A Girls Work Ethic

The argument or debate about women in the work force is still raging, not in terms of them actually working, but about the pay they receive and how it is normally less than what a man working in an equivalent position would make.   My opinion is that pay should absolutely be equal and not gender based.  Many women work just as hard if not harder than men and they should be afforded equal opportunities to show their skills and receive ample compensation for their work.   I have seen the bias of men versus women first hand.  In my industry, myself being a painting contractor, it is almost a given that men do the work.   How do I know this?  Well, years ago, perhaps 5-6 at this point, my wife was working for me over the summer and one of the jobs I received was being subbed out to me by another contractor.  When I told him that I was planning on bringing my wife, he asked politely that I not do that because the customer wouldn't "like" it.  Now, I don't know if it was the customer or just his "old school" mentality that drove him to suggest that my wife shouldn't come.  But it did happen, and I am sure it still happens to a certain extent now.  Granted, some of the ladders and equipment that I have to move and use on a daily basis are cumbersome and heavy, but that doesn't mean a woman couldn't move them, it just might be difficult.  My wife was always a hard worker and was one of the few that I could trust to work to my standards.   That has always been one of the trickiest aspects of hiring someone to work for me; finding someone who can learn and execute what I ask and work to my standards.  There have been many people who have tried working for me and could not pass muster.  So, for the most part, I work for myself.  This year, however, my wife who is a high school teacher asked if I wanted to be part of the internship program at her school.  I figured why not.  I would get a high school senior looking to work and on top of that it would be essentially 120 hours of free labor.  Both my wife and I figured that one of the high school boys from the tech ed department would take the internship.  Well, we were both wrong.  Instead, one of her students who will be going to art school in the fall took the internship and she has so far proven herself to be a harder worker than all the young men I have hired.  

It has only been a little over a week, but so far she listens well, works hard, and if there is every any down time, she is always asking if there is anything she can do.  If she notices there is something that needs to get done, she asks and then executes.  Even young men years older than her have had trouble working as hard as she has.  Her skill level isn't where I need it to be yet, but it is a learning process and being an intern, I can take a little extra time to show her how to execute certain aspects of the daily work without worrying about losing money.  Even after just a week, she has already asked if I need help over the summer and if she could have a job.  Talk about motivated.  She is only the second woman to work for me, my wife being the first.  Comparing those two women to the other men I have hired, I am not sure if I want to hire another man to work for me.  I know that not every woman would be willing to work as a painting contractor, but the same obviously holds true for men.  There is just such a vast difference in work ethic that I don't know if I could go back to having some guy working for me.  

I have never been one to discriminate based on a person's gender.  I didn't grow up surrounded by the type of people who placed men as more important and harder workers than women.  I was never subjected to the cultural stigma that women should not have certain jobs because they are women.  At this point in my life, I am glad that I never had those discriminatory aspects in my life.  I can now say I will afford equal opportunity to both men and women, but honestly, I might actually favor hiring a woman over a man now.  In my world, the pendulum is swinging the opposite way.  I won't discriminate against men for any reason, but I will now be more inclined to look for a woman to work for me instead of a man.  My intern has obviously just started and time will tell if she can keep up, perform to my standards, and continue learning about the painting business.  I have a feeling she won't have a problem though.  This may be all new to her, but it would be new for any high school student.  For now, I am relishing my free labor and seeing how girls can work harder than the boys.  

