I’m back at work and have a project that goes straight through the end of January. Its pretty much 3 days a week spread across 4 days for now, then it ramps up later this month to a full 4 days. Its a lot of working time. As most of you know I work from home and as all of you know I have a 2 year old. Those things don’t mesh.
Anyone who says they can work from home with their kid around is doing a disservice to both their work AND their child. Its just not possible to be a productive worker with a kid around, and who would rather concentrate on writing emails when there’s a little boy in your face saying “mommy, lets do puzzles!” I don’t even bother trying. Asher is in preschool 2 mornings which has been a dream. I usually drop him off then work in peace all morning and pick him up on my “lunch break” when Jackie meets us at the house. She helps with his lunch and takes him out after his nap so I can keep on keepin on. 2 additional days Jackie comes for the full day and I try to split when I know they will be home.
I can do everything but conference calls at cafes and my favorite time to go is mid-afternoon. After the lunch rush and before the after-school rush. A hot chocolate with almond croissant is apparently part of most kid’s afterschool snack and they pile in like crazy and it gets loud and exciting. If I wanted loud and exciting I would have stayed home.
My other sometimes option is heading to Matthew’s design studio with him. There are big windows with city views and its super quiet but I hate going alone. Its in Dumbo which is close enough but the walk from my desk to the bathroom is really far and that’s not worth the 30min each way if I don’t have anyone to talk to when I get there. If Matthew is going (he only goes a few days a month) then its much more fun and worthwhile.
As much of a pain as it is I would not give it up for anything. I have to figure out everyone’s schedule every single day to make a work plan and between mine/matthew/asher/jackie/house cleaner/etc its so complicated and tiring sometimes. On the bright side, I do get to wear yoga pants and have lunch with Asher every day if I wanted to. I get to fold laundry on conference calls and not be bothered by people stopping by or music or the dumb office stuff I hated when I worked at an office. Or commuting. Lord I hate commuting. And wearing shoes. Who can work with shoes on? Not me anymore, that’s for sure.
We applied for Asher to go full days next year (its 830-245, so I guess full-ISH) and I really hope they have room for him. We find out mid-december and I am already fantasizing about working from home from 9-230 all by myself. Ahhh, the good life. My fingers and toes are crossed and if it comes through we might have to celebrate with a hot chocolate and an almond croissant!
Asher and I got into a bit of a routine in October and every day when Jackie left around 5 we would play outside on the stoop for a while. It started because he likes to watch her ride away on her bike but then he realized we could hang out and say hi to people, wave to dogs and count the airplanes. I liked it because 5-6 is TV time and if he wants to play outside instead that is fine by me. Then all of a sudden the leaves started to fall so we got out his little broom to sweep up the leaves which turned into flopping into the leaves which turned into throwing the leaves.
He loved it.
The weather got cold, then colder but today it was warm again. I think a high of 70. I had the morning off so we spent a few hours in the backyard sweeping leaves into bags for the winter and counting the worms, broom at the ready. Its probably the last of the days we can hang outside without a jacket. So sad!
Marcella Hazan is amazing and This recipe has been floating around on the internet for years. Guess what, all the hype is true. I read about this easy peasy tomato sauce about 20 times before I tried it last year. Its so simple and fast and we always have these ingredients in the house so its great in a pinch. Its Asher’s favorite.
Ingredients
2 cups canned imported Italian tomatoes, cut up, with their juice (a 28oz can)
5 tablespoons butter (unsalted)
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt to taste
Put the tomatoes in a saucepan, add the butter, onion, and salt, and cook uncovered at a very slow, but steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until it is thickened to your liking and the fat floats free from the tomato.
Stir from time to time, mashing up any large pieces of tomato with the back of a wooden spoon.
Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before tossing with pasta. Serve with freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese for the table.
BK notes:
Use the best tomatoes you can find. Really try and get San Marzanos.
I throw the sauce in the blender after cooking because I hate chunky pieces of tomato. Its also way more kid friendly.
Since today is all about leftovers for you people that didn’t go out…Here is something I recently started doing with soups, sauces and anything else I can think of:
Storing leftovers in flattened ziploc bags. That’s enough vegetable beef stew for a few dinners and lunches and it takes up barely any room. I can fit so much more in my microwave sized freezer now and I love it!
The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that “people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government” and “6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government” compared to those who watch no news.
This is not actually news to people who don’t watch FOX News. We all know that people that watch FOX News only watch it over real news stations because they are
a)scared of the real news
b)uneducated/ignorant
c)under a rock
d)all of the above?
Guess what, I do not watch any news. I READ news and not even every day. I am no fancy pretentious npr listening NYTimes reader (like my husband) I still know quite a bit of current events. Amazing right?
*If you read my blog and rely on FOX “news” for your information you should probably stop one of those things. We don’t mesh.
A while back I heard that somewhere in PA you can ride on Thomas the train and after some investigation I realized its a tour and they swing into our area 2-3 times a year. Last week we decided to look into tickets for this past weekend and that was that.
We told Asher that Thomas was coming from Sodor and he was going to be in this place called Pennsylvania so Friday after art class we were going to go there. We kept it pretty casual and besides finding a hotel with a pool we didn’t make too many plans.
Friday afternoon Asher and Matthew took a dip then we met my old work friend Jamie and her family for dinner. We probably haven’t seen each other in 8 years but we’ve kept in touch via the internets so when we decided to go I emailed and we made plans for our (semi) blind date. They live in the area and have a 2 year old who digs trains so we got to hang with them on Saturday too.
I like Jamie because it was barely 10am when I busted her eating cheese fries and she just laughed. That’s my kind of peeps.
As you can see its a very glamorous place.
They tell you to get there an hour before your train ride and we were like whatever but then we had to park a mile away and walk over through mud so yeah, get there a little early. The good part is that we didn’t have to wait on line. The bad part is that Asher was Very Rushed and Asher does not like to be Very Rushed so he was a grump for the first hour. Also, Matthew had to run while holding his coffee. (sad trombone)
He warmed up a bit on the ride. Since we were “not early” he didn’t really know we were riding on Thomas until we got off and walked to the front.
As you can tell by our 17 different views of Thomas we basically spent the entire time watching the trains pull in and out of the station (vu den?) The Thomas train ran every 30 minutes but they also had what Asher refers to as “Big Black Steam Engine” for obvious reasons.
Luckily Big Black Steam Engine was fairly exciting in its own right, what with a coal tender and all. There was a bunch of other stuff to do, both Thomas related and not. We poked into the music tent, the storytime tent, the train table tent and our favorite part – this ride on a small train I referred to as the Hayride Train. because that’s basically what it looked like.
They also had teeny tiny donuts. Too bad the kids didn’t like them.
The Strasburg Railroad is actually a really cool place we didn’t get to see all that much of. They also have a railway museum and there’s tons of stuff around there for kids. We saw cows, horses and goats from the car and Asher was almost as excited about that as he was the trains. I think we’ll head back when the weather is nicer and do some more exploring. We didn’t even get to pick up any jam!
