Another working mom's vent

I'm going to riff on Lutherliz's post about the lack of classes and fun stuff available for working parents and their kids.

I don't know the statistics, and I can't be arsed to look them up, but I'm willing to venture a guess that most parents in the US right now are working parents.  And most of us have day jobs.  So staying up until midnight to sign up for an evening or weekend community ed class the moment registration opens?  Not cool.  Free family movies at the Mall of America?  Tuesday mornings.  Wee Wednesdays at the Midtown Global Market?  10:00 AM.  Playdates, parenting groups, mom & me classes, La Leche League meetings: all weekdays during business hours.

Working parents: we have to fix this.  So what can we do?  Start a letter writing campaign?  Raise funds to guarantee community ed classes for us?  How can we use technology to our advantage?  Start a website that lists things just for us?

I'm not a web developer but I know what would be nice in a website like that.  At the very least it should be searchable and browseable for activities, cost, day, time, age, etc. 

Social inside of me...is on the riiiiiiiiiise

So I had basically the entire Dr. Horrible soundtrack in my head all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Rewatching it on Friday and last night didn't help.  I'm listening to the sountrack this morning.

Four sweatervests!

Goddamnit!

The big news for me today is that I went to a party this weekend -- get this -- by myself.  No social crutch to lean on (besides beer), just little ol' me in a backyard full of strangers.  And it was awesome.

I didn't spend any time at all afterwards obsessively going over every detail in my mind.  Maybe I said something stupid to somebody.  Oh well.  I'm getting better and better at this social thing.

Herp derp numbers

I'm looking at starting school in January to get a CIS degree.  I am not looking forward to the math classes I will be forced to take.

Here's a semi-related tangent: the Korean number and counting system sucks.  Hard.  It's completely baffling to me why they would have to completely different sets of numbers.  One set is used to count certain things, and the other set is used to count other certain things.  And then just to be really confusing sometimes you have to mix the two, like when you're telling time.  You say the hour one way and the minutes the other. 

I've always struggled with math.  I'm sure I'm somewhere on the dyscalculia spectrum.  I have no problem with fractions.  I was always able to make my way through algebra.  But when it comes to understanding the concepts behind math and putting them into practice I just can't seem to make the connections.  When I see a bunch of numbers my brain sort of goes into a test pattern and a beta wave hum.  I have a very hard time paying attention to the weather report on the news or even just remember what time it is.  Phone numbers and addresses are a joke.

The majority of my math issues stem from one very terrible math teacher, Mrs. Osiecki, in junior high.  This woman's teaching style was and still is incomprehensible to me.  We'd spend the entire period going over the previous day's homework, then maybe spend the last five minutes on what we were supposed to be doing that night.  What?  My stepmom also had Mrs. Osiecki and also credits her for a lifelong math learning problem.

As an aside, Mrs. Osiecki the woman is kind of a legend in my hometown.  We'd take bets on how many pens she'd pull out of her afro (she's a white woman) in any given school period.  I bet you can still see her around town to this day, giant fro bouncing up and down as she jogs. 

Mrs. Osiecki taught 7th grade algebra.  I barely passed.  Subsequent classes in junior high and high school in trig, statistics, functions, and geometry were completely ruined for me.  When I got to college I took what was basically a remedial math course called Math Appreciation in which our final grade was based on writing an essay.  About math.  I took the smartass route and wrote something called "The Hatred and Humor of Math" where I basically made fun of math geeks.  Somehow I got an A.

I seriously doubt the credits from that class will have any bearing on my future college career.  Now I'm looking at the daunting list of college algebra, trigonometry, discrete math, and calculus.  And those are just the pre-reqs.  I will also have to take calculus II or higher and comp theory or whatever seq. & par. algebra is.  I'm doomed.

My thought: They make machines to do the computating for us.

Mama Thursday: Outkide

I just know that one of these days Lily is going to look up at us and start speaking in complete sentences.  She talks plenty at home -- just not in English.  This morning was a little bit of a breakthrough though.  She said, "outkide" and pointed at the door.  This child is always wanting to go outside.  Any time of day, rain or shine, cold or hot.  She wants to climb down the front steps, run down the sidewalk, and sit on the retaining wall three houses down.

She has a little sandbox in the backyard now, and that has been just awesome.  I wish we had one of those climbing cube/slide thingies for her but that will probably have to wait until next year.  She's a slide junkie.  She also loves to be swung around in a circle by her arms but Husband and I get nervous because we feel like we're going to rip her little arms out of their sockets when we do it.

She's got such a strong personality.  That's our fault, I suppose, because Husband and I are pretty stubborn people and her obstinance is as much as we deserve.  She has a very short attention span for books being read to her, but she will "read" them to us in her own babbling language.  She's still hitting me when she gets overly frustrated (I read that she hits me because she trusts me -- WTF?) but when she does this (or when she grabs the kitties by their tails) she looks me straight in the eye and gives me a devilish smile.  It takes everything in me to not yell or grab her hand and smack it.  The other day she hit me but then I could see in her face right away that she knew she had done something bad.  I was angry.  She stood up, got her face right in mine, and gave me a big kiss right on the mouth.

I melted.

Too Geeky to Diet?

I understand that the way to lose weight is to simply burn more calories than you take in.  Running is my primary form of exercise now that I'm not playing roller derby anymore.  I've been spending a bit of time on the stationary bike too.  But food is my downfall.  I like food too much.

I've been trying for years to find the best way to track my diet.  I've tried meticulous calorie counting at SparkPeople, not counting anything at all, the Hacker's Diet, and most recently simple food journaling.

Calorie counting is such a drag.  I used to not mind it but now that I've got a child occupying a good chunk of my active brain it's become unrealistic for me to continue researching the caloric content of every bite.

Food journaling is supposed to work because it's supposed to make you think about what you're eating.  It's supposed to make you go, "If I eat this doughnut I'll have to put it in my food journal and then I'll look back on that entry and feel really horrible about myself and the next time I see a doughnut I won't eat it because I don't want to feel bad anymore."  But because I'm not a normal person with emotional ties to journal entries, when I look back at my food journal I just see pure data.  Ones and zeroes.  I can say, "Yep, should have made a better choice at 12:47 PM on Thursday the 19th of August."  But the emotional connection just isn't there.  Maybe if there was a shock collar involved....

The Hacker's Diet should have worked for me, but it's more data entry than I'd like.

You know what's been working for me?  Slim Fast.  Fucking Slim Fast.  Slim Fast!  Me!  The Eat Real Whole Foods girl!  I'm absolutely disgusted with myself.

But fuck if it isn't getting the job done.  I see the numbers on the scale go down every day and my mind goes, "Target approaching.  Continue current trajectory."