virtualmom

Op/Ed Project

  

 Today I spent the day at a workshop from the Op/Ed Project.  It was great and I have to thank Amy and Adelaide, the co-founders of In Good Company, for being up to date on what is important for women out there in this big old world of ours and for alerting the IGC community. I had an eye opening experience and yet I would not have known about this if Amy and Adelaide had not put it right in my face by way of their newsletter!

I took this from the homepage of the Op/Ed Project: 

The op-ed pages of our nation’s newspapers are overwhelmingly dominated—80% or more—by men. Because the op-ed pages feed all other media, the under-representation of women here perpetuates and exaggerates the under-representation of women in larger ways. For example, men are:

• 84% of guests on influential Sunday morning political talk shows on TV

• 85% of Hollywood producers

• 85% of nonfiction books on The New York Times best-selling

• 85-90% of radio producers

• 84% of congress 

In short, public debate all but excludes half the population.

And again in their own words, here is WHAT THE WORKSHOPS DO:

 Since women currently do not submit op-eds with anywhere near the frequency that men do, we target and train women experts in all fields to write for the op-ed pages of major print and online forums of public discourse. We work with top universities, non-profits, corporations, women’s organizations and community leaders across the nation. We also offer seminars open to the public (women only) in major cities across the nation. Seminar participants are added to a database of women experts, connected with our community of writers and mentors, and go into a feeder system for op-ed, radio, television and other media venues.

BOTTOM LINE:  We NEED to get more women to SUBMIT OP-EDS to even the playing fields.  I am committed to trying--you know why?  Because it's important!  

Kudos to Katie for promoting this important message and for recognizing that we can make a change!!! 

Love My Fellow NY'ers

Within the last 2 days a few strangers have done some small but thoughtful things for me. Gotta love that...you know when you are least expecting people to be nice and it happens--well, it just illuminates their efforts.  

I was parking the car to run into the library to return some books and I was about to purchase my parking ticket when a man starts waving his hands in the air to distract me from putting quarters into the machine.  He runs over and gives me his ticket that still has half an hour on it.  I like to do this too and do so whenever I can, so I felt good accepting his offer.  

The other act of kindness happened yesterday when I was at Customs clearly 4 boxes of vases at JFK airport.  The line at the warehouse was really long and the staff was extremely slow.  After about an hour of waiting, one of the truckers was called up for his turn.  He went to the front desk and then pointed to me and asked the woman to assist me first.  I guess he had heard that I only had 4 small boxes to clear.  He told me that most of the truckers there had full truckloads to clear and that they were used to waiting 5-7 hours to do so.  I accepted his offer which quite possibly saved me several hours of waiting.  

People can be nice! 

Group Therapy vs. Group Coaching

I posted here some time ago about Coaching vs. Therapy since I have been in both.  Believe it or not, I am now in both group therapy and coaching!  I have tried a lot of things in my life and I guess I will continue!  I am quite open to 'trying'.

Over the summer I saw my old therapist a few times and I told her that I could not afford to continue to see her.  She suggested that I try her group therapy--which would keep me in tune with working on my emotions.  I said why not.  The group's fall session started a few Tuesdays ago.  Coincidentally, I signed up for  group coaching  through In Good Company which started on the same day!  My Tuesdays now consist of a lot of group work!  It is a lot to absorb in one day.

So in our group coaching we have decided that each member gets 8 minutes of 'floor time'.  We want to be fair and make sure that everyone is treated equally.  Each Tuesday, a different member assumes the role of timekeeper.  When your turn comes up, you answer the some questions(I listed them below for your information) and verbalize a goal to accomplish before for the next meeting.  It is all about accountability and moving forward.  Compare that to the group therapy where there are no rules to who gets how much floor time and one member has monopolized the time for the last two sessions!  Finally another member blew up and said it was not fair.  Then we talked about how we all felt about stopping the member and standing up for ourselves and how we don't appreciate this members selfishness!  It can get a little hairy--sort of like a family fight but with a monitor there to guide us.  

I keep trying to compare the two groups but they clearly focus on different things.  In coaching, progress is very clearly measured. If you accomplish what you said you were going to--then you have done well.  But in group therapy, progress isn't as obviously measurable.  I can only hope that my interpersonal skills are improving and I suppose only in awkward situations will I be able to access if I have improved.  Surprisingly, I like both groups(at least so far!)

Getting Old Sucks! HERE COMES MY RANT!

Last Wednesday night one of our soccermoms(KB) brought a photo of herself from years ago to show us how curly her hair used to be.  I swear that besides her hair being shorter now she looks the same!  

I can't say the same for myself!  Yesterday I got a prescription for reading glasses, my hearing is going, and so is my hair and my shape!  I feel some big changes in my overall body and appearance and I DON'T LIKE IT ONE BIT.  I have crow's feet big time, and my arms have gotten yucky.  It is hard to watch the downward effect!  My attitude is BAD, I confess, and I am sure that doesn't help, but it is hard to cope with aging in our culture.  

