lawmummy

No, not my Katrina. THAT Katrina. Hurricane Katrina.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.

I grew up on the coast of North Carolina, so my family and I know what it’s like to live through hurricanes. Big ones, little ones, concurrent ones. We’ve been evacuated, we’ve been without power, plumbing, telephone and fresh water for days, we’ve had holes through the roof when trees fell into our house - often more than one and on more than one occasion. As a little girl, I remember sleeping in sleeping bags in our hallway so that we wouldn’t be near flying glass. I’ve “showered” in our back yard using water from jugs. I’ve had many a meal cooked over a tiny propane campstove. And my mother has been rushed to the hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning when the generator that was used for back-up power pumped it into the house.

And as horrible as things seem at the time, they always get better thanks to family, friends, neighbors, well-wishers and law enforcement. Not necessarily what you want to think about at the time, when it seems darkest, but it’s true.

So, I am thinking good thoughts for all of the folks down that way… Hang in there.

So, now that you’ve been reading, you probably think you know a thing or two about me.

You can test your knowledge here. You can also create your own quiz there, kind of a cool site.

After a day or so, I’ll post the real answers with explanations. Enjoy!

So, it’s late and I haven’t posted my top ten yet. And then I read a rather fervent exchange on one of my tax listservs (hey, I’ve admitted that I’m a geek about this stuff!) about the KPMG indictments.

In case you haven’t heard, eight former KPMG execs have been charged with conspiracy to sell fraudulent tax shelters. They are former KPMG Deputy Chairman Jeffrey Stein, former officials John Lanning, Richard Smith, Jeffrey Eischeid, Philip Weisner, John Larson, Robert Pfaff and Mark Watson, and outside tax attorney Raymond Ruble. It is being described as “the largest tax evasion scheme in U.S. history.” The company will pay at least $456 million in fines to the feds as a penalty (KPMG made at least $115 million on the schemes, according to prosecutors).

I suspect the pressure from the top at KPMG to market these schemes was huge. The payoff surely was. And now the consequences are.

So, in light of this, I present today’s top ten… My top ten reasons why I love working for me.

1. I see my kids and my husband all day, every day. I take my kids to work with me - and I work with my husband.

2. I don’t have to wear shoes. Yep, it’s true. Today I accepted an originally signed Petition for Orphans Court from a client while in my bare feet.

3. I don’t have annoying employees or co-workers. I do have employees and co-workers, but I chose them and most days, I like them.

4. I can have as many highlighters as I want. A small victory, yes. But at my first law job, the secretary used to hide them and dole them out one at a time - only one per person. There’s something freeing about having one in every color.

5. I can blog at work if I want. The boss is okay with it.

6. I sell a good product… Me. I know that I am a good lawyer and I don’t feel compelled to be snarky to sell my services.

7. I take the clients that I want and I fire the ones that I don’t. I don’t have to sit across, as I once did at another firm, from a client that bragged about cheating on audits. Now, I show those clients the door. My clients hire me on my terms. And that means that I insist that my time is valued and I further insist that everything be above board.

8. I send out the bills so there’s no pressure to bill high. No minimum billables. If I don’t hit 2000 hours this year, and trust me, I won’t, the boss will let it go.

9. In theory, I can take a day off when I want. I never do. But I could.

10. I sleep well at night. There’s no pressure to do stupid stuff for money. Or not for money.

Continuing the debate about teens and clothing, a friend pointed me in the direction of a recent article by Paul Sheehan, an Australian journalist, about teens and sexuality.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

In defense of teenage girls and young women "who behave badly, dress provocatively, engage in risky sex, and get pregnant", Mr. Sheehan states:

There is nothing wrong with pelvic display, push-up bras, Gosford miniskirts, spray-on jeans, low-cut tops, bare legs, bare arms, bare ankles, G-strings or even buttock cleavage, providing the displayer is young enough to get away with it.

His whole argument is that females are more or less put on earth to have babies, and to have them at an extremely young age.  He claims that by dressing provocatively and engaging in risky sex, teenage girls and young women are just doing what God intended.

Further, he argues that the consequences of teenage pregnancy are "trivial by comparison to suppressed pregnancy."

