Pooping unicorns

This morning, a friend (who may or may not have been feeling a trace grouchy about the prevailing meteorological conditions) asked me for advice on how to be happy in the rain.  He didn’t specify, but I have my suspicions that he was referring to a very special subset of precipitational joy: biking in the rain. 

Upon receipt of his missive, I was lucky enough to spend the following hour in intense study of this very subject, during which time I mentally threw together a list of Super Helpful Advice.

Given the source, all items on this list should probably be assiduously and vigorously ignored.

1)      Thermoregulation. 
This is first because it’s the most important thing.  Really.
Being too cold is miserable.  Being a hot sack of homo-sapiens-raingear-sweat is also less than desirable.  Being soaking wet, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily suck. 
Wait… you do occasionally shower, right?  Right?

2)      Fenders. 
See photographic evidence.  Being wet is okay, so long as the wetness is the dewy sky-sprinkling of pure and joyous rain-prisms.  The gritty road-poop of wheel-spun crud is less splendid, unless you’re an insanely cheerful five-year-old, specially bred for that purpose.

3)      Clothes that are not utterly gross when wet (see #1). 
If it’s too hot to pedal in full raingear, or any raingear at all, you should be wearing something minimalist that approximates swimwear: say, Teva sandals, a nylon tank top and lightweight nylon shorts with a liner.  Nah, you don’t need boxers.  And you definitely do not need panties.  No one of either gender ever needs panties, unless the word is used in an ironic context -- in which case you all need them. Biking across town in a stars and stripes bikini is also an acceptable strategy, and has been successfully road-tested by one of my family members.  I’m not divulging which one, but I trust your powers of imagination.

4)      Change of clothes for when you get there.
I’m making the bold assumption that “there” is somewhere that does not appreciate drippy, gritty, slightly steaming people.  A shower at your destination is a nice bonus, but if not, you too can be the person sponging off your children with paper towels in a public restroom.

5)      Raingear. 
Yeah, this is kind of far down the list.  Most people think of this first, not, like, fifth.  However, the truth is that raingear is hot and awkward and inevitably a bit leaky, in an up-the-sleeves-and –down-the-neck kind of way. It’s what you use when it’s too cold to bike in your swimwear, and too hot to be snowing (which is a different blog post; ask again in September).   It’s worth investing in a rain jacket that is lightweight, at least a bit breathable (see #1), fully waterproof, and long enough to cover your butt in the back (see #2).  As for rain pants, just get the bombproof cheap kind that make you look like some kind of obsessive fisherman.  Then when they get torn or covered in chain oil, you’ll just look like a more authentic obsessive fisherman.  My kids even bike in their colorful little rubber boots, with their home-sewed rainpants pulled down over the tops.  It won’t look cute when you do it.

6)      Umbrellas. 
If you are not biking, not hiking, and in fact not moving or using your hands in any way, and if you are located somewhere with no wind, no trees, and no other people around (or, at least, only people who like being repeatedly poked in the eye), then an umbrella might be extremely handy.  Or so I hear.  I do not own an umbrella.

So there you have it: Rainy Day Happiness! 

Of course, some of you may have noticed that this list is missing a crucial element, which we should probably call “Zero [0]*: Being batshit crazy.”  When biking in the rain, it is crucial to persuade yourself, your companions, your children, and all the people passing you in weatherproof vehicles, that you are having a seriously splendiferous time.  [My spell-checker just accepted “splendiferous”, which makes me think that I may be more sane than I thought I was.]

This morning, I told the kids that there would probably be a rainbow any minute, and they should watch for it.  And then a ginormous rainbow appeared.  Seriously.  I mean, I’d have a photo, if I were at all competent as a blogger.  Anyhow, I told them it had been pooped out by magical unicorns, and they lectured me about the electromagnetic spectrum, and then we all sang “Roy G. Biv”, by They Might Be Giants. 

Because, well, obviously.

