I got informed last night that I was putting a cramp in people's schedules by not updating this journal first thing in the morning. Ha ha. I like putting a cramp in people's schedules.

Ok. Anyway. Last night I talked on the phone. And then I went grocery shopping at about 9 p.m. This was very funny, because it was only dishevled looking single men who were grocery shopping at 9 p.m. Does this mean I live the life of a dishevled looking single man? That is a little depressing, to say the least.

The more depressing part was by the time I got back from grocery shopping, I wasn't famished with hunger any more. That was the only reason I went in the first place - my options were go without dinner or go to the grocery store. I managed to eat a bagel before going to bed, but that's it.

Stress management from the mouth of a psycho-babblist

I took this class in stress management yesterday. It was four hours long. The first part was what you'd expect from such a class. It was mostly women in the class (a cross section -- from group leads to secretaries). Anyway, we were supposed to evaluate what caused stress in our lives. Now one of the women said that it was stressful to try to have a career and be a good mother at the same time. This broke down into the other women in a complaint session (there were only about two of us childless singe-types in the class). I guess this was ok. What was NOT ok, was that our instructor (a young man, unmarried, no children), concluded for the class, that it was impossible to live a happy life (which he equated to stress free) if you wanted both a career and family as a woman. He suggested that if the women want to be happy, they drop down to part time. (And his argument was stress free = happy; I mean, its nice to be stress free, but I can't imagine any parent is without stress in their life, whether they work or not).

OOOH that made me so angry. What is this? The stone age? How can he tell the women in the room that they can't have both family and a career and happiness, when men have been doing it for centuries? Dropping to part time is why, even though there's plenty of working women, there are far less in the executive ranks. Not to mention, as my Aunt Diane pointed out to me last night, psychologists have shown time and again that women are HAPPIER if they are doing something outside of just caring for their family. At that, even if that was his advice, what made him qualified to tell a bunch of hard working mothers that to be happy they need to abanadon their careers?

Ok, that was my vent.