Sunday, March 29, 2009

When I grow up, I want to be a concrete operational thinker

As a coda to my last post, Thing 2 recently asked Thing 3 what she wants to be when she grow up. Thing 3 responded, "A teenager." Thing 2 then asked, "What do you want to be when you are 20." Said Thing 3, "A adult."

I'm not even going to try to explain my 3-months' absence from the blogosphere. It's been....not very fun and quite unrelenting. Even if I had the time to write about it, it would have only served to make the mishigos that much more palpable and the my ability to push through it much less, uh, able. Better to keep my head down and wait for the mortar attacks to stop.

So here I am, on the cusp of starting yet another job. Sort of. Same office, same bosses, same cases, new name on the door, new benevolent overlords in another office. These, at least, believe in transparency (at least among the partners) and division of powers and checks and balances, so the likelihood that we will all be in the same place in three years is unlikely. I head down to Philly tomorrow morning for a day and a half of orientation to the new firm, which will be capped by a photo session for my full length portrait and headshot for the website. Ugh. Double Ugh.

This firm purports to be woman-friendly (Sure, like which firm claims to be woman-hostile. . . Benefit of the doubt time -- Working Mother magazine gave them props so they at least have third party verification of their claims). Anyway, as I was saying -- they claim to be woman-friendly but then submit us all to full length photos - even those of us approaching 40, with 3 kids, who have sat on our butts billing 2300 hrs/yr+ for several years.

And I hear that I can't even mug for it. I have to do the "look of confidence with arms folded" pose, or "look of confidence with hand on hip or in pocket and jacket open" pose. Women also get the variable of "half-leaning on stool" to add to the above. I want to do "middle-manager/suck-up double guns" or "Buddy Christ single gun, thumbs up" or any of a number of poses from my dancing school portraits. Think any of these white boys will notice if I throw down some gang symbols???

And they want us to wear "colorful" suits or dresses. I'm sure I have that psychedelic caftan around here somewhere... Seriously, 90% of the time, I wear black separates and colorful tops. And I don't want to wear anything for a portrait that, six months from now, is out of style. I bought an appropriate "colorful" suit yesterday, which is a black skirt with a minty-fresh green jacket, but due to topstitching on the jacket the perfect color for a top is black. I'm taking a trip to the Mother Ship (Lord & Taylor, Stamford) today to see if they have anything better, but I'm not optimistic.

I've got to get on with motherhood, so that's all for now. I hear that I get to review the proofs and pick what goes on the web. I don't know if I'll provide a link, but if I get the proofs, I'll scan and post them.