Good enough

“It’s ... pleasant,” said S. 

We sat, half-turned toward each other, on a deep couch in the back of the wine bar. The wine bar is like something out of a movie, although a movie I haven’t seen, something about the tech industry and hedonism and the valley and the magnetic attraction everybody around here feels for things that are “cute.” The wine bar is in an old adobe building, and the ceilings are low, and the waiters use phrases like “not too heavy on the fruit” without thinking much about it, and the upholstery is vaguely mahogany-colored. In the back room, where S and I sat, there’s a fireplace with a semi-sculptured mural above it and, at least tonight, a Real Fire burning in the grate.

“Me too,” I said, and sighed. “It’s pleasant.” 

We’d been talking about all the things that aren’t quite right, from work to geography to relationships. We’d agreed that it was hard to complain, because things are ... pleasant.

“We cook dinner,” one of us said, and the other nodded.

“It’s nice. Domestic.”

“I’ve been working out a lot.”

“Work’s okay.”

“I think I’m in line for promotion,” one of us said, and the one who hadn’t said it nodded in turn.

A while later, we paid the tab, hugged goodbye, and went our separate ways. I drove the short distance home, pulled into my usual parking place, and walked down the red-painted path to my front door. I slipped the key in the lock, turned it, and went inside: home. It felt good to be here.

And yet I wonder: is this underlying something the famous, originally unvoiced female complaint? Is this what fifties and sixties feminism was about, this lurking feeling that there’s something ... more ... out there, that “pleasant” isn’t quite enough? Don’t get me wrong, I know this is 2009; I know S and I have it better, far better, than did our forebears. I know that.

And yet. Things are ... pleasant.

And pleasant isn’t quite enough.

Housework June 21: 3 hours

I know, huge jump. Here's how it breaks down: 

1 hour: general kitchen-cleaning-up + breakfast-making (tea, toast, fruit). Yeah, that's a long time, but there were a bunch of piled-up dishes kind of everywhere. 

2 hours: more kitchen-cleaning-up + dinner-making (curried cauliflower & sweet pea soup, with a side of sauteed beets with lime; very yummy, but the first time I'd made either one so it took forever). Then after dinner I decided this was a good time to clean all the counters, the stove, the pans I didn't get around to earlier, etc. I may be overestimating slightly but not much. 

What's not included: the hour and a half or so my guy and I spent figuring out what pieces of art we want to hang. We've been in the house a year and a half so it seemed like a good time to sort out our interior decor :) Also not included: the time I spent in the yard mulling over why exactly the gardeners saw fit to remove my grapevine, while leaving intact the giant palm-like shrub with sharp poky fronds which extends threateningly halfway across the front walk. Yeah, I know, that's what you get for such a lazy, bourgeois setup as having gardeners, but it's not my choice; we rent, remember, so it's a property management co thing. If it was up to me I wouldn't have a gardener. I'd have one of those no-electric-power push lawnmowers and develop an incredibly buff upper body by manicuring our tiny lawn half to death.  

Housework June 20: 15 minutes

... which I don't actually remember so I'm estimating. I think I put away some laundry. I had breakfast at work since it was Donut Friday (mmm, donuts) and then dinner out in Half Moon Bay since it was The First Day of Summer. The First Day of Summer meant that my guy was ridiculously miserable in town - he hates heat - and I get cold easily, so I figured the hot weather would be right in the middle if we headed to the beach. For the record, it was perfect. I also love that the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co allows dogs on their patio. It seems so friendly.  

It occurs to me that if I ate at home more often there'd be a hell of a lot more housework. And that people with kids generally eat at home more often, since (I assume) packing the kids up to a restaurant is a pain, and anyway they might scream once they got there. I have no kids + I eat out a lot, therefore minimal housework. 

Interesting. 

Housework June 18: zero hours :)

I had a rotten day at work yesterday (no, not bad news, just another stall), so I insisted on going out for Mexican food and margaritas for dinner, hence no cooking time. And curiously, the idea of tracking housework made the idea of emptying the dishwasher before I went to bed pretty damn unattractive, so I skipped it.

I also noticed another interesting stat in the same article: lesbian couples with kids (no data yet on gay men) do a total of 31 hours of housework per week - about a third less than straight couples. 

Wha... ?! Clearly the lesbians are on to something. 

