January is one of the more dismal months. No more decorations. Back to the regular routine. Diets and exercise. Bills. There’s MLK Jr.’s birthday to look forward to, of course, but other than that it’s just one long stretch of deprivation and paying the piper.

This is why I recommend that January be a month of small treats. “Small” because it’s a month of many kinds of restrictions, and we are not going to get anywhere by thwarting all of them. “Treats” because if we don’t find ANY small way around those restrictions we’re going to lose our will to live.

(And make sure you price it right: if it’s something you’d need buy anyway, the treat is only the amount EXTRA it costs. That is, if your regular fabric softener is $6, but the scent you really love is $8, buying it is only a $2 treat, not an $8 treat. If packing a lunch would cost you $2, but buying a lunch is $6, buying it is only a $4 treat, not a $6 treat.)

(photo from MrsMeyers.com)

Treat Idea #1: A nice smell. If you have perfume you don’t usually wear, wear it sometimes. Or buy a new candle, or get some perfume samples to try, or choose a new hand soap, or a new air freshener, or a new fabric softener. We are not thinking BIG here: even very small and ordinary things can be cheering.
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This week a little virus sped through our household: sore throats and 103-degree fevers for everyone except me. If I ever wondered if I might have been a good and kind and angelic nurse in, say, an army tent with rows of patients, the answer is “Probably not.” Six people asking for more juice, more water, a blanket, the remote, maybe another piece of toast, was pretty much all I could handle pleasantly, and probably the adverb “pleasantly” is pushing it a bit, even in much nicer conditions and with much less upsetting illness/injuries than would be in an army tent.

There are certain things I keep in the house always, so I have them on hand when illness visits us and don’t have to add “running to the store” to my toast-fetching list:
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(The winner of last week’s Valentine’s Day contest is Karen of the February 8th, 5:46 pm comment! I’ve emailed my boss so she can send you your Amazon.com gift certificate!)

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Here is something I’ve noticed: that working mothers will sometimes say they wish they could stay at home, and that at-home mothers will sometimes say they wish they could work—but what they really mean seems to vary widely.

Sometimes these wishes seem like the normal “path not taken” wishes, or “grass is always greener” wishes: the other way looks temporarily better to us, even though it’s not really what we want. That’s one I think we can all identify with. Working mothers would like it to be known that a part of them wishes they could stay at home instead—whether they mean they mean financially, or whether they’re talking about personal preferences, or whether they’re talking about ability. At-home mothers would like it to be known that a part of them wishes they could work instead—whether they mean for the financial aspect, or whether they’re talking about personal preferences, or whether they’re talking about ability. Women doing a combination would like it to be known that a part of them wishes they could change the balance, or do more, or do less.

Sometimes it seems like what we’re really saying is, “I would like people to realize that the path I’m on is not an easy one.” Again, I think this is something we can all identify with. None of the options are all good and no bad, or else we’d all be doing that one. Some days we want it understood that even if someone else is looking at us with grass-is-greener eyes, we don’t like the trade-offs required and they wouldn’t either.

Sometimes these wishes are deep-down genuine: our life choices and/or circumstances have led us to a situation that is not what we want, and we wish it were otherwise. This is the saddest one, I think.

Sometimes these wishes are designed to hurt others: we want to do it the way we’re doing it, or maybe we don’t, but in any case we want to make the women who are on the other path feel bad about it, and like they’re the ones who got the lucky break, or like their path has no trade-offs, or like they’re the ones who got to make a choice while we got screwed, or like the few vocal jerks on their path also represent everyone else on that path. This is the one that causes all those idiotic and tired debates.

Here is what I would like us to talk about today: What does each of us REALLY want? Leaving aside finances. Leaving aside circumstances. Leaving aside ability. If you could have your own ideal balance of working and being at home—what would you want? Would you want to work, with all the advantages and disadvantages that come with it? Would you want to stay at home, with all the advantages and disadvantages that come with it? Would you want to work part-time or from home, with all THOSE advantages and disadvantages? Close your eyes: pretend there are none of the usual limits constraining your choice. What would you, personally, WANT?

(I hope that during this discussion we keep in mind that we can all tell when someone is phrasing her answer in a way meant to make other women angry and upset. What we’re asking here is not “What do you think all women should do?” or “What do you think women SHOULDN’T do?” or “How can you state your own preferences in a way that disparages other preferences?,” but rather “What would YOU specifically want? What would be YOUR individual ideal FOR YOU? What, after weighing the pros and cons of all the options, do you think would be YOUR best choice?”)

Two goals for back-to-school shopping:

1. Saving money.
2. Bein’ all green ‘n’ stuff.

Sometimes these two goals are in conflict, as when the Super-Speshull Recycled Lunch System of Environmental Awesomeness is $kerjillion and the plain no-environmental-awesomeness one is $5. But other times these two goals work together like pencils and paper.

