Working At Home

I've been working at home for about eight years now. I am a medical transcriptionist; I type up reports of your visits to the doctor. Well, probably not yours specifically unless you live in my smallish city and go to a certain hospital. I don't work for a national company; I transcribe local doctors and work as an independent subcontractor for a local businesswoman who owns a transcription business.

Working at home is amazing. One of my best friends since grade school works at home too. I can work whatever hours I need to as long as I get my work done before the 24-hour deadline, while my friend works set hours every day. We both have small children that we have to run to and/or pick up from school. Both of our jobs allow us to avoid daycare expenses.  Working at home is great.

In the real world, that cereal would spill
on the counter, the OJ would end up
all over the laptop, and mom would
find a better place to type her work.

Except when it isn't. My friend and I went to Chico Hot Springs with our other childhood bffs last weekend, and we confessed to each other that we have become no-showering, dirty-clothes-wearing, stank breath, messy haired slobs. Our other friends piped up that they'd love it if they could roll out of bed and go to work. And that IS nice. To a point. My friend said she sometimes went four days without showering. I admitted I almost always sleep in my bra and often wear the same clothes for two days in a row. I never wear makeup.  So my friend, who may have been totally sloshed, insisted we make a pact.  At least four days of our work week (I talked her down from all five days), we will get up and shower or wash our faces. We will fix our hair. We will put on makeup (she even gave me some makeup, since mine is pretty much decimated with four little girls in the house) or at least earrings. We will get dressed in real pants (difficult for me since I have exactly three pairs of jeans, but still doable).

I'd already decided I needed to start caring for myself. Hell, even just changing my underwear and washing my face makes me feel like a new woman, so I started getting dressed every day, even if it was yoga pants, and began wearing earrings again. I've amassed a few pairs as gifts over the years. I'm all about hair flowers, too, so instead of makeup I'll probably be doing hair flowers and earrings.

Another difficult thing about working at home is that there are so many DISTRACTIONS. Especially now that we have seven kids in the house, there is always someone who needs me to do something. Someone wants to read to me--how can I say no to that? Chores need to be supervised, fights need to be extinguished, dinner needs to be served, etc., etc., etc.  So at times, work that would take me four to five hours takes me ten hours. This means I'm distracted during all things.  When I'm working, I feel bad for ignoring the children. When I'm doing something for the children, I feel guilty about not working. It's something I need to work on changing, these feelings, because neither thing gets my full attention.

Even with the distractions and lack of personal care, I love working at home. It's the only way I can work realistically right now, with seven kids, one vehicle, and a partner who works outside the home. I know how lucky I am to be able to do this--but that doesn't mean it's all blissfully rolling out of bed and performing my work until finished, and then attending to the children's needs. It's a mishmashmosh of coffee breath, sock buns, and getting my ears used to sporting earrings again.

I'm trying.

Let's Be Bad, Together.

I've started subscribing to the thought that for feminism to really work and come full circle, women have to care for and support other women. This is hard because our culture has taught us to judge each other as whores, sluts, prudes, thin, fat, ugly, pretty. You know where I am coming from. Fighting the urge when we meet or see another woman and not to compare her to yourself physically and mentally (job, man, etc) is what women do a lot of the time. We have to program ourselves to fight this innate urge to judge our fellow women. This comes to the forefront of my mind tonight because I will be attended a hip hop/rap show where a female group is headlining. There will be big hair, lots of eye makeup and hella cleavage. I am sure to be one of them, as this is part of the fun. The headlining women swear like sailors and talk like men. In a word, as a woman, I jump between thinking the music is super ridiculous to a good turn in the status quo of things. Why shouldn't girls be able to rap about getting laid? About wanting to be tough? Men have been doing this in every form...forever. If the critics of feminism think feminist language is hate speech towards men, they need to think again. Women are just trying to undo the millennia of oppression placed upon them. And if we wanna do it with big hair while trying on your crude lingo? We are going to do just that.

A Virtuous Woman is Above Feelings



A couple of years ago, after a visit to their place, my stepmother sent some stuff home with me for the kids. When I got the bag home and looked through it, among the toys and clothes there was a magazine. My stepmom had written on it that it was for my mother-in-law. I looked at the cover, and something jumped out at me. See, the mag was called Above Rubies, which is a publication "to encourage women in their high calling as wives, mothers, and homemakers."  Oh, brother, I thought, no WAY am I letting my MIL see this crap.  I threw it away.