Boy, gotta wonder what’s in the water down in Australia…

Well, fear of foreigners for one.  Australia is experiencing a bit of a population "crisis" and fear that they can only maintain population by what Mr. Sheehan refers to as "imported fertility."  And Australia is notoriously anti-immigrant, illustrated by loud national debates in the 1990s about the role that immigrants would play in the country’s future.  Ironic for a country who, like the US, is a relatively new country populated by immigrants - and "undesirable" immigrants at that. 

At any rate, Mr. Sheehan seems to be implying that if Australian girls and young women (and indeed women all over the globe) would just be sexual at early ages and have children fairly immediately, the problems relating to "suppressed pregancy" (his term, not mine, meaning waiting until later to have children) would just go away.  And again, he thinks that those problems are far more serious than teenage pregnancy.

Hmm.

Apparently, it’s a much scarier prospect to have immigrants and older moms in your country than an illiterate population.  According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (so yes, it has a bias), less than one-third of teens who have children before age 18 ever earn a high school diploma and about 1 in 100 earn a college degree by the age of 30.

And health risks to the mother?  Sure, we know what happens to "older" women who have children later in life (though Mr. Sheehan and I disagree on what constitutes older) but did you know that teenage moms experience poor weight gain, pregnancy-induced hypertension, anemia, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and cephalopelvic disproportion?  And that later in life, teen moms tend to be at greater risk for obesity and hypertension than women who were not teenagers when they had their first child?  Guess that information wasn’t on Mr. Sheehan’s radar.  He can read more about it at NCPTC’s web site.

It affects the children, too.  According to NCPTC, children born to teen mothers suffer from higher rates of low birth weight (21% higher) and related health problems.  Low birth weight raises the probabilities of infant death, blindness, deafness, chronic respiratory problems, mental retardation, mental illness, and cerebral palsy. In addition, low birth weight doubles the chances that a child will later be diagnosed as having dyslexia, hyperactivity, or another disability. 

But hey - they’re not foreign.  Which is good, because immigrants are poor, right?  And we wouldn’t want that.  So here’s some food for thought…

According to NCPTC, almost 50% of teen moms and over 75% of unmarried teen moms began receiving welfare within five years of the birth of their first child.  Ouch!  That would hurt for a relatively socialist country like Australia, no?

And in the US, the NCPTC reports that "the growth in single-parent families remains the single most important reason for increased poverty among children over the last twenty years, as documented in the 1998 Economic Report of the President."  Not immigrants.  And according to a DC study, each year the US federal government spends about $40 billion to help families that began with a teenage birth.

And I could go on.  But I won’t.  I think it’s clear that Mr. Sheehan has a slant towards sexualizing our teenage girls and young women that can’t be swayed by facts or statistics. 

And I’m guessing he doesn’t have daughters.  And if he does, I suspect that he doesn’t let them leave the house dressed in anything like he described above.

And he’s not advocating that we try to bring the age of moms down from age 50 or even age 40.  He’s horrified that women are having children at the ripe old age of… 32.  Yes.  It’s true.  And boy am I relieved.  That means I got in just under the wire.

I’m not about critiquing someone else’s choices about when to have children.  I think that’s a personal choice.  But I do think the key word is choice.  And I don’t think a 17 year old has all of the information necessary to make a choice.  Which is not to say that I don’t think that really young moms can ever make good moms.  My mom had children far earlier than I ever did, and I think she’s a great mom.  So, I don’t think age necessarily equates to any sort of child-rearing ability.  But I do think, taking into consideration other factors like education, financial resources, support system, etc., it doesn’t make sense to actively encourage teenage girls to have children.  In fact, I think it’s irresponsible.

If Mr. Sheehan and others like him want to see teenage girls in provocative clothing, they can buy an issue of Rolling Stone and lust over the "next" Britney Spears all they want…  And check out the statutory rape laws while you’re at it.

But stop encouraging our children to grow up faster than they need to.  As parents, we have enough challenges.

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I just had to yell at Chris to get into the shower. He was tapping away at the computer, leisurely sipping his espresso and otherwise enjoying a relatively mellow Saturday morning. Then he said he was taking the dog for a long walk. And this is where men often don’t “get it.”

I know and he knows that we are out of milk, eggs, juice, bananas and yogurt. All of the breakfast-related items. I can hear my mother’s voice in my head screaming “IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY!” So we desperately need to make a trip to Trader Joes today. But more importantly? We have to eat breakfast out. While it’s true that Chris could forage together some sort of breakfast consisting of pretzels and coffee, that’s not what I want the girls to have. He’s kind of “creative” that way. Yesterday, when we were out of everything, Chris decided that the girls could have granola bars for breakfast. Mmm, nutritious!

