Good Read on American Families

Spurred by a New York Times recommendation, I just read "How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society." 

First, OK, yes the title might be a bit much. And a second caveat, it's a little science-y. Especially for me. But I'll give you the layman's summary:

People are waiting longer to have kids (in 1970 the average age for a woman to have her first baby was around 21; now it is 25) and as much as there are benefits like general maturity and financial stability to that, there are also risks. Risks include fertility struggles, the child's health, a smaller family "village" to help raise the child and the economics of a shrinking population.

Young parents, on-par aged parents, old parents - all that aside. I really like the way the article ends: with a call to action for a more family-friendly society. There are lots of ideas about what that means. With my thus very limited scope, if I were Queen of the World, I would start with family leave and up it to at least the following

• 6 months maternity leave
• 6 months paternity leave (and somehow make it totally normal and expected by employers that new dads actually use at least most of it)
• partially-paid for the full duration, funded by the government

And then as Queen of the World, I'd move on to these things which have a variety of reasons for being more family friendly than what is happening now

• More job-sharing, starting with, you got it, government jobs
• Make "work-life balance" an everyone's issue, not a women's issue (starting with making the Mitt Romneys of the world also ask men what time they need to get home for dinner with the family)
• Public pre-school because early education is important for the long-haul and as icing on the cake, this would reduce the years that working parents pay for full-time childcare
• Free prenatal health care. Because duh.
• Free childhood immunizations. Because duh.
• Stabilize the cost of college so that educated wanna-be-parents don't have to choose between paying off college loans and baby-related expenses
• Increase incentive (maybe reduced interest rate on federal loans? partial loan forgiveness?) to finish a 2 year degree in 2 years and 4 year degree in 4 years so young adults are ready to enter the workforce quicker and can get their feet under them younger

If you were Queen (or King) of the World, how would you make it more family-friendly?

It's tough being a girl

A story on the local news tonight highlighted the height/size requirements for San Antonio's Fashion Week. While I can't find the story online yet to quote the exact requirements, I know it was at least 5'9" and size 0-something small. Many are arguing that plus size models should be included.

Interestingly enough, the story didn't mention anyone fighting for just a regular size 6 or 8, average height girl to be in the runway show.

This made me think about how tough it is to be a girl. Girls are given such conflicting body image messages both directly and implied. You must be skin and bones to model. But big is beautiful. Every body is great. As long as you are a size two.

Personally it is my hope that one day magazines, fashion shows, TV, etc will depict girls and women at healthy weights more than either end of the spectrum. How great would it be for "healthy BMI" to be the target of model recruitment? Because really at the end of the day, isn't achieving a healthy lifestyle what we want to teach girls?

Moms, Dads, teachers and other mentors can have an incredible impact but a little more help from pop culture on the importance of health wouldn't hurt.

11 Qs

I love these cheesey things so when I saw this one on Anna's blog, I just couldn't resist. Here we go:

1. If you could live anywhere in the world for just a year – where would you live?
At the risk of starting out even cheesier, I'd live in Austin. I might make it downtown Austin instead of suburbia. I feel like when I graduated college I asked myself this exact question and then chose Austin. So it's not "if I could" it's more of a "I decided I could" kinda answer.

2. What were you like in high school?
Chatty. Busy. Mostly upbeat. Really busy.

3. How old were you when you had your first kiss?
12...almost 13. Like within weeks of 13.

4. What is your go-to coffee or tea order?
Tall caramel frapaccino with 2% milk and no whip cream please. And yes, that is saved in my Starbucks iPhone app with caloric information readily available. (Wow. Yuppie.)

5. How many states have you lived in?
Let's say 3 - Texas, Massachusetts and New South Wales which is a state (or province maybe?) of Australia.

6. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?
About 30 minutes ago to both my favs, Ross & Lexi.

7. What is your favorite color?
Pink. And orange. And red. That whole side of the color wheel really.

8. Favorite cartoon character?
Oh wow, I haven't thought about this in forever. Well, for adult cartoons, I really like Peggy Hill. I can't tell you how many Peggy Hills I know in Texas. It's hilarious!

9. What were you doing a year ago today?
Let's say give or take a day, in which case, apparently blogging about my dad and Girl Scout Cookies.

10. What do you want to be when you grow up?
I went through a handful of phases like any kid but other than the teacher and obligatory gymnast phase (Olympic gold medalist gymnast to be exact) they all kinda stuck to the communications field. For a bit in high school I wanted to be Diane Sawyer. Starring with her on World News is a close second best.

11. Today is going to be a great day because…
It was 83 degrees. In February. God I love Texas.

I was spammed. I think.

