Archive for February, 2010

The 36-Hour Day

with Lylah M. Alphonse

I'm a full-time editor, a part-time writer, and a mom and stepmom to five amazing kids, ages 1 to 14. For me it's not about finding balance, it's about the daily juggle-- my career, my commute, freelance work, homework, housework, married life, social life, and parenting-- and finding the time to get it all done.

To learn more about Lylah, check out her Work It, Mom! profile and read her blog at writeeditrepeat.blogspot.com.

The best jobs for women: We’ve discovered them, we just can’t seem to get them.

Categories: Career, The Juggle, Uncategorized, Working? Living?

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In the interest of “finding the best jobs women haven’t yet discovered,” ForbesWoman last week published a list of 20 best-paying careers that women aren’t in. The ones they picked were based on a 2008 Department of Labor list of jobs in which women make up less than a quarter of the field, and data about earnings by occupation.

Number one on the list? Chief Executive.

As if women could just walk in to a company and apply for that job, but haven’t because they just don’t know about it yet.
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How do you juggle when your kids are sick?

Categories: Hacking Life, Making Time, Parenting, Uncategorized

13 Comments

The preschool called before noon on Tuesday, saying that my 3-year-old son had a fever and needed to be picked up. I was working from home that day — I had a feeling something like this might happen, since he seemed off but OK and eager to go to school — and so I made the 5-minute drive to get him, and settled him on the couch for a cuddle and a nap.


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What’s on your plate?

Categories: Hacking Life, Making Time, The Juggle, Working? Living?

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I have a lot on my plate. I won’t go into the details here, but frankly, there are times when I’m overwhelmed by the length of my to-do list, and right now is one of them.

Like many others, I turn to Facebook to procrastinate… I mean “to seek support and encouragement from my peers”… OK, I mean “to commiserate and complain.” The other day I updated my status on Facebook to read: “needs a bigger plate.” And an old friend of mine from college commented, “No… you just need to tell yourself that it’s OKAY to put less stuff on it.”
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Losing the end-of-the-week baggage

Categories: Hacking Life, Making Time, Uncategorized

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While I was driving home from work on Friday, my husband called and suggested I meet him and the kids at a little local restaurant we used to love. Money is tight, so we rarely go out to eat now, but we’ve been in a bit of a rut lately and it seemed like just the kind of treat we all needed. The weariness of the long week seemed to fall away as I drove.

Usually on Fridays, my husband picks up the kids from school and I try and fail to get out of work at a halfway decent hour and end up racing home to make bedtime instead of dinner. The kids are happy to see me and the welcome is always warm, but I hate ending the week that way. This past week, though, my department got done early; a last-minute family date felt like icing on the cake.
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Tim Tebow’s Super Bowl commerical: What was so controversial?

Categories: Hacking Life, The Juggle, Uncategorized

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I tuned in to the Super Bowl yesterday in order to root for, well, pretty much either team — as my husband likes to say, I’m deeply ambivelent about football — but also because I wanted to see the controversial ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mom, Pam.

I’ve held off on writing about it, so far. I wanted to see it first, in order to separate the ad itself from the controversey surrounding it. Some women’s groups were calling on CBS to pull the ad, which news reports said featured a strong anti-abortion message and was paid for by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. Planned Parenthood preemptively launched an ad of its own on YouTube, before the Super Bowl, featuring atheletes talking about the importance of trusting women to make their own decisions.

So I settled in, ready to be riled up.


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Do you blog? Why or why not?

Categories: Career, Hacking Life, Making Time, The Juggle, Uncategorized, Working? Living?

21 Comments

Last week, I spoke to a roomful of marketing and public relations professionals as part of a panel on Mommy Blogging — even though I’ve never thought of myself as a Mommy Blogger.

I was in some amazing company: Marketing guru Susan Getgood, one of the cofounders of Blog with Integrity, was the moderator, and the other panelists were Jodi Grundig of Multitasking Mommy, Audrey McClelland of Mom Generations, and Christy Matte of Quirky Fusion and More than Mommy. (Jennifer Leal of Savor the Thyme was slated to join us, but was thwarted by traffic and weather.)

What I learned — and what I really, really hope the PR and marketing people learned — is that there really is no one type of Mommy Blogger.
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