Anyhow, what he fails to realize and what I know is that just because the girls aren’t up yet doesn’t mean that we can’t go on the offensive. The girls rarely wake up in the mood to relax over the newspaper while sipping a little caffeinated something… In fact, they usually wake up as though they’ve been ingested caffeine in their sleep - raring to go.

Amy will cry. She will want her milk NOW and she will not understand why we don’t have any in the house. Not surprisingly, the fact that I was late at the office yesterday putting bills together so that we can pay for said milk doesn’t hold much water for a one year old who is demanding something to drink. Anything. And again, choices right now are water and coffee. Nary a drop of juice.

Katie will get up and run downstairs to get her own yogurt. She will be perplexed that there is none in the fridge and will probably start yelling “YOGURT!” after taking a bunch of stuff out of the fridge first. She may even decide that she wants chocolate jimmies for breakfast and make a break for the pantry. Fortunately, she still can’t get the top open. Well, she couldn’t on yesterday. You never know with her.

And by that time, it will be too late to develop a plan, get Chris showered, etc. You cannot get a house of toddler-aged girls (and one husband, but I am trying to go easy on him) ready to go anywhere in a matter of minutes. There will be chaos. And screaming.

You know, exactly the way you want to start your Saturday morning…

Kind of like how I didn’t want to end my Friday evening by finding out that the last banana we had in the house had found its way into my briefcase… a few days ago.

Anyway, the weekend has begun. Once we actually get some food in the house that doesn’t require hours of preparation and has at least some nutritional value, I’ll feel much better. Sigh.

Angry Pregnant Lawyer’s post about TMDI really got me thinking…  Well, besides about the words across your ass part which I’ve been thinking about forever and plan on posting about soon…

It’s kind of what I was talking about below when I blogged about finding less and less in common with some of my friends.  And what I was referring to in my post about kids’ rooms these days.

This whole wacky theory on parenting that says overindulge your children constantly?  I just don’t get it.

I do understand wanting your children to have the best that you can provide.  And I understand wanting them to have things you didn’t growing up.  Trust me.  As a second child, I wore a lot of hand-me-downs from my older sibling - and I was the first girl.  And my brother grew up to be 6′ and skinny.  I am 5′2" and chubby.  So let your mind goes nuts.  It was a dark time for me.

And I’m not advocating never spoiling your child occasionally.  I have Snoopy plastic golf clubs laying all over the house simply because Katie wanted them - and I don’t even golf.  Katie has discovered that they make nice weapons.  Her sister is not pleased.

So yeah, spend the money when it’s appropriate.  And that’s different for every family.

But constant overindulgence?  Who does that help?  The article that APL cites in her blog mentions a girl who owned 15 pairs of $200 jeans.  That’s $3000.  At least.  And I suspect those jeans won’t last more than one season.  Admit it.  When you’re in your thirties, you cling to everything that you buy in a desperate fit of "some day I’ll wear it again" but when you’re in your teens?  God forbid you wear the same top twice in one month.  People might talk.  Well, other teens anyway.

I don’t want my girls growing up with skewed values.  I want them to be happy.  And I think, in our society, we easily exchange happy and money as if they’re the same thing.  They are not.

My grandfather is the closest member of my family to ever be considered "well off."  He died relatively poor and alone.  My grandmother (yes, they were married - together - at one point) is also fairly "well off."  She, too, is alone, in Florida, where she constantly gripes about the rest of the family.  She never even gave us a chance. I don’t think she’s seen my father in ten years.  And he’s her only child.

I am not saying being well off equals being lonely and miserable.  But I think we’re all too eager to make the other jump, that being well off equals being happy.  And it doesn’t.  And yes, I too, have often said I am willing to give it a shot - but I know I’m lying.  That is, I’m lying if I have to do the things that I know I would personally have to do to be well off.