So of course I brought this up with my guy over dinner. Our guesses: 1) women and men traditionally notice & care for different areas around the house, but a lot of housework isn't strictly required. So in a lesbian relationship, maybe the "guy" things just don't get done - which makes me really, really curious about gay male relationships and housework load! and 2) a lesbian couple is already outside society norms in some senses, so maybe it's easier to avoid getting your ego caught up in having a perfectly-kept house. 

Which leads to the question, what is housework? For purposes of tracking it, I'm figuring it's things I do in the house (or yard), which benefit both me and my guy. That ropes in cooking, cleaning, yardwork - but no errands, and no time spent setting up our various networking gadgetry needs which are totally gratuitous, really, and fun anyway. 

And for today's count (as yet incomplete of course): I spent 10 minutes emptying the dishwasher and pouring myself a bowl of cereal this morning....

Housework: are you *!?%$** kidding me? (part 1)

This weekend I read a New York Times Magazine article about couples who attempt to achieve 'equally shared parenting.' Ok, fine, that's nice - but what really stood out was this statistic: 

"the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14"

That's appalling from a gender-relations standpoint, it really is - but right now I'm not thinking about that. No, right now I'm thinking, "45 hours of housework PER WEEK?!" No matter how you divide it up that's just awful. That's more time than I spend at work. If I hired someone to do all that I'd be paying them overtime! 

And so I embark on an experiment. For the next week or so I'm going to track how much housework I actually do and report back here. And it had better not be 31 hours - or anything approaching that.

Discussion redux: "The Feminine Mistake"

I did, in fact, go to hear this author speak - and came away with a few interesting points, none of them counter-intuitive and many of them encouraging. My favorites are:

• Intensive child-rearing doesn't last long. At five years old, kids go to kindergarten. When planning for the initial few years when children demand the most time, it's also important to plan for the years that come next.
• There's a positive correlation between women's happiness and working.
  
• There's a positive correlation between women's working and children's learning to be self-sufficient (walking sooner, tying their own shoes, making friends more easily).
• At higher income levels, not working is often a status symbol for a woman (and her husband).
  
• The author of the book isn't aware of any research on what happens to a man's career when he leaves the workforce to care for children for several years.
  
• The female taboo on publicly striving for, rejoicing in, publicizing, gloating about, and even taking credit for work success is alive and well. I've seen it clearly myself since I started mentoring: almost every woman I mentor has asked for advice on how to get recognition & credit for her work - and most these same women feel frustrated that they don't already know how to do this. Not one guy has brought this up. It might be time for me to stop feeling mildly embarrassed about my shameless self-promotion - and start giving my mentees a to-do list.
  

Isn't that interesting? We've come so far, and yet....

A book I haven't read yet: "The Feminine Mistake"

The author of "The Feminine Mistake" is coming as a guest speaker to work tomorrow. I'm interested to hear what she has to say - in spite of friends who juggle work/family daily, I can't yet wrap my own head around how, exactly, anyone can ever achieve any sort of reasonable balance (my parents' truly excellent solution - both teachers with summer vacations - unfortunately isn't available to most of the population).

Luckily I'm not currently subject to any urge for children, but I can imagine the anguish I'd feel if I were. Would I be willing to leave work for more than, say, three months? I doubt it. I get way too big a kick out of the adrenaline rush that comes with competition: for good projects, for promotion, for quarterly performance metrics, to get resources to get something done. I angle & fight for the respect of my teammates and I gloat like a proud mother (!) when someone I'm mentoring launches something exciting. I also really, really, really enjoy the conversation of adults. If I left all this behind, would I resent my kids for dragging me from it? Maybe. And don't tell me that the mothering instinct would kick in and save me from that - I've heard too many times that my biological clock would start ticking by the time I turned 28 to believe that feminine biology is destiny.

So where does that leave me? Wishing I knew of a clear way to fight for more work/life balance for all members of society, not just women, that's where. As long as the ability to juggle kids and a job is seen as a women's issue, we're all screwed, women and men together. I know way too many overworked male lawyers who are frantically jealous of the "mommy track" to believe anything different.

Pro-Choice

I've discovered as I get older that I wind up a) caring about more issues and b) caring about them more passionately. Cartooniste recently sent me this link, which can be used to easily spam various politicos about the Prevention First Act (not perfect, but better than the current situation).