Tip the first: Reuse instead of purchase. If school shopping is fun for you like it’s fun for me, or if you have kids who want the fun of something new, this will be a challenge. But the best way to be all kissy-kissy to the environment is to use things until they are USED UP, and this saves money too. Sometimes stuff is so beat up by the end of a school year it has to be replaced, but sometimes it can go another year, or two, or three, which brings me to tip the second.
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I didn’t get too fretful reading that if I’m going to use reusable bags I’d better spend $20 or more on each one or else I’m doing Something Bad—especially when it seems to me that the ones TRULY SUFFERING when I buy a reusable bag for $1-5 are the companies that sell the same thing for more than $20.

I did however feel some concern when I read about how very, very, VERY many reusable bags will be purchased in a fit of Earth Day spirit (or given away as advertising) and then will not in fact be used—so that we still have the original problem of plastic bags stacking up underground like the neverending leaves of deciduous plastic trees, PLUS the problem of all these REUSABLE BAGS. One store I shopped at this week was giving out a reusable bag to each customer without even asking if the customer wanted one; I wonder how many of those bags were pitched out as soon as the customers returned home?
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I’m getting so frustrated. I have work to do, and I’m trying to do it in an office packed with three people who WON’T SHUT UP and who keep interrupting me to ask for help with THEIR work. And since part of my job is to oversee and assist their work, I HAVE to do it, I HAVE to stop my work to help with theirs. Sometimes I can say, “I think you can do that yourself, remember how I showed you before?,” but that’s an interruption too: stopping my work to hear the request, analyzing the request, answering the request. And then having to go deal with the results of them handling it themselves. They are only four years old, only two years old—they still need a hands-on management type.

I count the interruptions: how many times will I have to get up and go take care of something, or answer a question, or moderate an argument? I will keep track: one, two, three…. twelve times in fifteen minutes. These are not good working conditions. My brain feels jittery, scattered, splintered; I’m trying to hold on to so many thoughts at the same time and they’re getting lost.

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[A note on this post: Do you get Night Sadness? Where it's the evening and you feel like everything is crappy and hopeless for no particular reason? It's kind of like depression except that it's only occasional and it goes away by morning. Anyway, when I wrote this post I had Night Sadness, and when morning came I felt happy about the holidays again---though I do still find I'm connecting each happy thing ("Almost time to put up the lights, yay!") with the corresponding sad thing ("Ug, and then we'll have to take them down, and they always look so tacky and sad as soon as Christmas is over"). And so then I felt a little silly about this post, but I'm on a deadline here so I'm going with what I've got---particularly because I am certain to feel this way again and again before it's January and we can relax and enjoy the inventory clearance sales.]

I’ve been up to my hairline in holiday shopping and I’m sick of it.
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Before my first son was born I was working full time, we had no childcare costs, my husband was well-rewarded at his job, and our investment portfolio had yet to begin its terrifying toilet-bowl downward spiral. I only have to consider the stroller we got back then in order to truly visualize how things have changed. It’s not that we’re in trouble now, it’s just that with my 3-day-a-week salary, my husband’s exciting-but-scary startup, two kids in daycare, college savings plans, and a staggering monthly grocery bill (the children eat NOTHING, and yet I keep TRYING TO FEED THEM!), there’s no way in h-e-double-hockeysticks I’d buy such a spendy stroller today.

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I have often thought that caring for a baby in their first year of life is like watching the lights come on in a house, one by one. First they’re all unfocused and mewly, then they’re laughing and doing that funny stationary leg-marching business, and soon they’re entirely purposeful and able to reach right out and grab what they want. Click, click, click, one room after another gets lit up in their brains, and their worlds open wider and wider.

If that’s true, then the stage around 18 months is like having all the lights on at once, blazing away, while a mad scientist operates the giant electrical switch powering it all. “MOO HOO HA HA HAAAA!” shrieks the apparition in the white coat, hair standing on end and eyes pointing in two different directions. “HA HA HA—WAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Young toddlers are insane, is what I’m saying. They’re physically capable of outrunning you, yet they have no sense of self-preservation. Their emotions are as wild and unpredictable as a storm on the high seas, and the smallest trespass will send them flinging their bodies to the floor in order to throw a tantrum loud enough to detonate an adult’s eardrums at fifty paces. They kick, they slap, they throw things, they scream, they eat things that aren’t meant to be eaten while hysterically refusing things that ARE meant to be eaten.

Thank god they’re still formed entirely of Pillsbury thigh-rolls with baby-soft faces and the occasional desire to cuddle, because in my limited experience this is the age which most strongly begs the question, Would It Be Wrong To FedEx My Child to Octo-Mom, Since She Apparently Can’t Get Enough of this Crap?

So! Let’s talk about ways to survive the 18-month zone, and by that I mostly mean “let’s open up comments because I sure don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
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January can be a sad month:  the post-holiday letdown, the weather, the mid-school-year slump, the lower sunshine levels.  It can also be a BROKE month as the bills start to come in from December.  Here are some easy and inexpensive ways to decrease the sad without increasing the broke.

1.  Sunshine.  If it’s in short supply where you are, you may need to grab your moments.  We have one particular window that’s aimed to catch any midday sun there is, and on bad days you can find me with my face almost pressed against the glass.  I close my eyes and upturn my face and admire the pretty pink-orange color of the inside of my eyelids.  The light and warmth and vitamin D are like a shot of…wheatgrass, or something.  Without the gagging.
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