At work I deal with a lot of blog spam, especially when I first started and our filter system was pretty primitive. But that's just one of the casualties of having a popular blog, with SEO around terms that other people want to advertise to and being open to commentary. (Tangent: we changed to the Disqus commenting system that requires log-in and I would say our spam was reduced by about 80% plus our commenting system is now more interactive. But alas, I digress.)

Today though I got my first spam comment on here! Well, at least I think I did. Disqus email alerts me to comments and I woke up to this email.

Looks like spam to me. But get this - I can't find the comment anywhere but in my email. It's not showing on the post nor is it showing in the admin settings in Disqus. Strange right? Donde esta my spam?

Assuming though that I was spammed, I'm not sure if I should be irritated or pleased. On the one hand, nobody likes spam. On the other hand, does it mean this little blog is kinda a big deal now?

While I'm not totally convinced that this little blog is a big deal, I'm choosing to be pleased with my spam. I'm considering it a blogger milestone.

Question About the Governor

This is a political post where I am going to try not to be overly opinionated. Because I really have a question for which I want a more clear understanding.

Recent Republican primary debates brought a lot of attention to the HPV vaccine that Rick Perry mandated and then repealed. Lots of Republicans are chewin' him up and spittin' him out over the initial mandate.

This is where I am stuck.

The arguments I've heard are that people don't like that the government was ordering girls to be injected with something. While I can understand that, is it different than the vaccines kids have to have before starting school? If I'm understanding that as the main offense, am I to understand that the same people have reservations or objections to other vaccines? To each his own of course.

Or is it the sexual nature of cervical cancer? I can definitely see that as a differentiator between the HPV vaccine and other vaccines.

The other theory I've thought of is that it was an "executive order." Does that carry a different type of weight and implication that the vaccines that schools require? I know both school vaccines and the former HPV vaccine gave parents an opt out. So if there is a difference between executive order and school requirement, I'm not sure what it is (but am curious to know if you happen to know).

So that's my story. I'd like to fully understand the objections to the HPV vaccine mandate.

No way

At the risk of sounding really old...

There is no way that driving with earbuds in both ears is safe.

Do you see people do this? I see it more than I'd like to believe.

At first I saw people with one earbud in and thought "well that's dumb" but then when I got my iPhone, I realized for some of them, it might be their hands free cell phone. Now you can argue that talking and driving is dumb too. But that's not what I'm here to blog about.

Is there something that would require earbuds in both ears? Or is it just people rockin out to their iPods?

Work Out Rock Out

Every few months I find myself doing the same Google search: "work out playlist."

It usually takes a while, but I can find some suggested tunes to update my iPod with. (Ha! iPod shuffle. I am so 2006.) Tonight I found some awesome lists from Shape Magazine.

Let's cut to the chase. I work out. I need music. You work out. You probably need music too.

WANTED: Songs that will make
me look like this when I work out.

Here's the highlights from my iPod right now.

• Are You Gonna Be My Girl
• Black Betty
• Crazy In Love
• Dynamite (a current fav)
• Fire Burning
• Harder to Breath (Dear Abbey's version)
• I Believe In a Thing Called Love
• I Gotta Feeling
• I Love Rock n Roll
• Just What I Needed
• More
• Seasons of Love (gotta have Broadway represented)
• Should I Stay or Should I Go
• Single Ladies
• SOS (another fav)
• Still Haven't Found What I'm Lookin For
• This Love
• When I Grow Up

Fill me in with what's on your exercise playlist and may our work outs reach new musical heights.

The Many Faces of Lexi

Lexi has multiple personalities. That's the only explanation.

When she's off the leash, she's a little puppy angel. She greets people and other pups with licks and sniffs and love. And in addition to being sugar sweet, she sticks right by us, which of course is why she can go off leash. She's constantly underfoot, follows us around with no seeming interest in leaving ever.

When she's on the leash, she's...something else. And it's not just her inner honey badger shining through. It is, in fact, a little embarrassing. She's more assertive to say the least. Maybe it's like keeping a short "leash" on your kids or spouse and they simply rebel. And she pulls, pulls, pulls on the leash. Like she's gonna run away for miles. Newsflash Lexi, you are way too clingy the rest of the time for me to think you actually want to run away. Run after a squirrel or cat yes, run away, no.

People with puppies: do you have this experience too? Does your sweet, cuddley puppy become a barking, marathon running beast as soon as that leash hooks on? What's the deal?!?!

Who Did What?

We took a painting class tonight. (Thanks Mom & Dad!) Who do you think did which painting?

How Much Should We Save?

I called Mom today with this question. And you know what? She didn't have a magic answer. (Though after some conversation she did say she thought 20% of net income would be pretty damn good.)

