Confessions of a green-mama wannabe

I bought an ultra cool new supermarket grocery bag that fits into the supermarket cart while walking the aisles, then turns into a knapsack to help you carry groceries easily.

Now I can preach silently to the masses of shoppers who'll admire my eco-sense... while I fill my reusable bag with processed food and disposable diapers and hope nobody notices (at least it's opaque.)

Of course, I'm all for the environment. And for sustainability. And for renewable energy. And for the myriad of other buzzwords that have sprung up in our language for the past few years.

But I admit I sometimes feel like the grown-up version of that teen who feel's she's saving the world by just "thoroughly eliminating CFCs from her life" - in that case, refraining from buying hairspray & certain brands of mousse (according to what my then-source of wisdom said at the time)

Fast forward a couple of decades and different versions of of bad hairstyles later. I'm a full time marketing consultant, mother, diaper-changer, air-conditioning queen who doesn't have time to breathe. Being green is much more important today, yet much more complicated.

A few examples. What would you do?

• Dilemma #1: finished conference call at 11:15 PM. Husband rightfully complains that I (well, we) don't have a life. Washing machine is done. Should I bring in the laundry hanging outside from previous day, then hang the new batch on the clothesline, or just spend 10% of that time to push the wash into the dryer? (never mind it's 30 degrees outside in the Israeli Summer)
  

• Dilemma # 2: We need a second car so that husband can help dropping off kids in the morning (none of the preschools/schools are within walking distance), and so that I can add at least 1 more hour to my work life.
  

1. Should we actually get the car and stop using the organized transport the amazing company he works for puts together as a perk (and as small contribution to carbon-emissions reduction?)
2. Now that I've said yes to question #1, should I feel guilty I'm not even considering hybrid cars as an option (too expensive here, unknown resell value, unknown problems in the longer term, and too little storage room for strollers and "really important things" like grocery bags)

• Dilemma 3: Which takes me back to my ultra-cool grocery bag. First, a confession: the real reason I bought that ultra-cool shopping bag was to organize my shopping cart and separate tax-deductible items from the rest of my shopping (don't ask - the only joy of being a freelancer here). But since I'm already using The Good Bag, I will also aim to reduce my consumption of the bad (aka plastic) bags. But then, what would I do when I run out of current stock of bad-bags at home? After all, where will I put all those dirty diapers? Should I just grab a few at the cash register and stuff them inside the lining of my Good Bag?
  

Guess that my role in saving the world will currently be accomplished by the sole virtue of displaying my use of Good Bags, regardless of the shipment they carry.

On gender, faith and a 4-year-old's wisdom

Friday night dinner. Ben is telling us about what learned in Gan this week.

- So what's the Torah Portion this week?
- Mishpatim
[ah-ha. He remembers more than the drawings and songs]
- And what happens there?
- It's about rules. Like when you find a ball in the street and it's not yours. You can't take it. But if someone comes looking for it and they say it's their ball and that it's red, when the ball is really yellow, you can't give it to them.
[This is way beyond the level I had expected from a four-year-old. He's well on his way to become a lawyer. I decide to go on, just for the fun of it.]

- Ben, do you know what the Ten Commandments are?
- Yes, "Aseret Hadibrot"
- Right. Do you know what's written in them?
- Not really.
- Well, the first one tells us something about God. Like, do you know how many Gods there are?

[That should be a piece of cake for him after his elucidation on Jewish Law]

- Yes. There's two.

[Jaw drops. What kind of Jewish parents do we call ourselves?]

- Ben, we know there's only one God.
- No mom. There's two... One man, and one woman.

Update: redefining journalism & social relationships

This is an update to two seeminly unrelated posts: "What frozen peas can teach us" and "Jounnalism Reinvented."

A couple of days ago, a twitterer I didn't know about, but with whom some of my twitter "friends" had conversations and shared twitter/flickr initiatives - died in a car accident.

Her name was Ashley Spencer, otherwise known as @ahspeamama. She left behind a toddler, a baby and a husband.

A fund has been established in her name to help out her family. Spreading the word are lots of twitterers and bloggers who, in her honor, have changed their avatar to a purple and gold croc shoe.

I still can't get over the immediacy of the response. And over the lack of geographical boundaries. And the cross-channel coverage. And over the human story behind it.

Justifying offline guilt

There was a notable slowdown of blogging activity during the holiday season, often preceded by a note apologizing to the readers for going offline for the next few days.
"Of course I pardon you," I anwered back the Netvibes widget on my screen.

But then, within 48 hours or less, there was a new post that started "I just had to blog about this cool thing in my skiing vacation / Christmas presents / New year's resolutions." That's okay. But what I found disturbing was that it was sometimes preceded by an apology to their children/spouse/conscience for breaking their promise to go offline.

