Shame, Shame, Shame

Okay, now it's June 1 and we're coming up on six months since the last blog update. Shameful. And not for lack of news! Life has been pretty busy this year so far, so I think this blog will be just a quick catch-up with associated pictures.



In the travel log:

We went to Salt Lake at the end of January for Grandpa Hinckley's funeral. We miss him more than words can express, but are glad that he and Grandma are together. The week was filled with peace and wonderful experiences.

In April, we flew to Phoenix for a friend's wedding - Rob's first time in my hometown! We had so much fun visiting family and friends, and enjoying the desert. There's simply nothing like it. The wedding was beautiful, and we had a great time. We swam in Uncle Tom and Aunt Sylvia's pool. We wandered Tortilla Flat and took a boat ride through breathtaking Canyon Lake in the Superstitions. We visited all the Arizona Hansen cousins and got to give them big hugs and have lots of catch up chatting.



We drove past our old house in Scottsdale. We wandered Old Town Scottsdale. We had a magical time!





Memorial Day weekend took us to Red River Gorge in Kentucky with Jared and Dani Jensen, and Matt and Camie Christensen. Altogether, we had 4 two-year-olds and big sister Lydia Christensen (age 5). Ellie was very taken with Jacob and Claire Jensen and Lydia and Clayton Christensen, and she popped out of bed each morning saying, "Want play kiddos!" We hiked Natural Bridge and a few other gorgeous trails, took the canoe and paddleboat around the lake, played games on the deck of the cabin, and roasted s'mores by the campfire.









This week, we got to play with Grammie and Pops Hinckley right here in Middle America! The day they arrived, I woke up at 6:00 a.m. like it was Christmas morning. We did all kinds of important Cincinnati things: Montgomery Inn pulled pork and Graeter's black raspberry chip ice cream, Harriet Beecher Stowe house, Joseph Beth Booksellers (one of the great independent booksellers), Greenacres Farm (a pilgrimage for any sustainable agriculture fan), the zoo, Germano's Italian Restaurant, and the Loveland Bike Trail. Ellie cried and cried at the airport when we had to say good-bye - it was a pretty pitiful sight! It was so, so fun to have them here. We talked non-stop the whole time, and it still didn't feel like we talked enough!








I think that completes the travel log. Other life news? teamLesan has a baby boy arriving at the end of September! The day we found out, Rob ate a double bacon barbecue cheeseburger from Cheesecake Factory in celebration. We're not sure that Ellie entirely understands what is about to happen, but she is kind enough to offer sips of milk and fruit leather to my tummy, saying "Want share baby."

Well, I won't make an absolute promise to shorten the delay between blog entries. As Mary Poppins says, "That's a pie crust promise: easily made, easily broken." But I do hope to not engage in shameful blog neglect in the near future.

PS: The iMac is everything it's cracked up to be, and Rob has talked me into buying him a MacBook for his birthday in August. We'll never be PC people again!

"And if you rub it, it will grant you three iWishes"

Well, it happens to everyone at least once.  You come downstairs and sleepily turn on your computer while getting breakfast.  Suddenly and without warning, you find a scary "I refuse to boot up" screen and realize that the worst has occurred - the hard drive has crashed.  If you're like us, you are wholly unprepared in this worst of moments.  You haven't backed up your documents, pictures or music in two years.  A sick feeling begins in your stomach.

In my case, I immediately called my computer-genius and ever calm husband, who was already at work.  Help!  Well, evening came, and Rob started attempting the great repair.  To no avail.  So many parts of the hard drive had crashed, along with other important computer components, that my laptop was unsalvageable.  Along with aforementioned precious files.  We took a deep breath.  I tried to hold back the tears.

Then we made the decision that we'd both been considering all day.  There was no place to go but the Apple store.  So we hopped in the car, pajama-clad Ellie in tow, and headed over to that wondrous place.  A few minutes later, we walked out with an iMac.

I'm trying to properly mourn the loss of my HP laptop.  I am deeply mourning the loss of my files, and send a plea to any and all who might have pictures of us to please email them to hollylesan@gmail.com.

It's hard to properly  mourn the loss of a PC, however, when I'm staring at the shiny iMac in my office.  My mourning is mixed with absolutely giddiness about my new life.  I am a Mac person.  I have long imagined myself part of the artsy, literary, ultra-cool Mac group.  I may spend my days firmly entrenched in the decidedly PC world of law and business, but underneath all that PC exterior is the heart of an artist.  Well, I'm hiding no longer.  And I'm looking forward to many years of photo, movie, and artsy creations.  Deep breath and sigh, and into a brave new world.

Daddy's Little Buckeye

Well, it's game day. Ohio State Buckeyes v. Michigan Wolverines.

If the Bucks win, Rob will post a detailed victory report. If we lose, well, let's not think about that right now.