* There are many ways in which being a Zero [0] makes me happy.  Results may vary. 

Leaning ... toward baking cookies for the office

Photo courtesy of the Breakup Triathlon

A few days ago, a friend of mine brought my attention to an online story highlighting Susan Stamberg's stellar career with National Public Radio.  The article – perhaps inspired by the recent Lean In buzz -- focused on the question of what advice older women would give to their younger selves.  Reader comments were numerous, but my friend enthused that “by far the best comment” was:  “Dear Self: To be taken seriously, dress better and learn earlier how to act like a pro in meetings. Keep your "business face" on in all communications and don't bake for the office.”

When I saw this, I blanched. If this quote offered any indication of the grading scale by which I am measured, I thought, I am not just doing poorly; I am earning an irredeemable F.

Professionalism is not my strong suit. 

Last Sunday, I was standing around in Spandex shorts and a sports bra, drenched, when I spotted someone I knew.  I greeted her by name, my voice only slightly obscured by the huge chunk of honey-oat bagel I was shoving in my mouth. 

She smiled uncertainly – the polite greeting of someone who has no idea who the heck you are, but is much too nice to say so.

“I’m Nancy,” I reminded her.  Was it the raggedly dripping pigtails on either side of my head that threw her off, or was the bare skin of my torso blinding her with its fish-underbelly whiteness?  “I interviewed you for the ACCAP job last week.”  Then I bit off another large hunk of bagel.

Dignity and I are not closely acquainted.  Not ever, not in any context.  But should I, I wondered, be trying a bit harder in the “professional” realm?

Officially, I’m the Network Coordinator at the Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic planning, a climate change research group at the University of Alaska.  Unofficially, the nametag outside my cubicle grants me the title “Head Monkey.”  It was put up about three years ago by a coworker (and friend), as a joke.  It sports a photo of a chimp (which, I of course know as a biologist, is an ape, not a monkey).  It was never taken down. 

I regularly wander around the office in sweatpants, T-shirts left over from college, and bare feet. I make jokes in meetings – and some of them are vaguely risqué.  I sign my emails “N,” call people by their first names regardless of rank, and admit to my collaborative partners at government agencies that my work schedule is dictated by when the school bus comes and goes.  I also (oh, the shame!) wantonly leave apple cake and leftover brownies on the break room table.

Is this really so wrong?  And does it have anything to do with gender?

Well, maybe.  I can’t possibly comment on Lean In, in which Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, exhorts women to strive for the professional pinnacle.  For one thing (note to internet commenters in general – this is kinda a key point with regard to vehement and vituperative editorializing), I haven’t read it.  However, I do know that women are still mired in a wage-gap rut that has barely closed in my lifetime.  ABC news reports that “Women working full-time earned just 80.9 percent of what men earned per week in 2012.”  The Center for American Progress Action Fund puts the figure at 77%.

There's simply no joking about this.  It’s a problem long overdue for a solution, and it pisses me off.  But if I (a PhD-holder and a research professor, for heaven's sake) am not setting myself up to be taken seriously, am I somehow part of the problem?

Ok, I lack dignity, I tell myself defensively, but it doesn’t have anything to do with being a woman.  Besides, I usually have a reason for it.  My semi-nude bagel-consumption was perfectly logical, given that I had just completed a triathlon.  The young woman I’d interviewed – who was, in fact, the top candidate for the job – had done the same.  She was just as damp as I was, and probably just as hungry.  Moreover, there was no clear avenue toward “professionalism” in this soggy context, because I was in the awkward position of not being able to tell her that we were about to offer her the position.  The paperwork hadn’t yet cleared with HR.  (Gods of bureaucracy, I have you in my sights, y’hear?)