Logic and Potty Training

So I'm going to jump from one end of our life cycle to the opposite; from losing logic and faculty, to gaining and learning everything.   I'm going to talk about our son today.  Potty training is one of those activities that, as a parent, I have absolutely dreaded and still take no joy in.  I'm not gonna lie, even from the outset, potty training sucked.  There was nothing I liked about it at all.   Give me a temper tantrum with objects being thrown and feet being kicked and I will gladly jump right in and deal with that over training any child to potty, let alone our son.  Despite all that I am saying, I do love our son very much, however, potty training I can do without.  But, lest I jinx myself now by saying this, the days of potty training our son are nearing the end.  (Yes, we still have our daughter to deal with, but at least we get a little reprieve.)  The last time our son had an accident was weeks ago.  Every so often he will still have an accident, but his muscle control has grown leaps and bounds and the periodic accident I can handle.   Whenever he announces to the household that he has to go poop now, I want to jump for joy, run in circles shouting at the top of my lungs in celebration, and break out the party music.  I don't do any of that despite a burning desire to do so, I just usher him inside quickly and tell him how proud I am of him.   It is even getting humorous at times.  Yesterday, we were outside starting up the charcoal for dinner when he announced that he had to poop.  He ran inside, grabbed his mommy, and had her help him out on the potty.  The poop went well.  On his way back outside, according to my wife, he stopped at the door, turned to announce, "I have to poop some more", and started running back to the potty.  Before he was even out of the room, he stopped, turned, and said "uh uh, Mommy, there's no more poop, I just had a little gas".  That was it, but hearing it from a child is hilarious.  Everything must be announced and broadcast to the household.  I absolutely love the up front honesty of a child.  It puts a smile on my face and makes me laugh more often than not.  

Going along with mastering his potty training, our son is now gaining a new tool in his arsenal of manipulation.  Logic, or at least the early stages of logic.  Yesterday, the same day where he mistook gas for poop, we were unloading the car from the grocery store.  After asking him to grab the cheese, he instead headed to the front of the car.   Curious as to what he was doing, I follow him and see him standing in front of the car, pants and underwear dropped, peeing on the driveway.  Of course, my first question is, "What are you doing?"  "I had to pee".   "Yes, but if we have to pee outside, we pee behind the shed, right?"  "Yes, but I was staying close to you Daddy."  At that point, I stopped and thought to myself about our son, "Your good you."  Seeing as we try to get our son to stay close when we are at a store, he employed that in his desire to pee on our driveway.  So amending my earlier statement, I proceeded to tell him that I appreciate what he did, but next time he can just tell me and I will accompany him to the shed so he can pee back there instead.  You see, I an effort to speed along the potty training, I taught him how to pee outside so he didn't have to run inside all the time.  Sounded brilliant at the time, but now he pees wherever he wants outside, including the occasional time at daycare.  Yes, we get chided for that, however I would much rather have him pee outside than have to clean him up and change him after he peed in his pants.  Now it is just a matter of teaching him peeing etiquette.   As for the logic, it just means we need to tread ever more carefully in what we tell him and say to him as he will not begin attempting to use our words against us.  He is a joy, regardless, and between him and our daughter, I couldn't be happier.  I just hope our daughter is easier to potty train than he was.  We are not completely in the clear yet with him, but the end is in sight and what a beautiful end it will be.  

Off topic briefly, yesterday morning my son and I decided that we needed to cut our hair, so yesterday afternoon while his sister was going to bed, we broke out the clippers, and began cutting.  I cut his hair first, nice and short for the summer.  He sat still through the whole process and periodically ran to check his hair in the mirror.  When I was all set with his hair, he said, "Alright Daddy, my turn to cut your hair."  What could I say?  I handed him the clippers, and he went to town.  I proceeded to check my hair in the mirror periodically, and overall, he did a pretty good job.  There were a few tufts that he missed here and there, but he insisted that we were done and he put the clippers away.  I didn't argue at that point, I just finished cleaning up my hair after he went to bed.  Its funny how life works.  I was talking to gentleman a few weeks ago about kids and he was saying that as kids grow older, it just gets better.  I would have to agree at this point.  Every time I think we have reached a point where I enjoy our kids as much as possible, they get a little bit older and I enjoy them even more.  Can't wait to see what's next with my two little ones.  

