Dinosaur Mom Chronicles

Today I am living the reality. The unresolved asterisk from Tuesday’s post is that getting the kids out of the house “under their own steam” means cajoling them out the door 15-20 minutes earlier so they can walk to school or the bus stop instead of being dropped by car at their respective schools. It is not an easy sell. Then there’s the fact – which should not have been surprising – that Metrobuses do not magically appear five minutes after I get to my stop every day. OK, so maybe it’s not as easy as it looked on Tuesday morning.

Then there’s the weather. And The Patriarchy. The hose and jackets that are unfortunately de rigeur in my professional weight class are not consistent with personal comfort on public transit in Washington May – October. At least I can legitimately escape hosiery if I wear full-length pants and stick with closed-toe sling-backs all summer. I would rail about hose with skirts and dresses, but I would wear hosiery over a necktie any day. This burden is classist, not sexist. The sexist part is the shoes and make-up. Even “sensible” closed-toe sling-backs (square, 1-5/8″ – 1-3/4″ heels, round or square toes) are dreadful to walk and stand in. And, since women in “natural-looking” make-up are consistently perceived as more competent in psych experiments than women in no make-up, I am resigned to applying, sweating off, and reapplying the concealer, foundation, and powder it takes to make me look “naturally” well-groomed.

Today I am getting the permanent parking pass from my apartment complex, the one that goes with my new state license plates. This will shift the burden of hunting for guest parking every night on to Dino Spouse, whose car can’t get legal in its own right unless we move to a larger apartment and thereby buy the right to add an additional soul to our lease. This prompts a contentious discussion of the circumstances that led to our untimely relocation from Columbia every time we have to search in more than two places for visitor parking in our complex. That’s been twice in the last four or five days. I do not want to move again until April or May of next year, but neither do I wish to refight the battles of Operation Dino Freedom ad infinitum. I predict that we will trade cars soon.

Today I am living the dream. My kids all left the house on time to get to school under their own power.* I am sitting on a Metrobus that will take me to another Metrobus that will take me to work. In under 50 minutes, according to the WMATA Trip Planner.

This is almost an 800% improvement over yesterday in that visitor parking at the only garage near my new office that has parking spaces after 8 AM was $24. The trip estimator tells me that my trip to work this morning will cost me $3.40 (unless that’s the round-trip cost, of course – I need to find out. And get a bus map. And a Smart Card.)

The project I am assigned to is quirky and obscure enough that it might be a good fit for me. I am seated in an intern bay at a work station with no walls. So far, though, I am …. hmmm. Bus nap. Ah.

So far I am hopeful that this assignment will work out. Now back to bus nap.

We’ve been living in Virginia a month now. I got VA tags for the microvan this week**. Podrostok is getting an A in English and going out for the local soccer travel team. Tweenbot, though still mopey and convinced that Maryland or maybe Michigan is where he truly belongs, is voluntarily doing his homework and hasn’t fled school grounds in a couple of weeks now. Mouse complains that her schoolwork is not challenging, but she really likes her teacher and is planning her first party in the new place. Dino Spouse worries about Babushka’s well-being and how we are going to finance life inside the beltway, but now that he’s found a boxing club he seems happier.

We’re doing OK collectively. But my professional life is in flux again. It looks like the too-good-to-be-true permanent assignment I secured in January was just that, with the end result that I’ve been relaunched into never-ending detail assignment land again. I found out Monday and I start my new mystery job tomorrow. So today I am getting my hair professionally cut and colored (for a change) and going to clean out my old new office. Without a child attached to me (for another change). I am not overflowing with professional confidence at the most settled of times, and nothing has happened in the last few months to enhance my sense of puissance. Throw in the family turmoil of the last few weeks and – well, let me stop. Hyperventilating is not going to help my chances of getting a better hair do.

*I hate the Disney Channel. But some of their tween TV offerings are tolerable. The one I like best, sexist and racist subtexts aside, is “Phineas and Ferb.” The title of today’s offering comes from the sound emitted by the stereotypical Indian brainiac kid when he has trouble finding his inner rock-and-roller.

** Of course, putting the tags on the car is an entirely different matter, and the computer system for generating drivers’ licenses was down, and I haven’t completed the safety or emissions inspections yet. So I will be returning to the Alexandria DMV ere long.