Instead, I started a conversation about something I knew she’d relate to.  At her interview, she’d mentioned that she’d been out of the workforce for a short time because she has a two-year-old.  So I talked about small children.  And stomach flu.  That’s right – knowing exactly how much I had in common with this vibrant young scientist, based on her résumé and her interests, I talked about my puking first grader.  And when, a few minutes later, I spotted another post-race coworker in the poolside crowd, we talked about … daycare for her toddler.

I know, I know.  Anyone care for a stereotype with their bagel?  How on earth can I be taken seriously if I don’t know how to “keep my business face on”?  Indeed, many debaters in the wage wars argue that women earn less than men because they choose to do so.  Women pick careers that are less stressful, more flexible, more open to part-time employment, more “female” – so that they can spend more time with family.  On the other hand, others argue that the reason women choose to be the ones to take more time off with kids is because they are being paid less to begin with.  

Either way, was this a choice I made?  And if it was, should I feel defensive about it?  Irascible?  Guilty? What flavor of guilty?

I like chocolate-chip-guilty the best – I always have.  Luckily, when I went back to work on Monday morning, I found that our IT director, wizard of computer hardware and cookies, had left a generous number of the latter in the break room.  He’s a new dad, and working only part time these days, but he still manages to keep up with the software licensing, the network issues, all our terabytes of data storage, and the gooey treats.

As it happened, my boss was home sick that day.  His two little girls had passed on to their daddy the latest horrific chest cold.  Luckily, he got hold of me via email.  Sure, I told him, I could cover the interview he had scheduled with the guy from Switzerland’s public radio.  This sort of thing happens regularly around here, and we always cover for one another.  When the temperature hits forty or fifty below zero, people’s cars get finicky.  There are sudden dental emergencies; sick parents who live on the other side of the map; and ailing dogs.  Once, my boss called me at the last minute to give a presentation for him.  He couldn’t make it in to the office, he explained, because his goat was kidding. 

When the Swiss guy showed up, I was wearing old jeans and a t-shirt, but that was fine, because so was he – and this was a radio interview, after all.  I told him a heck of a lot about climate change science in the far north.  I also told him about the vagaries of living in an environment underlain by thawing discontinuous permafrost.  I described how Jay and I built our cabin.  I described the variety of biomes to be seen in the space of the half-mile walk to the school bus stop.  He asked more questions about those personal aspects of the interview than about anything else.  We called each other by our first names, and I offered him coffee.

Back at my desk, I found an email from our tech lead.  Like me, he’s part of the office’s four-person “management team”.  “A few of us are headed over to HooDoo today after work.  If others would like to join, I'll pitch in for a few pizzas…”  He’d cc’d the entire staff list. 

Well, why not?  If you work in a cool office, then everyone is invited to the local brewing company at the end of the day.

Somewhere between the brewery invitation and the quick dash across the road with the inhabitant of the cubicle next to mine to see if Hotlicks Ice Cream had opened for the season, I decided that the well-meaning advice about how to be taken seriously as a Professional Woman was not so much wrong, as utterly inside-out. 

We don’t need women to dress better.  We don’t need them to “keep their business face on” at the expense of taking time to care for their children -- or their parents, or their dogs, or their goats.  We certainly don’t need them to stop baking chocolate-swirl pound cake with streusel topping.  What we need is for men to do all these things, too.  And at my office, it’s happening.

Yes, it’s important to Get Stuff Done at work.  Yes, sometimes we all need to stop multi-tasking and focus on getting the report written, the documents signed, and the &%$@ paperwork back from HR.  Sometimes it’s even necessary to come in and work a bit of utterly unpaid overtime on the weekend (although if you’re a non-exempt employee you must never, ever admit to this, lest you face dire consequences such as paperwork, and maybe spanking).  Being professional can be important, and I even have a few semi-respectable clothing items to prove it.  But in my opinion, being human is more important than being “professional” – for women and for men.

