Chicken Soup

For the Environmental Consultant's Soul

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

Robert Frost

It was a clear spring day in 2012, full of the kind of hope and promise only a spring day can hold. But even though spring was Pam's* favourite season, she hardly noticed what a beautiful morning it was. All Pam could think about was work.

Pam had been involved in an all-engrossing project for months. She had harboured hope for it when it was only a twinkling in a client's eye; nursed it through the tricky cost estimate stage; celebrated with pink cigars when she was awarded the proposal. That was when the the first warning signs had cropped up: "But they told me specifically not to put that in the scope, how is the budget going to cope with that change?"

Things had gone steadily downhill from there. The client seemed to be withholding several crucial pieces of information, while rapidly and randomly changing others. The timelines were practically tripping over one another. Pam wasn't allowed to make half the calls she needed to make, and the ones she was weren't being answered.

In short, Pam was overworked, overwhelmed and over budget, and that wasn't even the worst of it. What bothered Pam the most was the direction this whole project was taking. What she had initially believed was an exciting and important project appeared on further scrutiny to be a boondoggle at best, and a deleterious debacle at worst.

"What is the point of all this?" thought Pam. "Am I really going to spend the rest of my career facilitating more holes in the ground? Where is the positive impact I once dreamed of making in the world?"

It wasn't long before Pam was having a full-blown crisis of conscience. She began spending her lunch breaks perusing job ads, but she had a mortgage to pay and it seemed as if all those soul-satisfying positions just didn't feature paycheques that could support her lifestyle. How would the children ever be able to go to private kindergarten if she left her job now? Pam's golden handcuffs grew a little tighter each day.

Dissatisfied and disillusioned, but with no discernible way out of the pickle she was in, Pam continued her work on the project. When final deadlines began rapidly approaching, she started working weekends as well. This is where we first encountered Pam, unhappily braving crappy weekend transit schedules to make her way to an office she resented, to work on a project she no longer believed in, on a beautiful spring day that she barely noticed.

Pam was cranking through the final details of the project when she discovered something that stopped her dead in her work. "No," thought Pam, "it can't be..."

She ran through the evaluation process again, and then, with growing excitement, once more just to be certain. "It is true! It is!" cried Pam. "And all this time I've been so worried, for nothing!"

In that single, simple moment it was as if Pam had found a new lease on life. All her doubts about the purpose and meaning of her work, all her questions about the moral and ethical value of her projects were laid to rest. What Pam had discovered was this:

The project would have no significant cumulative effects.

Pam was so very surprised. It looked as if the kids could go to private kindergarten after all! Pam treated herself a new designer dress to celebrate.

* Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Influencing the Weak-Minded

Is it wrong of me to use the Jedi mind trick on my own kids?

'Mom! Mooooommmmm! Come play race cars wif me.'
You don't need me to play race cars with you.
'Mom, where are you?'
This is not the parent you're looking for.
'Mom, why are you hiding in your bed?'
I can go about my napping.
'Awesome! I'm coming in to play fort wif you!'
Dammit!
'Mom, that's a bad word.'

Not that it ever frigging works, mind you.

I am fully convinced of the Awesome Untapped Potential of the Mind. Trouble is, that "untapped" (or, in this case, un-desired-results-producing) business makes it tough to maintain my conviction sometimes. It's not that I'm lacking motivation in my efforts, though - for example, there have been a few** "select" situations over the years when I've been really desperate to make some small interloper or another go away, but I always figured it didn't work those times because my attention had been diverted to somewhat more compelling anatomical regions, ergo my brain was clearly not operating at its Jedi best.

And today, well, I think it's pretty reasonable to chalk today's failure up to my being half asleep. Full Jedi mastery is always easier when I'm not in my afternoon slump.

There's a slightly trickier alternative theory as well: it may be that the Jedi mind trick only works in the expected way on adults. Kids, on the other hand, will always do exactly the opposite of whatever it is you actually want them to do - except when they don't, which further complicates things - so in order to effectively manage their behaviour through mind control techniques one may have to employ the less well-known art of Jedi reverse psychology:

'Mom! Mooooommmmm! Come play race cars wif me.'
I am the best person to play race cars with you.
'Mom, where are you?'
You don't want to play race cars with your sister.
'Mom, why are you hiding in the basement?'
Race cars are less fun by yourself.
'Awesome! Let's play ball hockey! I'll get the hockey sticks!'
Dammit!
'Mom, that's a bad word.'

