While I love this blog part of me wants to move on. Is that blogging suicide? I already committed that by switching to WP.

I have so much going on in my life and I want to write write write about it without wondering ‘wait, is this mommy-related?’ because that isn’t fair to me. I know that no one else is censoring me but while I like the idea of a topical blog I HATE IT in practice. Let me be free, dammit!

Many of you have multiple blogs and post frequently on all of them and I marvel at your abilities to generate that much fresh content. I, on the other hand, can’t. I have a separate blog (it’s a Tumblr page) for weight loss-related entries but I would like to talk about that stuff on my ‘catch-all’ blog too.

I will let this simmer for a bit but I think it’s going to happen. I just hope that my web guy doesn’t get pissed at me. I’ll buy you a beer for your hard work, dude.

Of course, I will keep you all posted.

I always wondered how working moms ‘do it all.’ Truthfully? I can’t.

I go to work and often go to the gym during my lunch break because there isn’t another opportunity during the day unless I want to get up at 5am. Once I pick up the kiddo and arrive at home it is already after six o’clock. Dinner takes way too long to prepare and then I eat as quickly as I can so that I can clean up and do the dishes while Avery finishes her meal. Bath time is when I try to slow down and just let her splash in the tub without rushing to get her out and onto the next task in the bedtime routine. While she plays with her rubber duckies and boats I check my email and send tweets from my phone.

No matter how ready for bed she is actually getting her to sleep is a task that I often have to pass off to Jacob once he is finished working at 11pm so that I can go to bed. 6am comes really early for me and I am not getting enough sleep.

I know that it will take some time to adjust to our new routine but I wish it would happen sooner rather than later. I never wanted to be the perfect mom but at this point I’ll settle for surviving.

Tonight after meeting my parents for dinner I took Avery to Kohl’s so that I could try on some dress pants. Thanks to my new job I am now required to make an effort in regards to my appearance. Since I live in jeans I had to get some dress pants. I hate dress pants. They are not made for people. They are high-waisted and wide-legged and unflattering in every way. So far I have three pairs of pants and after losing fifteen pounds one of them is now too big.

So back to Kohl’s. I grabbed every style of pant they had. I was going to find something OR ELSE! Avery hates going shopping with me because I won’t let her run around like a wild animal at the zoo. She sat in the stroller for exactly no seconds. As we wandered through the misses department she stayed close to me but every now and again she would run off and I’d abandon the stroller to chase her down. It’s hilarious. No, really. Okay, no. It’s scary. She doesn’t understand that there are creeps out there who want to kidnap children and they are all lurking inside of the Frisco Kohl’s.

After rounding up one of every kind of dress pants we went into the fitting room. Thanks to some bitch who doesn’t have a wheelchair or a stroller the large fitting room was occupied so we squeezed into a smaller room. Avery climbed all over the stroller and kept opening the door so that everyone could see me in my skivvies. Awesome. I put her in time-out which was the triangle-shaped seat in the corner. After a minute of that torture I gave her permission to move about the tiny fitting room. She wasn’t having it. She wanted freedom. After tossing a belt I tried on under the door she went after it and slithered under the door. I barked at her to GET THE FUCK BACK HERE RIGHT NOW. I snatched her up and told her to stay put. She’s a shitty listener. During all of this annoying toddler wrangling I managed to try on some clothes. As I was taking off a dress that made me look pregnant it happened. She bolted.

I get the dress off and she’s gone. GONE. I quickly grab my pants and slide them on as I run out of the fitting room yelling ‘AVERY!’ At this point I was freaking the fuck out. I couldn’t breathe. I did a quick scan of the area outside of the fitting rooms and couldn’t see or hear her. My worst nightmare was coming true. I had lost my baby.

A woman saw me and pointed to the rack she was standing in front of and whispered, “She’s in there.” I bent down and saw her sock-clad feet and I could breathe again. Not wanting to yell at her I gave myself a second to calm down before I snatched her from the rack. She laughed and I hugged her close to me while saying firmly, “Don’t you EVER do that again.” We went back into the fitting room where I made her sit in time-out again.

