Should I Become a Plumber?

Our shower head had been constantly dripping for a week, but now it's fixed, thanks to a plumber that our landlord called. Hooray! Now to attack the mildew that accumulated in the meantime...

Whenever we need some kind of home repair, I start to wonder why I didn't learn a trade. My "marketable skills" are rather nebulous - writing, problem solving, event planning. I mean, a lot of people share my same skill set. It makes it hard for me to know what kind of jobs to look for.

I don't think I could handle being a plumber (too many gross scenarios to encounter), but I do think I'd make a good electrician. I liked science class in school. I'm careful, so I would (hopefully) not fry myself or others. I like to analyze and solve problems. The one issue I might have is with bugs/critters/dirt. I bet electricians have to crawl around in some uncomfortable places to install or repair stuff. That would not be my favorite part of the job. Maybe with the proper protective gear, I could handle it. (Hazmat suit to avoid roaches!)

Plus, it would be cool to be a female electrician. I've never met one, so I could be a trailblazer. Then I could go speak at schools and teach kids to explore all sorts of jobs they might not have considered. 

Did you know that mean wage for electricians is about $55K (as of 2015)? And you don't even need a college degree? You can do some formal education, but you mainly learn through an apprenticeship program. Meanwhile, I have six years of higher education under my belt, but in the Memphis job market and my current line of work, I would have a hard time making $55K. Maybe I should give this new career path a bit more thought... :)

Is Competency Possible in Parenting?

Back when I used to work for a paycheck (rather than for slobbery peanut-butter-covered face rubs), I found satisfaction in a job well done. I feel confident that, after an initial learning curve, I was pretty darn competent in most of my jobs. (That one internship in grad school where I never really understood what I was supposed to be doing aside, of course.)

Lately, it's occurred to me that working a job is super different than being a parent. No duh, right? As usual, sometimes it takes me awhile to catch on to these obvious realities. At work, I had a boss, a job description, procedures/policies to follow, and results to achieve. I could measure my progress and see how I was getting better at my job. I also received feedback from managers, customers, and co-workers that let me know if I was on the right track.

Let's take one of my first jobs, the illustrious position of Courtesy Clerk at a grocery store. My brother called me a "bag lady," but I think Courtesy Clerk sounds more professional :)  When I first started the job, I received training on the company's procedures and had a chance to practice the job in a controlled environment. Once I was working in the store, supervisors were close by to provide guidance. After just a short time, I found myself improving. I could bag groceries more quickly and efficiently. I wasn't as exhausted after spending a whole shift standing up/walking. I started to recognize when little tasks needed to be completed and did them without explicit instructions. Over time, I got to try out new positions in the store, such as Janitor and Bakery Clerk. Even in new roles, my goal still remained the same, to provide excellent customer service. (Green Bow Tie Service, we called it.) And at the end of the day, I knew if I'd done a good job or not.

Why am I reminiscing about the good ol' days of <ack!> two decades ago? Because that job was both similar to and strikingly different than motherhood.

See, in pretty much any job, there is a right and wrong way to do things. Maybe what is "right" and "wrong" is just sort of arbitrary or determined by your brand standards. If you work for Coca-Cola, I bet it would be wrong to host a company function at a Pepsi-serving facility. You can learn these rules and follow them if you want to be a good worker.

But what about motherhood? Sure, moms agree on big-ticket items like "you should give your children food and liquid," but beyond that, it's impossible to reach consensus about the right/wrong way to do it. Is formula evil, or is it a modern miracle? Should I let my kids have pouches, or should they be eating regular table foods right from the start? What about organic? GMOs? Is the meat I feed them ethically-sourced? Or should we be going full-on vegan? Is juice a good choice to keep kids hydrated, or are milk and water the only acceptable beverages?

Maybe a few generations ago, there wasn't so much debate on these topics. Moms just did what their mothers before them had done, or they followed along with the norms of their communities. The information age is a stressful time to be raising children.

My rambling point is, compared to the relative certainty I had about being a good employee, I find it nearly impossible to know how I'm doing as a mom. I have moments where I feel like, "oh yeah, I got this!" But there's no one here looking over my shoulder all the time to tell me if I'm doing things "right." And even if there was, I'd probably want to Google it to verify if my motherhood supervisor was really up to date on all the latest research. I don't have a lot of policies or procedures to follow. I won't know for a long time if my mothering work is really effective. I mean, how many people do you know who seem to be totally competent and kind parents but then their kids wind up making some rather unhealthy/undesirable life choices as they get older?

