transposable element

when outdoor temperatures start dipping below 10°C, that means …

…jan would need new winter shoes, new winter boots and a new snowsuit. everything else from last year is history.

…it’s time to change the car’s summer wheels to winter wheels. oh shit, we need new winter wheels this year!

…christmastime is fast approaching (read: buy gifts!)

…get myself a new anorak. my old one retired last winter.

aaaargh, for families like us living on tight purse strings, the start of winter can be hard on the budget. but just as luck would have it, i’ve landed another small research project for the next two months. i won’t earn heaps, but that would ease it a bit. so, let’s see: jan, car, christmas and me. in that order. in that order??? ouch!

i’ve long ago read the harvard business review article, “corporate women and the myth of having it all” (thanks, karen!), but refrained from blogging about it at the time, lacking the terms that are PC enough. but heck, out with it! this blog is getting full of jan-i-mania, i’ve got to blog about something else before he gets overexposed, haha!

the article was quite lengthy but concise; every single paragraph was really informative. and, it was based on facts and figures. in brief, the paper points out the glaring reality that women simply CANNOT run a family and a highly demanding career (top management levels) at the same time, and for women to believe otherwise is just foolish. some points of interest lifted from the article:

* 49% of ultra-achieving career women (earning more than $100,000) ages 41-55 are childless; a mere 19% of their male colleagues are. apparently, men do not have to consider trading of having children with their careers.

* generally, highly sucessful men are married to less career-driven women, while 9 out of 10 high-achieving women are married to equally succesful men. do i smell machismo?

* 89% of high-achieving women believe they will be able to get pregnant deep into their 40s, lulling themselves into an illusion that they can prevaricate childbearing until their careers are more established. the truth is, only 3-5% of women attempting IVF un their 40s succeed in childbearing.

i often hear women complain that the corporate world is still a man’s world, and to have this validated by (harvard!) figures is certainly discouraging. up to that point, i can emphatize. but to read that a lot of these ultra- mega- super-highly achieving women regret not having children, i can’t bring myself to be symphatetic. they felt having been forced to make a choice (career vs family), when men do not have to. i do realize the loss to the genetic pool, sure, but…

at the risk of being flamed or (again) being target for rotten tomatoes, i will admit to owning that MOTHERS ARE MEANT TO STAY HOME AND TAKE CARE OF THEIR YOUNG. ok, before you let go of your expletives, at least give me the chance to explore the vagaries. having a background in biological sciences, i’ve always believed that the impetus for almost everything can be traced back to biological and anthropological reasons. simply put, if it is not the mother’s job to take care of her offsprings, then whose is it? take any representative of the animal kingdom and see who’s looking after the young ones.

being a mother is a full time job. a very demanding one. any mother would (should?) know this. sure, one can be a mom and have a job on the side, yes. but a fast-track career? it’s like being an in-demand neurosurgeon and a high-profile criminal lawyer, and trying to be good at both at the same time. possible but not probable. there’s no other way about it; it’s one or the other. a high-powered career and having children just doesn’t go together. no, don’t think i’m simply sour-graping. in fact, i take my case in point. i’m practically unemployed and am therefore able to spend a lot of time with my kid, comparatively. nevertheless, at the end of each day, i am often exhausted and still sometimes feel i have not done enough. i cannot imagine how much more inadequate at parenting i would feel if i had to work 80 hours a week as well. and i don’t believe that crap that it’s the quality of time spent together that matters, not the quantity. for very young children, quantity does matter. and what quality time could there be, if you spent the better part of the day exhausting yourself in boardrooms and client meetings, making million-dollar-deals?

before i get completely misinterpreted, let me point out that i do have understanding for mothers who take on jobs for financial reasons (probably 99% of my friends and relatives fall in this category). or those who feel their jobs make them a better person and hence, a better mom (love kita, AnP!). or those who need their jobs for intellectual nourishment (ahem?). these women are not the subject of that harvard article nor of this blog entry. the point is: there is a difference between a job and a career. mothers who simply take on a job know their priorities. they’d be there when the child is sick, or need help with homework in the evenings, and needs to go to the doc for immunization shots. but i pity the child born to a woman who consciously opt for a fast-track career and expect to squeeze-in mothering in-between meetings, trips and conferences. what kind of parenting would that be? poor child.

