Eight things

I have had a bunch of vague ideas floating around that never made it into full posts, which means it's time for...

Ten minutes of writing! And, GO.

 

1. Buying things. I cut down on my food-blog reading because it was making me think about food all the time. I started reading some more style and design blogs. The problem is, those blogs are always listing things to buy. Maybe I am too suggestible. I should get rid of the style blogs and start reading health blogs instead. Anyway, I have been clicking that Buy button a little too easily lately, especially since we're on a single income these days. I will cut down on that.

 

2. K's birthday. We are going to have a Pac-Man party. Invitations need to go out this week. I am still a little terrified at the thought of all those little kids running around my house.

 

3. Work. Work has been slow, and correspondingly I have been pretty low-energy about work. I probably should spend my downtime doing something useful, like writing an article or learning about some new area or going to an event or something. But I haven't been. I've been going home at 5:30 every day and I love it. I'm just not feeling very ambitious lately. It sounds like an excuse, but I just want to lay low and hang out with my family for a while. I have years and years to do something useful, right?

 

4. My mom's retirement. She took an early retirement package and now she regrets it. I asked her how she was feeling and she cried, "I don't have a job!"

 

5. Saraswati puja. We went to my parents' house last weekend for the ceremony. In the past K has been fidgety and resistant to even stay in the room, but this time he sat there the whole time, was interested in what was going on, and asked lots of questions. I always felt like everyone expected me to know everything, which made me feel uncomfortable because I didn't. Actually, that's a good summary of my ethnic identity issues in general.

 

6. Super Bowl. What to cook? I'm thinking pigs in a blanket, chili, and cheesecake. Cheesecake is not manly but I haven't had it in a long time. K is having a Patriots-themed week at daycare. Yesterday they made jerseys out of construction paper. The alpha girl in the class picked #12 and, according to my sources, is obsessed with Tom Brady. K picked #91, which turns out to be the number for Myron Pryor who has been injured all season. Why? He said 91 was his favorite number.

 

7. X update. X is waving, which is very cute because he gets excited when someone waves back. JW says he is also growing two top teeth. He loves to eat tissues and paper towels, and yells when you take them out of his mouth.

 

8. Habits. I always have some habit or other that I'm trying to establish. Many of these have to do with social interactions, because I am socially retarded and have to actively watch other people interact and take mental notes. I'm serious. I have had to practice things like using people's names when greeting them, and continuing to laugh after someone has made a joke until everyone else has also stopped laughing. I'm getting pretty good at the last habit I worked on, not saying sorry, and am moving on to not being the one to end the conversation.

 

The end. Which means I have saved for my next post... a picture of X in mid-spit-up!

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Who owns the data

Struggling with some issues about data ownership at work today.

Several of my clients sell SaaS (Software as a Service) products. Access to their software is entirely web-based. They process information provided by their customers. In the course of processing this information, they generate metadata and usage data. In some cases, for clients whose business is providing analytics, the metadata or usage data is the whole point of their service.

The question is, who owns that data, and what does ownership of that data mean? I think a reasonable way to look at it would be:

1. Customer owns any data they provide
2. Customer "owns" metadata in the sense that SaaS provider can only use it in the context of providing services to Customer; however:
• Customer has no right to actually get the data, except in a format that SaaS provider has agreed to provide. If Customer is paying for analytics, Customer and SaaS provider should work out in advance whether Customer can export the metadata after their access to the software is terminated; in the absence of any agreement, Customer has no right to access the metadata.
• SaaS provider can transform the data by anonymizing it and aggregating it with other data; Saas provider should have full ownership over this, including the right to sell it to third parties

If anyone bothered to read this, feel free to weigh in on whether you think this makes sense and conforms with what you would expect as an Internet user (of, say, Facebook). Just needed a space to think out loud. Now back to my regularly scheduled "cute thing my kid said today" / "blathering about biglaw" posts.

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Kid art

I have to confess something.

When K brings home an art project from school, I talk with him about it. I keep it on the table. Then after he goes to bed I throw it away (or recycle it, if it's not covered with glitter or cereal or something).

