One of the most awesome things about being a white male is that I can write about minority issues or women’s issues with complete confidence, because I’m a white male and therefore automatically knowledgeable about such things. I’ve been told this is the very definition of entitlement, which is what I’ve been saying all along… I am entitled to write about the issues and experiences of other people in a knowing if slightly condescending way.
So… chick stuff.
In case you live under a rock, Lean In is the best-selling book by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is the kind of woman that other women line up to hate on.
It’s easy to see why.
If Sheryl underwent gender re-assignment surgery and became Shane Sandberg, he would be an alpha male. Ambitious, driven, professionally successful, great home life… men would be lining up to learn how he did it. Except he is a she, and when you say “she is ambitious and driven” it sounds like you’re describing Sharon Stone’s character in Basic Instinct.
Maybe not with the psychotic murderer thing, but you never know.
The point from Lean In as I understand it is that right when women should be reaching the prime of their career, they chose to step back. The reasons for this are varied but tend to center around expectations, both of themselves and what women feel others expect of them.
I have been in an interesting place these past few months because I’ve gone from being under-employed to un-employed to now insanely busy. Mrs. Nostrikethat has felt the impact as she has picked up all of the slack. Everything from 100% car pool duties to remembering to drag the trash cans out Thursday night. I have been able to lean-in precisely because I have a dedicated home team propping me up.
So how does it work in reverse?
Let me ask the question another way: if someone leans in, doesn’t someone else have to lean out?
I remember one incident from my recent past. I was with the client trying desperately to finish up a major project by the deadline. At the same time, I had made a commitment to Mrs. Nostrikethat to be home by 5:30 at the absolute latest so she could make it to her class. As the day dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that we weren’t going to get done in time to allow me to make it home. I was confronted with a choice: do I tell a new client while I am still in “trial mode” that “I’m sorry, I know we’re almost done, but I have to stop working right now and go home?” or do I bounce a check to the Bank of Wife and hope for the best?
I opted for the latter.
It wasn’t pretty.
I was late, she was late, everyone was grumpy. But the key point in this story is that I had the luxury to make that choice precisely because my partner leaned out and was already home with the kids. If I was a single parent I wouldn’t have that choice– daycares aren’t very forgiving when it comes to leaving your kids there all night. By necessity, I would have to lean out and “mommytrack” myself- take a less demanding, less visible job that had stable hours and less variability to the work.
Now let’s say that at some point in the future Mrs. Nostrikethat decides to relaunch her career. There is still roughly the same amount of work to be done. Milk must be bought, kids must be picked up from school when they’re sick, laundry must be laundered. She can’t lean out when she’s just starting to lean in again, so I have to be the one to pick up the to-do list for the family unit. No amount of time management skills will help in dealing with the variability that is children.
Until we as a culture collectively decide that long hours are not the currency of professional success nothing is really going to change for women, because the men in their lives won’t have the option to pick up the slack.
The post-Christmas lull has always felt like a comedown from a really good coffee buzz. It’s inevitable that the actual months of build-up take their psychic toll: all that’s left is the leaky air-mattress of your soul slowly collapsing under your own weight. Or something.
This year to stave off the inevitable post-holiday grumps, the Nostrikethat family cashed in the last of Daddy’s Marriott points from his travelling days and a Groupon and went up to New York City the day after Christmas. Overall it was a fun and memorable experience for all of us and I wanted to share a little bit of gleaned wisdom in case any of you decide to plan any big trips with your family.
1) One bag travel is still the best
I have written before about the virtues of traveling with just a single bag per person. Even with kids and going someplace by car it still makes sense. It’s surprisingly easy for kids to stuff everything they need into a backpack– it’s usually the adults who have the harder time prioritizing, but it pays dividends in unexpected ways.
We accidentally had to unload our car in the parking garage across the street from the hotel. Fortunately we made it in a single trip, which is a good thing because I think the valet ended up parking our car in the 3rd circle of Hell, which I’m told is called “Queens.”