It was all I could do to keep from crying. I wanted to scream at her; I wanted her to be just as afraid of strangers as I am.

Giving up on trying on clothes, we left the store. As I loaded her into the car she started to whine and I wanted to yell at her, “Haven’t you put me through enough tonight?” Instead I shushed her and gave her the iPod. I knew that I handled the situation well and didn’t explode but it was so hard for me to keep it inside. As I folded up the stroller my new cell phone fell out of the tray on the stroller and hit the ground. Seriously, kick me when I’m down. Please. Go ahead. I’ll even bend over.

The screen was cracked. At this point I’m LIVID. Now I wanted to yell at Avery for causing me to be so shaken up that I dropped my phone and will have to pay over $100 to replace it.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS!

Fuck the phone. My baby could have been kidnapped. All the way home I stewed. I marinaded in my fear and anger. Once we got home I asked her to clean up some little toys that she left on the floor before going to daycare this afternoon and she said no. Several times she repeated the word until it had lost all meaning and then I lost it. I screamed at her to go to time-out. I didn’t want to lash out at her. I hated myself for yelling at her. I was so upset at what could have happened that I couldn’t control my emotions. She stayed in time out for several minutes while I told her how dangerous her behavior was. I knew that she didn’t understand but it wasn’t for her. I needed to vent. At this point I had stopped yelling and was talking sort of calmly to her. I released her from time-out and asked her to pick up her toys. She obeyed.

Now why can’t she just do what I ask the first time?

I am grateful that nothing bad happened to her. This phase is certainly one that I will be happy to see get the fuck out of our lives.

Like I said, that’s just my opinion. They’re like assholes, you know.

Thanks to no longer having any free time it took me about three days to complete my gloriously hand-crafted creations. And you know what? They look AWESOME.

Now what the hell do I do with them? The party is in two-ish weeks so I don’t have anymore time to spare and I don’t have stamps. After all of my hard work guess what I’m going to do – send out e-vites. No shit.

I only do paper invitations since my grandparents don’t have email (get on it, Betty and Lucille) and that’s just silly. I can call them and not waste paper or a fucking stamp.

Anyway, I love wasting what little free time I have on craft projects that are never going to get used. Awesome.

I GOT A JOB!

Not just a job, people. A REAL job. A REAL WRITING job.

That’s right. I have landed a stable, full-time, bad ass position as a copywriter. I am so excited about this opportunity that I almost don’t even know what to say.

Also, I wrote all afternoon and I’m kind of drained.

I work for a company who owns several auction sites. We list designer brand watches, jewelry, sports memorabilia, and we even sell coral (our owner is kind of eccentric but so far it’s kind of cool). I work on the jewelry team which means that I write a couple of sentences describing each item and making it sound amazing. In addition to that I measure the stones on the jewelry and write the specs for the listing.

Basically I get to look at fine jewelry all day and write about it.

Life? It’s good.

I feel at home there. It was refreshing to be around other creative people and be a part of creating brands and doing what I do best which is to write and share my opinions.

This is HUGE for me because I don’t have a college degree and you pretty much can’t get a job as a writer without one.

Anyway, I am so happy that I could explode.

I need to focus on myself and my life outside of the box.

But don’t worry, friends. I’ll be back March 1st.

Don’t forget to subscribe and I’ll see y’all in a few weeks.

Worst. Question. Ever. I hate answering this during an interview. What is my go-to answer? “I have a problem with authority.” Just kidding. Usually it’s a toss-up between being too detail-oriented (how is that a weakness?) and “diving into the work without a formal plan in place” (the latter is a weakness I GUESS but it’s just my method and it works for me).

