~megnut

Yesterday I was having breakfast with my five year old daughter and she was looking at a "beautiful doll" in the Toys-R-Us circular from the Sunday paper. She was going on and on about the doll, about her clothes and her neck, and how she wanted this doll and could she get it? And while she was talking I said to her,

"I'm sorry but I have to open my laptop and check my email quickly. I haven't checked it since Friday afternoon."

(I try very very hard to be present with them and not online when we're spending time together.)

So she looked at doll and I started checking my email. Then she said,

"This doll doesn't smile. This doll makes the same face you make when you're on the computer."

I looked at the doll and it was true, she had a weird grimace, not a smile at all, sort of a generic straight mouth, definitely not happy.

That's how my daughter experiences me when I'm online: not happy, not smiling, not enjoying whatever I'm doing. Just grimacing, unsmilingly dealing with whatever's out there.

No wonder my jaw aches whenever I'm using the phone or computer.

thur oct 16 2014

This week has been long and hard. Bummed I didn't get in a bike ride. Haven't made a yoga class since Monday. Been waking up in the dark to have time to get all things done. Ready for the weekend.

tues oct 14 2014

Much to do today so I didn't want to get distracted by tilde.club until later when I needed a break. But then this!

Apple and Facebook will now pay for female employees egg-freezing procedures. Why, you wonder? Because [o]ffering this benefit 'can help women be more productive human beings.'

Yay!! Women are human beings!!

Boo!! It's so hard to be productive when we have all those eggs inside us, wanting to be fertilized! I've lost so much time at work just, you know, because of my eggs!

Double-boo!! A majority of patients who froze their eggs reported feeling 'empowered', not because of sane family-focused policies at the office, but because they've put their faith in a future that will hopefully have sorted out the pesky business of successful IVF with frozen eggs.

"The American Society of Reproductive Medicine doesn’t keep comprehensive stats on babies born from frozen eggs – in fact, the group cautions against relying on egg freezing to extend fertility..."

Triple-boo!! How's this plan supposed to go again?

How about making sure decent maternity plans are in place, so that women can leave and come back to their job without fear of losing pay and promotions and opportunities? And that they don't have to return eight or twelve weeks after giving birth?

How about making sure decent expectations are in place, so that women see having a family as compatable with having a job, and not something to put off until far in the future?

How about instead of pouring money in to these proceedures (and the egg freezing banks that profit from women's biggest FOMO ever) you just ensure women receive equal pay for equal work, and you give them salaries and respect in the office that matches what their male counterparts receive every single day?

That's a pretty good benefit I'd say.

fri oct 10 2014

Because I only want to write a single post a day, this is gonna be a disjointed doozy of a brain dump I fear.

Firstly, WTF conferences celebrating women in computing that have idiotic men on stage talking out their assholes. Seriously, fuck men with a "C" in their title, we don't need to hear anything from them anymore. Ever.

On a sweeter note, we got a waffle maker recently. Normally I'm oppososed to single-use items in the kitchen, but I made an exception for this. It's been really fun to make waffles in the morning before school (and chaotic!) but the kids help make them and we all eat around the table and it's a nice chunk of togetherness in the morning and it makes me feel really good the rest of the day. Except when I have to clean it all up. Anyway, I share this because I'm looking for waffle recipes. If you have a good one, @megnut on Twitter, would ya? TIA.

The tilde.club RUL (recently updated list, this is what we called it at Blogger, though it was DRUL because dynamic you know, DYNAMIC HTML!!) is causing me to be terribly unproductive, but man how I love clicking those links of people I know, and some I don't, and seeing real honest-to-goodness updates and feelings in all their simple stark beauty. ~ford, please don't let everyone in from the wait list, I'll never accomplish another thing in my life...also...

I was saying to ~mo that I don't want more people in here because this space feels Safe to me, on a web that feels increasingly unsafe for women. I fear that will be lost if we have 10,000 tildes.

I'm a selfish jerk.