Has saved my bacon sooo many times. Via Pintrest user Jamie Grafton
2) Plan for sit down meals
Our first thought when we planned our vacation was that we would take advantage of some of New York City’s famous dollar-a-slice pizza and save mucho bucks on our food. In reality, what happened was that we ended up walking so much that we all needed a place to just park it while we ate and collected ourselves.
I don’t think it matters how fit you and your family is or is not– unless you come from a nomadic tribe of sub-Saharan hunter-gathers you are probably not prepared for the level of walking you’re going to do.
Speaking of food…
3) There is no shame in visiting a chain restaurant
Well, maybe a little bit of shame.
That shame is vastly outweighed by the comfort factor your kids get from being able to order their favorite food in a familiar surrounding. When you consider how hidebound the average adult is, and then factor in that children have nearly zero control over their own destiny, you can begin to get a sense of how important it is for a child to have a little bit of home in a strange place.
If that “home” happens to be a grilled cheese sandwich from Panera, so much the better.
Yes, you want your kids to be adventurous. Me too. Now is not the time. Perhaps one day, they’ll go off to college/trade school/eco-commune and come back as normal human beings. Go out for Thai and celebrate.
I think there are a few souls in this world who are born vagabonds, and who knows perhaps you might have the child version of one. In that case I say enjoy your backpacking in Bangkok with your toddler in tow! The rest of us will muddle along and make do as best we can, consoling ourselves with the occasional comfort food stop.
I did not know you could get a kid’s grilled cheese sandwich as a desktop wallpaper. Thanks Internet! Via Panerabread.com
4) Aim to do 1.5 things per day
Even though kids seem to have nearly inexhaustible supplies of energy, their actual stamina tends to be pretty low and when they run out of gas they don’t sputter out, they just switch to “obnoxious whining powersave mode.”
We got to NYC late Friday, visited FAO Schwartz and then crashed early in the hotel room. Saturday morning we caught the Rockettes and then wandered Times Square, and then Sunday we visited the Natural History Museum.
On both Friday and Saturday nights the kids were happy to return to the hotel room and just sprawl about for the rest of the night.
This is something I think we did pretty well.
5) Vigorously and selfishly recharge yourself
It’s all too easy to focus all of your energy on your kids and making sure they’re completely comfortable and putting your own needs dead last. You might be tempted to do this, but try to remember you too are in unfamiliar circumstances and in charge of this crazy train.
We were lucky in that our hotel was a Residence Inn with a master bedroom that rivaled the one we had at home in both spaciousness and having-a-door-that-locks-ness. While the kids had taken over the living room with their TV and electronics Mrs. Nostrikethat and I were able to retreat to the master bedroom and stare at the ceiling and drool for a while. If your digs aren’t quite as posh, you can always bar and barricade the door and take a nice long shower. Even a hot wash cloth on the face and some earbuds can create a little bit of mental privacy to soothe your jagged nerves.
This totally makes the vomit on the car seat worthwhile. Image via Spaweekblog.com
6) Plan for someone always being cranky
At any given point in time, the probability (P) of some child (N) being in a snit can be described by this function:
P=N
Someone is always going to be snippy at some point.
With four kids, I am having a good day if I can use three of them to shame the fourth one.
What’s wrong with him?
Don’t talk to your brother, he’s grumpy.
I’M NOT GRUMPY!
Why’s he grumpy? We’re on vacation!
My favorite dinosaur is a T-Rex.
I’M NOT GRUMPY!
I don’t know I think your other brother made fun of his hair.
HE WAS MEAN.
I did not. Although it does look ridiculous.
HEY!
What’s your favorite kind of dinosaur?
SHUT UP!
Daddy! He said —
I heard what he said I’m right here. Don’t tell your brother to shut up. And it’s Triceratops. Oh look, it’s the M&M Store! I wonder what they sell.
I’m sure the Pilgrims on the Mayflower had to deal with the same thing, just with more frocks.
