| Tales from the Mommy Track is a weekly column about the daily life of a part-time working mom. Risa Green is a critically acclaimed author who lives in Los Angeles. Her previous adult novels, Notes from the Underbelly and Tales from the Crib were made into a television series. Her latest novel, The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball, is a Young Adult book that will be released in September, 2010. |  |
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My Working Mother Model.
I grew up with a working mother. When I was really little – before I can remember, even – she took some time off from being a English teacher to stay home with me, and then my brother. But somewhere in there she got bored, or needed the money, or both, and she took a part-time job for a while as a proofreader, and then as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. Eventually, though, and while I was still in grade school, she went back to teaching, full time. more
Watch Your Mouth.
My husband has a lot of wonderful qualities: he’s caring, he’s thoughtful, he’s generous, he has good taste in jewelry. But he also has some, uh, not so great qualities, as well: his taste in music, his habit of putting his dirty clothes on the floor next to the hamper, his picky palate. But perhaps his worst quality – or, at least, the quality of his that offends me the most – is his mouth.
It's A Post-Balance World.
We got a Wii Fit board like, eight months ago, and after gorging myself on turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie all weekend, I decided that I should probably take it out of the box and give it a try. I created a Mii (an avatar that’s supposed to represent me on screen while I work out) and then I selected a personal trainer. more
Jonas Brothers Concert: Play by Play
7:00 pm. Me: jeans, painfully high, black patent heels, white tank top, grey blazer, very heavy black bag. My mommytrack’d partner in crime: jeans, painfully high, black heels, grey tee shirt, black cardigan, very heavy black bag. Dinner: a trendy sushi restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Several cosmopolitans and lychee mojitos are imbibed.
Election Day Electricity.
Everywhere I go today, the city seems electrified. I pass libraries, schools, churches and rec centers that I never before knew were polling places; but today, the lines that wrap around the block give them away. more
Back to High School.
While most people in America have been counting down to the Presidential election, in our house, the excitement has been building towards a different event: the release of High School Musical 3: Senior Year. more
I Hate Girls.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Last year, when my daughter was in kindergarten, everything was great. It was a new school, where she didn’t know anyone except for one boy from preschool, who wasn’t even in her class. more
Sarah Palin's Papoose.
I know, I know, everybody’s talking about O-calm-a and John McBlinky, about William Ayers and Joe the Plumber, about whose attack ads are more negative, whose campaigns are more corrupt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. more
What Will We Tell Our Daughters?
If there is a god of after school activity schedule coordinating, he must have been smiling down on me when I discovered a gym that offers gymnastics classes for four year-old boys and six year-old girls, at exactly the same time. more