Then again, who was I to judge them? That is, what the heck was I doing online at that horrible hour in the day? Maybe my husband's complaints about the wife who quit her start-up partnership but is still online 24/6* were justified after all?

One has to think whether we're really taking our online lives too seriously. And with that thought, sorry, but I have to finish my accounting tasks for the month, pick up the kids, and find a birthday present for my husband before he really gets mad atme. After all, he does read my blog.

*24/6 vs. 24/7: A conscious decision not to turn on my computer on Shabbat I (thankfully) made prior to the Web 2.0 era.

Chag Chanukah Sameach from LeWeb3

Thanks to Corey and Jeff and Amber and Sarah and the others who came together to light the eight candle at LeWeb3. Chag urim sameach from the City of Lights.

Big Ben for Little Ben

One of the few advantages of having a 4-year-old TV-addict is the fact that they become well versed in the world. That is, if they’re watching the “right” programs.

• Take Dora the Explorer for example. English as a second (or third) language has never been easier (despite some of the character's accents in translated Hebrew version). Plus, the feminist Latina in me cannot object to the protagonist’s ethnicity and gender.
• And Little Einsteins. He learns about music, composers, cities and art. It’s a bit too artificially put together for my taste, but hey, Ben’s buying it. Here’s proof:

I’m flying with ResearchTrail to the Online Conference in London next week. When I asked Ben if he wants me to bring him “algo chiquito de Londres” he said,

“Mama, bring me back a picture of Big Ben...For little Ben.”

What more could I ask for?

Long-distance Zeides

Ben and Yael have long-distance grandparents. This is nothing new in my family - my sisters and I had a long-distance grandma until we each turned 18 (and them made up for these "lost years" by going to live with her for college). And though I'm almost convinced we came out of this experience unscathed (yet additional proof that kids get used to anything), I'm not so sure about the parents: No babysitting. No potential sleepovers. No sleep.

But the real losers in the equation are the grandparents.
They missed the kindergarten Chanuka parties. They missed the visits to the doctor. They missed the ballerina chocolate birthday cakes, the love triangles in a four-year-old's world, and the new haircuts.

They missed Ben's face when we brought home the keyboard, the bike, even the little siter. They missed Yael's first words in Hebrew and Spanish, and now miss the bilingual conversations peppered by an ocassional English word (yes-yes, blue, noooou, piiiink).

Skype helps. Email and Shutterfly do too. VoIP is a blessing. But still, to have some sort of real-time interaction with them, these long-distance grandparents can't really be spontaneous. They must coordinate between time zones (8 or 9 hours behind Modiin standard time) and weekdays (Sundays are a workday in Israel), dodge key obstacles (no response during Mickey's Playhouse or Little Einsteins), and pray that the little ones will in the mood & willing to talk.

So kol ha kavod to the long disance-grandparents. My next challenge, besides finding more backup babysitters and surrogate uncles, will be preventing Ben and Yael from one day doing the same to grandmother me.

Boo!

An Israeli version of a scary Halloween.
Yael, my two-year-old, fell yesterday. Result? Very bad bruise and scratch on her big toe. She's scared of a bandage, terrified of using her foot at all.
- Limping and all, she is sent to Gan anyway (guilt trip). A couple of hours later, my cell phone rings. Caller ID shows Yael's Gan. Heart thumping. Kidergarten teacher says Yael isn't doing too well, plus she has a fever. I panic (tetanus shot? X-rays?) Drop everything and rush back to pick her up.
- Outside the doctor's clinic (a new pediatrician, 5 minute walk from home) Yael sees the stethoscope. Still traumatized by her vaccine a couple of weeks ago, she goes into a tantrum.
- New doc shows special "funny monkey." She's clinging to mom. He blows bubbles. Yael is not impressed.
- "Dr. Red Nose" takes out a pink balloon and makes her a cute dog (yes, I'm serious.) Yael finally smiles. Result? Mom is reassured.

Yael's fever is down, her big toe has not changed in size or color. And in case I had any doubts, she's now jumping on the couch. Sigh of relief.

But then I open my inbox after a 12-hour lapse. Boooo!

Dormir, dormir

According to an article in New York magazine, loss of sleep is responsible for many of the ailments we face today:

• "Sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine"
• "Sleep loss also elevates the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is lipogenic, meaning it stimulates your body to make fat,"
• "... experiment shortening adults’ sleep to six hours a night. After two weeks, they reported they were doing okay. Yet on a battery of tests, they proved to be just as impaired as someone who has stayed awake for 24 hours straight."

Here's something for the parents amongst us

• "On average, children who sleep less are fatter than children who sleep more."
• Sleep deficiency "has the power to set [kids'] cognitive abilities back years."