Largely for my own amusement, I'm posting a copy of the highly edited letter I recently used this link to send:

It's important for the benefit of all society that all women have a) as many children as they choose b) when they choose.

Ideally, birth control pills should not require prescriptions - but I realize the current political climate isn't likely to support this, so I support the Prevention First Act as a reasonable next-best-thing. This bill would help prevent unintended pregnancies and make abortion less necessary by improving women's access to family-planning services and preventing teen pregnancy, among other things.

Please support women and their families by cosponsoring the Prevention First Act - and by considering more advanced legislation for the future.

Sincerely,
Me

The prescription thing for birth control pills has bugged me for a long, long, time. After all, I'm not sick - and my doctor sure isn't recommending a cure; she's saying, 'Yep, I'm a grownup too, and we're all in this together - sure, I'll check this legally-mandated but still very silly box for you. Kind of a shame we're wasting both our time, isn't it?' And we both sigh and go back to whatever more useful thing we were doing before we met for this appointment.

Then again, I'm lucky my medical options aren't restricted to Catholic hospitals.

So it felt nice to send this off. Of course, I have no idea if anyone will read it - and yes, I also realize I'm just dreaming. But darn it, this is so dumb....

The Ironic Doppelganger

A couple of weeks back, my guy & I drove out to Half Moon Bay to go to the beach. On our way through town, we spotted a new bookstore, so we wandered in. While browsing for anything new by Michael Faber (I can't decide if The Crimson Petal & the White is a great book, a decadent guilty pleasure, or just a fun ride), I ran across this book.

Note the author's name.

Note that the author lives in the Bay Area, has hair about the color mine gets when I spend a lot of time in the sun, seems to be about my height, and appears to weigh about what I do.

Note that I didn't write this book.

What the . . . ??!!?

When I first picked it up, my stomach turned over. I think my fingers shook a little bit. I looked over my shoulder to see who - or what - was watching me. All those sci-fi & fantasy books I read as a kid, not to mention the time one of my friends asked why I'd been in San Francisco one weekend and not waved back at her but I hadn't actually been there, came bubbling up from the unused, not-looked-at-too-often recesses of my mind.

I have to admit this feels damn weird.

I'm also pondering a new question: when I send my current story out to magazines in October, what name do I send it under?

It's going to be pretty funny if I wind up taking my guy's last name after all - and do it to maintain my own separate identity, rather than to establish new credentials as part of a couple. Just when I was getting comfy with the dictates of feminism. . . .

Responsibility

This morning my guy and I had a conversation that went roughly like this:

Me: We need to get plane tickets for our friends' wedding in Hawaii. It's really soon.
Him: Yep, but I'm super busy right now - can't do it. If you can, great - otherwise it'll have to wait.
Me: But I'm busy too! I can't do it either.
Him: Well. . . .

Now my guy basically meant what he said: he's busy, he can't think about plane tickets right now. But my internal, gut-level response goes something like this:

Me: Oh no, he's expecting me to do it! How can he do this to me - he knows how busy and stressed-out I am right now! I can't do it! Gaaaaah!

Why is this? My guy didn't actually say he was expecting me to do anything at all - and based on past history, I know he wasn't thinking it either. I just assumed it.

The other interesting thing is that my guy doesn't think this way. If I say, "I can't do such-and-such," he takes that info at face value, without assuming any responsibility to deal with such-and-such himself.

So what causes the difference? Is it how we were raised? A gender thing? Based on how much sleep we've each gotten lately? And is there some way I can learn, or at least temporarily borrow, the way he thinks?

From listening to female friends talk about this kind of thing, I know I'm not the only woman stuck in this hamster-wheel cycle of taking on more responsibility, more ownership for the mechanics of daily life, than I need to (or than my significant other even asks me to).

My highly scientific conclusion: this is not good! I don't know what's causing it, but I don't like it at all. I don't have a fix, either, but I'm crossing my fingers that putting this idea out there makes me more aware that yes, there is another way to think. And over the next couple of weeks while my work schedule goes crazy, I'll be trying to remind myself that just because my guy can't deal with something, doesn't mean that I have to. There are very few things that really have to get done, after all.

Now . . . how often will I remember to tell myself this? And is it fair to ask my guy to remind me?