I'll just send this one last email while you plan stuff to happen all around me

As if the Diddy Day proclamation wasn't enough, Chicago is now all abuzz about our bid for the 2016 Olympics (even bringing Michael Jordan into the mix and adding some star power to the official committee).

We can't forget that our fair city will also graciously put out canapes and calligraphied place cards for next summer's BlogHer Conference and National Women's Studies Association conference. With all this good stuff going on, I may actually have to change out of my yoga pants and leave the house. In fact, I may have to leave the neighborhood park/co-op/produce market/playgroup vortex and travel to the netherlands where real people talk about things other than when Trader Joe's is going to carry tabouli and the chicken-feta-spinach sausage again already?

Actually...The Did's long gone and Air's all busy with bid paperwork and proposals and figuring out how the city might make much-needed subsidized housing for the displaced Cabrini community  million
dollar condos out of specially-built athlete housing, and really, the
conferences don't get going until next summer, so that means I still
have some time to  dig out jeans from the bottom of the hamper  to get all purty and put away my laptop.  Plenty of time left to hole up with my laptop in my overly chilled/uncomfortably hot apartment and ponder all the big buzz in the big city.

And in the meantime, my landlord's building a bachelor pad where the garage and concrete death patch yard used to be, so that's cool, right? I mean, how often do you get to wear jammies while you watch cement trucks and hot tub installers from your back porch?

So to my single friends with your dry-cleaned clothes and unending supplies of Post-It Notes and pens that write more than four items on the grocery list and to Erin, who called me yesterday and said that she "envies" my flexible work schedule*, I say, "This is my life, people. This is my big, badass city. Try not to be too jealous."

* And yes, I did tell the lovely Erin (seriously, she is incredibly lovely and I do adore her) that I envied her own desk to work on rather than a dining room table cluttered with pumpkins, gourds, sippy cups, Lil E's disconnected keyboard and endless scraps of paper with never-completed to-do lists scrawled out to taunt me. I also mentioned that while it is a privilege and a joy to work from home (pretty much) part-time and raise a toddler (mostly) full-time, I do also have a wee bit of envy for anyone who doesn't rely upon Elmo to keep the staff entertained during weekly conference calls, just hoping the attention span: Mr. Noodle air time ratio is somewhat equal. Oh, and one last thing: I also envy not having to weigh whether the last two sentences of the email you've meant to send all week is more important than whatever overpriced toy your child is throwing into the toilet amidst squeals of delight and curiosity during your "work day." Grumblings and WAHMania aside, I really do love my gig and my life. No really, I do. Honest.

Photo credit: Lindsey Kaiser / www.sxc.hu

Comments

[2Jmama]

I'm with you, with you, with you!!! I sent the parentsconnect email before I read this....sometimes the smog waves, I mean mama waves, I mean air waves, NO, zen waves between us is SO strong it is scary!