Overheard in New York Seen in Los Angeles

As I was writing recently that two hours of my day are lost to my commute, I started wondering if there is anything I can do while I drive to and from the office. I usually listen to NPR and that gives me my current event awareness that I would otherwise completely lack, but sometimes that gets boring after 45 minutes or so. I've thought about books on tape but haven't tried that yet. I also usually call my mom once a day. But what else is there? Today I spied on looked around at other drivers sharing the road with me, and my mind was instantly filled with possibilities. I saw drivers:

* Texting/emailing on their phones or blackberries
* Applying make-up
* Eating breakfast and drinking coffee
* Reading the newspaper (spread out over the steering wheel)
* Marking up a huge stack of paper with a pen
* Turning around to face their kids in the backseat to have a conversation
* Dancing
* Flossing their teeth
* Picking their nose

This was all this morning. I myself was admiring the clear, pretty air and the gorgeous view of the morning sun shining down on the Hollywood hills. Mind you, all these drivers were on the freeway, but when you are only going between 10 and 30 MPH the whole time, it apparently becomes easy to multi-task. I wonder why people think LA drivers are so terrible?

The Juggle

It begins. I knew that I should enjoy the first few days of my job where I didn't have a blackberry or work to do because it meant that I could go home ridiculously early and enjoy the entire night with PJO and Timmy. I did enjoy them, but I didn't realize how quickly I would be missing that freedom.

Around 4:30pm on Monday, I realized that I had a lot of work that needed to be done by the end of the night. Around the same time, PJO was pulled in to put out some sort of fire in his office too. (That rarely happens; he is home by 6:30 or 7 almost every day, even with his hour long commute). I could have asked the babysitter to stay late, but I decided that should wait for the days where there really is no alternative. So I left the office around 6:30 and magically navigated my way through LA rush hour traffic in 30 minutes, so I was home by 7 to let the babysitter go home. She had fed and bathed Timmy, so I spent 20 minutes or so reading and cuddling with him. As soon as I put him to bed, I started working and managed to finish everything by 12:30.

Last night I was able to leave the office pretty early, so I treated myself to a visit with one of my best friends and ended up staying at her place for wine and dinner. I knew I should have gone to bed earlier, but I was having fun... Until I realized upon coming home that Timmy was sleeping in our bed. That usually means he's been crying in his room for a while. He cried for a bit when I climbed in to bed next to him (though he wasn't awake, so he couldn't really be comforted). Finally, we all fell asleep somewhere around midnight. So now it's Wednesday and I am once again waiting to send in a revised document to the partner (after my computer ate an hour and a half of work). I am so tired from this week that I keep having to remind myself that it's not in fact Friday. I know I will be much busier and much more tired at various points over the next few years, but this is the first time in a long time that my tiredness has to do with something besides a baby and it's hard to ramp up again.

I have been pleasantly surprised so far that I still feel like I am getting enough quality time with Timmy, even on days where it is in fact only about an hour. The minute I walked in the door Monday night, he ran to me, flung his arms around my neck and didn't let go. He was happy and cuddly; I didn't have to fight with him over eating dinner or starting the bedtime routine. I just enjoyed him and held him and that was better than being with him, but not present, for 8 hours.

I am also a little surprised that I don't really think about him too much while I'm at the office. I am so excited to be at work, trying to meet people and scrounge up work and figure out how the hell to be a lawyer that it rarely enters my mind to think about him. I know he is safe and happy at daycare, and that's enough for me to move on to other things in my day.

It's going to be a struggle to find any true sense of balance in our lives for a while. PJO and I both spend 2 hours a day driving to and from work. Those commutes won't improve until one of us switches jobs, so we just have to fit work, sleep and family time into 22 hours instead of 24. There really aren't enough hours in a 24-hour day for everything to be in perfect balance, but hopefully it is a better picture over the course of a week or a month. I guess that's why they call it a juggle rather than just accepting that you'll always be deficient in one or all areas in your life.