You see, I’m an attorney.  But, of course, you know that.  Chris and I used to work for large law firms where we got paid some pretty decent money.  In exchange, we worked constantly.  A 60 hour week would make me nervous because I feared falling behind in my billables.  Add the commute to our home and realistically, it was over 70 hours per week minimum.  If you’re doing the math, that works out to 10 hours per day, every day.  And in the legal field, you don’t get paid, really, for holidays and vacation.  You still have to make your billables.  And, at my last firm, in addition to the long hours and constant pressure, I wasn’t appreciated.  I cried so hard after being yelled at one day (and I am NOT a crier) that I ran my car into a metal post off of Kelly Drive.  That’s when I realized I had to quit.  That, and the fact that I was paying someone to clean my house, mow my lawn, do my laundry, cook my food and walk my dog because I didn’t have time to do those things.  I was outsourcing my life.  It was not how I pictured where I would be.  And I didn’t want to become one of those people who constantly complained about their lives.  So I quit my job.  And Chris quit his job.  And we opened our own firm.  In the space of a little over a year, we saw our six figure income drop to four figures.  That was scary.  A few months later, I had the opportunity to go back to a six figure salary - about the same time I found out I was pregnant.  We talked and talked about it and decided that I wouldn’t do it.  I wanted to raise my own children and not have them in daycare 60 hours per week where I would never see them.  I made some adjustments - Chris did, too.  A few years later, we’re doing okay.  And I have two amazing girls.

That’s why it galls me to hear my friends complain about their husbands not working hard enough, not making enough money.  I feel like a broken record when I say "Be careful what you wish for."  And that’s one of the reasons that I feel that I am growing apart from certain friends.  I am not into the wishing my life away stage anymore.

Don’t confuse that with not wanting more money.  Of course I do.  If you told me tomorrow that I won Powerball, there is no way that I’d be aww-shucksing and saying, "No, really, keep it.  I don’t want it."  Cause boy do I really want it.  But I am not relying on the expectation or hope of money for purposes of making me happy.

Which brings me back to my girls.  They do make me happy.  And my husband and my dog.  They are the collective reason that I get up each day. 

And I want my girls to be happy. I don’t want them to have to struggle like I did.  I don’t want my girls working three jobs through grad school in order to stave off eviction.  I don’t want my girls to know what it feels like to be ridiculed because their clothes are handmade.  I don’t want my girls to be saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of school debt after graduation - or to take a job that they really don’t want in order to pay the bills.

But that’s different than spending $3000 on jeans.  There’s a difference between making sure your children don’t want for things that matter and giving them every thing that they ever want.

I have listened to friends talk about buying cell phones, iPods and Game Boys for children under the age of ten simply because "everybody else has one."  An associate actually rented out an entire hall for a party for her two year old.  Yes, two year old.  And my good friend from Texas brought a petting zoo to her house (!) for her four year old’s birthday.  And, quite timely, I received a slickly printed customized photo invitation for yet another party.

What’s next?  What do you do to top petting zoos, cell phones and $200 jeans for your kids?  Even more important, what do they do?  Isn’t the goal of each generation to do a little better than the previous generation?  What incentive are we giving our kids?  Is giving them everything that they ever ask for the answer?  I think not.

Whatever happened to just spending a little quality time with your kids?  Is that passe?  Is it old-fashioned to say no to the jeans and instead take your kid to the movies (gasp) with you?

If money were the answer to all of our problems, Donald Trump would have better hair and Paris Hilton would have a little sense.  But clearly it’s not.

I’m definitely not down on the idea of money.  Some of my best clients have lots of money and are some of the most decent people that I’ve met.  The key is that they’ve made good choices.  I hope that I, as a parent and an individual make good choices, too.  Despite what Diddy says, it’s not all about the Benjamins.

Friendship was so much easier when we were kids. Do you remember those goofy notes? Those “Do you want to be my friend?” questions? Where you would check yes or no – or sometimes maybe? Those were the days.

Now, things are so much more complicated. And I can’t remember the exact moment that it happened. But it did.

Don’t get me wrong. I have great friends. But some of them are more work than others. And as I get older – and perhaps more selfish – I am finding it harder to find it in me to put the level of work into it that some of my friends require. Is that awful?

And this is the thing. I keep telling myself that it’s a blip on the surface. That at any given time, it’s difficult for one of us “because”. You know, because a friend is working. Or I am pregnant. Or one of us is going through a bad time. And I always assume that things will get better. Eventually. But they don’t. And I just don’t have patience anymore.

And I feel tremendous guilt about this. But I don’t think I have enough guilt to change it. Is that awful?

