WONKESS

Training the Young'uns...

Srsly, both my daughters are really really into Annie.  With absolutely no pressure from me, except being the initiator (but I've also introduced them to Mary Poppins, Sound of Music, and the Wizard of Oz, and Annie is the only live-action musical that they've asked for repeat rentings).  It seems that my daughters might be vaguely prescient, being intuitively attached to a movie/musical about a spunky girl in the midst of the depression (tho' no daddy warbucks linger in their foreseeable futures, at least I hope not).

What's particularly exceptional to me is the attachment that Kali (my 2 y.o.) has to Annie.  On the whole, Kali has a shorter attention span for television than my oldest, who has been fascinated by television and film since she was 1.  Kali can barely sit through a Dora the Explorer, and will often give up her "turn" to choose a show to her sister because she just can't be bothered.  But Kali absolutely adores Annie.  She walks around singing "Tomorrow", with not exactly the correct lyrics (if you know what I mean).

This weekend, after a pre-bed viewing of select songs from Annie, the girls were all PJ'd and brushed and tucked into bed.  I had already left the room, and J was about to, as he had talked out Loo, who was sound asleep.  But as he was leaving, he told me that Kali picked up her bunny, looked at it, and started singing, "Dumb bunny, why are you following me?"

She cracks me up.

Summer's End...

I do love the fall, and despite the brief weirdness this weekend that was Tropical Storm Hannah, the city is definitely hinting at the autumn to come.  It's still warm, but the light is different, and the breezes are different.  There are acorns falling off the trees.  I'm not sure I ever noticed that before, that acorns fall at the end of summer.

Is it possible for a four year old to have nostalgia?  Loo certainly seems to be experiencing it.  She comes into our room in the morning, floops on our bed and starts remembrances of things past.  She'll say something ridiculous like, "remember when I went to Auntie P's wedding and we went to the carnival and then we had ice cream?"  Or worse, "remember last week, when I used to like Dora the Explorer?"

*rolls eyes*

Meanwhile, her baby sister is the incarnation anti-christ, in full on biting and pinching mode - Loo, the nanny and I all have the marks to prove it.  And this is not experimental biting and pinching, this is the sly glance to the side, smirky faced, how-many-times-can-I-do-it-and get-away-with-it  biting and pinching.  She is a calculating two year old torturing machine.  I've told Loo that if her sister bites or pinches her one more time, she has my consent to knock Kali on her ass.

Unfortunately, Loo really is a pussy.  She couldn't hurt Kali any more than she could hurt the cute furry puppy from next door.

J's back in school for another year of classes and whiny students and convocations and faculty events and academic committees and student advisoring and.... oh yeah, a contract review.  I guess the count down begins: we will know in about 6 months whether or not we'll stay in Boston or if it's off to another school in another state. 

Hoarders R' Us...

I use to hoard.  Places like Costcos?  Made for (the old) me.  Even now, when I'm at my mom's, or going through an unopened box in our basement storage, I will find an unopened bottle of shampoo, a brand new notebook, a box of unused pens (stationery has always been my Waterloo), half or quarter used bottles of lotion, face wash, etc...  It hasn't helped that I've lived in several countries and several states over the past  10 years.  I'm a fast packer but a far slower unpacker, there's always a stray unopened box that contains some sooner-or-later essential that I end up restocking. 

I've been trying desperately, since Kali was born, to cure myself of my frightful hoarding.  I'm now religious about purging, especially papers.  When reading a magazine, I'll take quick notes, but then it's into the recycling bin.  When I get the chance to read a book, and if it doesn't strike me as keep-worthy (a much higher standard now), it goes into the donation/swap pile, I've started to work through the boxes of unused stationery goods instead of buying new ones.  I've also been medieval with my clothing.  I've edited down what once would have filled an entire walk in closet (and then some) down to one smallish closet and one large underbed storage drawer (well, two officially, one for winter, one for summer).

