtime, my boss called with a change in plans.  I was going to have to attend a week-long offsite in San Francisco starting at 9am on Monday.  As in the next day.  While the offsite wasn’t planned last minute, the requirement for my presence was last minute.  I needed to make it to the city (about a 2-hour drive from my home in rush hour).  I quickly did a mental calculation to determine what time I would have to get up taking into account getting ready for a business meeting, sitting in traffic, finding the office building, and then finding the elusive city parking.  It meant a wake-up call around 5:30am. 

My boss offered a consolation prize for the last minute notice.  She booked a room at a hotel around the corner from the office.  I wouldn’t have to commute each day.  It was a nice gesture.  But I would still have to pack (which of course meant doing laundry), find alternate arrangements for my son’s swim lesson on Thursday afternoon, coordinate drop-off and pick-ups for daycare with my spouse and MIL (my regular back-up), and assess the contents of our fridge to see if my family could survive a week with no home-cooked meals by mom. 

Add to that my son decided to use my 15 minute call with my boss as an opportunity for mischief.  He emptied the entire tube of toothpaste all over the toilet and bathroom floor.  Needless to say I was overwhelmed and frazzled about a week that hadn’t even started yet. 

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It’s the Fourth of July today.  Independence Day.  The day is one of my favorite holidays.  It’s in the summer, is notorious with a big barbeque, practically every city in America has a parade, and - my personal favorite - a big fireworks show.  Really, what’s not to love about fireworks?

What I love most about the holiday is the laid-back - have another beer - let the kids run around -throw another hot dog on the grill - attitude of the holiday.  It’s not like Thanksgiving where you can be slaving away in the kitchen for the entire day.   I can do Independence Day.  Hot dogs, hamburgers, store bought macaroni salad, fresh watermelon.  That’s my idea of a good time.   And while many counties in California has banned fireworks this year due to the 1000 wildfires in our state, we’ll still have hours of fun with the Slip N’ Slide and Super Soaker.

So here is to a guilt-free Independence Day.  Let the kids have another popsicle, sit down in your lawn chair, enjoy the parade, and relish in the Fourth of the July. 

Just take a TUMS after that second hot dog.  Believe me, you’ll be thanking me later.

I became a mother when I was 36 years old — rather late, by most standards. Nonetheless, I’ve always felt like I was exactly the right age to become a parent: I’d have been a disastrous mom in my 20s , I tell myself. I had no patience. I could barely take care of myself. My 20s were a good time to focus on my career — definitely not a baby .

While I have no regrets about parental timing, as I approach my 41st birthday, I find myself ruefully looking at how I’ve handled the financial aspects of my life. My husband and I are lucky — we are relatively debt-free — but other than our 401Ks, we haven’t been particularly smart with our money (and the stock market hasn’t been doing our 401Ks any favours these days, either). I’m realizing that in a decade and a half, our daughter will be heading to college. In about two decades we’re going to want to retire.

And then I look at our bank account and I’m PETRIFIED.

I find myself now looking at college funds. And retirement funds. And investment portfolios. And while my mind boggles, a tiny part of me wishes that I had twenty extra years to worry about all of this. Another part of me wishes that I’d spent more of my twenties saving, instead of traveling.

Eventually I shake the fog from my head and realize that if I focus on the present, my life couldn’t be happier — and that has everything to do with how I spent my past. Still, as I look at our future, I realize that perhaps those dreams of moving to a mountain retreat and spending my days writing poems are probably unrealistic for the time being — that perhaps my time to focus on my career hasn’t passed quite yet. Perhaps it’s time to look at how to prepare for our financial future — not just for my husband and me, but for our daughter’s sake.

How about you — how has parenthood affected how you look at your professional future?