Or maybe I just haven't got the little hand wave down right.

** Possibly more than a few. You know how it is.

The B's Knees

Many aspects of being a university student with a small child at home weren't easy. Aside from some obvious student-parent issues - for instance, How to Feed a Family on Twelve Cents a Day - I generally found myself with an issue that perhaps doesn't quite fit the student mold as it's commonly viewed: namely, I had far more brainpower available than time. Therefore, in order to maximize overall results (i.e., GPA), my brainpower needed to be harnessed in the most effective manner possible given the allotted time.

Unfortunately, my brain is a lazy slug that plays nasty tricks like setting my body off cleaning the bathroom then taking a rest itself. I figure the equation looks something like this:

GPA = (b/t) - P

Where b = brainpower, t = time and P = my propensity for endless procrastination via household cleaning.

So I made two things: one, a schedule ('You can wash the floor for ONE HOUR and then you HAVE to study, got it?'); and two, an Excel spreadsheet. I used the schedule to relentlessly nag my brain into action, and the spreadsheet to calculate the precise minimum amount of effort required to achieve a 4.0 in any given course, which assisted me in prioritizing all the nagging I had to do to myself.

Sure, there were bumps along the way - Physics springs to mind - but it was actually a pretty good little system and once I had that parchment With Distinction in hand I felt pretty darn smug for having cracked one of the great mysteries of studenthood.

A few years later I have come to understand that no one - not one single person, entity, potential employer, no one - gives a shit about my GPA. They never have, they never will. It just doesn't matter. The only person who ever cared about it one iota... was me.  I would have been well served to set my sights on a B average and get some more sleep.

This past weekend, I took Small Fry to the dentist for a check up. "Oooh!" they said. "Aaaah!" "You know," said the dental hygienist, "I don't think I have ever written this on a file before, but I am definitely writing it this time: Excellent home care!"

Do you hear that, people? Excellent home care. Excellent. I excelled at prying those miserable little jaws open every night for the past four years, risking life and limb patience and digits to floss and brush those minuscule, razor sharp chompers, and finally - finally! - my time for recognition had come. I swiftly touched up my makeup and unfolded my prepared speech.

Interestingly, despite my high GPA - which could theoretically be used as a proximal measure of (at least!) a keen ability to cram information into my brain in a reasonably thorough and retrievable way - it seems I just never learn. Because, guess what? No one - not one single person, entity, potential employer, no one - gives a shit about whether there exists in a filing cabinet somewhere in Calgary's northwest a note that my child received "excellent" daily hygienic care on his deciduous teeth. Once again, the only person who ever cared about it was me.  And, once again, I would have (in fact probably the whole household would have) been well served by me setting my sights on "pretty good" and enjoying life a little more.

Happy Leap Post!

Rare are the New Year's resolutions that I actually stick to for more than approximately one menstrual cycle. But today marks sixty days since 2012 kicked off and I've still managed to hang on to one last shred of self-respect resolution: dress up for work every day.

I admit, I'm one of those people who really works the "casual" end of the business casual scale. No, not that end - a little further - keep going - leeeetle more - yup, right about there. My MO over the past couple of years has pretty much been to throw a scarf over whatever I'm wearing and call it a day (bonus: hides toothpaste stains!), and actually that's a few steps up from when I used to do significant amounts of field work and was known to wear pigtails and mud boots at the office on occasion. (Don't worry - strictly on casual Fridays.) 

Besides needing a way to justify a fairly serious bout of shopping, I was prompted to make this particular resolution largely because it dawned on me that not everyone realized that my wearing mascara indicated that I had dressed up for the day. I mean, if you can believe it, some people wear makeup even when they're not at work! In my mind, I had been dressing up for quite a while already when it occurred to me that eye makeup was perhaps being inappropriately utilized as my sole indicator of dressed-uppedness and that maybe, just maybe, I needed to catch the rest of my attire up to my face.

So I did. Frankly, it's created something of a feedback loop: Shiny New Me has been experiencing a lot of intangible benefits over Crappy Old Me. For instance, I can tell that people really respect the hell outta me when I'm wearing pointy, uncomfortable shoes with my slacks. Plus my appearance occasionally elicits compliments these days. From men. Be still my throbbing feet beating heart! Why, one day it's all "Hey, you don't look like total arse all the time any more" and the next I'm having to beat them off with a stick!

... with a pool noodle?

... a limp spaghetti?

Alright, seriously. Can someone please just make a pass at me? This is a LOT of work to do every day for nothing, you know.