Here's one for Mrs. Maristhany (and the rest of the principals at Colegio Interamericano):

“Of all the arguments I’ve heard over school start-times, not one person has argued that children learn more at 7:15 a.m. than at 8:30.” (Dr. Mark Mahowald, U Minnesota professor who runs a sleep clinic)

Too late. 14 years too late.

Focus

I like frameworks. I feel comfortable with a plan, a timetable, a path. Does that mean I'm not spontaneous? Not at all. But I like the peace of mind that comes from knowing I'm not dropping too many of the important things at once.
Last week (and the previos one) was supposed to have been annual vacation.
Instead, I worked on two major projects (no, didn't finish), had a houseguest, juggled new schedules for my kids in their respective kindergartens, squeezed in three dozen visits to the supermarket (hey, it was erev chag 4 times in the past 2 weeks) and a visit to the doctor (ear infection for me) and home-sick-from-Gan-day (for Yael). Didn't quite have the patience for my soon-to-be-new-neighbors remodeling their apartment (thump thump, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - with no break during Israel's theoretical siesta between 2 and 4 pm.)
I need my framework back.
On shabbat and holidays I turn off the cell phone. I don't turn on my computer. Then I have a legitimate excuse to put off everything else, and just focus on my family (and myself) and the rest of the really big things that don't even make it to the to-do list.
Would my partners in the new biz venture be happier had I spent today working on my deliverables for Tuesday? Absolutely. Will M have a fit tomorrow when I tell him I didn't yet finish the set of presentations? Quite likely...
But did Ari and the kids enjoy the time that I finally had for them? Hey, they even said so.
[sigh]
I'm happy.

Tia Godmother

Mom called again. Tia didn't make it.
Baruch Dayan Emet.

The Godmother

Last Tuesday our family's Godmother (otherwise known as my mom's aunt Reyna) had a stroke. Early Wednesday the morning, finally crying since she first heard at midnight, my mom called to tell me. To sweeten the blow, she ended, "I'd like to think that my sister is exaggerating, because she tends to exaggerate. She says things with Tia seem pretty bad."

She was not exaggerating. Tia is still in a comma, suffering from even more complications since.

Doctors say there's no hope.

Every family has a pillar. Someone whose influence is so strong, whose presence is so important, that others define the family in relation to that person. I am known as Reyna's grand-niece.

I am also Zeide Nune, Tia's father, great-grandaughter. We used to call him The Godfather (no mafia connection here, but his charm and influence over the family would rival the Corleones.) Tia inherited Zeide's sense of strategy and influence, but she used it in a different way. She was the silent Godmother, always pulling strings and making things smoother for all of us behind the scenes, no glory there

And when Zeide passed away 11 years ago, she became the sole Godmother.

She was a womanly Godmother, a fairy Godmother. Caring for Tio Mike and for our 93-year-old Bobe Malka. Orchestrating all the seders and rosh hashana dinners and family events for the family in California, and never missing one elsewhere (weddings in Guatemala, Bar Mitzvahs in Mexico, her grandson's school ceremony in San Francisco, and had she not collapsed last week, Eitan's wedding in Boston tomorrow). (And before my time, building the shop with Tio, growing the business, making deliveries for him. Plus raising two kids)

Tia was always running the show, making plans, volunteering, calling friends, giving and giving. Even driving me to a business meeting 50 miles away in rush-hour traffic when I was in LA for a quick business trip ("But Tia, my company pays for cabs!" nonwithstanding.)

This pillar is now fading. What will we do without her? Did we ever tell her how important she was for all of us.

And will my kids ever understand the concept of Tia Godmother?

My Kids - the introduction

ABOUT BEN (Two years, 8 months)
Ben likes music. He makes up the lyrics to his own songs. Knows the names of about 12 instruments, and pretends to play the guitar with a fork at the dinner table.
He is determined, strong, agile and loudspoken. He also gives the sweetest kisses and best hugs.
Ben sucks his thumb, especially when he's tired, or bored, or angry, or anxious.
He knows most of the letters of the Hebrew and English alphabets, and can switch back and forth beetween Spanish and Hebrew with ease.
In him I see things I would have liked to be and often I see the worst of myself repackaged in male format. Then I have to remind myself that he's only two.

ABOUT YAEL (10 months)
She's beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking. Blue, almond-shaped eyes and red cheeks.
Yael doesn't stop moving for one second. She can climb stairs. Cruises across furniture. Feeds herself Cheerios, bread, meat, avocado, yogurt (with her fingers, of course).
Absolutely refuses to take a bottle. Fortunately she can drink alone from a cup (water only - don't even try to sneak her formula) and make herself heard across the room.
Grins. Smiles. Shows you her toothless gums every opportunity she has.
Is in love with Ben. And Ben with her, as long as it doensn't mean sharing his guitar with her.