7) Be open to a night in
This seems counter-intuitive. After all, you spent a ton of money and energy to get to wherever you’re going, how can you in good conscience contemplate wasting even a single minute in a hotel room?
We have about a 50/50 split of introverts and extroverts in our family. After spending all day Saturday on the streets on New York two days after Christmas the introverts had crashed hard. We spent Saturday night in the hotel room eating a carry-out pizza (with a little bottle of wine for the grown-ups) and mini ice cream pints from the drug store around the corner.
It was perfect.
Everyone got some much needed rest and relaxation and we were all a little more prepared to deal with the city again Sunday morning.
It’s a vacation, don’t hurt yourself. Via Pintrest user larosenia.
8) Don’t regret what you didn’t get to
There were a ton of things we just didn’t get to do this time. Visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. See the view from the top of the Empire State Building. Hang out with the Naked Cowboy. All of which we left open for the possibility of a return trip. We might go back in the summer, or next summer, or really any time that’s not after Christmas. Or we might not go back at all and try someplace new instead. Perhaps one day my kids will decide to go to college in The Big City, influenced by the trip they took so many years ago. You just don’t know, and that’s okay.
9) Respect your vacation traditions
I think there are fundamentally two different kinds of vacationers in the world: sensation seekers and sensation retreaters. There are the people in the Corona beer commercials who just sit in the white sand staring at the glassy green ocean and drinking cheap weak beer from a bottle, doing absolutely nothing.
These are your classic retreaters.
Then there are the people who go insane just thinking about that kind of vacation.
These are the folks that keep parasailing operators and jetski rentals in business.
Our family has a tradition of taking beach vacations and we are definitely retreaters. Like shorebirds we scurry down to the sand in the morning, retreat back to the cottage for lunch, take naps, and then scurry back down in the afternoon. Our trip to Manhattan was surprisingly low-key for being in the “city that never sleeps”, but it was in line with what we normally do on vacations: go easy.
It worked for us.
That’ll do, beer. That’ll do. Image via wallgiv.com.
10) Be thankful
We definitely had tense moments: 6 people being on top of each other for an extended duration tends to do that. We also mostly kept a sense of humor and found lots of incidental fun. Through it all I couldn’t help but remember that just a few months ago I was unemployed.
If you’re travelling you’re luckier than 99% of the world. I am so fortunate to live where I do and have what I have, and it’s easy to forget that when you’re cleaning barf from the car seat in a rest stop. My kids are funny awesome little humans and that I get to spend time with them exploring the world.
I hope you get a chance to do the same.
Got any travel tips for kids or a story to share? Leave a comment below!
Here in the Nostrikethat household Christmas Traditions are serious business.
While I have blocked out most of my childhood, my memories of Christmas day focus on getting clothes with the gift receipt attached (you know, in case you want to take it back) and going over to one of my aunt’s houses so all of my dad’s sisters could take turns making my mom cry.
When I met the Eventually-To-Be Mrs. Nostrikethat, however, I learned why that “T” was capitalized.
When I went with her and her family on vacation for the first time to the beach we visited one of those year-round Christmas Stores.
In July.
Without even a trace of irony, even. There might be new and interesting Christmas decorations to admire, I was told.
In July.
Long story short, my “Low Effort” Christmas tradition ran headlong into “It’s the Great Christmas Buildup, Charlie Brown!” and lost miserably. Let’s face it resistance requires effort, which I am not about.
In the many years since, we have started building our own family traditions. Christmas lights eventually became my thing. Could be the Baltimorean in me (the city that gave us John Water’s Hairspray) but I like’em big, bold, and blinking. This year as I was standing on a ladder in the dark in 20 degree weather I found myself contemplating the silly traditions of our family.
1. The Holiday Food Trough
This time of year Mrs. Nostrikethat starts making Nuts-N-Bolts from the Hallowed Family Recipe (which I think came from the Chex box in 1967) and it tends to just sit on the stove until it is all gone which normally takes about a three minutes and thirty seconds.
