I'm so used to posting every day that I feel like I'm showing up to class, five days late, and now I'm typing this a mile a minute because I have to leave to go to the dentist in an hour. A dentist that had to "check its archives" to find and retrieve my name and dental history. That's how long it's been since I was dentisted. It's funny because as much as I see myself as this person who thrives on chaos and impulsiveness, I freak out when my routine is compromised and these last few weeks it has been. Changes are afoot at this Circle K and I'm still trying to figure out how to cram everything into the phone booth. (We watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure with the kids Friday night and it was most triumphant, air guitar solo.)
Anyway. Back to schedule! The oh-so riveting schedule! When I was pregnant with the Bo and Revi, everyone told me that the key to surviving the first few months (years?) of life with twins was to nail down a schedule. You NEED a schedule. So for the last six months it has gone something like this: sitter arrives at 7am, when I'm in bed feeding the girls their bottles. (When they wake in the middle of the night I bring them into bed with me/us. We have a futon in the office where Hal spends a lot of time these days.) So the sitter arrives, I hop out of bed and help kids get ready for school, slave over the stove cooking breakfast. (No, I don't), pack their lunches, and off to school we go...
I have a handful of hours (9-2) where I can work, catch up on emails, get errands done, exercise, update GGC, and even though five hours seems like a lot of time, it's not. Especially when there are giggling babies one room over. I know working from home is a total blessing and "best of both worlds" like scenario. However, there are some days when it feels "worst of both worlds" as in... I never feel like I can focus on work because I feel guilty not being with my babies. And then, when Tamara goes home and I'm with my kids, I feel guilty that I can't put the finishing touches on work. It's hard not to feel like I'm half-assing everything especially, today, when I'm feeling completely behind on life, barely dressed with a calendar full of appointments I shouldn't have made. And then there's Spring Break next week, which further complicates matters. Do I take a week off? Can I take a week off? Should I just not post something today? Is it weird to write a post about not posting? How about a post about not posting about posting?
How about we move on to baby news, because there are lots of babies in my house and every day they are growing inches and feet.
Bo and Revi have officially switched places and now it's Revi who wants to be carried everywhere in the pack while Bo is happy hanging out wherever, so long as there are faces nearby. It's an unbelievable turn of events that I find myself hard to believe but it's true and this is happening and Thursday, when the girls go in for their six-month appointments I will get to the bottom of this mystery, I will. In the meantime, this is what I see when I look down. (Hi, Revi.)
I went to San Francisco for a day this week and on my way to the airport last Tuesday I had a full on panic attack in the back of windowless cab with a broken air-conditioner. It was the first time I had to call a cab from a cab. It was also the first time I had to call a cab from a cab in tears because "I can't breathe in here and will surely die." When the second cab picked me up from the first cab, it ALSO didn't have roll-down windows (Bell cab, NEVER AGAIN) but I was already late so I hopped in and prayed. And of course, to match the day's theme, my airplane window seat was windowless. It was almost poetic so again, I sat there, read my book and repeated various mantras while chanting.
My stay in San Francisco was brief but really wonderful. Federated Media (my ad network) invited me to speak as a representative of "the independent web" so basically this was the lineup:
-Big Gun at Google.
-Big Gun at Facebook
-Big Gun at Twitter
-Big Gun at Microsoft
-Guy who started Instragram
-Guy who started LinkedIn
-God
-Me
I'm not even kidding. It was my first time (ever) putting together a power point presentation in a room full of people (geniuses) whose children were named Powerpoint and Presentation. I'm pretty sure I was thrown in the mix for comic relief because here is how the day looked:
-Fancy presentation presented by fancy genius.
-Fancy presentation presented by fancy genius
-Fancy presentation presented by fancy genius algorithm genius
-Fancy presentation with 3D graphic algorithm graph world domination PHD universe.
-Fancy presentation with laser display, fireworks, holograms and Matt Damon talking on a screen about saving the world, presented by fancy genius/friend of Matt Damon.
-Me showing pictures of my kids.
I was there to share my story and talk a little about branded content, how I make my living ... but because it was my first presentation and I only had ten minutes and I was slightly nervous to be on a stage speaking to geniuses who knew how to spell algorithm, I opened my mouth and forgot how to close it. As in, I went SO far over my ten minute max, I had to be escorted off the stage. Because the producers of the conference who were jumping up and down in front of me saying "TIME IS UP!" were invisible? So were the flashing red lights. And the timer that said "00:00!!!!!!!"
Oh well. At least I went up there and gave it my amateur all, right? At least I did that.
Back home, because everything happens at once, we shot our first episode of Child Style at my house, in the girls' nursery, an all day affair that went off without a hitch, which, with twins in the house and a zillion people in and out of the house, was a pleasant surprise, I think, for all of us. In the house. (The producers thought it would be cool to shoot episode one in my space before we explore our fourteen other locations. Ack! So pumped!) I'm in love with the production team and think the show is going to be something really special. Still no word on when the series will go live on HGTV.com. I'll keep you posted. This morning, when I dropped Fable at preschool she cried for the first time in months. She screamed like I was leaving her forever which has never happened before.
"It's because I keep leaving," I explained to her teacher. I keep going on little trips and my kids aren't used to it.
Neither am I, caught in this weird limbo every time I go out, leave, do something work related that requires travel and/or the odd late night...
Part of me is like, "OH GOD! I can't leave my children! I can't leave my babies when they're so small and who will carry them around in the Ergo and ohhhhh..." And the other part of me is doing The Roger Rabbit followed by The Jessica followed by an encore presentation of The Running Man. Because freedom is tasty and I want to eat it all!
... Until I get a stomach ache, of course. And then, BOO, FREEDOM! BOOOOO!
But a crying child screaming, "Mommy, don't leave me!" is a horrible thing. And knowing that her sudden separation anxiety was caused by me and my new quest for career excellence made me feel terrible and sad and angry at myself. Because ultimately I want to be a stay at home mother AND a working one. I want to present shitty Power Point presentations and attend dinners and meetings and travel but I also want to put my children to bed every night, take them to school every morning, be here.
Fifteen minutes after I reluctantly left Fable's school, I got a text from Fable's teacher telling me she cried for a minute and then was fine.
Same here. All of that. Exactly.