Maybe I would feel differently if he expressed himself more through arts and crafts, but he's never been the least bit interested and doesn't even like drawing with crayons like a normal kid. So the stuff he brings home is generally part of a school activity and is indistinguishable from art any child this age would do, except sometimes it has his finger or hand prints.

I've kept a few things I like. I also kept a writing assignment where, after months of resisting writing at all, it was obvious he had worked hard and made real progress. That one is on the fridge. Sometimes I send it to the grandparents and great-grandparents. But mostly, it goes in the trash.

Do you think I'll regret it later? What do you do with little kid art?

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Why I went to law school, and what happened next

Proto Attorney and Dinei both wrote these "should I go to law school / why I went to law school" posts, and suggested that others do it so applicants can see a range of experiences, so, okay.

First, this is what I tell aspiring law school applicants.
1. Do you really want to be a lawyer? How do you know? Have you talked to practicing lawyers? If the answer to any of these questions is "No" or "I don't know," stop there.
2. Is there anything else you want to be that doesn't require this much specialized education? Do that first.
3. What do you think you'll do after law school, realistically, given what you know about yourself, where you live, the level of law school you're likely to attend, and the job market?
 4. Can you afford to go to law school? What will be your return on investment? If you don't know what that is, go Google it now.

I have written about this in bits and pieces, but here was my decision process about law school. I had worked for six years as a software engineer, and had known for a while that it wasn't for me. I spent a long time, over a year, figuring out what I liked and didn't like about my past jobs, and what I wanted out of a job. Some of the things I was looking for were:
- Working with words. Reading and writing as an essential part of my job.
- Being an expert in something. Specifically, something that was a little difficult to become an expert in, something that not everybody knew, and something that many people would find useful and want to know about.
- Advising people.
- Financial security.
- Subject matter that I found interesting.
- Smart colleagues who I liked.
- Independent, respectful, flexible work environment.
- Feeling that my work served a worthwhile purpose.

I found myself reading Supreme Court decisions and volunteering to work with our IP lawyers on some DRM issues, and I started to consider law school. I wondered whether it was worth it to give up a stable, well-paid, intellectually challenging job for three years of very expensive graduate school followed by an uncertain job future. At the time I was applying to law school, I was married, owned a house, and was hoping to start a family soon. I decided that, for the sake of my future career and our family finances, I would only apply to top 30 schools, and if I didn't get in I would try to think about other career directions.  I applied to five schools and got into all of them without any scholarship money, so the choice was easy -- I went to Harvard Law, right down the street.

One of the most valuable things I did during law school was talk to lawyers, attend lots of career seminars, and in general give lots of thought to my career options. I didn't even know my current practice area -- advising technology startup companies -- existed. I didn't know any lawyers growing up, and before I started exploring law as a career I was only familiar with lawyers on TV.

I'm happy with how things turned out. Legal work suits my personality. I love finding a precise way to express a client's intentions, puzzling over which word is appropriate and how the different provisions of a contract interact with each other, parsing a statute to see exactly what it means. It's a lot like programming. I love it when clients call me for advice. I love learning about new technologies and helping my clients get their ideas out into the world. I also feel more secure being in a profession with a clear career path and possibilities. Frankly, I'm not that entrepreneurial. Since the role of a lawyer is well-defined, I have an idea of the range of things I can do and the places where I belong. If I were more entrepreneurial, I think I'd have been better off developing expertise in some field on my own, and then consulting or finding a position with someone who needed that expertise.

At the same time, the job market scares me. I'm at a large law firm and I have seen friends get laid off. I hope I would land on my feet, but I'm relatively new to the field and despite my talk about exploring career options, I'm not sure where I would end up next or whether I'd be able to find a job that suits me. While I'm grateful to have my current job, and like the work and the people (and the money and the office), I find the schedule, requirement of constant availability, and billable hours onerous and anxiety-inducing. As a field, law is also much more sexist than engineering, and large law firms in particular assume you will have a stay-at-home spouse so you can devote most of your energy to work.