In my less angst-ridden moments, I try to remind myself of some general principles I want my kids to learn like, "be kind to others" and "think before you act." And I want to be sure I'm showing them lots of love along the way. But then I start to spin my wheels when I think about all the areas of their life I can't control. They could be the victim of a crime, or hurt in an accident, or contract a serious illness. What then? How can I reconcile my instinctual desire to protect them with the reality of life here on Earth?

Motherhood is a tough job.

The Skill Set of a Twin Wrangler

Another reader-suggested post today: Reflections on transitioning from a professional who flew around the US and had a very full schedule. How have the skills of your profession helped you in your twin wrangling profession?

(Yes, the "reader" mentioned above is my mother. My biggest fan, ha ha :) )

Raising twins is a challenging profession. It's not like I filled out an application, had an interview, and HR said, "You are just what we're looking for. Here are your twins!" Ha ha! No. Apparently, God thought that DF and I were up to the task, and so here we are. The phrase baptism by fire comes to mind at times.

But yes, Mom, you make a good point. I did develop some skills in my previous jobs that I've been able to apply to motherhood x2.

Coping with Stress
I've dealt with my fair share of job-related stress through the years, whether it was dissatisfied customers whose coffee order hadn't arrived on time, or a host parent who couldn't get their exchange student to follow their household rules. In those stressful times, I found that often what the other party wanted was for me to listen to their problem, empathize with them, and then take whatever steps I could to fix it. I try to do the same with my kids. For instance, maybe they trip over a toy, fall, and bonk their head. I give them a hug while they cry, say, "Ouch! It hurt when you fell on your truck," then give them a softer toy to hold with until they're ready to hop up and run around again.

At work, I also had to learn not to internalize the stress from others. I had a coworker once who was fond of saying she had to "empty her emotional bucket." This means that you have to find ways to de-stress yourself regularly so that you don't overflow and dump your emotions all over someone who really wasn't prepared for it. Now, I certainly did not perfect this approach on the job, but I tried some techniques like not checking email outside of work hours except in extreme circumstances. That way I had time to mentally refresh before going back into the office. It's a little trickier as a mom since my hours aren't exactly, shall we say, confined to a certain window. But I will say that I feel better on the days when I spend the boys' nap time losing myself in a good book instead of frittering away the hour(s) on Facebook.

Juggling Multiple Priorities
I suppose nearly every job has days/seasons where there's too much to do and not enough time to do it. In those periods, I learned how to take a step back and assess which tasks needed to take priority. Sometimes it was obvious, like in a job with a daily time deadline for a certain task to be completed. In other cases, I had to consider multiple factors, like who would be impacted by a delay, my working relationships with those people, and if there was a way I could share some of my workload with others.

Now, consider my SAHM life. My top priorities are making sure my children are safe, fed, clothed, well-rested, and having their emotional needs met. (I was going to say "happy" for that last point, but I realized that's an unrealistic goal.) Anything that doesn't contribute to those priorities tends to take a back burner.

But what if the twins themselves are giving me two different priorities simultaneously? Well, that's a tricky one. I've had to get creative. I remember awhile back when the boys were sick, particularly Gus. It was meal time, but he didn't want to eat. He was too upset. Gibson was hungry, though, and getting mad because I wasn't feeding him. Solution? Grab the Ergo carrier, strap Gus in (meeting emotional need for safety/connection), then I've got my hands free to feed Gibson (meeting need of hunger).

Functioning on Little Sleep
Back when I was working, sometimes I had to keep on being a professional even when I was tired, like when I was crossing time zones in travel and my brain's sleep clock got out of whack. Or, I was in charge of events that went all day, but I still had work to complete in the evenings. Only rarely did I actually get awoken in the middle of the night by an exchange-student-related phone call.

The sleep-deprived life of newborn twins is sooooo much worse than anything I encountered when working. I was such a zombie those first 6 months of motherhood. It made me realize I'm tougher than I thought, however. Pre-kids, if I didn't get a decent night's sleep, the whole next day was shot. I was grouchy, my head hurt, and I had a hard time being productive. With the babies, I had to push on through the exhaustion. I was responsible for their well-being in a way that far exceeded the supervision required to make sure a bunch of foreign teenagers didn't convince the hotel shuttle driver to take them to Walmart without their chaperone's permission. The babies needed me to be alert enough that I wouldn't stick a bottle in their eye or swaddle them upside down. We muddled through that phase of life somehow!

Now that they sleep fairly well, I feel so much more human. And for those times when they have a rough night, I know that I'll be ok the next day. Yes, I'll be tired, but it won't be the bone-rattling exhaustion I've already endured. And maybe I can sneak in a nap while they're sleeping.