But it has been an unsatisfying, sisyphean task.  Whatever gains I make on my side is constantly being neutralized by J and the girls.  J is a srsly crazy hoarder (I blame it on his Mom, who really elevates hoarding to a sport).  J only marginally hoards material goods - he hardly has any material desires - but as an academic, he hoards books, papers, magazines, papers.  He has one of those professorial offices whose number we dare not mention - you know the kind.  He literally has a small swath of floor to walk through to get from the door to his desk, outlined by stacks upon stacks upon stacks of books and papers (despite the fact that two walls of his office are lined with floor to ceiling shelves, which are, incidentally, completely full).  And whereas once, as a beginning academic, his office contained his madness, now that he's had 6/7 years of teaching under his belt, with all the incidental new purchases, new works and old hand-me-downs, his work has spilled into our home life.  For example, we have a small, unused corner in our living room, where I used to breast-feed when the Kali was a baby.  The rocker, and the entire surrounding area has now been infiltrated by folders, tons of old newspaper, stacks of books, and various other academe sundries.

It is driving me INSANE.

And I am expressly forbidden from touching any of J's "work".  Oh, and don't think that he doesn't notice.  Just yesterday, he came home and looked on our desk and noticed that a pile of his correspondence had been moved from the middle off to the left side.  Psycho.

But this post is not about J... or at least it was not meant to be.  The thing that has me so worked up is the apparently genetic incidence of hoarding.  Because Loo (not yet Kali)... well, she has taken up hoarding with a passion. 

It's a habit of hers that I've been subconsciously aware of for a while.  For a while, I would take it upon myself to sit with their toys in the wee hours of the night to "edit" out the broken, the age-inappropriate, the mis-matched, the general "yechs".  Loo had not yet learned the fine art of categorization, so missing toys have generally gone unnoticed, until their dense excuse of a father mentions an edited toy for no apparent reason.  Alas, the time of the short memory span has come and gone.

What really brought Loo's hoarding to the forefront for me was going through her pictures on my computer last night.  That's when I noticed that in many of her pictures, she is clutching some coveted found "thing" that would ultimately wind up at home with us, in her toy box (until one of my edits).  From the pool, she's found lost balls, discarded bottles, broken necklaces, all of which she lovingly collects and obligingly brings home.  At the zoo, she found a pair of 3D glasses (one of those wear and toss kinds) that is now in our toy box.  She has a broken car that we found when watching the Memorial Day parade, a natty beach ball that was found at the beach this weekend.  And it's all documented on film!

Loo also clings, valiantly, to her possessions.  She asked for a spiderman figurine sometime last year when the latest spiderman movie came out.  Since acquiring said figurine, it has: lost its legs, its head, lost two of the three accompanying spider web accessories.  And she refuses to let me toss the sad, sad spidey torso.  With arms.  What a grotesque testament to a her possession obsession.

I am dreading the day when her little sister follows suit.

HAWT... (and not in a Tranny way)

It was a real scorcher this weekend.

In that wonderful, yes we are seriously experiencing global warming, WTF happened to spring NE way, we were introduced to the height of summer after exactly, what, 3 days of spring?  It went from 60ish degrees to 90 degrees in one day.

Which then turned this daddy's-not-around-he's-at-a-conference-the-bastard weekend into a how-do-we-keep-the-kiddies-from-frying weekend.

Which in turn meant shelling out over $200 to (re)join our local swimming hole/"acquatic center", which we probably don't get the full use of, but you haven't seen the lines to get inside when you aren't a member and it's a hawt (and not in a good way) day.

Loo got in the spirit of things quite quickly and she had a blast.  I didn't even end up having to keep much of an eye out on her, since 2 of her friends and their 'rents were also at the pool, and there was a tag team effort going on to keep track of the three girls.  Kali was more of a challenge because she fell into the water, face first, within minutes of arriving at the pool, which scared the living bejeezus out of her and me and set the tone for the rest of the day... which she spent hovering right at the edge of the pool playing with a pail and a couple of shovels.  Oh well, can't really complain - she had a blast.  If only we were all so easily amused.

