| 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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Thank Goodness the Glass is Still Half Empty.
In case you ever had occasion to doubt it, payback really is a bitch. After all those years I spent making fun of annoying, sappy, oh-having-kids-is-the-greatest-thing-in-the-world parents, it turns out that I am actually one of them. Somewhere between my son turning two and my daughter turning five, a pod person must have landed in my bedroom and stolen my soul while I was sleeping, replacing my dry cynicism with a sopping wet blanket.
Premieres & Anniversaries
I have so much to talk about this week; I hardly know where to start. Well, that’s not true, exactly; I do know where to start. Let’s start by saying that the timeslot for Notes from the Underbelly has moved AGAIN. Apparently, it’s got something to do with October Road performing well after Gray’s Anatomy, let’s not rock the boat, blah, blah, blah. So now the show will still be premiering this Thursday night at 10:00, as planned, but after that it will be on Wednesdays at 8:30. Because that’s not confusing to viewers or anything. But hey, what do I know.
A Day In The Life
My nanny called in sick a few days ago (worst possible start of my day is to find this on the news on my answering machine at 7:30 am) and so I got stuck – okay, stuck is maybe a harsh word but that’s how I felt at 7:30 in the morning – having to skip work to take care of my kids all day. Thankfully, my daughter was in preschool for most of the day, but my son, who is nineteen months old and ALL BOY (read: favorite activity is climbing up onto the bathroom sink and then dropping various items into the toilet) was mine for another twelve hours.
Harpalicious, Steadman and the Queen of Darkness.
The big week came and went, and all in all it worked out pretty well. Despite my best efforts to stop time, my daughter still turned five. She had a really cute little dance party at the place where she takes ballet – twenty little girls in tutus doing hip hop routines and the limbo – and I have to say that I did an excellent job with the party favor. I burned CDs that I titled Harpalicious!
And So It Airs: Part Two
So, I know I said last week that I’m not expecting my life to change at all when the show airs, and I’m still not, but I am really relieved that it is finally going to be on television, if only because people can now stop asking me why the show isn’t on television yet. Being in tv-airdate-limbo kind of reminded me of being pregnant - in that lots of well-meaning people asked me lots of well-meaning questions to which I did not have answers – and we all know how much I loved being pregnant.
The Carnival Box
Last year, one of the mothers at my kids’ preschool asked if I might be interested in co-chairing the school carnival. Why this woman thought of me, I have no idea. My former school volunteer experience consisted of hosting a parent coffee at my house and driving two kids besides my own to a class field trip. But I must have been feeling particularly competent that day, because for some unfathomable reason, I said yes. I mean, what’s one more full time job on top of being a mom and writing a book, right?
Leotards & Legwarmers
If you’re looking for a girl who’s going to complain about how she never gets to exercise anymore because, between work and the kids and the husband and the house, who has the time, well, then, sorry, but you’re barking up the wrong blog. If you’ve read either of my books, which are, admittedly, based just slightly on my own life, then you know that I’m kind of a freak about exercise. It’s an obsession that started early for me; when I was just fourteen years old, my parents bought a family membership to Bally’s Total Fitness.
Ah, Father's Day
Ah, Father’s Day. The most inequitable holiday of the year. Think about it: according to a statistic whose source I can no longer recall, mothers in dual income families do approximately seventy percent of all household and child-related duties, while fathers tackle the other thirty percent. This, by the way, is hailed as progress. Yet, somehow, mothers and fathers are celebrated by society for the exact same amount of time each year. We have Mother’s Day, and we have Father’s Day. Seems pretty unfair to me.
An Alternate Viewpoint
One of the things that I learned from having a crappy publisher who doesn’t promote my books is that if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself.
Life, Death and Seashell the Goldfish
My daughter’s preschool class just did a month-long unit on the ocean, culminating in a field trip to the aquarium last week. As a “present,” lovely male teacher gave each child an early lesson in death, oops, I mean a goldfish. My daughter, ever the enthusiast, was thrilled by her new pet. She named the thing Seashell and made a birth certificate for it and everything. Now, to lovely male teacher’s credit, he did give us typed instructions on how to take care of a goldfish, as well as an envelope full of fish food.