Great Overall*

Week one of being a working mama is officially in the books. I loved it. It almost feels like I never stopped working at the Firm after my summer clerkship. I'm just as inexperienced, just as unprepared to do the work I'm given, and yet I don't feel as nervous this time around. Maybe because I know I have a grace period to figure things out. Maybe because I'm a real attorney now, with a bar number and everything. Either way, it's nice to know I belong here and I'm going to have time to get good at what I'm doing.
I love starting with a clean slate...my office is clean, shelves are empty, Outlook is organized, to-do list is manageable. I hope that lasts for a few weeks at least.

There are, of course, things that have been frustrating. For example, the fact that I had to work on Thursday night and this weekend on an internal, non-billable research project. Yes, that was annoying. And then there's the fact that some days it takes me 35 minutes to get home and some days it takes and hour and 35 minutes. And there is Timmy, who throws himself at me and won't let go because he sees me so much less than he is used to.

But overall, things are good. I wish we didn't have to travel this upcoming weekend because we have to take a red eye flight to NYC on Friday night and then fly back Sunday at 9am in order to take Timmy to the Halloween costume parade and trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. That will be exhausting.

Recap

Thank you all for the sweet comments. Today really could not have been a better first day of work. I managed to share a nice smoothie and oatmeal with Timmy this morning before dropping him off at daycare and getting to the office early. As soon as I walked into reception, everyone started asking how Timmy was and demanded to see pictures. Everywhere I turned, I saw friends I had made when I was a summer associate.
Training was a little bit mundane, but before I knew it, I was sitting in my office waiting for my mentor to take me to lunch. After enjoying a leisurely lunch with some fun ladies, I sat through a bit more training before leaving for the day at 3:45(!!) I was in my sweatpants and on my couch at 4:30pm and I still don't have a blackberry so I wasn't even obligated to check my email.

I had been a little bit apprehensive about going back to work full-time, but the minute I started talking to people at the Firm, I relaxed. I really like the people that work there and being back in the same office made me immediately feel at ease. Then the office Managing Partner gave a little speech, basically telling us that no matter where we go next, today we're starting our legal careers so we should be proactive and make it something great, shape it and direct it. Until then, I had been so focused on getting used to the mere act of being in a physical place besides home and away from my baby that I hadn't really thought of going to work as starting my career. I had been worried about the fact that I would feel trapped by the time constraints of my job so I didn't focus on the benefit of having time to devote to building my career. Now I am so excited to be starting this new part of my life.

Today, just getting dressed up, driving to a pretty office and being with educated people who had interesting and varied things to talk about made me feel so much more fulfilled than I have been in a long time. I can't even imagine the satisfaction I'll get from the substantive work when I find something that I like and am good at. I don't want to seem naive; I know there will be days that I hate what I am doing and I desperately miss my family or life outside of work. But right now I love everything about the place that I'll be spending much of my time at. Coming home and letting Timmy body slam me and point out my nose, eyes and mouth repeatedly (with corresponding pokes) was pretty cool too.

P.S. I ended up wearing a skirt and button-down shirt to work. I'm glad I didn't wear a suit...I was the most conservatively dressed female of all those who started today. One guy wore a suit and tie and he was the weird one.

Divine Intervention

Somewhere between last Sunday and Thursday, I lost my big to-do list. The one that included everything I had hoped to accomplish before I started working. I had successfully crossed off a small handful of tasks and had started working on a few more. I knew that a good amount of my goals would remain untouched and it was starting to stress me out. But really, it was a pretty ambitious list that didn't stand a chance once we all started getting sick.

I honestly felt lost for a few days. I knew there were a ton of things that I should or could be doing but couldn't focus my energy on a single task because my list was missing. So I just sat and read my book or cleaned up my place. I met friends for 3 hours for "coffee." Went shopping and enjoyed spur of the moment lunches.

And now that my first day of work is tomorrow, I know that I couldn't have spent my last few free days in a better way. No matter how hard you try to make yourself a completely clean slate to start from, it will never happen once there are kids in the picture. When you finally take care of paying that disputed doctor bill or finish a project, there is another one right around the corner. And I'm kind of at peace with that now. Sure, our lives will be hectic and I'll feel frazzled from time to time, but that's ok.