Chris says people change. And I know I’m different than the Kelly I used to be. As I get older, I’ve become more certain of who I am and what is important to me. I have a solid work ethic – I don’t get the constant complaining about jobs when you’re not willing to do anything to change it. I dote on my girls but I understand that someday they will grow up and leave (excuse me while I run for a tissue!) and for that reason, while they are a big part of my life, they are not my whole life. I don’t obsess about my looks anymore, including my weight – no more constant dieting, no diet pills, no vomiting – and I don’t “get” people who can’t move beyond superficiality. And the list goes on.

So maybe I’m just less tolerant of what I perceive as character flaws in my friends. If that’s true, that makes me sad.

Do I expect a level of change in my friends that hasn’t happened for all of them? When did I become so judgmental? Or is it something deeper?

This has really hit home lately because of an “event”, but I am sure you’ve guessed that by now. A formerly close friend and I have been growing apart. I am not sure why it’s happening but I think it’s because we’re choosing different paths. And to some degree, I feel like I should make an effort to stop the slide. But then I wonder if it’s more energy than I am willing to expend.

And again, I know that sounds awful – which is why I am totally anguished about it.

Is this just what happens when you get older? Do people just go in different directions? And can you stop it? And if you can, should you? Is it maybe the true order of things? And if that happens for friends, does that mean that it can happen for other relationships? Is that what people mean when they say that they “fell out of love” with each other?

Sigh.

I don’t know. What I do know is that this sucks. Sometimes, I wish things would stay the way they were when we were little. Things like those little notes made things so simple. Trying to figure adults out? Not so simple.

This is my 100th post on Mommy Grows Up! I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not on the same level as say, man landing on the moon. But hey, I have two kids, I work full time, I volunteer and I blog. So for me, this is kind of my moon landing. Here’s to many more!

So today’s top ten is…  Children’s programs that I try hard to avoid.  As always, they’re in no particular order.

1.  Teletubbies.  I don’t get the appeal.  They’re creepy.  And that baby in the sun is  even creepier (shudder).
2.  Oobi.  Okay, this one is not only annoying but it actually irritates me as well.  I understand the gist.  I just wish that they would speak in complete sentences.  I don’t need my child repeating "Oobi sad, wants cupcake" or whatever like a caveman.
3.  Caillou.  The first time that I saw this, I was in Germany and I thought it was French.  I was devastated to learn it was Canadian and available in my home country.  Caillou is not only bald as a four year old (which bothers me for some inane reason) but is the reason, I’ve discovered, that my three year states emphatic "But I don’t like it" to so many things.  Caillou is the whiniest child you can imagine.  If he were my kid, he’d be spending a lot more time at Grandma’s house…
4.  Barney.  It’s not just the goofy voice, I just don’t like this show.  I like the morals and lessons that they teach but it’s kind of bizarre how they just burst into song at a moment’s notice.  It’s as if they’re stuck in some wacky Broadway show.  And the dinosaur costume is hideous.  At least I knew it was a dinosaur - Chris thought he was a dragon.
5.  DragonTales.  Okay, who among us doesn’t wonder what the "dragon dust" is that allows those kids to see two-headed dragons (speaking of dragons).  This is one of Katie’s favorites lately and I will confess that I will sometimes pretend it’s not on.  The last episode where they rooted through the garbage to find tin foil balls?  I don’t need my child to be encouraged to root through garbage, for goodness sake.  Especially for tin foil.
6.  Little Bear.  Okay, it does get points for having Little Bear use his imagination, but someone needs to explain to me why Little Bear is naked while his parents wear clothes.  It bothers me.
7.  Maisy.  The drawings are cute.  But the voices grate on me.  And that jingle?  I can’t get it out of my head.
8.  The Wiggles.  I have never seen an entire episode of this.  I can’t.  Rich Australians or not, they freak me out.
9.  Berenstain Bears.  I loved the books as a kid but the show isn’t the same.  It’s like they made every person in my home town a bear and put them in a cartoon.  And I like LeeAnn Womack usually - but that theme song?  I run screaming for the remote from the first note.
10. Angelina Ballerina.  I’ve only referenced the shows that my preschoolers have been exposed to.  And I guess this one is a little over their heads.  But their cousin, Layla, exposed them to it and I think Katie found it interesting.  I did not.  Maybe it’s a rodent bias.  But the idea of a dancing mouse just doesn’t cut it for me.