After the pool, Loo kept her swimsuit on and went to a birthday party, where she proceeded to spend two hours outside, running around a back-yard which had been set up with various novelty sprinklers.  Unlike Citymama, who had to face the inevitable question of what to do with the second born when the first born gets to do enviably fun things, I was able to drop Loo off at the party (which happened to be just down the block from us) and return home with a snoozing Kali, exhasted from her pail and shovel exertions.

But here is the real kicker.  What do you do when your 3-almost-4 year old insists on going to visit her friend down the block all by herself?  Loo has done this several times now - she's figured out how to get out of our apartment and apartment building all by herself, and will literally walk down the block to see if Rebecca is around (and if Rebecca isn't, to hang out in Rebecca's awesome cool backyard which has a swingset).  Usually, I'm alert to her disappearing act and will run out of the front door just as Loo is setting her feet onto concrete.  Luckily, the street is a dead end and so has very little traffic.  Unluckily, there is no sidewalk.

We've tried everything short of actually running her over with our car to try to convey to Loo that this is unacceptably dangerous.  She is, unfortunately, fearless.

In the meantime, I've settled with teaching her that whenever she walks on the street, she must hug the curb.  She's taken this (as far as I know) to heart.  So it was only slightly surprising to me when, two hours into Rebecca's birthday party, I hear the intercom buzz, and when I run downstairs to open the door, who should I find standing there but Loo, apparently finished with playing for the day.

Which meant that I had to then grab the baby, leave Loo at home with a juice box and a video, and run down to Rebecca's house to let her parents know that they had not, in fact, lost a child under their care.

*sigh*  You know what they say about payback being a bitch.

Loo-ism of the Week and Kali-Kans

It (was) getting warmer and then *wham* we get hit today with and dark and dreary day.  Which goes hand in hand with the fact that I've been getting slammed at work for the last 2 weeks and, guess what, today we come in and find out that the deal is dead, done for, kaput.  All that work down the drain.  As a new lawyer, I'm still finding the death of deals rather depressing.  And I know I shouldn't take it personally, cuz it's not like we're not going to get paid or anything like that.

Anyways, because it's been warming up, I've been doing my traditional spring reorg - you know, putting away the too heavy jackets, hats and mittens, storing away the winter weight comforters.  I also started putting away our three space heaters (we keep one in the living room, one in the bathroom, and one in the girl's room).  The bathroom heater is a tiny one - it sits on top of the toilet, and I had taken it out of the bathroom and (temporarily) put it in the living room next to Loo's chair, where I promptly forgot about it for a week.  Loo had, during the week, pointed it out to me once or twice, asking why it wasn't in the bathroom and why it was there, next to her chair.

Last night, when we were playing in the living room, Loo accidentally stepped on the prongs of the power cord, which probably caused her some pain (though there was no puncturing of skin).  She put her little fists on her hips and said to me, "Mama, that's why I keep tell you to put it away."

I always thought I would start sounding like my mom when I became a mom, but I wasn't expecting my daughter to sound like my mom. 

***

Kalina is the ultimate can-do second child.  Or at least she is in her mind.  Truth is, she was a late bloomer (compared to Loo): whereas Loo was walking by her 10th month, Kalina didn't start walking until her 14th month.  So even at this point, where she has more or less mastered the art of toddlering, she is no where near as competent as her older sister.

But this weekend, I was watching the girls from the front steps of our apartment building as Loo zoomed down the street on her tricycle (no worries, dad was following behind), while Kali, distraught at the idea of being left behind, followed seconds later, half running, half stumbling, yelling plaintively, "me too, me too."

Her other favorite phrase is "one mo' time," which she reserves for only the interactions she loves very best, like being raspberried on her tummy, and getting superman time from mommy.