I still have it in the back of my head that I gave up 3 years of salary, plus spent about $45K a year for 3 years, to go to law school, and I calculate when I'm going to break even. If I stay at my current job, it'll be in about a year. I've paid down most of my student loans, and may be able to pay them all off by the end of this year. We bought a new house (and our current outstanding principal on our mortgage is more than the entire value of our old house, which is a little terrifying). We replaced both our ancient cars. We had another baby. My husband was able to leave his job and pursue some less lucrative goals. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Most people don't get this kind of job out of law school.

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Creature Report

Hello.

Here are some things I have been thinking about lately.

Octonauts. K has been watching this show on Disney. It's about a bunch of animals (plus some "vegimals," including a talking turnip, radish, and eggplant) who explore the sea and learn about different sea creatures in their octopus-shaped submarine. At the end of each segment there is a "creature report" with an infernally catchy song that has been stuck in my head for days now.

The Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney is smug and out of touch. Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Rick Santorum's name is synonymous in my mind with "animal sex." Ron Paul thinks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should be renamed "Hate Whitey Day." Rick Perry... it's hard to believe that this ad is even real. (Recap: What kind of country do we live in where gays can serve openly in the military, but our children don't pray in public school because Barack Obama hates Christmas? I am not even exaggerating.) These people are running for PRESIDENT. Can't they find anybody remotely suitable?

The Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster. Mainly because this is all over the news, but also because I keep thinking about the recording of the phone call where the Italian Coast Guard keeps yelling at the captain to get back on board and see who needs to be rescued, and the captain just stammers and sounds confused. Then the captain said he diverted his route and went closer to shore to salute a retired admiral who he had been talking to on the phone at the time of the crash, and then he changed his story and said that it was because one of his waiters had grown up on that island. And then today he claimed he didn't abandon the ship, he FELL out of it. Much like the Republican presidential candidates, it keeps getting crazier.

Jorts. I lamented the ever-widening hole in the knee of my favorite jeans. JW suggested I turn them into cut-offs. "Do people still wear cut-offs?" I asked. "Sure," he said. "I think so. Yeah, people must still wear jean shorts. Jorts." "Jorts? That's not a real thing." "It is!" So we googled it (because that is how you settle a modern argument) and found an entire website, jorts.com, dedicated to making fun of people who wear jean shorts. Also, the Urban Dictionary's definition of "jorts" includes the following: "Jean shorts. Worn mostly by children and douchebags. Jorts are perhaps the easiest way to recognize people you will not like." So I will not be cutting off my jeans.

My Kindle (and the books I have been reading on it). It is amazing how much I've been reading since getting the Kindle. Recently I've also been emailing long-form articles to my Kindle so I can read them when I have time. I read the Democracy 21 report on Super PACs and how the existing ones are basically illegal. I read a This American Life transcript about how homosexuality was redefined in the DSM in the 1970s so it was no longer classified as a pathology. I've been buying way more books than usual, too. I used to buy a book maybe once every few months. I'm a library person. But now books seem so bulky. I have to lug them around with me and remember what page I was on and put something on top of  them to keep them open when I'm trying to read and do something else at the same time. I wasn't sure I would like an e-reader, but I'm a reluctant convert. (Reluctant because I'm not crazy about being tied to Amazon, and I dislike the DRM restrictions on the books I buy.)

The end.

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Mom of the future

I waited a little while before changing X this morning, due to his new habit that requires two diaper changes within the first half hour of waking. After seeing him make the face and freeze for a moment before returning to crawling around, I checked his diaper. Sure enough, it was time for a change. I unzipped him and broke out into a little song of "Poop, There It Is." X gave me his trademarked scowly face. "You're right, I'm dating myself," I said. "You'll hear this song on the oldies sta..."

Then it hit me that nearly all my cultural references will be incomprehensible to my kids. What's a tape? What's a station? What's a dial?

This must be payback from all those times I made fun of my mom for not being able to program the VCR. (The what?)

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Working moms group

I started a working moms group in my town. I thought it would be a good way to get to know other working moms in town and share advice. So far we've met twice and have had 6-8 people each time. I have about 20 people on my list.