Because I'm a selfish jerk, I don't want to do activities where fundraising is required, e.g. run a marathon and raise $1000 to save three-legged dogs, or whatever. My yoga studio does a 30-day challenge twice a year. You commit to practicing every day for 30 days. It's amazing and transformative, and I've done it twice now. A new one's coming up in November, except this time we're supposed to fundraise to save the Amazon or something. And I've lost all interest. Sure we should save the Amazon but I really don't want to hit up my friends and family for it. I want to do a 30-day yoga challenge because it makes me feel better and stronger. And when I feel better and stronger, I'm a better person, and that ripples out into the world in basically everything I do. I feel like that should be enough. The exercise or marathon or canoe trip or whatever one commits to should be enough. Do the thing for the thing's sake. We don't need to multitask this too.

I hope the Amazon survives. And the elephants. And the three-legged dogs.

Namaste.

thurs oct 9 2014

Today I'm going to share with you THE BEST WAY EVER to keep track of recipes. This is definitely the best tech thingy I've come up with in the past ten (?) years: Dropbox Recipes!

I have three computers now: a desktop, a laptop, and my phone. And my old system of some recipes on paper, some in notebooks, some in text files, some online at various websites like Epicurious, just wasn't working. At all.

So I made a Recipes folder on Dropbox. And I type up or copy/paste all recipes into individual text files (e.g. "Bread Pudding.txt") and save them there. I also put little notes in the files, and add hashtags for something I might search in the future like #easy or #summer or #favorite

With no plan, I started doing this about three years ago. Now I have so many recipes! And there are many Best Things about this approach:

1. When you're out shopping and you think, "Hmmm, I'd like to make that spinach with chickpeas for dinner" you can just pull up the recipe on your phone!
2. When you think, "What should I cook? It's chilly and I'm short on time" you can search "#fall" or "#winter" or "#quick" and you have so many choices!
3. Also allow me to point out how quick and easy searching is on text files, zippity zap you get your answers and they're accurate! No fancy social graphs required.
4. When someone says, "My, but this banana bread is fantastic! Would you mind sharing the recipe?" Instead of saying Yes and then never doing it, you say, "Yes" and click and click again and voila, they have a link to the recipe! You become a recipe-sharing superstar just like that!
5. When you're traveling, you're never without all your trove of recipes, so you can make spaghetti carbonara (my kids' favorite) when you're in Amsterdam with a friend.

So there you have it. The best thing you're (probably) not doing with your recipes and your technology.

You're welcome.

wed oct 8 2014

When my kids were younger, I really frowned upon co-sleeping. I wanted to make sure they felt comfortable in their own beds, that they could make themselves fall asleep without my presence. And I just wanted my space. After all day with them, especially while I was still nursing, all night together felt stifling.

But now they're older, and they can fall asleep just fine on their own, even after a nightmare, or getting up for the bathroom or a drink of water. And somehow the idea of co-sleeping, or as we're calling it, "sleepovers", has become a special time to hang out one-on-one.

This was what I wanted to write, and to tell you how I love having more time with them, rolling over in the night and feeling that hot little arm pushed against me, or listening to Minna's snoring which manages to sound cute and annoying simultanously.

I was going to write about how in a marriage you make compromises, compromises you didn't know you didn't really want to make. And now that no one is saying No, I am free to say Yes. To many things. To bring forth what is within me.

I was going to tell you how much fun these sleepovers have become, and that when I say Yes I actually truly mean it, that I want that sleepover to take place, even if I sleep less.

And as I thought all these things and planned what I would write, I got ready for bed last night. I opened the door to my room, and there was Ollie, asleep, breathing softly, looking much younger than he does when his face is animated and he's talking about big kids stuff. He was taking up most of the bed. I peeled back the covers and slipped in next to him, only to discover he'd peed everywhere.

tues oct 7 2014

As with blogging, when I felt late to get started in early 1999, now nearly a week has passed of tilde updates before I've gotten mine going. As with circa 1999 blogging, when you say it doesn't matter. It's that you're saying it at all.

So what is kind of amazing to me about tilde is how much I've totally forgotten about everything computer-related. Over the weekend I was driving with my kids, and we were listening to a CD with music from my summer camp. I could sing along perfectly to every song, recalling lyrics from nearly thirty years ago. But I couldn't even remember what vi _was called_ when I needed to update my config. And all that other stuff? Well here's hoping it comes back to me. For someone who found pretty real (for a while at least) fame and fortune with tech, I feel pathetic.

Hopefully I'll remember how to write at least.

All the tildes

Email me: [email protected]!! Sorry tilde.club members only!

Twitter me: @megnut