Time Management Skills

Elizabeth had a post about how she manages her family schedule. The most recent installment in the Times on class discusses another mother's method:

Kathy Link is 41 with blond-streaked pigtails and, at 5-foot-9, straight as a spear. She is still in the red sun visor and tennis whites she wore leading her fitness class at the Forum Gym and winning at doubles afterward. Tucked by her seat is her color-coded itinerary.

Kaleigh, 8, is red. With school over this afternoon in late August, she has already been dropped off at her soccer practice blocks from home. Kristina, 11, is dark green, and Kelsey, 13, is yellow. Kristina must get to her soccer practice four miles to the north, and Kelsey to her practice 14 miles to the south.

Ms. Link (blue for work, light green for family and volunteering) surveys the clotted intersection at the mouth of her 636-house Medlock Bridge subdivision.

Am I this woman? Is she worthy of the reporter's thinly veiled derision?

Like Elizabeth, I've got everyone's family schedule organized a calendar program. I have to keep track of birthday parties, therapy schedules, baseball photographs, and school pizza day. I don't do a great job of it, but I have to make some semblence of organization so that I don't send Jonah in with lunch money on Nacho Day at school (yes, they feed the kids chips for lunch) or I forget to contribute to his teacher's gift. Ian needs a chicken pox vaccine. Jonah's birthday party will happen in July and not in June, because I didn't make phone calls early enough.

Every Monday morning, I have to update the schedule, print it out, and put it on the side of fridge. I've been so busy that I only had a chance to figure out life this morning. Without the list, I've been oppressed by vague worries that I was forgetting something.

In addition to the responsibilities for the kids, I'm also Chief Contractor for our old home. I've been trying to lure Sam over here for months to fix the roof. He's very much in demand. I've resorted to leaving him husky, toussled hair sort of messages on his machine to get him to the job. I have been also trying to track down someone else to replace some window frames and rotting porch boards.

Then there's my own work. I'm knee deep in a research project now, and it's using up every free second.

Hence my color coded schedule. Gag.

Back in college, my friend, Adrienne, and I sat on the hallway floor like we did every afternoon. Dressed in flannel before grunge hit big. We spent hours lazily talking about boys and working on the Times crossword puzzle. Cursing Eugene Maleska, we always finished the whole damn thing even on Fridays.

Adrienne had a photographic memory, so she never bothered to show up to her bio-chem classes until the final. If she woke up in time for the exam, she always got an A. So, Adrienne was a great person to blow time with. After the puzzle, we wandered to the campus pub where the usual suspects were carving their names on a table and chain smoking.

Days and weeks passed liked that. No schedules or lists.

I haven't talked to Adrienne in years, because now she's even busier than I am. She's a mother and one of hottest doctors in the country. I'm going to track her down. We have years of crossword puzzles to catch up on.

Comments

[Ancarett]

I sensed that same derision in the article -- unpaid labour never seems to deserve any respect in the NYT view.

You do what you have to do to manage schedules. Some days I'm lucky and can get by without anything written down. Others I generate a two-page long to-do list (as I have today, gah!)

[timna]

I"ve got the long list ready for today, too.
What resonated with me was the discussion of the mileage, the feeling of the hamster in the cage on the running wheel.

[ianqui]

I don't think the color coded schedule is the problem, I think the soccer practice 14 miles to the south is the problem.

[jen]

I also felt the critique of the Atlanta mom, but I'm not convinced it's because her work is unpaid. You could take that entire story and alter it to discuss the same woman going to college, with different colors for her classes, and it would have been viewed positively IMHO. What if this woman was working class and trying to get her kids to all these activities? I believe that also would have been viewed positively. Ditto if she was doing nonprofit work not directly tied to her kids. And I don't think it's just an issue with this particular writer at the NYT. Middle-class moms get critiqued pretty frequently and it's not clear (to me,anyway) why. What's going on?

[Elizabeth]

Yup, I think the article has an implicit "doesn't she have something better to do with her education/time/skills than to plot out elaborate car pool arrangements?" and "isn't she a sucker for letting her kids do all these things that require her to drive all around?"

I also think that the judgment is stronger because it's *soccer* that all 3 kids are playing, but not all at the same place. (And that is crazy -- but not the mom's fault.) If one was playing soccer, one chess, and one taking piano lessons, I bet she'd come off better in the article.

[Frolic]

I've only read a few articles in the series (I plan to catch up this weekend), but a lot of it rings really hollow to me. Many of the assumptions seem to be about how class is lived between Boston and Washington. Not that class doesn't exist outside that corridor, but it's played out quit differently. I know, a sweeping generalization with nothing to back it up.

And yeah, non-working mothers can't catch a break at the Times.

[Frolic]

Here is a piece Chris Lehmann (husband of Wonkette, I believe) that nails why I don't like the series:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi_3/documents/04731992.asp

[cc]

When I read the article, her crazy schedule and the color-coding of their lives just sounded sad--an attempt to bring control and meaning to a life that lacked it. The poor woman has to create meaning in a life that otherwise lacks it. She admits she has no deep connections that matter--to a job, to a place, to her neighbors.

What is she going to do, regardless of her geographic "place," when her kids graduate? She'll have to make up something else to substitute for meaningfulness--just hope it isn't alcohol and/or pills.

[timna]

I think she does find connections, but lacks the time and long-term commitment to cultivating them. Give her a move that isn't temporary, let those kids walk or bike-ride to some activities, and I think she'd find her own meanings. It's too hard to do when juggling all the balls, and it's too much to expect that she also develop yet another person's capabilities (her own!) when she has no time or energy.

[Dr_Funk]

I'm cool with the colour coded schedule, but what's the deal with all the 'K' names?

[Laura]

Heh. The K names.

Thanks, Frolic, for the link. It was a good article. I'll put it in a post later.

[Laura]

Heh. The K names.

Thanks, Frolic, for the link. It was a good article. I'll put it in a post later.

[Stephen Patrick M.]

The woman described in the NYT article seems dissatisfied to some degree with her husband. After taking over the leadership role in the family, she wonders why her husband doesn't behave more like a family leader.

The husband apparently has no time to play tennis with the wife since he is working his butt off to pay for her tennis instructor.

The tennis instructor is probably screwing the wife since the husband is not at home to do that either. He is too busy working to pay for the maid because the wife is too tired from tennis ''lessons'' to vacuum.

The short-sighted husband is simply doing his part to maintain the illusion of a meaningful existence. This type of husband is just waiting to die of a heart attack before the age of 50. When that happens, the wife gets everything and marries some other sucker. C'est la vie. Hopefully for them, the afterlife is not a fairytale.

The rat race is a cruel joke played on those foolish enough to spend their short lives running it.