Shy of not getting a magic answer from Mom, I hit the Internet. I really just wanted to know are we saving at a rate that's good, normal or crap? My gut said not crap since crap savings probably would mean we didn't care enough to be asking if our savings was crap or not. I was guessing normal to good.

I found lots of articles out there on the interwebs. Here's some of the advice they gave.

• Spend 60%, save 30%, play with 10%
• Saving 10% sounds good-ish
• Save at least 10% in your 20s
• Needs 50%, save 20%, play with 30%

So we're looking at a 10-30% range for savings. Some of those include retirement (the 40% specifically does) and some don't.

I have to admit, playing with 30% of our income certainly sounds the most fun. A heck of a lot more fun than only playing with 10%. And where do vacations fall in there? We save every month...but then every few months we blow invest some of it in travel.

Also, what about things where you go above and beyond? That first link talks about "committed" expenses. His example is he committed to his kid's music lessons. You could cut or eliminate them but really you've committed. Our big "committed" expense is my school loans. I have Y due but we try our darnedest to pay Yx2 so one day they'll actually be paid off. (Lofty goal I know.)

Math isn't my strong suit and with all those variables (retirement, long-term savings, short-term savings, interest rates, net income, gross income - AH) this feels more like algebra by the minute. But I think I'm determining that at least 10% of our income should go to long-term and/or retirement savings. I can work with that number.

What's your take on smart savings goals?

Dear Ross

Dear Ross,

You knew when we got married that I had this affliction called travel. What you might not have realized is how severe my affliction is and how many resources are required to meet my needs. Bad news bears - it's severe and it requires like...all our resources.

Currently I am looking forward immensely to our Canadian Vacay in August. Hello Niagara Falls! I spent part of my lunch break scoping out hiking options. It's gonna be awesome!

Then I'm gonna take off for my 2011 Cheryl-only trip to Seattle. I'm jazzed about Seattle but you know me, there's a Delta there and the only thing that makes me more excited than travel is a Delta. Yeah, you're right, trips like this are like my dreams coming to life.

I've also got biz trips to Philly, Baltimore and probably NYC this fall. I'll take pics of things besides the library and fancy dinners on this NYC trip, promise.

Now for 2012...I'm getting ambitious. Jane's getting married in March so I'm gonna need to fly to Boston for that (yay Deltas!). And in April I have a biz trip to San Fran and since that will already get me to the west coast, well I think I should go see Kev in San Diego too. Thoughts? Then I want to take our EuroTrip together. Austria and Italy are sounding superb for that. (Spent another few minutes on lunch looking at weather in Austria and Italy in May...lovely.) And didn't you want to maybe hit up Illinois or Tennessee next year too? Count me in babe.

All that said, I'm thinking maybe we should sell the house and live outta a tent. I mean heck, we're going to be spending so much time in hotels, do we really need a house too? That just seems kinda wasteful...

Again, thoughts?

Love,
Me

You Can't Have Half

Warning: this blog post is not fluffy. It's about a real issue and is kinda serious in nature. Read at your own risk.
 
Monday night I had drinks and dinner with some fabulous former coworkers. Most of our meal was fun and fluffy but somehow we got to talking about a (hypothetical) predicament that we'd either seen amongst friends or in my case, had seen on Grey's Anatomy.

If you are in a serious relationship or marriage and you don't want kids but you get pregnant, what do you do? Compound that with the man in the relationship wanting kids.

On the one hand I'm pro-choice. But just because I believe in having the choice, doesn't mean I believe abortion is the right answer most the time or even half the time. The choice just exists. If you are married though (or in a very serious relationship, I'm just gonna keep saying "married" and "husband" for simplicity), is it just your choice? It is both of yours baby but you are the one who has to carry it in your body for 9 months. And even pregnancy aside, if you don't want to be a mother, should you have a baby for the sake of your husband? Is a kid whose mother doesn't want to be a mother going to have much of a shot?

We all agreed that it wasn't a decision you could make without talking to your husband. I would say though to some extent, that was where agreement ended. Personally I view it as someone having to give in (though I don't really like that phrase in this instance). Either you are going to agree to have the baby against your initial desires and hope it all turns out OK or he is going to agree to let you have an abortion. Or you are going to tell him that you hear him, you understand he wants a baby but you cannot compromise and you are not having a baby. Let's face it, at the end of the day there's not really a compromise in this situation; you can't have half a baby.

It's really a no win situation. But know it is a no-win situation, what do you do?

Personally, I'm just thank my lucky stars, the baby-gods and the marriage-gods that my hubs and I are on the same page. No we're not quite ready to become parents but if I woke up pregnant tomorrow (extremely unlikely), eh so we'd become parents sooner than expected. It'd be fine.

But what do you think? How should one handle the uncompromising nature of having children or not having them?