Being human means having a life that’s complicated, messy, multifaceted, rewarding, funny, and real.  It means juggling the pieces to make them fit as best you can.  When I drop by the office on weekends, I bring along the kids, and let them draw on the one-sided paper supply and make cool stuff out of the cardboard and plastic recycling.  Jay does the same.  No one has ever complained about stray rainbows on the whiteboards.  Being human means passing on our well-worn stroller/bike trailer to the guy down the hall with a new baby, giving the little green pull-wagon and wooden cars to the triathlete with a toddler girl, and donating the itty-bitty moose slippers to whomever snagged them from the break room.  I’m not sure who that was, but there are an awful lot of small people to choose from.  And if the coworker who asks me for breast-feeding advice when we run into each other at the coffee pot is male, I’m not in the least bit surprised.

Of course, even as I paint this rosy picture, I know I’m incredibly lucky.  I work thirty hours per week.  So does Jay.  We use the extra time to hang out with our kids, take part in ludicrous outdoor adventures, and (upon occasion) bake stuff.  We choose to live an inexpensive lifestyle, but we’re also immensely fortunate to have the skills, the degrees, and the jobs required to make this workable.  Most people don’t.

This brings me back to that wage gap, and all the politics and social injustice that go with it – a hydra of a problem if ever there was one.  The United States is woefully backward with regard to affordable childcare, healthcare coverage (particularly for part time workers) and wage gaps not only between males and females, but also between CEOs and workers.  I could rant about this for pages (or for hours, depending on whether you like to take your rants visually or aurally) but that would be, as I’ve been noting in fifty different spots on the spreadsheet-du-jour, “Outside the scope of this project.”

I will add, however, one salient postscript.  In the ABC article I perused, Ariane Hegewisch of the Institute for Women's Policy Research notes that “there may also be some reluctance to hire women for high-powered, lucrative jobs when there is the chance that they may take time off in the future to have children.” 

Our top candidate for that ACCAP job – the mother of the two-year-old – mentioned in the course of the interview that she plans to have another child. 

Well, excellent.  When she does, maybe someone will have an extra car seat or a pair of moose slippers to pass on to her.  It will be easy to find her -- because yesterday the Bureaucracy Gods reached down from on high and gave us the green light.

Welcome, New Person.  I’m the Head Monkey; feel free to ask me whatever you’d like.  There are muffins on the counter.  I hear you enjoy triathlons…

Fashion Bugged

“Mommy?  How come there are so many people wearing fancy dress-up clothes here?”

I glanced around. The bustle of a major airport at five a.m. is at best incongruous, and at worst feels like a Technicolor hangover.  Dress-up clothes?  What was my kid talking about?  I was so bleary from three hours of neck-crick half-sleep that I almost expected to see revelers parading around in clown wigs or Superman suits. 

“I mean, people wearing high-heeled shoes and stuff,” my daughter elaborated.  Despite the fact that I’d had to pry her slumbering head off my numb thigh only a few minutes previously, she was obviously primed to bubble over with perky questions.  Even her twin, doped up on chewable ibuprofen to combat a fever of 102.6, was evidencing more interest in her surroundings than I was.

The very idea of high heels seemed ridiculous.  My own feet felt as doughy as Cinnabons in my half-laced sneakers. But yes, it was true.   A pair of thigh-high boots with four inch spikes strode by.  I spotted a teetering pair of pumps. And I wasn’t just the footwear.  I was surrounded by sleek jackets, designer labels, and glossy leather.  

I felt that resounding mental thud that seems heavier the longer I live above the 65^th parallel. Toto, we’re not in Fairbanks any more.

Not long after I moved to the frigid land-locked center of Alaska – a staggering twelve and a half years ago – I first heard a local adage:  “Fairbanks isn’t the best place on Earth to live… it just ruins you for anywhere else.”  At first I thought it was funny.  Then I wasn’t sure.  I was already fashion-illiterate; living in a sub-arctic backwater was only going to make my condition worse.