She also likes one particular page in Todd Parr's Reading Makes You Feel Good, which shows a woman soaring over a city, a map in one hand and what looks to be the Himalayas in the distance.  Kali returns to the page over and over, points to the woman and says "you can fly."

Now this is going to both show my age and show my uncoolness, but on of the Baby Talk movies (you know, with Kirsty Allen and John Travolta before he was the comeback kid), there was this toddler girl who was obsessed with Michael Jordan because she thought he could fly.  Well, Kali's newfound interest in this flying girl has me a bit worried, and I'm looking at the tall bookshelves in our apartment with newfound discomfort, hoping that Kali does not, as the movie girl did, one day take matters into her own hands to find high grounds from which to execute some sort of takeoff maneuver.

One step forward, two steps back...

You know that magic moment when your children start doing things on their own and start leaving you alone for long enough for you to take a shower, eat some lunch, blog? Yeah, not there yet. And that could not have been more clear this long, loooonnnng weekend.

Loo, despite her 3.5 + years, is incredibly needy. She demands constant entertainment, constant attention. She’s high energy, and higher demand. But slowly, we’re seeing signs that she’s willing to be engaged by things (other than the television) for more than a split second.

We went to the park Saturday morning – really the first time that we’ve spent any extended time outdoors for the last two months. It was chilly, but the sun was out and you could just feel the tinge of green in the air. Loo must have felt it too, because instead of insisting that we play with her on the swing set, she actually spent several minutes running around on the open grass.

I had never really seen her (1) run without my inducement or (2) run for such an extended amount of time, so I was positively flummoxed by her exuberance. I leaned towards J, who was pushing Kali on the swings and asked him, “What’s Loo doing?”

“Frolicking. You know, like Snoopy.”

And indeed she was.

Kali will probably be much better with the self-reliance. Even now, she’s more likely than Loo to retreat to a corner with a book or a toy and spend 10 to 15 minutes amusing herself. I wonder sometimes how much of this is due to the fact that she’s a second child and has had to be satisfied with whatever dregs of parental attention that hasn’t been siphoned off by the first-born.

Kal is also one gigantic ham. I’ve never seen anything like it. And this was discovered sort of entirely by accident. At some point this weekend, Loo fell off a chair when she was too engrossed in the computer to notice that she had pushed her chair too far away from the screen. She wasn’t really hurt, but landed on a sharp edge with one of her knees. As she wailed bloody murder, Kali toddled over to investigate. As I was consoling Loo, “aaawww…. don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s ok,” Kali squinted her eyes shut, wrinkled her nose and started making wailing noises as well. “Waaa… waa….. waaaaaaa”

Then she reached out her arms for a hug.

And for the rest of the weekend, J and I realized that if we said to Kal, “cry for mommy, Kali… cry for daddy,” Kali would squint her eyes shut, wrinkle her nose and start wailing while toddling to the nearest parent for a pick up.

Then we tried other commands, like “say hooray” and “Kali has a boo boo,” and Kali would either throw her hands up in the air and cheer, or rub her head with a distraught look on her face. Wow.

Anyone know a good child-actor agent?

*******

We had a bit of a financial set-back this weekend. J ran our numbers through TurboTax and it looks like we will owe AMT and have a tax bill of about $20,000. (And, no, this is only slightly due to capital gains and dividend income: most of this is income tax.) I have no friggin’ idea how this happened. And this is not only a travesty because of the amount of withholding that we are already subject to, but because I’m a friggin’ lawyer (theoretically) and I should friggin’ know why this is happening.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your POV, I suppose) we don’t own our home, so we have no interest payment deductions. It also looks like we might not qualify for too much deduction on the child care front, because J had taken care of a dependent care flex spending account at work.

We’re going to talk to an accountant next week, after we get back from TX, just to make sure that we’re doing this correctly. Because, seriously, we don’t friggin’ have $20,000 dollars. And I don’t really know what to do about that. When the numbers first popped up, I felt ill. I felt so ill, I had to go lie down. I thought I would burst into tears.