jan is at that stage where he wants to do everything by himself: “jan make it! jan do it! mach’s alleine (make it alone)!” he wants to be treated like an adult and do grown-up stuff as well. on the rare occassions that he sees me labouring in the kitchen, he naturally wants to dive into the fun as well. but hah! smart mama that i am (pagbigyan, hehe!), i got him his own stuff so we can do things in parallel; otherwise, we’d end up with nothing done. here’s his first try at baking:

l-r: the baker hard at work, the product: red brezel, and jan, the master baker. click on photo for a larger image.

i am not alone. and it doesn’t seem to be a rare breed either. behind the making of such a picture:

stand so many moms:

and saturated us with sunshine today, putting to full show how grand autumn can be. trees showing colors from the whole spectrum: from red, orange, to yellow, to green and purple. nature’s last show of splendor, before finally laying herself to sleep.

oh, and there’s plenty for kids of jan’s age to do, as well. leaves of all sorts of colors, sizes, shapes and degrees of decay (!) now adorn our windows… and, er, floors and tables. yes, it looks somehow like a jungle in here. but wait til the cones and nuts start to fall as well. perhaps next week, it’ll be time to go on a walking trip to the forest to collect more stuff for our crafting sessions. oh no, more detritus into the apartment!

autumn can be heaps of fun. and actually, i could handle the temperature, as long as we get lots of sunshine and blue skies. hah, suntok sa buwan?

i feel the chilly gloomy autumn weather starting to get to me. aargh, i’m trying to fight it, but there it is, that glum feeling that probably propels other temperate animals to go hibernate. come to think of it, why fight it? why can’t we all just follow the force of nature and go snuggle under a warm cozy blanket in a foetal position?

what do you do when, in the middle of a screaming fit over an upturned glass of apple juice on the carpet, you’re calmly interrupted by a 2-yr old, saying:

“mama, stop it. no shouting.”

reservations have been made and fully paid. tight as our budget is, hubby decided we could dig once more into the madaus treasure and treat ourselves to a weekend get away. it’ll be our first weekend alone after…well, two years! i almost cannot remember how it can be without jan. see, since jan was born, he was never left overnight without either hubby or i with him. he’s never had so much as a babysitter and the most that hubby and i spent together without jan were probably 5 hours or so, when opa and oma would volunteer to look after him while we’re away. we’ve never been to a movie, to a museum, to a bar, not even out to a romantic dinner by ourselves. for TWO whole years.

we’ve made arrangements with oma and opa. jan will stay with them for that weekend, but we’ll all stay with them a couple of days earlier, just to get jan used to their company and the routine. i really wanted to go out of germ’s land, either to prague or budapest, but there’s the visa to see to, and it’s gonna be too far from my in-laws’ place. you know, just in case there’s an emergency or something. we wanted to be within just a few hours ride.

so. a whole november-weekend away. am not sure for whom it’s gonna be tougher: for jan or for us.

yes, ruth still lives. just a bit overwhelmed. so many things have been happening and the first week of pinoyexpats just put me on high! we’ve great plans for this webzine and i really hope they all come to fruition. hm. first steps done, and there’s still a long way to go…

the weekend was a nice cap to the week prior. jan and his cousin k celebrated their birthdays together at the erlebnispark-funtastic and though jan’s birthday was nearly a month over, jan didn’t seem to mind one bit. jan had tons of fun running around, jumping, riding bumpcars, sliding… having fun the way a 2-year old child’s supposed to be! what a chaos!

and now, back to the regular run… pile of laundry waiting up…

Gear up for the next issue: We will be featuring modes of transportation across Europe! Love European cars? Been through a train under the sea? How about flying London-Rome for €9.99? Travel the continent with us on the next issue!

Want to contribute? Email us at volunteer@pinoyexpats.org!