Tragic Sandwich

Tag: commute

  • If Waze Could Talk

    Interactively, I mean, not just reading its script. (Oh, and while we’re on the subject, Waze, could you bring back Terry Crews?) But if Waze could talk, this is how our conversation would have gone today:

    Me: Navigate to home.
    Waze: This way is fastest!
    Me: Are you sure? That seems unlikely.
    Waze: It’s definitely fastest!
    Me: I don’t know. I feel like it’s going to be slow.
    Waze: Absolutely the fastest way home!
    Me: Well, you seem pretty sure. I guess I’ll give it a shot.
    Waze: Oh. Huh. This way is really slow.

    So I guess crowd-sourcing isn’t always the answer.

  • My Balance, Revisited (Again)

    balance scale

    I want to blog, but it’s so hard. So. Hard.

    Time is fleeting, and filled up. Here’s what my balance looks like, for the past two weeks and the foreseeable future.

    5:00 Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button.
    5:09 Hit snooze button again. 
    5:17 Get out of bed before the alarm goes off again. Wash face, brush teeth, etc. Open dog door. Unload dishwasher and dish rack. Wash remaining dishes. If Baguette needs to take lunch to daycare, pre-heat thermos.
    5:35 Finish morning ablutions.
    5:45 Sit with Baguette so that Mr. Sandwich can get up and get ready for work. Catch up on Facebook and blogs in RSS reader. Check weather for day.
    6:10 Get up and assemble Baguette’s breakfast, snacks, water bottle, and lunch (unless it’s one of the days for which we’ve pre-paid for hot lunch). Put ABA binder in bag (if it’s Monday, put sheets and blanket in bag). Assemble my breakfast and lunch, if I got them prepared the night before
    6:30 Get dressed. Put insert in toilet seat for Baguette.
    6:45 Take Baguette’s pre-selected clothes and stage them for getting her dressed. Choose different clothes if weather forecast has changed from night before.
    6:55 Wake up Baguette. Comb her hair. Sit with her in bathroom. Get her dressed.
    7:10 Leave for daycare. Take Baguette to her classroom and set out her breakfast and water. Drop off ABA binder, bag, jacket, and any other items needed for the day.
    7:17 Drive to bus stop or to work, depending on whether I’m actually on schedule.
    8:20 Arrive at office building. Buy breakfast or parts thereof, depending on what I brought.
    8:30 Turn on computer and check email. Touch base with Mr. Sandwich, to let him know how Baguette’s morning went. Work.
    4:30 Leave work.
    6:00 Arrive home. Evening ABA session starts. Prep dinner. Participate in ABA.
    7:00 Eat dinner. Participate in ABA. Check calendar to see if Baguette has hot lunch at school. Check weather for next day. Lay out my clothes for next day. Lay out Baguette’s pajamas.
    8:00 Sign ABA provider’s timesheet. Give Baguette her bath.
    8:15 Get Baguette out of bath and get her dressed for bed. Take Wicket outside one last time. Close dog door for the night. Feed Wicket.
    8:25 Load dishwasher. Wash other dishes and put in dish rack. Play with Baguette. Check Facebook.
    9:00 Go to bed. Read to Baguette. Hope she falls asleep by 9:30. Go to sleep ASAP after that. 

    The big difference from my balance in 2011 and 2012 is ABA. It’s a big difference.

    And this isn’t just my balance. Mr. Sandwich’s day is not identical to this, but looks very similar. With a lot more laundry.

    Photo by winnifredxoxo, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • Mom-Friendly Meals: Steel-Cut Oats

    I leave before 7 a.m. for daycare dropoff and work, which means that I eat breakfast after I’m at my desk. There’s a deli on the ground floor of my building, so I’m able to buy breakfast and lunch there, but that adds up quickly.

    In an effort to keep the complex mornings as simple as possible–and to keep costs down–I’ve started making a big batch of steel-cut oats and reheating a serving once I’m at work. I also take a small container of walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon to mix in.