A Self Destructing Mind

Last weekend, the weekend before Memorial Day, I decided that I needed to go see my grandmother, Baba, again.  She is my mom's mother, and lives in a nursing home in Westport.  She has been there for the past two years and is dealing with dementia that is slowly unraveling her mind.  Her personality still comes forward, but she rarely remembers who people are and most of the times when she talks, it is very hard to follow what she is saying.  That is how it was last Monday when I went with my mom to go visit her.  Her pin straight gray hair is longer than I have ever seen it, past her shoulders, and her face looks simply tired, partly from being in her 90's and living a long life, partly from the meds that they keep her on to mediate her volatile temper.  When we arrived, she was napping in her wheelchair just outside her room which is visible down a long hallway immediately after disembarking from the elevator.  With Baba, you never know exactly how she is going to be when you visit, although according to my mom, these days she doesn't really remember much of anything.  So, we approached her down the long hallway, watching her nap in peace with not a care in the world.  We woke her up when we got to her and as would be a typical response from her when asked if she was napping she said, "No, I just closed my eyes for a minute."  She was periodically coherent in what she was saying, but most of the time when she tried to convey a thought of hers, she jumped around so much that my mom and I couldn't follow.  I'm sure that it made sense in her mind, but to us, it was a jumble of words that she struggled to put together in three different languages, English, Spanish, and her native Russian.  At least she was happy to see us and have us as visitors.  And when I showed her pictures of my children, a huge smile came over her face and you could tell she was excited to see pictures of little children.  We had to explain that they were my children, but that doesn't matter at this point.  The only thing that does is that it brought a smile to her face.  Despite the fact that she didn't know who my mom or I were, she is still a mom and a grandmother to us respectively and we won't forget who she is.

Part of me wonders if the medications she is on has contributed to her trouble in assembling coherent thoughts and communicating them to others.  Even with her unraveling, self destructing mind, I would like to hold on to a glimmer of hope (even though that is probably long gone) that she still has some of her faculty left.  I understand completely why she is on the medications she is on.  Before she left my parent's house where she used to live, she would get periodically violent when she would forget where she was or when she thought that my parents were breaking into their own house.  Even in her earlier time at the nursing home, she would get extremely upset if someone touched her in an effort to help or if she had a roommate she did not agree with.  Her temper would ramp up to the point where they would have to sedate her in order to calm her down.  It wasn't good for her or those around her and unfortunately in order for her to stay there, she had to be put on medication.  Dementia, unlike Alzheimer's, seems to be more of a disease where the connections in the mind come undone and re-assemble themselves in weird and distorted ways.  Its almost like a person with dementia has taken an ungodly amount of hallucinogenic substances and is incapable of seeing reality the way the rest of the world is.  There are still areas of overlap, areas where there is a mutual understanding of the reality at hand and a comprehension of what is being said, but mostly there is no overlap.  It is a weird disease, it dementia even fits into the category of a "disease", and unfortunately there is no cure.  Its like watching someone travel down the rabbit hole, still being able to communicate with them, but not understanding what they are seeing.  Our reality is understood based upon what we all agree on.  We, meaning all conscious humans, agree that a tree is a tree based upon the fact that it is made of wood, surrounded by bark, is tall, has branches at the top, and unless it is winter in the northern areas, has leaves that help it to grow.  Baba, whose mind has traveled down the rabbit hole, might still see a tree, but where we would see only a tree, Baba would see a tree from her childhood, with notches in it from children climbing it, perhaps with a tree house in it, and that tree could even be Russian, in her back yard from her childhood.  A grossly simplified example, perhaps, but not being able to see what Baba sees, that is the best I can surmise.

What I do know is, Baba is still around, she is still my grandmother, and while life is hectic with two children running around the house, I still owe it to her to visit as much as my schedule allows.  After all, I only have two grandmother's left.  Out of those two, one can see me but doesn't know who I am, the other is blind and knows who I am but can not see me.  An interesting situation when you think about it, but I still love them both.  Seeing my grandparents get old as made me resolve to never get old myself.  I am not sure how I will accomplish that yet, but that is my goal.  OK, so that might be a little beyond my control, but what I will do is do everything in my power to stave off dementia and diabetes, the two diseases that my two grandmother's have, and the two diseases that have rendered them incapable of caring for themselves.  How I wish things were different sometimes, but alas, these are their lives and at this point we can do nothing but visit them, love them, and let them know we still care....even if one of them doesn't know it is her grandson and daughter who visited her.