It’s not that I have any desire to be stylish – or any hope of ever being so – but my complete inadequacy in a pursuit that most people seem to think is Very Important can trigger uneasy self-doubt and even creeping panic.  The whole idea of fashion has always seemed both ludicrous and intimidating to me.  Why spend heaps of money on peculiarly uncomfortable garments that are predestined to look laughably dated in photos?  I hate shopping, and on the rare occasions when I’ve tried to look “dressy” or even “professional”  I’ve felt fidgety, constricted, and about as attractive as a llama in a tutu.  All the same, “everybody else is doing it” can be a potent mantra.  My fashion-angst was more acute when I was younger, and hadn’t yet found safe haven in Fairbanks.  Still, with my mental energy at low ebb near Gate A7, it seemed a bit frightening to think that I’ve fallen so far off the map that I can’t ever step back on. 

As I staggered past the Sea-Tac Starbucks (motto: “We’ll charge what we want because you have been jet-lagged into desperation”)  I was reminded once again that not only do I not look and act like a normal American, but I wouldn’t be able to fake it if I wanted to.  The clothes I’d chosen to wear for my marathon of planes, trains, and automobiles were newish.  My luggage was clean.  Still, my choices were obviously not right.  My t-shirt said “Fairbanks Public Library” and sported a picture of sled dogs reading books.  The jeans were men’s Levis. 

Everyone else in the airport had matching wheeled luggage.  I had a backpack and a canvas tote.  I looked down at my kids.  “Um…”  I still hadn’t figured out how to answer the original question.  The girls had their own little backpacks.  They were wearing hand-me-down fleece pants and t-shirts.  If kindergarten chic exists – and I strongly suspect it does – they didn’t have it.  But in Fairbanks, the only way to tell the kindergarteners apart at pickup time is by the color of their snowsuits. “I guess some people just… like to dress up fancy, in big cities,” I mumbled.

This sounded unsatisfying, even to me, but the five-year-olds accepted this answer.  They had been distracted by a new mission: finding the tiny germ-infested playground that is the saving grace of Sea-Tac layovers.  As the kids clambered on a plastic airplane, I joined a slumped row of parents slurping lattes and typing on laptops.  Like everyone else, these grownups looked more put-together than I did.  Nevertheless, they seemed willing to chat with me.  The bonds of parenthood during pre-dawn layovers run strong.  Still, as I traded niceties and wandered around on-line, I let my thoughts fester.  I knew more than my kids they did.  I knew that Seattle doesn’t remotely qualify as an haute-couture metropolis.  Our next flight would not only render us even more travel-crumpled, it would also take us to New York.

New York may not be Milan, but it takes fashion seriously – at least from my vantage point. I was going back to the suburb I grew up in, so you’d think I’d know how to fit in.  The problem was, I never did.  The closest I ever came to style back in junior high -- when all the other girls were creating a fog of 80’s hair spray in the locker room -- was matching my t-shirt color with my sock color.  All through my teens, the whole question of fashion generated feelings of disdain, misery, and incredulity. When I was eighteen, one of my biggest concerns about heading off to an Ivy-League college was that all post-Ivy-League jobs (so I imagined) required dress clothes.  The idea of wearing hose and pumps every day made me wretched.  But in New York, that was simply what professional women did.

Contrary to my teenage fears, I’ve managed to find a professional career – if professors are actually professional, and not simply in a little world all their own – in which I don’t have to look dressy.  In fact, when I was a PhD student working as a teaching assistant, I attended a brief training session in which a roomful of us were advised that when acting as instructors we should endeavor to a) wear clothes without large holes, and b) avoid smelling bad.  Now here was a bar I could reach!  These days, I occasionally have to look presentable at meetings, but the audience is usually other academics even older that I am and decidedly un-trendy, so I can pull it off with black slacks, sturdy black shoes, and a plain blouse.

