House wife? Home maker? SAHM and all that.

My friend, b~, tells me I like to go around in circles, analyzing and re-analyzing an issue ad nauseum (Well, he didn't use those words exactly but in essence this is what he meant). I suppose my life goes in circles sometimes where a relevant issue keeps occupying mental space and rising up to the occasion to shine every now and then and going back to oblivion (like r2i). The current issue being whether I want to be an SAHM.

Unlike in France or in Australia or even India (6 months maternity leave I hear), America has deigned that 6 weeks is all a mom needs to bond and nurture her child before bounding back to work in a size-6 outfit refreshed and re-energized from her nice long break. Ok fine, sarcasm doesn't lend itself to my writing but you get my point?

What's the big deal? Give up your job and quit whining, you want to say. But, you are nice too and probably won't say this to my face but this probably crosses your mind while you wonder how to phrase it all nicely. Somehow, that decision is not easy. There is the house with the mortgage, the parents back in India, the child's college education to cover, emergency funds and America's obsession -- the retirement funds. Even if you can manage to ignore the financial aspect of the choice, consider the woman who decides to stay back home to bring up her child. Does society treat her as it treats a working woman? "Oh, she is just a house wife" has probably improved to "She is a SAHM" but come on! Stay-at-home-mom? Work-your-ass-off-mom is more like it. I stayed back six months at home (unpaid of course), so I know what an SAHM does. Like I read somewhere, it's the most under-valued job in the world and probably the only job which inspite of being immensely challenging has no perks -- no vacation, no recognition; I won't add no-money to that list because the satisfaction that a mom gets by staying back and taking care of her kid at home cannot ever be matched by $$.

But assume, you did go back to work like me, now there is the whole relative grading at work to consider. Obviously, no business is going to give you high marks for taking time off for baby. And so you got to work your way up the ladder again (if you so choose to do) and convince your boss that yes, this brain somehow can manage to hold much more than just baby-thoughts. Thank you. I wonder how woman executives reached where they did? What suffered, I wonder...the child? The marriage? Her health? Because you know...something's gotta give!

And so, I had my argument points ready and thus armed, I confronted k. But I am no match when it comes to crunching numbers with him and so forty-five minutes later with my head reeling with facts and figures about expenses and risks, I admited defeat, at least for the present.

And so the nanny interviews continue...and I suppose I am an SAWM for now (because seriously, compared to parenting, anyone can dish out a few kilobytes of code. No offense meant -- And I say that because long back in another world, I lost a friend because I argued with her when she said, "My mom is just a house wife, what does she know?" to which I suppose I should not have responded, "Just because you are doing your Ph.d doesn't mean..." or maybe that was the right thing to say because that's exactly what I thought...whatever, old stories, old lessons).

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Blue winter crib-fest, oh! and about being rich.

We are experiencing miserable weather. The kind that makes you want to break the damned alarm clock, pound it into a mush and go deeper into the comforter. I lead a pretty normal life, so I did none of those things, got up on the wrong side of the bed, got ready and came to work. So, I sat staring at my monitor, having finished checking my gmail, my blog comments, the daily dilbert cartoon, my horoscope for the day, witty saying by unknown famous person of the day, the first few links in reddit, headlines of the most read articles in the New York Times and then I wondered about right and wrong, good and bad and such thoughts that only a gloomy, wintery day like this could inspire.

I reached a few conclusions in life.

1. Oatmeal sucks. I know I claimed it was a super food to my mom, made her switch to oatmeal for breakfast and proudly declare that I eat oatmeal for breakfast to people who enquired about my breakfast - well, there are not really that many that enquire but I tell them all the same. But the dirty little secret that I am privy to is the fact that I completely, honestly HATE oatmeal. It tastes like nothing. And if you add a bunch of stuff to it to make it better, it only comes off tasting even more awful. And that is the truth.
   
   
2. Tiffin time sucks next. You know, around 5 - 5.30 PM after you have driven home from work, that time. That time is what I miss most about India. No jasmine-like idlis with molagai podi, no hot crispy bread upma, no rava kesari, no hot chola with bread, no nothing. It's the same - toast and jam or on other days even chips and salsa and thank God, a cup of coffee or tea. I really wish I had better tiffin options. Yeah, you can stop giving me that look "Cook!", I just don't have the energy to cook anything remotely edible at the end of a long day! No, I don't want cold fruits and ready-made processed crap. I want hot food! Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is...

Ok, that concludes the crib-fest for today. Stupid weather. I am switching to one of those fancy companies on the West coast that has like 4 different canteens on campus serving HOT food, not cold salad but real, hot food. Plus, the weather has got to be better than this. Or better still, I'll go back to Madras. I guess I can't do that either, k promised we could shift to Madras only if I (not him) became super rich.

Any ideas? Let's see...(since I am in the mood for bulleted lists)

1. I could write a novel like Rowling did, sitting in a cafe or was it a train and imagining super-fantastic characters,
   
   
2. Or maybe I'll write one of those natural-living-green books but then I'd have to eat oatmeal everyday and not yummy crispy-creme donuts...


3. I could work real hard and become rich, does that still work?


4. I got it! I need a life event! I keep reading about life-changing events that umm...changed people's lives forever, again. I mean, Lisa Jewell, my new favorite author, got kicked off her job, that was a life event. And then her friend challenged her to write the first three chapters of her novel, she did, sent it to ten publishers and forgot about it. And one of them called back! And she became a famous author. Like that. But, I really would not like to be fired. I like my job (All the people I know say that, I guess it's a sorta ego thing, maybe you don't want the other person thinking "Poor old so and so, look at her stuck with her job", or maybe they really like their jobs, I mean, I can't complain about my job - I fought with my dad to switch from Bio to CompSci. Except some days I think, "What am I doing stuck in a little cubicle with my hands freezing in spite of the wristies when the sun is shining golden bright outside and so on...you get my point?).
   

So, that's that. I'll probably be doing the same thing ten years down the lane and asking you for ideas even then. You'll stick by, won't you?

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Personal finance!

Short break from regular post ->

Found this in Anupama's blog...my visual DNA :)

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Regular post continues ->

Now, there's a title you would not see again on my blog posts :)

So, my (comparatively) financially-aware husband decided to start a small investment club here, a pretty informal weekly gathering where we brainstorm financial ideas, discuss strategies to become rich in a few weeks and regularly implement ideas to save money and the world at large. I wish! Anyway, we do manage to meet as regularly as possible (movies, icecreams and napping have higher priority, of course) and discuss personal finance and related topics. k updates his blog (yes, it has been revived from it's semicomatose state and is now trying to hobble back to life, please provide incentives to revive said space :p).

So, inspired by his blog valiantly fighting for life, I also decided to revive the financially side of my peaceful brain (which has been largely dormant, one could also use adjectives such as doltish, dumb...you get the point) and voilà! we have a presentation!



Also, I made this nice pie chart with our controllable expenses divided into nice wedges, spent a good one hour on it, didn't want to miss a chance to brag although I did have to remove the chart out of the presentation because this is on the big, bad www....shudder!

Back to comfortable dormancy. S'long.

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