It was so painful to remember all that we have been through this past year, all the turmoil and strife, and all the sacrifice that we’ve asked of our children. Yet, just when it was looking like we would be able to finally get a handle on our financial situation, when we finally started on our goal to getting out of debt and getting out of this situation of constantly clawing and scratching our way to the surface to get some air, we could get knocked back down with one tax bill.

If it turns out that this tax bill is correct, J and I have to seriously reconsider everything, and sooner rather than later, because this definitely tips the scale towards having one parent stay at home with the girls, at least for the next two to three years.  And you know J and I are not ready to have that conversation.

We're also not so sure where we're suppose to come up with the money to pay the taxman.  Our (nonexistent) cash and J might be able to get a loan from his dad? 

Seriously, it's like being punched in the balls.

Dark and twisty me...

I heart Grey's Anatomy, though for a long time, I had a real problem with Meredith.  I mean, she's always up to so much damn drama, and wtf with the whole I love him/I love him not relationship with McDreamy.  Hard time committing to a guy like that?  Please.  But then I remembered that as often as not, when I dislike someone, it is because that person reminds me of characteristics of myself that I don't like.  Not that I'm a drama queen - sometimes I'm so non-drama, my husband has to poke me to convince himself that I'm alive.  No, it's the dark and twisty.  I'm dark and twisty.

So now that the tumultuous year of the first year associate is drawing to a close, and we're all breathing a collective sigh of relief, hubs and I are finally revisiting the issue of how we should be restructuring our lives.  It's been a hell of a year, with childcare cobbled together through friends, family, a generous nanny, and some crying jags at the office.  My mother, who helped us for well over a month, was unfortunately here during the cold season and caught a nasty bug from the babes that has, in quite dramatic fashion, apparently turned her asthmatic (I had never heard of such a thing, but it is what her doctor says).  She has come to me, quite apologetically, and said that she didn't think she would be able to do that again, which given her age and health, is hardly surprising.  J's family are no help whatsoever: the MIL is a raving lunatic and has very bizarre notions of what "watching" the grandchildren means (mostly it means doing absolutely everything that I ask her not to do with them) and the FIL (they're divorced) is so distant from his son that J has said that he's uncomfortable asking his father to sit with the girls for even a few hours because FIL has never indicated any interest in helping out. 

Last night, at the firm holiday party, I ran into the partner who helped me get this job (he's on the board of overseers at J's school) for the first time since I joined.  He asked me how things are going and of course, I cautiously divulged that things have been rough between the hours and the girls.  He made some noise about how the firm was looking into ways of helping associates find better work-life balance and I could barely suppress my whatever guffaw (yes, there is theoretically "part-time" available here, but you can't take it until after you've been at the firm a couple of years, and I heard a nightmare story this year about a part-time associate who still billed over 2000 hours for the year).  The motto of my firm should be: if you have a life, you must not be working hard enough.

The "talk", as I lovingly refer to our ongoing conversation about our jobs, has been progressing in fits and starts, mostly because there is actually very little time when hubs and I overlap, are not busy with the kiddos and are not exhasted.  But with two slow weeks behind me, and a renewed sense of energy, I've tackled the "talk" with new vigour.  Basically, I'm trying to convince J that it's time to let go of the dream.  J has agreed that everything I say logically makes sense.  I make more than double what he does, and my bennys are better.  Furthermore, despite the income disparity, J often works into the night, usually past the girls' bedtime (though he has, thankfully, been around almost all weekends).  But everytime we have the conversation, he looks at me as if I'm repeatedly slashing him with a large and very sharp kitchen knife.  His arguments: but if I leave now, I'll never have another chance at the academe; what if we enter a recession, you get laid off, and we need my job; I have no other marketable skills.  Fine, I say.  You don't have to leave your job if you could just get yourself a more stable tenure-track position.  J's been at this for a decade now.  A decade of low-paying, three-year long associate positions with no possibility of extension.  Each in a different part of the country.  In short, I (bitch) want J to be successful.  Unfortunately, J's published very little, has a caustic and wry personality (which has caused an inordinate amount of fisson in his work places) and is not personable enough to be a star teacher.  So I tell J that if he can't do it, then he needs to be at home with the kids so that I have reign to be successful instead.  At this point, he huffs and puffs, yells about how I'm a superficial bitch and how I knew what I was getting into when we got married and shouldn't be changing the terms now, and then refuses to talk.