Trying to look young becomes more and more time consuming and harder and harder--I have never been a make-up user and I don't want to start now--but maybe I should?  Why do we have to look young?  Why can' we be OK and BEAUTIFUL as aging women?  It gets me mad! GRRRR!

Shana Tova

We had a nice New Year's Dinner last night, small but nice.  I made an apple torte for the first time and it came out pretty good.  The crust was repeatable but the apple filling was a little too tart.  I am going to make it again-keeping the crust portion just as is, and tweak the apple filling a bit.

Note to self:  Gefilte Fish and Challah from Fisher Bros. uptown were good enough to schlep for again.

We dipped apples into honey as is the tradition for a SWEET start to 5770!

A Happy One for All. 

The Beach

I realized toward the end of August that I had not seen the beach this summer, in fact, all year --and that bummed me out.  

I love the beach and am drawn to it but oddly, I don't go to it that much.  So as fate would have it, today I was driving S. to a soccer match in Long Island and we saw a sign for Jones Beach and she asked me about it--which of course gave  me the idea that we should stop there after her game.  

It was a great day to be there; not too many people, not too hot, and just the right amount of sunlight.  It was a glorious weather day today.  S. immediately ran into the ocean-clothes and all.  I plopped down on the sand and laid there listening to the waves, breathing in the smells, feeling the wind on my arms and digging my bare feet into the sand.  Aww, All of my senses were aroused and happy.   

And I asked myself why I didn't make it out here more often?  It is so restorative and calming.

Yet I was happy to have been there, if only once,  in 2009.

Sundays

I am watching CBS's Sunday Morning and they are doing a feature on Sunday routines which got me thinking about mine/ours.  Sundays are indeed special days.

Pressure is off on Sunday as it is accepted as a lazy day.  A non-work day.  Since I do not have a regular 9-5 job, I could in essence work any or all of the time(sometimes I work strange hours), except I  give myself a break on Sundays.  There is something reassuring about knowing that mostly everyone takes a break on Sunday.  

Our family's pacing is  different on Sundays-slower, more relaxed.  We usually wake up a little later on Sundays(except for this morning) and have a bigger, longer breakfast.  I like to cook on Sundays too and finish the rest of the New York Times.  Yes, Sundays are nice. Restorative too...a day to recharge and gear up for the week ahead.

Today's possible agenda:  a bike ride to barnes & nobles, mowing our little lawn in our  Soho backyard, and grilling ribs later.  Nice.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Blogging and Editing

It is a lazy relaxed day here and I have re-read some of my recent posts. Boy do I make a lot of mistakes! I apologize. After writing this short entry I am going to the backend to fix some of the many errors I found.
Just so you know, I write a post and then don't look at it, I just hit the 'publish' button. If I looked at it, I would want to edit and change and fix-who has time for that? BUT, I should do a re-read, and I should use spellcheck. Lately I have been sloppier than usual!
Gonna start proofing.

Father's Day

It is almost 8 a.m. and I am sitting here on my apple green chair in our bedroom typing on my keyboard and trying to be quiet. Everyone else is still asleep and today I will let them all do so. L.'s early morning little league playoff's game was cancelled due to weather, the game was our last scheduled commitment of the year. So for today, the rest of the family can sleep in. Not a bad start to Father's Day, unsheduled days rarely happen here.
Later we will take La. either to the Mets game or to the MET museum for the Francis Bacon exhibit. It is the METS or the MET. He can choose, he likes both, but if I had to put money on it, I think he is going to pick baseball.

Shirley

I am referring to my friend Shirley, who I have lost track of since she and her family moved to LA about 2 years ago. I confess to being THE WORST at keeping in touch. With me if you aren't in sight, I have a hard time keeping in touch. It is never a personal thing, just how I am. Facebook has helped.
We re-connected this morning over coffee at Bazzini's in Tribeca. She looked great as usual and we talked and tried to get in as much as we both could in the short time we had. I was happy to see her. Shirley and I relate to eachother. She claims it is because we are both strong women, I don't know if that is the reason, but I know there is a connection. Our talks are straight to the point and meaningful to us both.
We each bitched a little about mid-life! So what else is new!
Shirley is a professor of business in NYC and has been doing the bi-coastal commute for the past academic year. It has been rough and great simultaneously, you know what I mean by that.
She did not want to give up her job because of their move out west. She made the adjustments that needed to be made and figured out how to accomplish what she wanted.
This is a great example of how things operate with Shirley. She just makes things happen. I love this about her. There is no NO with her, she just makes it happen. No drama about it, it just gets done. She is very focused, very straight forward, very clear about how she can get to her desired end result.
Needless to say, I was very happy to have seen her today!