Parenting in the Dark

For some reason, the power seems to go out a lot here in Memphis - way more often than it ever did in Seattle. (But, sidebar, probably about as often as in the DC metro area, another well-known thunderstorm center.)

Before we had kids and the power would go out, it really didn't faze me much. If it lasted too long, DF and I could just hop in the car and drive somewhere that still had electricity. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I might not even have noticed if the power was out. Or if I did, I'd just go back to sleep and hope it came back on by morning.

Being in charge of two little ones really raises the stakes for power outages. Over the summer, I nearly had a total meltdown when a branch fell on the line supplying electricity to our house just a couple weeks after the babies came home from the hospital. In that case, we sought refuge with some kind friends who had a couple spare bedrooms. I'm so glad we found a place to go since it took over 48 hours for repairs to be completed and power to be restored! 

I might have a little PTSD over that incident because the power has gone out twice since then, and I've kind of panicked. A couple months back, I woke up to a baby crying in the night. When I went in to check on them, I noticed their sound machine was off. I thought that was strange since it was pretty new and really shouldn't have broken already. Then I also noticed their nightlight wasn't shining, and the furnace wasn't running. My sleep-deprived brain finally connected the dots that the power was out. I looked out the window to see that all the neighbors' houses were dark, too. So I grabbed my phone and called the MLGW outage reporting line. It told me they were working to fix the outage, which had started about 20 minutes ago and was affecting about 100 customers. I tried to go back to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I was worried about the babies. Were they going to be warm enough without the heat running? Should I go in and cover them up with some blankets and then hover in the nursery watching them sleep so they didn't suffocate themselves? How was I going to use my breast pump without power? What about all our food in the deep freeze? Was it going to melt? I laid awake, my mind spinning, for about an hour. Then <click, whir> the furnace started up again, and the nightlight flashed on in the hallway. Power was restored, and all was well.

Last night, we lost power again. I think I coped a little better, though I did go into hyper-vigilant-problem-solving mode immediately. I wasn't as worried about the babies since it was fairly warm last night and we didn't even have the heat turned on. But I wondered if our hot water tank would work without power. I think it runs on gas, but I'm not sure. I need hot water to warm up the bottles, so I decided that if the power was still out in the morning when the babies needed to eat, I could heat up their bottles by boiling water on the (gas) stove. There's not really anything else they need that is electric - they have clean clothes and plenty of disposable diapers standing by. During the day, we can open the curtains to let the sunlight in. As it was the power came back about 30 minutes after I woke up. So, I could sleep easy!

This morning I put batteries into the sound machine for a backup in case we have another outage. Trying to be prepared...

My point is, as a parent, I seem to have a lot more responsibility in life. It makes me kind of glad for all the problem-solving experience I gained in my last job. I never had the power go out during an exchange student event, but plenty of other unexpected things happened. When they did, I had to take charge to implement Plans B, C, and D, preferably without the students knowing anything was amiss. (Sometimes I was creating Plans C & D on the fly...) I guess I'm doing the same thing now for my own kids. Well boys, I hope I can teach you to be flexible and adaptable like good exchange students!

Opting Out, For Awhile

Yesterday I pondered the lack of paid maternity leave in the US and why I quit my job to stay home with the kids. After I posted, I realized I had other reflections about taking some time off work. Since I'm almost out of time to post for Day 8, I figured "leftovers" were as good as anything else.

My prior job was Senior Program Manager for a non-profit working with international youth exchange. I'd been there for 6 years, including the last 2 years working from home after we moved to Memphis. When I was pregnant, I kind of wondered if I could keep working and maybe hire a nanny to come to the house and watch the kids. Now that the babies are actually here, I realize that idea was insane! There is no way that scenario would work because two babies are very distracting. If I had wanted to keep working, I would've needed to send the twins to daycare, or I would've had to find an office space somewhere outside the home.

Another major issue is sleep deprivation. I am so exhausted all of the time because I'm not getting much sleep. My job used to tire me out pre-kids, so I really don't know how other moms do it - how do you go back to work with a baby at home? Do you drink a ton of coffee?

In short, I'm content to be taking a break from the world of paid employment. But at the same time, I'm kind of concerned about how I'll eventually re-enter the working world. How will I know when the time is right? What kind of job would I be able to get with a big gap on my resume? I've heard that you're supposed to try and keep your marketable skills current so you are still employable once you want to return to work. My former job involved a lot of problem solving; I think motherhood will keep those skills sharp, at least!

File under: NaBloPoMo Day 8