The truth is, I don't really want to be the sole provider.  I miss being a mommy.  I was, for the most part, a full time mommy to Loo for the first two years of her life and to Kali for the first six months of hers.  I can't imaging being a SAHM, but it has been physically painful to abdicate the role completely, which I seem to have done over the past few months.  I would love it if J and I could just both find reasonable jobs with reasonable hours so that we could be home more.  As it is, I feel that K&L and experiencing real reprecussions of having absentee parents: Loo, who has been potty trained for over a year, has been having daily accidents for the past few weeks and Kal has such a insatiable appetite that her pudgiliciousness is interfering with her toddling.  There is no proof that these are connected to our parenting, but call it a mother's sixth sense.

I know that this isn't forever.  Just like (it seems) every other biglaw associate out there, I'm just in it for the short term experience and cache, which will hopefully get me to something more stable, manageable and family friendly.  But right now, the short term has filled every corner of my foreseeable horizon, and it's hard to be optimistic.  See, dark and twisty.  Dark and twisty me.

***

We went to a holiday party this weekend at a local hotel.  It was an adult affair, but they actually welcomed children with open arms so we decided to bring K&L (well, it was also partly because we just couldn't line up any babysitting).  I was a little apprehensive about the food situation, so I went armed with sammies and jarred babyfood.  As it turned out, the kidlets were thrilled with the butternut squash soup and there was some nicely grilled flounder? trout? that they gobbled down as well.  Of course, Loo couldn't sit still for even a minute (and where Loo goes, Kal goes as well) and so it was me with a plate of food chasing after them for a good portion of dinner. 

At one point Loo befriended one of the other little girls at the party, a 7-year old, T.  They were inseparable for the rest of the night (with T acting as hen mother).  Loo has been calling T. her "best friend" for the last three days. 

When dinner segued into dancing, who was first on the dance floor, with all of her foot stomping glory by little (and by little, I mean roly-poly) Kal.  My baby is a dancing fool.

We left at 11 and the girls did not nod off until midnight. Bad parents.  But a good time was had by all.

Twisted Sisters...

When Kali was making her way into the world, we did everything by the books to prepare Loo for her arrival.  We bought the big sister books, we showed her mommy's growing tummy, we tried to teach her the concept of sharing and prepare her for the time that mei-mei (Chinese for little sister) would necessarily demand from mama and papa.

We needn't have worried - Loo has been completely enamoured of Kal since she arrived.  Many of our early pictures of Kal also include Loo hugging her, smooshing her face up to Kal's, holding Kal's hand.  And to this day, Loo continues to look out for her mei-mei.  She will run around to get Kal's shoes when we are going out, she'll get toys for Kal to play with if Kal's bored.  Loo gets a bit grabby when the two of them want to play the same toy, but it's not bad, and she'll usually even give up a toy, with only a bit of prodding.  She had no problems when Kal had her birthday, even though it meant so many many presents for the little one and so few (the conventional one) for her.

If only the same could be said for Kal.  Kal has a serious mean streak in her.  Like teeny meany mean.  When Loo was teething, it only took a week or so to teach her that it isn't right to chomp on other people in order to alleviate the itching.  She took to chomping inanimate objects like a real champ.  But for Kali, no matter what we do, she keeps taking large bites out of everyone: me, her dad, her nanny, the next door neighbor.  Always followed by a gleeful sly smile when she gets reprimanded.  And these aren't playful nibbles - they are full on, leave teeth mark, draw blood bites.  My daughter the vampire.