Recently, though, I came across another magazine while I was waiting for some work done on our vehicle. I skimmed it for any particularly offensive articles. Above Rubies followers believe their god should control their bodies, not their own selves here on earth. (Contraception? Goodness, no! Submission to husband in everything? Of course, silly billy!) and instead I found one that made me stop in my tracks. It wasn't offensive, exactly, but it was disturbing. The article is titled "I Almost Gave Up!" and is about a woman who read AR and threw her birth control away. Her second child was a sick baby who had jaundice and a milk allergy. The next two babies had kidney problems, and one of them needed surgery. Her husband lost his job during that time. Obviously this was all very stressful. So the wife asks her husband if he would consider having a vasectomy, which he would not. She begged him, then, "Well, how about just a temporary preventative method? I really need a break. I can't do this anymore."

Let's stop there. This woman has been through incredible stress and anxiety; probably she'd been sick with worry for YEARS. She's coming to her husband, her partner in life, for support.  She's telling him very clearly she wants a break from pregnancy, that she needs time to recover.  So how does her loving husband, her spiritual leader, comfort her?

He refuses to have sex with her until she changes her mind. Not, mind you, because he's a DICK, but because "He was not willing to compromise [their convictions]."

Then, this woman who obviously needed comfort and support, changed her mind. Her kids began asking her when she'd have another baby, and "I realized I was the only one wanting a break." 

THAT. is the part that hit me the hardest. She believes her own opinion doesn't mean shit. Her feelings are invalid. I'm all about reproductive choice for women, and not just when it comes to abortion. If a woman wants to have 19 children, who are we to tell her she can't possibly be happy having babies every year? Because we don't know what that woman is thinking. But here, we do know what she was thinking. She was thinking she needed time for emotional recovery. She was thinking her husband might support her in her crisis. She was thinking of her own personal emotional and physical health! She's the one carrying the children in her body, but her emotional torture means nothing even to her.  Gawd, that's just so fucking disheartening.

Celebrating International Women's Day Informally

I began a post for today, International Women’s Day, and I was going to list all the crappy bills being introduced in Montana that will hurt Montana women. That’s sorta my schtick, being pissed off, and I definitely am.  But I have already had bad news today and I didn’t want to bring myself down any further.  So instead, a happy list! I did some good things for women and girls over the past year, even if I couldn’t be involved in a formal IWD event (there are none here in Billings as far as I know).

 

1.       Being real. My daughter, 8, asked me how babies are created, and I told her! I had been planning a speech and I was going to get library books and it was going to be a whole thing.  Instead, one evening we were lying together in my bed talking, and she asked me. No one else was around, I had the time, so I explained how babies are made and born.  I believe her words were “Huh!”, and since then she has told me several times that she wants to have kids, but she wants to adopt, since she doesn’t want to go through “all that stuff.” I’m not sure if she means the sex or the pain of childbirth!  This led to a funny exchange a few weeks ago:

DD:                  Mom, do you have to do, you know, to have a baby?

Me:                Do you mean sex? 

DD:                 Yeah, that.

Me:                Oh.  Well, no.  there are other ways (I go on to explain about sperm  banks and surrogacy and etc.)

DD:                 Can you do that?  I want a sister.

Me:                …well, I could.  But Daddy and I could also make a baby by having sex, like we talked about, right?

DD:                   I guess…but do in PRIVATE and shut your door!

Me:                 …we usually do. 

DD:             Well, this one time in Spokane, I saw you and Daddy and you were naked and kissing.  I was supposed to be taking a nap.

Me:          Are you ever going to let me forget that?!?!  Also, next time maybe you should just take a nap.

2.       Girl Scouts.  The same DD mentioned above came home from school one day last fall with a Girl Scout flyer.  Could she join?  Sure, I said, and signed the slip saying I’d be willing to volunteer. That quickly turned into me being a troop leader, and I’ve been loving it!  We’re currently doing a project involving gathering healthy and diet-specific foods for our local food bank. 

3.       Volunteering.  My Brownies and I have volunteered at the Billings Food Bank twice as part of our project, and I have to say I love it, and am looking for more opportunities for us to volunteer around the community.  I never really learned as a kid how important it is to just help people—even if it’s doing a favor like babysitting for a friend or giving someone a ride to work, so now I’m doubling down, trying to make sure my Girl Scouts know it is important that we get involved, that it’s not only fun for us, but it helps someone, maybe a little girl just like them.

 So yeah, it’s been a depressing year with the War on Women still going strong even though voters told the GOP in no uncertain terms last fall to back the fuck off women’s rights.  But there’s still work to be done, and I think one of the most important things we can ever, EVER teach our children is compassion.  Empathy.  Teaching them to give a shit about people, not things or gadgets or money, but people. If the human race is going to be as amazing as The Doctor gives us credit for, we better get on that compassion thing.