    Steel Cut Oats To Go

    For a while, I was making the oats in the slow cooker, but I found that they wound up mushy. If you like mushy oats, then that technique will work well for you; I’m having better luck with the following method:

    • Stovetop
    • Saucepan
    • 3 parts unsweetened almond milk
    • 1 part steel cut oats

    Put all of those together and bring to a boil; reduce heat to a low simmer and cook for 25 minutes, stirring several times. Cool and refrigerate.

    If I start this process early enough, I set aside a portion for the next day. If I don’t, I do that in the morning. Once at the office, I transfer it to a microwave-friendly dish, heat it up, and stir in the toppings.

    Someone will tell me I shouldn’t be boiling the almond milk. You can also use water.

  • Mom-Friendly Meals

    Recently, some of my friends have said, “You really seem to have this meal-planning thing down. What’s your secret?”

    I do not have the meal-planning thing down. My secret is that I have a child who is slightly older than their child.

    I think there are a lot of us in this boat. We think, “That person over there is doing this much better than I am.” And the truth is, they’re just working with different circumstances.

    One of my college friends has a daughter about two months older than Baguette. She also has an older child and a stepchild. And when her daughter was a baby, every night this friend would post on Facebook about some amazing meal she was making her family for dinner.

    Now, I know her. She wasn’t doing this to brag about how much better she was at parenting. She was doing it to show that it could be done–that often when you feel overwhelmed, it’s in your head. She wasn’t boasting, she was demonstrating.

    But what I couldn’t figure out was this: how was she managing it? Like me, she had a full-time job outside of the home. Like me, she had an infant. Unlike me, she had two other children. So how was she pulling off this amazing feat?

    As it turns out, she has a shorter commute. Like, a lot shorter. Mine is an hour each way. Hers is more like 15 minutes.

    See what I mean? Different circumstances.

    And my own circumstances have changed. Looking back, I’m not really sure what I ate when Baguette was a baby. I cooked for her, but I don’t remember what I made for myself. After a while, I found that I could use the crock pot on the weekends to make a big batch of something. That counted as cooking.

    slow cooker
    I no longer use the slow cooker for oatmeal, though.

    More recently, I’ve been able to use the stove a little. Last night I made shrimp with bell peppers and zucchini in Red Thai Curry Sauce, served over quinoa. I’m having leftovers for lunch.

    I have no idea what’s for dinner tonight.

    Again, I think there are a lot of us in this boat. So I’m starting an occasional series called “Mom-Friendly Meals.” I’m going to write about what I cook, how I choose recipes, what tools I use, how I find ingredients, and anything else that comes to mind. You can follow me on Twitter at @tragicsandwich; I’ll be using the hashtag #momfriendlymeals for these posts.

    One thing to keep in mind: These are mom-friendly recipes. At our house, we all eat different things. Baguette is going through a picky stage, and while we’re trying to move her through that, I’m not going to pretend that she ate the Thai curry with me. And Mr. Sandwich has his own palate, and tends to do his own cooking. So our kitchen is very busy, but we’ve finally started eating together as a family.

    Now we just have to clean off the rest of the kitchen table.

  • My Balance, Revisited

    Nearly a year ago, I was inspired by a post by Oil and Garlic to write about my balance. So, where do we stand now?

    1. What’s your work schedule?

    I still drop Baguette off at 7 so I can be at work at (or around) 8, and I still work until 5 and am home a little after 6. All of this is likely to change on Friday, however, because the Rampture is coming–and that means all bets are off. I have no idea what my commute will be like for the next year, except that I know it won’t be good.

    2. How do you handle childcare?

    We still love Baguette’s day care. Mr. Sandwich’s parents come over to help around the house, but are less likely to babysit on weekend evenings; they have their own busy schedules, and it’s a lot harder to keep up with a toddler than it was to monitor an infant. However, one of her favorite teachers left the day care (not for reasons that concern us), and we’ve had her over for a get-reacquainted evening so that she can sit for us on occasion.

