Women make the world go around. Your turn.

I have been thinking a lot about value. How we "Monetize" everything, even those things that never can and never should be counted in sheckels. I saw three 'Mother's Day' articles in which economists estimated the 'value' of a mother's work. Stop! It's assinine, it's pointless. Insure your life for a million, two million, whatever you need to sustain your children's bodies should you die, but you diminish yourself if you think a mortal invention like money can replace the infinity of love.

Resist the temptation to count yourself in measurable terms. My husband once sneered, "If women ran the world, we'd all still live in caves." I retorted, "Yes. But we'd all have one."
A woman's capacity to love without recompense is her greatest gift. Give all of it and be glad you can. That is your strength and no one can take it from you.

NPR had a woman read this aloud yesterday. I have copied it from womenshistory.about.com, and encourage you to read it. It will raise your head and stir your soul.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
"Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Taking shortcuts through the forest of life...

And now, the award for most pandering phrase in our current lexicon goes to:
“I don’t know how you do it! Juggling work and family and life!?”

It sounds like an innocent enough comment, even one that may be masquerading as a compliment, but y’know what I hear when someone says it? “And all this time I thought you were a disorganized idiot!”

It’s a rhetorical question that has no proper response. Do you dissemble? “Aw shucks, it was nothing.” I think I last uttered that phalse little phrase in my 20s. Then I got over it. Permanently.

Do you brag? Not the path to social acceptance. Learn from Martha.

Do you joke? Of course! My pat answer is “I just don’t do any of it well.”

Because over-busy women know the real answer, don’t we gals? And it’s not juggling.
I don’t juggle. Juggling is for women in their thirties who still have energy. I’m in my forties.
I cut.

The first thing to cut is of course, sleep. Since I don’t drive very often, sleep is optional. 6 hours, maybe 6 and half, tops, with allowances for 3 am nightmare wakeups, gets me through the week with minimal caffeine abuse. Heck, when my daughter was born she didn’t (And therefore I didn’t) sleep longer than 45 minutes at a time for the first six months of her life. I’d like to see David Blaine survive that.
So there’s a lot you can manage without reaching REM. And, when you are sleep deprived, our culture provides a plethora of handy substitutes! Sugar is a great one, the ever-popular caffeine is never more than an office coffee cart away… and then there’s nodding off mid-email. Thanks to my high school touch-typing class, I can keep my fingers moving on the keyboard in case someone walks in, and nap at the same time! It’s great! Try it at your job!

What other shortcuts? Here’s a beauty fave; liquid eyeliner. A nice dark line across your top lid and you can skip mascara. And sun hats! Hats are great – when you’re wearing it, it covers all sins, of course, and even better, once you take it off, everyone assumes it’s the hat’s fault your hair looks like crap. They never think it’s because you spent all of 90 seconds at the mirror and walked out of the house half-wet. I’m currently experimenting with hot-rolling my hair while it’s still wet so I get the drying and the curling done at the same time.

So that’s how I do it. Some of it. Of course the real answer to “how do you do it?” is
“What’s my other choice?”