I have tried to “preserve it” and put it in some sort of plastic container but then the heathens just eat the container. Hannibal in particular eats like a great white shark with a tapeworm and we usually find him diving in the trough, Scrooge McDuck-style.
2. Death March of Holiday Cheer
A few years ago we thought it would be a great idea to go into Washington D.C. to see the holiday sights.
Cue hearty laughter
Oh, to be slightly younger and idealistic again!
This was remains a bad idea for three crucial reasons:
It involves Being Around Other People, which is–even under the best circumstances–sketchy as heck
D.C. in the winter tends towards cold and windy. Faceman, if not closely supervised, dresses with a disregard for the weather that borders on “Call CPS that boy is an orphan”
Any excursion into the city involves a certain amount of walking, and my children’s legs have all atrophied from being driven in an assortment of minivans to swim practice. Were we actually in Atlantis we would have this thing down, but on dry land it’s a lot like putting a family of penguins on a treadmill: a whole lot of squawking and very little walking.
I am blessed with an almost terminally short memory, though, and so every year I manage to convince everyone to give it another go because This Time It Will Be Festive.
“No you can’t take my picture. No I won’t turn around. This is lame. I’m cold.” Festive, yes?
Speaking of festive…
3. Multi-Colored Dog Poo Admiring
I have previously written of New Dog and how much of a suck-up he was. As it turns out, he also has an intestinal track of cast iron and the grazing habits of a goat in weinerdog form.
This time of year our backyard starts to take on vibrant hues that are not so much natural as they are “Made in China”. How or why he has not yet ruptured a spleen I cannot say, but I am deeply thankful to him for reminding me of my place in the universe on a daily basis as I play “What the helldid he eat?”
I cannot help it that Legos are so crunchy.
4. Group Sloth Mode
For as much as I try to be no effort, our weekends start to fill up once we get past Halloween. Between birthdays, swim meets, and trying to stay out of the house enough so we don’t all get on each other’s nerves, we keep moving.
By the time December rolls around we’ve all kind of had enough and Group Sloth Mode kicks in. The other day I came home from work to find the other 5 members of the family plus dog on the couch watching TV. It only took a little bit of adjusting to make it 6 plus dog.
It looked like this, only our couch is gray and not red and a couch not a bucket.
5. The “We’re-Not-Buying-Presents-For-Each-Other” Game
Every year since we’ve had kids, the Missus and I have promised each other that we’re not going to buy each other presents. Every year, I get a little excited because I think finally I can be done with the ruse of Christmas present buying.
Cue hearty laughter
I am not a gifty person. The stuff I want is 1) expensive and 2) not in the budget, so I either do without or put it in the budget. It’s money that I’ve earned for the family, so it’s only logical that I just direct it where I want it to go.
Mrs. Nostrikethat, on the other hand, is genuinely delighted by both giving and receiving. This is because, as I’ve been told, her love language is gifts, which means under no circumstances are you allowed to take the “no presents” promise at face value. I mean seriously, what the heck were you thinking?
It’s taken me several years and a couple of near-divorces but I might have the rules to this game finally figured out. The objective is to pretend that you’re not going to buy the other person a present long enough to lull them into a false sense of security, then at the last minute find a small but thoughtful gift that shows just how completely and totally you understand the other person. Appropriate choices are:
A small splurge item mentioned in passing between 5 and 7 months ago
Chocolate, but not the kind you buy at the airport gift shop because that’s obviously a “oops forgot to get a present” present
Something thoughtful, if you think like a woman
Under NO circumstances should you get:
A Starbucks gift card
Fancy soap
A bathrobe
As long as the other person isn’t me, you can then expect to receive an equally thoughtful Christmas present in return, thereby validating that you were correct in not listening to your mother and you didn’t marry a clueless self-absorbed narcissist after all.
What unique holiday traditions do you have? Leave a comment and tell me about them!
No, Strike That 