Most of the women work full time. The ones with part-time or flexible schedules negotiated them up front when they started their job, and said their companies were fine with it. Only one woman said that she negotiated a flexible arrangement after being on the job for a while, and she worked from home one day a week. The consensus was that it's best to raise this once you're fairly certain you've got the job, or after you've established yourself (meaning the worst time to ask is within the first two years or so after you start). One person told a story about how her boss didn't hire a woman everyone else loved because her request that she work from home made her seem less committed, but she thought he actually didn't like the applicant and was using her request as an excuse.

Most of the women have babies. So far I've only met two with school-age kids, and have pumped them for information about the public schools.

ALL of the women outsource house-cleaning. And we all agreed that it preserves our sanity that the two days a week we have to spend entirely with our kids aren't taken up by vacuuming and scrubbing toilets. (Besides, we're stimulating the economy.)

I'm hoping that as we continue meeting and people get to know each other, we can develop a real network where people feel comfortable reaching out to the group with questions. Meanwhile, I feel like it's my responsibility to keep it from fizzling out. Do any of you have a group like this, formally or informally? So far it's been free-form, with everyone discussing whatever topic comes up, but I'd love to hear ideas about how and whether to focus meetings or have certain activities or discussion topics.

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Part-time

Recently I talked to some women at The Firm who work part-time, 4 days a week. My biggest concern about working part-time is that you'd end up working the same hours but getting paid less. But they all said that they have been having a much easier time setting boundaries -- not only because they feel they entitled to do so, but also because other people expect it. In contrast, a full-time associate is expected to have zero boundaries. A more experienced attorney who worked part-time pointed out that in her experience, if you're part-time and the people looking at your hours notice you're working closer to full-time, they'll view it as a problem and will work with you on strategies for reducing your hours. But if you're full-time and exceeding the billable target by several hundred hours, they just give you a bonus.

My other big concern is that in my department, there are very few female partners and I have heard several of the male partners express negativity toward scheduling flexibility for family obligations. One woman who has always been very gung-ho about her work recently went part-time, and she said so far it's been going well, she's happy, and she hasn't gotten the sense that people are less willing to work with her. (I have heard from others that some partners have been less willing to work with them. I think it depends a lot on who you usually work with.)

It all sounds tempting, leaving aside my feelings about part-time as a female ghetto. In law school I remember thinking it seemed like a no-brainer to buy back some of your time each week. Now it seems more complicated.

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Work anxiety

This week was an unusually slow week at work.

I didn't raise my hand to get more work. I decided to try to clean off my desk and deal with some nagging assignments. But a not-so-unexpected thing happened. I was totally unproductive. When I thought about doing that lingering work, I would panic and start surfing the web. And then I thought, crap, I wasted all that time, and I'm getting later and later at doing this work, and then I would feel even more anxious and still wouldn't do the work. That night I had trouble sleeping. Finally, at the end of the week, I managed to tackle the work, only to realize that I didn't have time to finish and if I had used all that time I wasted it would be done by now, and this will reflect badly on me and affect my reputation, all of which makes me feel even more anxious. Like pit in my stomach, heart beating faster anxious. And of course, I feel terrible that I'm taking time away from my family when I'm not even accomplishing the work I'm supposed to be doing.

It sounds ridiculous, but it feels paralyzing.

I've tried various productivity tweaks, including uninstalling my web browser of choice (because that's usually how I procrastinate), installing LeechBlock, which stops me from browsing, making to-do lists before I leave, restructuring my work day, etc... nothing seems to help.

What say you, Internet friends? Is this normal and I should just get over it? Is this an extreme version of normal unproductivity and procrastination? Is the solution just to be more busy? Is there some magical productivity hack I should be doing to change my habits? Do I need therapy?

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My Year of No

I was offered an awesome job that would have started at the end of January. For personal reasons, I wasn't able to take it.

Then I was encouraged to fill a vacancy for the elected position I ran for a few years ago. A small part of me likes the idea, but I feel like I already have a full slate of commitments and the timing is wrong for me to take on another one. I'm already on the board of a local foundation and I hope to be involved in the PTO once school starts in the fall.

I also decided not to continue with a pro bono program that I felt was taking up too much time and wasn't helping me become a better lawyer.

