Earlier this week I was making plans to meet up for coffee with a friend and she’d suggested Sunday night. I told her that Sundays are when I cook up a storm for the week and we kept flipping pages in our planners to find another time to meet up. (By the way, two busy working moms trying to find an hour to meet up for coffee could make for a really funny five-minute skit.)

Once we had our coffee date nailed down my friend asked me about my Sunday cooking nights. I told her that the one thing I’ve refused to give up are homemade meals for my kiddo. We’re not always there to have dinner together — actually, we only get to do this two, three times a week — but there’s always dinner in the fridge for our babysitter to give to my daughter. I don’t know what it is with me and cooking but I grew up this way and somehow I feel like having a homemade dinner is like a root of some kind. All day we run around — my husband and I at work, our kiddo at school and activities — and even if we can’t all be together for dinner, being able to eat something that I’ve made can ground us all as a family somehow.

That’s all nice and well but here’s a little secret: I kind of hate cooking. Not all cooking — for example, I love to try out new recipes and invite friends or family over for a fun dinner party from time to time. But this weekly cooking deal? I’m pretty tired of it. It’s 10pm on Sunday and I’d much rather be watching some silly TV than cooking. There, now I’ve told you.

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Last week at work we had what’s called creative week. Basically for five days we put every existing project aside, cancel all meetings, vow to not answer emails or pick up the phone and go from brainstorming ideas (on Monday) to building a fairly well functioning software prototype (by Friday). It is INSANE in every sense of what insane means — insanely fun, exhausting, challenging, and all-encompassing. I slept a combined 16 hours from Monday through Friday and by the time my team presented our demo I had a hard time remembering what day it was.

Now, to be fair and totally honest, not all of the week was work. I work in a social computing lab where my colleagues are spread between three locations and for creative week we all got together in one. Insane work + lots of colleagues who don’t know each other too well + the need to decompress = there was some serious late-night fun involved in being creative. The closest comparison I have to what it was all like is being part of a new start-up where everyone is highly energized, regular life is put on hold, and you think that things like sleep, regular food, exercise, and you know, talking to anyone outside of your team are luxury extras.
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I am probably behind the times because the first time I heard the words “silly bands” was about two weeks ago, when my daughter asked me why she didn’t have them. I asked her what she meant and she told me that EVERYONE in her kindergarten class had silly bands and she really wanted some. I truly had no idea what she was talking about but she did her best to describe them to me. It wasn’t immediately clear why “rubber bands which are different colors and some are sparkly and some smell funny and they are really cool” was such a special thing that everyone had it, but I told my daughter that she didn’t have them because I’d never seen them before.

“Well, can you please get me some, mama?” she asked, eagerly, “because I really really really want some.”

This isn’t the first time that our kiddo has come home asking for something she saw other kids playing with or eating.
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A few weeks ago I came across a study about breadwinner moms, a topic you guys know I care deeply about. One of the statistics in the study that caught my attention had nothing to do with being a breadwinner but everything to do with being a mom: 74% of working moms surveyed said they would not want their kids to follow in their career paths.

Wow.

I found this really surprising. I know a few working moms who have said that they wish an easier career path for their kids, one that involves less fighting of stereotypes and more fulfillment. Now that I think of it, all of the moms I am thinking about work in the extremely cut-throat and male-dominated fields of finance or financial services, so this make some sense. But 74% is a big number.
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