The Blatherings of Babs

My Own Women's Day Acknowledgement

2009-03-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

My mom is cool. Not in the way that celebrity moms like Madonna or Teri Hatcher are cool, but in the more normal—“I don’t need millions of dollars to make me cool”—cool. So cool that my teenage daughter actually wants to go to her house for the weekend just to hang out.

My daughter thinks my mom is cool because they watch TV, shop and go to the beach together, and they both giggle at the silliest things. I also think my mom is cool, but for an entirely different reason.

She loves me unconditionally, and I know it. I ended up going to business school, entering the corporate world and eventually starting a company. I know that she would love me just the same if I had gone to beauty school and worked in a salon, or if I had decided to pursue an acting career.

If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she was a terrible mother. From the time I was in grade school, she was a single parent of three kids. We were alone after school because she had to work full time. We didn’t go on vacations; we didn’t have a lot of new clothes and other stuff; we didn’t get our own cars when we turned 16. If we wanted to go to college, we had to pay for it ourselves. When we turned 18, we had to move out of the house. Of course when we were teenagers, we thought she was the Queen of All Evil.

But she loved us unconditionally, and we knew it. We may not have wanted to admit it, but we knew it. And it’s made all the difference, at least for me. I’ve learned to trust my own instincts, and to believe that I can handle anything. I know that no matter what I do, there’s at least one person who’ll tell me I did a great job.

I’m lucky I had such a terrible mother. If you didn’t have a mom like mine, you’ll have to learn to give yourself unconditional love. Easy for me to say, right? Try it:

Set up your start-up screens (computer, mobile phone, etc.) to give you some love. When I turn on my phone, I see, “Greetings, O Great and Powerful Queen!”
Go to Hallmark.com and send yourself some love. You can pick the card, create a message, and set it to be sent on whatever date in the future you want. Why not send a “You’re So Great” card to yourself every month?
Recruit a friend to be your fountain of unconditional love. Set up a daily, weekly, or monthly date to get together and pat each other on the back.

So thanks, Mom, for being so cool. I hope that I’ll be as terrible a mother as you are. However, I’m not sure I can carry off a birthday cake hat as well as you can.

It's International Women's Day

2009-03-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

Thank a woman in your life who is important to you, and visit the official International Women's Day site.

Feel free to acknowledge her by adding a comment to this post!

An Inspiring "Women In Sports" Story.

2009-03-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

Guess who is the all-time leading basketball point scorer for Massachusetts high school students?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/selena_roberts/03/05/clothesminded/index.html

Women's History Month: Word of the Day

2009-03-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

OK, so there really is not a connection between Women's History Month and a word of the day. But I came across the following while I was cleaning out some old writings.

Word of the day: virago. One definition is "noisy, scolding or domineering woman"; another is "large, strong, courageous woman". Guess which one's my fave?

It is Women's History Month...please go out and celebrate. Go, viragos!

Yet Even More Evidence of the Wage Gap

2009-03-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

In The New York Times today, there is a really interesting chart, outlining the fact that women make less than men in nearly every single job. Why? And what can we do about it?

See for yourself...

Voting: You Should Do It, and Tell Your Friends

2008-11-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

This is the 30th year I am eligible to vote. In all that time, I have not missed an opportunity to cast a ballot. I remember in my 12th grade government class, Mr. Baldwin (yes, father of those Baldwins) gave a speech about voting as more than a right, it's a duty. He's right.

We cannot complain if we don't vote.

We cannot profess that democracy is the best system if we don't vote.

We cannot presume to tell other nations that they should have elections if we are not participating in our own.

We cannot call ourselves patriots if we do not respect our country enough to cast our ballots.

Whatever your political persuasion, get out there and do it. Vote early if you can. Vote by mail. Or vote tomorrow. I heard on the news this morning that the odds of your vote being the deciding vote in the presidential election is 1 in 60,000,000. Those odds are twice as good as the odds of winning the California lottery.

To find your polling place, click here.

And here's a virtual "I Voted" sticker for you:

To Privatize? Or Not...

2008-10-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been toying with the idea of adopting a pseudonym for this blog. Will it free me up to write whatever and about whomever I want? Or will it stifle me because I'll have to remove all identifying marks?

Working Women Hold Key to World Prosperity

2008-10-29T19:28:00.001-07:00

From Reuters, via The Boston Globe...

"Working Women Hold Key to World Prosperity"

Finally... Some Changes to the Blog

2008-10-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have spent the better part of a year avoiding this site like the plague.

I had a new job.

I had wild success.

I had big disappointment.

I walked 60 miles in three days with my daughter and my sister.

I torqued my knee on Day 1 of above walk.

I met some interesting people.

I met some pretty important people.

I lost two people who were interesting and important, and nearly lost a third.

All excuses for not typing my URL, clicking in the big blank box and typing.

And as I look over my journal entries for the last several weeks, I notice that the theme of "I need to get back to writing" keeps coming up. So here I am.

I am not sure where this is going to go. I am not going to make any grand claims of insight or understanding. I will write what I feel I need to, and hope you find it interesting. I hope I find it interesting as well...

Thanks, Starbucks, for Helping Me Treat Myself

2007-11-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

Egg nog lattes are back at Starbucks. I wait for this day all year. To treat myself to the eggy noggy goodness is so unlike me the other 10 months of the year...I am a green tea girl all the way. But for some reason, I am mush in the hands of the barista at the beginning of November.

Say what you want about the machine/corpocracy/evil empire that is Starbucks...and I say it myself...often. However, I am grateful for their helping me to get over my "do-for-everyone-else" disease for a few weeks a year. And in the last two years, I have gone to my local, non-chain, coffee shops to ask for egg nog lattes.

Find a treat for yourself, however silly or small, and go for it.

You ARE Out There!

2007-09-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

When I started up again I thought that there would be no way anyone would remember me, or that it would take a while for readers to find me again, since I had been gone so long.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email from a reader, noticing I had come back! It felt fantastic. I'm enjoying a long weekend (it's Labor Day here in the US), and will for sure write more in the next day or so.

To the person who sent the email (you know who you are)--thank you! And I hope to hear from more of you as time goes on.

Women's Equality Day

2007-08-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today is Women's Equality Day. It is also the 87th anniversary of women's right to vote in the United States. It is hard for me to believe that their are people in our country who have been alive longer than women have been able to vote.

Equality? Hhmmmm...

According to the US Census, women's median income is 77% of men's.
10 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women (up from 7 last year).
Women hold 16% of the seats in US Congress.

Are you feeling equal today?

How About a To-Do for You?

2006-09-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

How About a To-Do for You?

Why do we consistently put ourselves last? Why is it so hard to get at least one item on my to-do list about me, and only me?

A while back, I wrote about removing one item from your to-do list to simplify your life. If you took that advice, what would be the item that comes off? My guess is that it would be the one that didn’t apply to someone else in your life. So today I’m amending my advice from that article:

Add one item to your to-do list that is all about you.

Need some ideas? How about these “To-Do’s For You”?

Get a “do not disturb” sign for your bedroom or bathroom door
Take yourself out for lunch—eat at a new place, get yourself a picnic, or go for a 20-minute walk
Read the first chapter of that book you’ve been dying to get to.

And to make sure you don’t cross it off almost as soon as you write it down, add a comment to this post and state your commitment. Go on! OK...here's mine, so you won't be the first:

I will spend at least 20 minutes before bed reading fiction or doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.

Now you...what's your to-do for you?