Mostly I feel okay about turning down these opportunities. My job is demanding, I have two small kids at home, and even though there are lots of projects I'd like to take on, I feel like now is not the time. At the same time, I sense a pattern of consciously pulling back, and I feel a little disappointed in myself for not being willing to try -- maybe if I did, I would discover I had the capacity. I wonder, is 2012 going to be my year of saying no?

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10 months

Dear X,

At ten months old, you are an adorable, roly-poly baby with almost four teeth on the bottom and two on top. You drool constantly, still spit up with some regularity (but nothing like the fountain you used to be), and since starting daycare there is pretty much always snot coming out of your nose. You laugh with delight when you see someone in your family, and you think pretty much everything your big brother does is the best and funniest thing ever.

When I come home, you immediately crawl over to me, grab my pant legs, pull yourself up and lift your hands up for me to grab and walk you around. If I leave the room after you first see me, you get upset, which is why I prefer to immediately sneak upstairs, change, and then come back down so you don't get spit, snot, and food crust all over my work clothes. The other day when I dropped you off at school, you cried. Then you crawled over to me and wanted to be picked up and were happy again. Then when the teacher took you again, you cried again. Are you suddenly developing separation anxiety? At least I know you like me.

You say "da" and "ga" but I have never heard you utter any kind of "m" sound, which makes me think it will be a very long time until I hear "mommy" from you. We are trying to teach you some basic signs (more, all done, milk, eat, drink, water, please, thank you, diaper, bath, play, up), but we haven't been terribly consistent and I think the only ones you recognize are "all done" and "milk". I may be imagining it, but I think you are starting to say "a-da" (all done) at the end of a meal.

You are still eating some jar food, but you prefer finger food and will happily eat anything and everything we're eating. Your digestive system can't always handle it, but your mouth is ready! Stay with that. No more picky eaters in our house, please!

You can move around easily and are getting more steady on your feet, but you can only stand by yourself for a second or two. I predict that you'll walk some time around your first birthday. You crawl if nobody is around to hold your hands while you walk around. You can pick up the teeny-tiniest objects (like a single round sprinkle) from the floor and shove them into your mouth, and you get annoyed when we prevent you from eating your objects of choice. Especially shoes, wires and cables.

You hate falling down. Even if you're not hurt at all, you get angry and cry. It surprises me because you're usually resilient. But then again, you never did like to be thwarted. You also do not like lying down. Luckily you're strong enough now for standing-up diaper changes.

You love being held up in the air, turned upside down, and spun around; watching ceiling fans; and clapping, snapping, and other body-movement sounds. You are ticklish, especially on your feet and on your sides around your belly. You laugh when I blow on your head, making your hair fly up.

You get tired really early. Around 6 p.m., your eyes start to get red. At 6:30 you enter a fun manic phase where you laugh hysterically at everything for no reason. By 6:45, if we have not started bedtime preparations, you become miserable. If you are not asleep by 7 p.m., we are all miserable. A bath can keep you happy even if it's getting late, but once you get out of it, you move quickly past fun-manic into upset-manic.

I can't believe you will be a whole year old soon. I'm excited to make your first birthday cake. The other day I gave you a little piece of an Italian cookie that a neighbor made and you tried to eat my face, looking for more. I think you may have a sweet tooth like Mommy.

You are an awesome baby and you make me so happy every day.

Love,
Mommy

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K's birthday party

The boys' birthdays are coming up! Happily, X won't need a birthday to-do this year or next year. But K is excited for a party with his friends.

Last year we did his birthday at the indoor playspace near our house. It was a little pricey, but super-easy -- I had pizza delivered and picked up an ice cream cake, snacks, and candles at the supermarket, stopped by Target for some goody bag stuff, and we were done. I went into labor two days later, so the ease more than justified the price.

This year, I'm tempted to do another out-of-the-house party. Since it's March, it has to be indoors. K generally doesn't like any kind of structured activity or art, so that rules out most party venues. He likes to run around and play video games. There's a nicer indoor playspace we could go to that charges the same amount, so that's an option. He loves Lanes and Games, a bowling alley with an arcade, but I feel like it would be repeating the party we just went to for another little girl in his class. The logical, and less expensive, choice would be a party at home, I guess. But the thought of having all those little kids in our house...

