Take Your Daughter to Work Day
April 28, 2011 at 7:23 am | Posted in Career Moves, Family Ties | 4 Comments
For 19 years, Americans have taken part in Take Your Daughter to Work Day (which is now the more gender-friendly Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day). The idea behind it was to expose young girls to the working world, at a time when women were underrepresented in the workforce. The event also allowed parents to bond with their kids on a whole different level.
I don’t remember how I knew about it, but I remember taking part in the event at an early age. I looked forward to commuting with my dad and hanging out in his office all day long. He would introduce me to everyone, with great pride. I passed the time sitting on his couch reading a book. We ate lunch in the company cafeteria with all the other business people. I was able to observe my father interacting with his colleagues and while I never understood (and still don’t) what my Dad did for a living, this view of professionalism definitely had an impact on me.
I always knew I wanted a 9-5. I always knew I’d work in an office someday. I wanted the same kind of professional connections that my Dad had. I did, in fact, model my career off of this one day of exposure a year. I didn’t have to do any work to know that one day, I’d be the one sitting behind that desk. I was driven.
I’m now at a point in my career where I can advocate for experiences like these publicly on a professional level, and hope to influence some change. My perspective is that youth need more exposure than just the one day. But also on a personal level, I can imagine celebrating this day when I have my own kids. I had my role models and I look forward to the opportunity to help guide my kids on a path to success.
Did you take part in Take your Daughter to Work Day? Do you still?
Me vs. the Butter Knife
April 26, 2011 at 7:27 am | Posted in Life and Living | 7 CommentsTags: accident, clumsy, injury, pain
Accidents happen. All kinds of accidents. And I’m not talking about car accidents. I’m talking about people doing the mundane tasks of their lives and slipping up just one time. Accidents are not reserved for children or risk-takers — we can all break bones and we can all bleed.
Up until this past week, I had gotten stitches four times in my life, three times in which I was under the age of 5, and were the typical clumsy accidents like banging my head into a cubby or falling off my bike. The fourth time, I was 11 years old and away at sleep-away camp for the first time. I was racing one of my friends down a hill and we both fell at the end. It was fun and we were laughing it up until somebody told me my knee was bleeding. I must have fallen on glass and didn’t even notice it. The blood definitely freaked me up as I hobbled a half a mile down the road to the infirmary where I was taken to the hospital to be put back together. I spent the next six weeks in an air cast so that I wouldn’t bend my knee and break the stitches.
Little did I know all these years later I would add a fifth time to my list. I was in the kitchen at work getting my 11:30 snack, an avocado. While talking to a colleague I attempted to stab the pit with a butter knife so I could twist it out, like I had done a thousand times before. My office doesn’t keep sharper knives, which are much more useful when trying to get into that pit. The butter knife ended up slipping passed the pit and right into my middle finger, really deep.
A butter knife. A freakin’ butter knife.
The shock of the incident and the sudden loss of blood made me woozy, so I sat down, but I really needed to lie down. My colleagues tried to help me get to the President’s office so I could lie down on the couch, but I didn’t make it far. A few steps out of the kitchen, I fainted and smashed my face on the floor, nearly biting through my lip.
You cannot make this stuff up.
By now, I am surrounded by colleagues who hoist me up in a chair, give me ice, and proceed to roll me across the office to the couch, passing by the conference room where my boss and the other executives were having a meeting. We waved them off, saying “she’s ok,” when clearly I wasn’t. It must have been pretty hilarious to see!
I finally end up going to the hospital and getting sewn up, and return to work a couple hours later.
Best story ever, right?
But this is not the first time I’ve done something insanely stupid as an adult. There was that time that I gave myself my first black eye by tripping over something in a bar and landing on my face. But at least I was a few too many drinks deep at that point! Or the time that I slipped on black ice and landed only on the back of my head, causing a minor concussion. But that was black ice! And I won’t even get into the dog bite story because that was just about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No, no. This time, I had no excuse. They say butter knives can’t hurt you. I call bluff. Anything can hurt you if the moment is right. And it doesn’t matter how old you are. You can always make stupid mistakes.
At least now, I am old enough to laugh about it.
An Update on Cohabitation
April 21, 2011 at 7:30 am | Posted in Relationship Woes | 2 CommentsTags: apartment, boys, relationships, roommates
When my boyfriend moved in with me last summer, I promised lots of updates on what it was like living with a boy. But I didn’t deliver for a very simple reason — there weren’t any great surprises or lessons learned. Beyond the drama surrounding the decision to move in together, the actual act of living together hasn’t been so dramatic.
Sure, we have our disagreements, mainly around the definition of clean,and I may threaten to kick him out in a fit of anger, but really, we adjusted to each other really well. We have very different schedules — I have my 9-5 and he has a schedule that’s all over the place, so each night he tucks me in and stays up for a while, and every morning, I kiss him goodbye and start my day. We see each other plenty but are not on top of each other. We both do household chores, though there always seems like there’s more to do than we have the energy for. He takes care of the dog when I get home late, and I leave him dinner when he gets home late. All in all, we take good care of each other.
He did move in with a lot of stuff, and I had been living alone for a while so I already had everything I needed, but we made as much room as we could. So we have a lot of unmatched furniture that is just for storage purposes.
So that’s really the main thing. I had already outgrown this apartment when he moved in. I never expected to be here this long, and now that we’ve been living together for almost a year, this place just keeps getting smaller and smaller. We aren’t on lease anymore, so we can move whenever we want, if we could find a place.
We’ve been casually looking at apartments for months, after deciding on a compromise on location that would allow him to drive to work and me to take the subway to work. We’ve seen some okay places, but nothing that made me want to go through the process of uprooting my life.
Because I want something better than what I have now. I want to be happy with my home. I can afford more than I could when I first moved into this apartment, both because of having a roommate and because of an increase in salary. I don’t want to settle. But it’s really hard to find an apartment that allows large dogs. It’s crazy to be how hard it is! I mean, I’ve seen small dogs and cats that cause more damage than my lab. It’s just not fair. It’s not like landlords ask how much their tenants weigh. Would they turn me down for an apartment if I was 300 pounds? I don’t think so.
So I don’t know what the next step is. Should we be looking to rent? Should we try to buy? She would save money for other things, like the new car we really need? Should we suck it up and stay here a little longer?
I don’t know how this sequence of events is going to unfold, but I do know this. Something is going to happen soon.
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