I hate being interviewed and when I was a manager I hated conducting them. The questions are canned and don’t give much insight into a person’s skills and personality. There are obvious right answers which defeats the purpose of getting to know a candidate to find out if he/she is a good fit. When I was a manager we were provided an interview cheat sheet with a list of the usual questions. I hated asking them but I didn’t know what else to do. You can ask a candidate where they want to be in five years but they aren’t going to be honest with you. These days no one works at the same company for more than five-ish years. There is no company loyalty because companies are ever-changing and offer little stability to its employees. Year after year the benefits decrease and the grievances become unbearable.

My best friend has been working for her current company for about five years and while she has bounced around doing various admin jobs she is currently responsible for their payroll (among other accounting tasks). This means, of course, that she gets to see what people are paid. She told me about a girl that was just hired for the entry level admin position where my friend also started with the company. The new girl doesn’t have a college degree (my friend has her BA) or any admin experience; what she does have, however, is a bigger paycheck. My best friend, who is the new girl’s superior, makes about $5,000 less per year. Ouch.

That would certainly piss me off if I were her. What do you do in that situation? Nothing. Quit? Sure. You have to find a new job first.

Basically I am trying to prepare myself for the typical questions while hoping that they don’t ask me the usual “tell me about yourself.” I hate that question. It’s open-ended. And I truly believe that they don’t really care about who I am. I love heavy metal and I’m a vegetarian. Does that make me more qualified for this job than the next person?

(image credit)

]]> http://mommyisrocknroll.com/interview-prep/feed/ 2 http://mommyisrocknroll.com/hire-me-goddammit/ http://mommyisrocknroll.com/hire-me-goddammit/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:34:11 +0000 Lauren http://mommyisrocknroll.com/?p=1001 [...]]]> On Friday I have an interview for a REAL FULL TIME PERMANENT NON-FREELANCE WRITING JOB.

That’s right, people. I finally get an interview and it’s for a product copywriting job. I’m so excited that I could puke. When I replied to the hiring manager’s email to confirm the interview I started to get butterflies. What if I bomb the interview? What if my writing samples are awful in their eyes? What if they decide that my bright red hair and stretched earlobes don’t fit in with their conservative office?

I don’t know if they are conservative but it’s always a fear of mine. I would hope that since they run a website that they’d be more laid back but I won’t know until I get there.

So yeah. Nervous.

We need the money and I want a real writing job so badly. I’m tired of writing for pennies. It’s not fair to me to expend so much energy for no mutual benefit. Writing for The Examiner was a waste of my time. I enjoy doing sponsored content because it actually pays and sometimes sponsored tweeting is worth my time but I want a REAL job.

I just hope that it’s the right fit for both the company and me. I guess we’ll all find out on Friday. Wish me luck.

Hang in there, buddies!! Don’t forget to update your RSS Feed subscription! Do it now!

And then? The unthinkable happens.

She gets BORED. Imagine that.

Avery decides that she is through lifting weights and tosses the hand weight onto the tile floor of our kitchen.

As soon as the weight bounced away from the point of impact I saw the damage and was furious. I yelled for Jacob to COME SEE WHAT YOUR DAUGHTER DID and I swiftly scooped Avery up and put her in time out.

While Jacob inspected the damage I told Avery that we don’t throw things and that she ruined our kitchen floor. I’m sure she totally understood and suddenly became filled with remorse.

Right.

I showed her the spot that she nicked in the floor and told her to apologize to her daddy. She said “I sowwy daddy” and I could see him melting.

STAY STRONG! BE FIRM! SHE FUCKED UP A TILE RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE KITCHEN! WE CAN’T PLACE ANYTHING ON TOP OF IT!

Our temporary fix will be to super glue the chipped piece back onto the tile square and we’ll replace the tile when we get around to it.

Once the confrontation was over she was free to go destroy something else. I put the hand weights up so she can’t reach them but it’s only a matter of time before she finds something else to break.

So yeah. Terrible twos? I’M SO OVER YOU ALREADY.