Kick off is at noon. Go Bucks!

Happy Halloween!

Ellie was a princess, of course. She had a tiara and a wand and a tulle skirt with hot pink bows - a birthday present from the Bowler girls. And, yes, her shirt says "Tiaras Make You Taller." Well, Rob says, whatever works...

Marc and Sarah came over and spent the evening with us. We ordered pizza and answered the constant ring of the door bell. Before it got dark, Ellie wanted to sit on the porch and hand out the candy herself. So of course we did. When trick-or-treating in Loveland closed at 7:30 p.m., we went over to the Strikes house where Monica and Jon were house-sitting. Pratt was an iPod this year. The picture doesn't really give the full view of the costume, which was elaborate and accurate. Then we went over to Nana and Keith's house, of course, to get ooohs and ahhs from them. Ellie twirled her wand and held onto her treat bag the entire time. She even kept her tiara on until we got to Nana's house, when she decided she'd had enough of being taller. It was a late night for a little princess, but too much fun to turn in early!

Anyone feel like applesauce?

Okay, our blog is sorely out of date. Sorry. I've been wanting to write this story for awhile, and have very little idea how to put it into words. I did something recently that I've never done before.

I canned. You know, like our mothers and grandmothers did. With the cooking and stirring and steam-sealing. The Kerr jars and lids. The whole thing.

Our friends the Harwards can a few bushels of apples every fall. You know, just a hundred or more pounds of apples. Nancy has an applesauce machine and a steam-sealer (or whatever it's called that seals the lids to the bottles), and years of expertise. So my friend Monica suggested that we join her this year and get some applesauce in our respective food storages. I signed up for half a bushel, and Ellie and I went over to Nancy's house one rainy afternoon to get to work. Monica brought Pratt, and the two kiddos traded off taking naps in the pack and play, eating, and playing. They did pretty well for the first several hours.

By the time 5:00 hit, we knew the end was nowhere in sight. So we called our husbands and told them to come over for a pizza/applesauce-making party. Once Rob, Michael Harward, and Jon arrived, they joined the applesauce-making extravaganza, which made the whole thing go faster - and re-energized us. We ate delicious Dewey's Pizza (for those of you who have access to this delightful place, I highly recommend the Green Lantern - goat cheese and artichokes on a pizza!) and then got back to work in the kitchen.

By 9:00 p.m., Ellie was absolutely demanding that we take her home. Monica, Jon, Nancy and Michael pressed forward until past 10:00 until the whole project was complete.

Our total? We made 70+ quarts of applesauce from 4 bushels, which we figure totals about 170 pounds of apples. My half bushel of apples made 9 quarts, which I was sure would last us forever. But this week we're polishing off the second quart, and we're going to have to start rationing applesauce.

Next year a bushel? It's possible. Now that I've entered this particular realm of Mormon Motherdom, or Pioneer Womandom, or something, there's no going back. For a complete photo essay on the project, visit Monica's blog (which is NOT Jon's blog - literally): http://www.cherryredmustang.blogspot.com/

Repeat Purchases

We lost Ellie's sunglasses. I don't know where they are. They must have escaped to the world of odd socks, important papers, and keys. I think the world is called A Safe Place. For three days I looked for them. Meanwhile, Ellie kept grabbing mine, and they kept slipping off her nose. The ones she managed to hold on to she also managed to loosen the screw and take apart. After three days of unsuccessful searching, I knew we had no choice but to buy a new pair. Turns out, baby sunglasses are hard to come by in October. I checked the children's resale store around the corner - none left. The Children's Place, which had rows and rows all summer. All gone. Target - bingo! Sure enough, tucked in the newborn aisle, were sunglasses. Only two pairs left. There was no deciding which pattern looked the best - we took what was there and checked out. Ellie kept them on the rest of the day. Literally. Except when she took them off and handed them to me so that I could put them back on.

So life is happy around here again, where sunglasses are appropriate attire for everything, including dinner.

How To Define This Working Life

I am a full-time mom. Rob is a full-time dad. Rob also works 12 hour days, 5 days a week, and sometime 4 hour days on Saturday. I work 10 hours a week. I am not a stay-at-home mom. I don't stay at home all day. I am not a housewife. Am I a homemaker? But doesn't Rob help make our house a home just as much as I do? We've never found the proper term for women that give up careers, education, or the dream of both to devote all day to nurturing children while our husbands work to pay for the nurturing our children need. I've asked around, and no one seems to be able to come up with an alternate term. My cousin Celia, a brilliant woman who was quite the executive before choosing to "stay home", and then taught English part time at a Utah college, describes herself as a Mother. That seems the most accurate. Although I don't know any men who write Father in the blank on personal information forms for occupation, and every father is definitely full-time.