In Fairbanks, most of my friends have hair the color that it actually is.  If they discuss shoes, it’s because they want to know which boots are warmest.  Some of them have a little panache and a sense of color and flair in their wardrobes, but others, if transplanted to the Lower 48, might be mistaken for panhandlers.  Sometimes it’s even an advantage to be a slob: I’ve found that in Alaska Industrial Hardware, I’m only taken to be a serious and knowledgeable customer if my work pants are liberally streaked with paint, grease, varnish, and mudding compound.

One day I was laughing with my neighbors about how hard it is to keep our small cabins tidy.  “I never know what to do with the clothes I’m going to wear again,” one of my friends sighed.  It transpired that some of us pile these not-quite-dirty garments on chairs, some scatter them here and there, and one more organized soul dedicates one end of his closet rack to them.  None of us looked appalled at the discussion, or protested that we actually wash every item of apparel every time it’s worn.  I had a college roommate who did that – jeans, sweaters, everything.  I’m pretty sure she considered me feral. 

Even if most of my habits are the antithesis of the Big Apple, The New York Times is one of my favorite news sources.  When I was a kid there was always at least one copy scattered around the living room.  I’ve never had the fortitude to read it exhaustively.  Generally, I cringe my way through the online world news (depressing) and politics (alternately laughable and depressing), then scroll down to Science, Health, Education, and Opinion.  On my way, I pass by Fashion and Style – but I can’t recall ever clicking there.  In fact, I’ve always been perplexed by the idea that there is actually something to write on that subject on a weekly basis for a literary audience. 

In the interests of research, I went and clicked.  I learned about Vensette.com, a service that will send a roving beautician to your home or office to provide a “90-minute session of daytime hair and makeup” for $250 or “nighttime looks” for $325. 

If I added up all the money I’ve spent on hair and makeup in my lifetime, I’m not sure it would reach $325.  The total would include a couple of dozen bottles of Suave or White Rain shampoo and conditioner, exactly two haircuts, lots of rubber bands, maybe three or four plastic brushes, a bottle of Sun-In that was very clearly a mistake, and a little container of blush that I picked up on a whim when I was about sixteen.  Oh, and thanks to the generous children at my kids’ preschool, there was also last year’s lice shampoo.  I’m pretty sure such a product would not be offered by Vensette. 

I could only hope that the padded room that is the Sea-Tac playground was relatively vermin-free.  The other kids, at least, were dressed wholly for comfort. As a little girl rocketed down the slide, someone eyed her pink flannel outfit and grinned, “Nice pajamas!” 

The dad to whom she belonged looked a trace chagrinned, as if it were in some way inappropriate for a child to be wearing nightwear during what was (as my body was vehemently protesting) the middle of the night.  But the rest of the group instantly rallied in defense of flannel.  “I wish I had my pajamas on,” sighed a woman who looked as though she belonged in a boardroom.  Another mom -- in those jeans that look like they’ve been spray-painted on -- concurred.

I contemplated the joy of the kid traveling in her pajamas. With one flight behind us, the twins and I still had this layover, a flight to Newark, and three train rides ahead of us.  Still, I was optimistic.  The sick kid would get better, and the question-asking kid would find other people to interrogate.  I knew that, as on previous trips, I would mostly forgot about the specter of fashion once the initial other-worldly feeling of New York had worn off.  After all, I was hanging out with my family and friends, not with the clients of Vensette.

If eighties high school hairdos and Ivy-League eyebrow-raising didn’t make a dent, I realized, then I’m probably somewhat impervious.  In Fairbanks – at least in my corner of Fairbanks -- I’m among my brethren.  But I can leave, and I can come back.  Fairbanks hasn’t ruined me, or even really altered me. I am free to be the overall-wearing, cheap-shampoo-owning person I always was. Meanwhile, the world of “fancy dress-up clothes” can carry on very well without my guidance. 

I stood up and stretched.  My jeans hung slightly loosely from my hips, causing neither plumber-problems nor muffinishness -- just the way I like them. 

We had a flight to catch.