What do you do online?

Not to be too nosy or anything, but what do you do online?

As a firefighter's wife, I have a lot of time at home by myself. Now I have girlfriends but they have husbands who are home every evening and apparently sometimes they like to hang out with them. So in short, my girlfriends aren't available to entertain me for a full 24 hours, every third day and thus, I'm at home.

I walk the puppy, watch a little TV, blog, read, work out... and then it's 8 p.m. Every once in a while after blogging I catch myself thinking "there is a whole internet world out there! What do people do there!?". Usually I've already Facebooked, tweeted and blogged...in short, covered all my social media bases. I've realized social media is about all I do online. I guess given how much I like to talk and socialize, this shouldn't have surprised me but it kinda did.

So assuming you do something other than play on social media sites when you are online, what is it? And can I do it too?

What did they do up at Hood?

When watching ABC World News (hosted by my BFF Diane Sawyer) there was some Osama bin Laden coverage. No surprise; it is definitely one of the biggest things to happen in recent months. The story, though having nothing to do with our local armed forces at all, started a train of thought in my mind that resulted in this question:

What did they do up at Ft. Hood when they got the news?

Ross suspects that the people at Ft. Hood and our other military bases were happy and relieved. I'm not saying I doubt that but how did that manifest?

Did they cry? Cheer? Hug? Break open a bottle of champagne and toast? Call their loved one in the Middle East and share a moment? Sit on the couch quietly trying to wrap their head around this, what it means for our country and what it means for their family?

How did they find out? From their loved one in service? A special correspondence from a military or government official? Or like the rest of us, via "USA" chants during that Mets-Phillies game, an overly eager tweet or "breaking news" alert?

Whether you are military or not, how did you react? What happened, if anything, at your home that day?

Post with Google Account

On the default Blogger settings, comments can be posted from a variety of accounts including through your Google account. (Note: you can't test this here on my blog because I recently started installed Disqus for comments. But you could test it on Jess or Jane's blog.) This is usually the option I pick. So I type my comment, click on the drop-down box and select "Google Account" and then hit "post comment."

Now this next part is why I'm even writing about this. The next screen I see is like 1/5 of the CAPTCHA. Like it really wanted to show up but just couldn't quite get there. So I push "post comment" again and I inevitably get the same thing. It isn't until the third time that I get the CAPTCHA and see my little Google account avatar next to my comment.

Does that happen to you? Or is my Google account a freak?

Our next 30 years

Tomorrow morning I am meeting with a financial planner from UBS. We're going to discuss all of mine and Ross' financial goals forever. You know I'm a planner. I love to plan. And I love to reach goals. And I really love to save money. So a plan to save money and reach our goals should be right up my alley.

And it is but it also sounds a little ridiculous. I mean at age 25 I'm going to set our goals for forever? Yes, yes apparently I am.

So what's on the list? Allow me to share

• Forever home
• Kids' college
• Ranch in West Texas
• Beach condo
• Self-sufficient retirement
• Not giving up everything else in life

We've talked about timing for most of these. The forever home will be in a couple years. I figured for kids' college (geez not even pregnant nor done with my own college expenses), if we do a little consistently for their whole lives, they'll have a nice little savings when they get there. Ross wants to buy the ranch in the next 5-10 years (specifically he'll tell you 7 years). Once we have the land we figure we can slowly build the house. And the deal is when we sell the forever home when we are old, I get to take that money and buy a beach condo. Oh yes, and we want to do all this without giving up the little things like weekend trips and dinner out.

I think we can do it...maybe...but it won't be easy. I'm hoping that the planner tomorrow will say "Y'all have ambitious goals but by being a little crazy and starting to work toward them now, you can do it."

Then our craziness will have paid off and I'll feel less crazy for trying to plan out the next 30+ years.

Goals, Revisited

Many moons ago I wrote some goals for this month. I've done OK.

• Keep up 200 minutes of cardio per week.
• Start Christmas vacation on December 18.
• Send out the cutest Christmas cards ever.
• Reach our savings goal. Well we knew this one would be tough. But I'm still pleased with where we'll be starting from for 2011.
• Wine tasting.  Specically this was my GroupOn.com wine date with Brittany. We didn't make it due to schedules and wine classes being canceled for two Saturdays due to holidays. We did however definitely drink our fair share of wine, we just had to pay for it the old fashioned way.
• Read at least two fun books.
• Complete all of my Women of Distinction proposals.

5 out of 7 is (findins calculator...) 71%. So I got a D for the month of December. But if I tell you that I had a (at that time) secret career goal that I have since achieved and of course that I did taste much wine with Brittany, can that count as extra credit? Maybe bring me up a letter grade?