I guess we could make it work. K has asked for a "Megaman, Mario, Robot and Donkey Kong party," which may be challenging for decoration, but we can have some fun with it. We can have the kids decorate their own cupcakes, or maybe even have them decorate a "Mario castle" (essentially a gingerbread house -- I may still be able to pick up a kit on sale, and save it until the party). We can set up toy stations, and a craft station where kids could make robot heads out of cardboard boxes, tinfoil, and pipe cleaners. Maybe we could even have an obstacle course in the living room. We can still keep the refreshments simple -- pizza, snacks, cupcakes. We can give out fake mustaches and antennae as party favors. This could work. I'll need to set a ground rule in advance of no actual video games at the party, though -- I can see all the kids fighting over who gets to play, or staring at the TV instead of playing with each other, and other parents may be more screentime-averse than we are. (We do have some fun Wii games for kids, though -- how funny would it be to see a bunch of 4 and 5-year olds playing Rock Band?)                                               

We're going to a party at one of K's friend's houses this weekend. I will monitor the situation and make a decision.

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New Year's Weekend

We had a low-key weekend at home, with an unexpected bonus: daycare was open on Monday, but I had the day off! And it was balmy weather for January. I got in a fun dance workout, dragged JW out hiking, took a nice long leisurely shower, had a delicious Indian lunch at Dosa Temple, and cleaned out my closet before picking up the kids early and walking them home.

Over the weekend, K and I made and decorated New Year's cookies and delivered them to all the neighbors. I am lazy about rolling out dough and cutting out cookies, so I just shaped the dough into logs, sliced, and baked. I made some lemon icing (using a lemon that CT sent from her balcony tree in California) and K dumped so much colored sugar and sprinkles on top that we'll be picking it out from between the floorboards for weeks. We wrote "2012" with icing to make them New Year's cookies. They were not that pretty, but nobody minded. It was a perfect time to be out delivering cookies because most of the neighbors were hanging out at home, having their own low-key weekends and recovering from the holidays, and were happy to have company. It took a while because everyone invited us in. I think this should be an annual tradition. Next year we'll make more cookie plates, and spread them out over a few days.

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Happy New Year 2012!

Happy New Year, all!

This year my kids will be 1 and 5. K will start kindergarten! JW will find a new career direction. X will learn how to walk and talk. I will practice yoga every day and attain enlightenment, all the while astounding clients with my corporate law wizardry. Or something. I think I'm the only one who doesn't have a big transition planned for this year.

My motto for this year is: LESS THINKING, MORE DOING. Too much thinking gets me in trouble.

I also resolve to take better care of myself this year: try to get to sleep by 10 p.m. every night, get more exercise, find clothes that fit my post-baby body. The baby is ten months old now (as of today!) and has been sleeping through the night for a while. It's been nearly two months since I last nursed him. Things are back to normal enough that I feel like I can pay more attention to my own needs.

Looking back on my goals for 2011, I'm about 50-50. Here they are:
Get in better shape than I was in pre-baby. NOPE.
Revamp my wardrobe so I have decent, fitting clothes that I actually like to wear both in and out of the house (and other appearance-related goals). NOPE.
Get out of the house daily during maternity leave. CHECK. Sigh... maternity leave. I loved it so.
Start learning piano. CHECK.
Plan a summer vacation. NOPE. JW wouldn't cooperate.
Get professional photos taken. CHECK.
Figure out daycare. CHECK.
Get the house in better shape. A little yes, a little no.
Budget and use financial software. We tried this; it didn't stick; it's not that much of a priority but is something we may go back to.
Do something town-related. CHECK. Joined the board of our local foundation.
Be able to talk about sports. NOPE. Forgot about this one. I guess it wasn't a priority after all.
Possibly try meditation. Sort of. Would still like to do more of this.
Join a book club and/or reading website; keep track of books read. Sort of. Tried it, didn't stick, but now that I have a Kindle it's keeping track of books read for me.

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