The first time I confronted this term-problem was when I had to fill out a personal information form at a doctor's office right after quitting my full-time job as a litigator at a big downtown Cincinnati firm. There was a blank for Occupation. I paused. Well, I'm still a lawyer. But I don't have a paying job (a job ''outside the home" - which doesn't include all those women who continue their professions from home offices). So I shrugged and wrote "stay at home mom." But it bothered me.

Seven months after Ellie was born, I got a call from a friend who practices intellectual property law part-time. She works 5 hours a week, exclusively from home. The firm is small, woman-owned, and comprised mostly of young mothers. We have one, lone male attorney. Bless him. They were looking for a part-time estate planning attorney, and I signed on. I work 10 hours a week for The Wolfe Practice (check us out at http://www.twplaw.com - we're awesome). I spend Wednesday afternoons in the office, and log in the rest of my hours from home. Wednesdays are sometimes back to back client meetings. I am finding that I can't get any work done at home unless Ellie is down for a nap. So days are definitely busy. But fun. I'm having a blast. I'm so happy.

Who watches Ellie while I'm at the office, I'm often asked. The answer? She goes to a daycare center a half mile away from the office. The Gingerbread Academy. I think it's a wonderful, nurturing, learning place. But I notice the moment of pause that people give at my announcement that I take my child to daycare. Daycare carries quite a stigma. I find myself always backing up the announcement with a paragraph about how much I love the Academy, how I think the socialization is good for her, how they give me ideas for what games and learning activities to do with her at home. Frankly, I'm a big fan of a good daycare center. But there have been several days over the last several weeks where I've needed office time two days a week rather than one. Not only is this expensive, but I've found that, emotionally, I can't handle having Ellie in daycare two days a week. I'm sure she's fine - plenty of children spend five days a week in daycare and grow up to be wonderful, contributing citizens. But every family has to make decisions about what's right for them, and for us one afternoon a week at Gingerbread is plenty.

You can have a lengthy, passionate conversation with any mother about "what's right for us" and how to balance "family and work."

Working mothers (but don't all mothers work, regardless of whether any of that work takes place in a office?) face different experiences than working fathers (and isn't fatherhood work?). I'm not saying that fathers couldn't have the same experience as working mothers. I'm just saying that by and large they don't.

And here comes the point of this blog: two hilarious stories from recent weeks. Last Wednesday, I was running a bit behind schedule getting to work. Just as I drove out of the driveway, my gas light came on. There was no time to stop for gas, and I calculated that my gas mileage was sufficient to get me to Gingerbread, then to work, and then back to Gingerbread, and then to the gas station down the road. I was correct, by the way. By the time I left work, it was pouring sheets of rain. I decided to stop at the closest gas station to work, rather than waiting for the cheaper gas station close to home, thinking that I definitely did not want to run out of gas in the pouring rain.

After pumping the gas, I went to turn on the car. Nothing. Literally, nothing. The guy at the pump next to me said it sounded like the starter was out. And this gas station had no mechanic. Luckily, there was a mechanic at the gas station across the street. So I pulled out the umbrella, put Ellie and I under it, and walked across the busy intersection through sheets of rain in my black dry clean only suit and 3 inch black stilettos. There was a tow truck guy in the waiting room, who towed my car across the street. Turns out it was the battery, which apparently had had enough of drought and heat and rain. An hour later, I had a new battery and was back on my way.

Next story, and this probably illustrates best what I find is unique in the experience of "working moms." I had a court hearing last week, on a day that Gingerbread is full and has no opening for a part-timer like Ellie. The hearing was a 9:00 a.m. I got Ellie bathed and dressed. I realized my black jacket was still at the cleaners. So we stopped at the cleaners on the way to the highway, where I removed the jacket from the plastic and put it on. We hit major, major traffic heading downtown, and I had to call the judge's chambers and tell the clerk we were going to be late. (By they way, the clerk was whispering, because the judge had a criminal docket before our hearing, and when I got to the courtroom I found three handcuffed, prison-attired individuals waiting their turn to make their case to the judge - fascinating). I stopped outside Rob's office - again, pouring rain - and picked him up. We drove up to the courthouse, where I hopped out and headed in for the hearing. The opposing attorney, whom I'd never met before, is just coming back to work after maternity leave, and we chatted about the difficult decision of how much to work and how to find good childcare before we started talking about the case. Forty-five minutes later, I called Rob (driving around town with a sleeping Ellie) and he came to pick me up. We dropped him back at work, and headed back to the 'burbs. All in a day's work. Thank goodness for team effort!

So there you have it. A long post, and somewhat indulgent on my part. Just a few thoughts I had to put out there. Now Ellie is down for a nap, and I'm going to sign on remotely to access my desktop and client files at work. Good luck to all women out there striking a balance. Let me know if you come up with a word to define what we all are doing.