    3. What do you find best about your current set-up?

    It works, but just barely. Because of our jobs and commutes, we just don’t have enough time with her on workday evenings. We get home, go for a walk, eat dinner, give her a bath (while the other person fixes lunches for the next day), play a little, and go to bed. There just isn’t a lot of leeway in that schedule. But at least we have a routine.

    4. What advice would you give to other moms about the juggle?

    It doesn’t last forever–at least, not in this form. For a long time, I barely cooked at all. Now, I can manage to make a big batch of food in the slow cooker on Sundays, and that means lunches for several days that week. But being able to do that, which previously I could not, tells me that some day I will be able to cook meals with more than one dish.

    5. Do you think the juggle is harder for women than for men?

    Yes. There are no Daddy Wars, not even in the media.

  • My Balance: Tragic Sandwich

    Rock-Scale

    I don’t know anyone in this photo; I just liked it!

    I got this idea from a post on Oil and Garlic; she got it from A Cup of Jo. Does that make it a meme? At any rate, here goes:

    1. What’s your work schedule?

    I start work at 8 a.m. (or thereabouts, depending on whether my bus is on time) and leave at 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Mr. Sandwich works 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., so our schedules are a little staggered. We used to commute together, but when my maternity leave ended, we needed to shift it a bit. Each of us comutes by bus, although I sometimes drive to work if I have a late-afternoon doctor’s appointment, or if I miss the bus and my day doesn’t allow for me to be 15 minutes late. Or if I’m super tired and the bus is SRO by the time it gets to my stop.

    My alarm goes off at 5:20, and I get up one snooze-button hit later. I drop Baguette off and drive like a crazy person to get to my bus stop. Mr. Sandwich picks Baguette up, and we all get home a little after 6 p.m. Then we play with her, take her and the dog for a walk, feed her, and bathe her when she needs it. (The order of these events varies depending on the day.) She hates to go to sleep, so there is usually a fairly long wind-down period, with lowered lights and hushed talking and a final bottle. We want her to go to bed between 8 and 8:30, but all too often she isn’t ready until about an hour later. Then we get our things and hers ready for the next day and watch a tiny amount of TV, and get to bed between 10:30 and 11:00–about an hour later than I’d like, but that’s how the time goes.

    2. How do you handle childcare?

    We found a wonderful day care center that is about a two-minute drive from the house. It’s like paying a second mortgage–and I am not exaggerating–but we have so much confidence in them, and Baguette really likes the teachers and her little friends. If she gets sick, one of us stays home with her. Mr. Sandwich’s parents live in town, so sometimes they will come over on the weekend and help us with supervising Baguette and completing tasks around the house.

    3. What do you find best about your current set-up?

    It works. I really like her day care, although I wish it weren’t so expensive. I wish my commute were shorter, but I live in the real world of Los Angeles, and that’s how commutes work here.

    4. What advice would you give to other moms about the juggle?

    Establish priorities, and don’t beat yourself up. I had fantasies of cooking meals for the three of us. This could work, because Baguette is a pretty flexible eater. This absolutely does not work, because I just don’t have time. I felt bad about it for far too long, and then I acknowledged that I really can’t do anything but supervise her when I’m with her–she’s just too active. So now I hope to be able to do that in the future. But it’s completely unproductive to feel bad about not doing something that I just can’t do.

    One of my friends has a daughter a couple of months older than Baguette, and she makes amazing meals every night and spends time with her children. I used to wonder how she managed it, and then I mapped the distance between her house and her work. Guess what–she doesn’t have my commute! So she’s got more time to work with. It’s not realistic to compare my life to hers, because they just aren’t the same. That’s true for everyone else, too.

    5. Do you think the juggle is harder for women than for men?

    Yes. Mr. Sandwich is a very hands-on dad, and he’s also done pretty much all of our laundry for much of the past year. But Baguette is a very hands-on baby, and she wants me when I’m home. I feel like I’ve been mommy-tracked at work, and I made every effort that I could think of to avoid that. He’s got his own work issues (don’t we all?), but I haven’t gotten the impression that he’s been daddy-tracked. That can happen, of course, but I think it’s much less common.

    Photo by neurmadic aesthetic, via Flickr.