So today we are going to carve pumpkins and roast some seeds. I made my weekly menu and bought the groceries, so we'll cook this afternoon. I'll clean and I'll pick out my outfit for tomorrow. Then we'll watch Mad Men (is it seriously the finale already?!) and go to sleep early. I feel ready and I am so excited. Crossing off everything on that massive list couldn't have been a better ending to my time off than this day.

The End / The Beginning

This is my last week before work starts. I'm trying to make it count. PJO had the day off work for Columbus Day, so we decided Timmy could skip daycare and have a day-o-fun instead.

We let him run out all of his energy at My-Gym and exclaim with delight to his heart's content at every airplane taking off and landing at LAX. We sampled strawberries and sweet Italian sausage at Whole Foods while we did our grocery shopping for the week. We took a family nap and snuggled for 3 hours together. It was really delightful to have that bonus time to spend together without thinking about what we should be doing or worrying about our to-dos.

I also made meals for the week and cleaned our apartment, so we're starting on a good note. Our new babysitter starts tomorrow for the daycare pick-ups, so I'll be spending my afternoons with her. But my mornings will be spent meeting friends for coffee and breakfast, reading, sewing and making Timmy's baby book. Friday night I'm going out with the friends I used to hang out with every day at the tot lot and park. I certainly didn't do everything from my big to-do-before-work-starts list, but I did the important things.

Today I got an email from the Firm about my first day. It included a schedule of training sessions for the week, allotted an hour and a half for lunch with my mentor the first day and it gave the time that we'll get our first assignment. After the initial flutter of butterflies, I realized I was totally, completely excited. It was just like walking up to the school doors in September and finding my name on the class list, figuring out who my teacher and classmates were. Suddenly, it is real and it is going to happen soon!

Trial Run #1

I haven't posted until now because I thought I had used up even my (usually high) quota of complaining, but I couldn't bring myself to write anything positive or upbeat either. The night after the trip to the ER, Timmy's fever spiked again. We alternated the max doses of Tylenol and Motrin for 15 hours, plus gave him three cool baths before it finally broke again. I knew that if I called the Doctor she would tell us to go to the ER again (because his fever was over 105), and I knew that the ER would just do the same things we were doing to get his fever down before testing for what was wrong. I couldn't bear the thought of traumatizing Timmy with another trip there and I didn't like the idea of paying my $150 copay again either, so we stayed home to do battle on the fever. I spent 8 hours on Thursday traveling between the Pediatrician and the Lab trying to figure out what was wrong with him, and we ended up getting a shot of antibiotics plus a new prescription to augment our Augmentin (ha, get it?).


He passed out immediately after the shot on the exam table.

He hasn't had any more really high fevers, so hopefully that infection is dead. We never did find out what was wrong.

Anyway, that sounded a lot like complaining, didn't it? The point of the post is to tell you that we're trying to get back into a rhythm. Now that we're in October, Timmy is in daycare full-time. I have this week to myself. Next week our babysitter starts. I wanted a few days to break her in while I'm here, so we'll spend four afternoons together next week. Then the following Monday is my first day of work. Therefore, this week sounded like a good time to try and find a routine that will work for us. Mostly that just involves our attempts to be more organized.

Sunday we planned out our menu for the week, bought all the groceries we needed, and cooked. I made meals for several nights, washed and cut up produce for salads to take for lunch, and made sure our pantry was stocked for the week. We did laundry and cleaned up so that we could start our week on a fresh note and hopefully convince ourselves that we feel healthy and ready to take on Monday.

Monday morning I got out of bed when PJO did, made the bed, showered, and got ready. PJO and I prepared lunches together in the kitchen before Timmy woke up. PJO was out the door on his way to work by 6:40, and that's when I got Timmy and ate breakfast with him, got him dressed and on his way to daycare.

My favorite part of the morning is eating breakfast with Timmy. I always ask him if he wants oatmeal or cereal, and he loves getting to choose. Lately, it's always been an enthusiastic "O-MEEL!!" I usually make a green smoothie and share it with him.


The only problem is all the dirty dishes this creates, which adds time to our morning routine. I think we'll need to wake up earlier or do more the night before if I'm actually going to get into the office at a decent hour, but it's helping to know that we'll be able to do it.

How do you make your mornings efficient?