Usually, this doesn't affect Loo at all.  Kali likes to bite the people who are holding her on their shoulder, and Loo is clearly not holding Kali at all.  But yesterday, the two of them were playing around the kitchen table when Loo stuck her finger in Kali's face.  Kali took one look at the succulent morsel and bit down hard on the proffered digit.  Poor Loo.  I have never seen her howl like that.  She extracted from Kali's mouth one very red finger with prominent teeth marks. 

Kali is starting to do toddler things like toddling, first words, real (unpureed) solid foods.  And she seems, for the most part, disinterested in her older sister.  I have read so many stories of younger siblings whose suns and moons rise and fall with their older siblings.  Kali couldn't care less what's going on with her sister.  She doesn't toddle after Loo, she doesn't squeal in delight when she sees Loo after Loo's been gone for a while, she fights off Loo's displays of affection.  It makes me sad.

Partly, I wonder if this is temporary or permanent.  Will they actually be close as grown-up sisters?  I've never been close to my own sister, partly because of sibling rivalry, and partly because of a whole race/identity thing that we both went through in our late teens, but I remember being close as children.  I've always envied those who had great relationships with their own siblings and hoped for the same for the kidlets.  Is this lack of enthusiasm on Kali's part only a pre-vision of what is to come?

I hope not for Loo's sake.  The kids got a heart as big as a mountain.  From whence it comes, I know not (since both her mama and dada have unfortunate tendencies to be reserved and sometimes petty).  It's a wonderful thing.  But as in life, you get rejected enough times and it makes you not want to give so much anymore. 

On a completely different note, a colleague showed me the following FO (fuck-off) resignation letter from an investment banker yesterday.  I believe this has been circulated for a few weeks now, but it just made me LMAO!  I'm not the confrontational type and I would never have the cojones to do something like this, but I applaud the verve.

From: Mauldin, Jonathan-IBD+
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 7:03 AM
To: [Redacted]
Cc: [Redacted]

Subject: Sorry everyone

I'm leaving the bank now.

I'm not made to do this. If I put my mind to something as much as I do here to mindless text editing, copy and pasting, and getting yelled at for stuff other people can't/won't/don't do, I would be much better off. It's 6:43 a.m. on a Sunday, and I have at least 14 more hours of work to do today that will not be fulfilling, useful, appreciated, recognized, or paid for.

Sorry this is last minute, but it's just not worth doing more

My blackberry is on my desk

Apparently that failed staffing request was fatal (no, not as in I'm going to kill myself, hehe, I'm just going to go enjoy life). There is no happiness here.

I took all my personal stuff. No one needs to contact me for anything (except for a drink for those of you with my personal number). I will only be at my New York address a few days longer.

Good luck y'all,

Jonathan Napier Mauldin

UBS Investment Bank
Global Healthcare Group
299 Park Avenue, 36th Floor
New York, NY 10171
(P) 212.821.5273
(F) 212.821.5482
Jonathan.Mauldin@ubs.com

P.S. I’ll be waiting for some smart-ass associate to send a “best-practice e-mail for how to quit properly”. Thank you XXXX, XXXXX, and XXXXX for your previous e-mails. I will be sure to keep your tips in mind.

Silence...

As the years tick off, we are reminded that we do move on, that even when the world can seem to have been frozen into one terrifying moment, life ignores our pain and our sorrow and ploughs forward with a singular determination.

Kali was born one year ago today.  She was due to be born one year ago yesterday.  I'm not a superstitious person.  I was neither phased nor upset when my OB/GYN told me her due date.  It only made me sad that my daughters would have to grow up in a world where an otherwise innocuous date will always evoke feelings of ... FEAR ... HATRED ... PAIN ... SADDNESS.

Elizabeth at Motherhood is not for Wimps has said it all for me.  Thank you, Elizabeth, for expressing in concrete words what we all, as women, as mothers, as people long for.