The House of Commons

Having a large caffeine habit and a small bladder, I spend a lot of time in the washroom. (I recently attended a conference at a venue that had about a million toilet stalls in the ladies', and made it one of my conference goals to try every one.) (I succeeded, by the way. Drank some coffee to celebrate.) As a result, I have developed some very strong ideas about what makes a quality public washroom: Cleanliness. Good lighting. Purse hooks. Motivational graffiti. A favourable toilet : sink : dryer ratio. High paper towel availability. If there's pleasant-smelling hand lotion available as well, the place is automatically granted an extra star in the ratings.

Conversely, I'm also pretty firm about what makes a lousy washroom: Lineups. Puddles of any origin. Air dryers that sound like jet engines and make the flesh of your hands flow up to your elbows.

Notice that I didn't mention any automatic amenities in my list. I'm actually pretty ambivalent about auto-whatevers in washrooms. Auto dryers are preferable to drying my hands on my pants, yet inferior to a nice, generous rectangle of paper towel. Auto soap dispensers and faucets are fine if they work but stupid and useless if they don't - which is too often the case. And auto flush toilets - well, on one hand I didn't really want to touch that handle, but one poorly-timed auto flush has been known to undo years of intensive potty training. The risk assessment leans toward the negative.

Not to mention that it used to be that a gal could wrassle with her pantyhose (or weep lightly, or phone her sister, or whatever) for a couple of minutes in the stall and not waste endless quantities of potable water thanks to an overly aggressive auto flush. I always feel a little ridiculous for using four gallons of water to dispose of four ounces of urine, but I feel like a total asshole when the toilet flushes six times while I'm just trying to dig falafel crumbs out of my bra.

And if there's someone else in the bathroom while all this flushing is going on, I feel that surely they must be wondering what the hell I'm doing in there. I'd rather suffer the rest of my days with undergarments filled with falafel that have anyone think I'm struggling to flush some behemoth poo loaf, so I started to compile a list of things to yell out if the toilet flushes excessively whilst I fuss with my clothes:

'Why won't these fem hygiene products and diapers ever go down?'
'The fuzz is coming! Quick, ditch the stash!'
'Oooh, this foot spa is so invigorating!'
'Wheeeeee!'
'Rinse and repeat...'
'Just washing my lunch dishes!'
'Go free, little crocodile!'
'SWIRLY!'
'How do you pee with these things on?'

Not Entirely Untrue

Small Fry is at a very inquisitive age. Or rather, he has probably always been inquisitive, but his vocabulary has finally caught up to the point where he can really articulate all the many and various things he's been wondering about all this time. Most of the time his questions are pretty innocuous (What does 'hint' mean? Are jeans a kind of pants? What's the word for cars with no lid?) but sometimes... sometimes they're indescribably brutal. Q-bombs, if you will. And he's been dropping a lot of Q-bombs lately.

At first glance you might believe that giving Q its own bomb, à la A and F, is taking things a step too far. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here - maybe you don't have kids yet, or maybe your kids are too little to have really convinced you of the awesome destructive power of the Q-bomb - but believe me, the devastation Small Fry has caused to my mental landscape is immense. I may never fully recover from the assault.

It doesn't help that his offensive program strategically targets vulnerabilities in the defenses:

Wednesday, January 18, 06:00 hours: Target appears groggy and uncaffeinated. Deploy Q-bomb.
"Mommy, what do I use my scrotum for?"

Thursday, January 19, 19:15 hours: Target arrears tired, grumpy and distracted. Deploy cluster Qs.
"Mommy, what is my belly button for?"
"When we were connected did I live in your chest or your abdomen?"
"How did I get out of you?"
"Why did you pee me out!?!"
"Oh. That's good. Ladies shouldn't pee on their babies. It's not nice." 

Monday, January 23, 18:55 hours: Target appears frazzled and overworked. Deploy Q-bomb. 
"Mommy, why is Grandpa dead?" 

Tuesday, January 31, 06:30 hours: Target appears groggy and uncaffeinated. Deploy Q-bomb.
"Mommy, you're very, very old. When will you die?"

Monday, February 6, 6:15am: Target appears exceedingly groggy and uncaffeinated. Deploy Q-bomb.
"Mommy, how do babies get in?"

Now, I have suffered through a lot of Q-bomb attacks from both my kids over the years, and I'm proud to say that I have done my best to cobble together what I felt was a biologically accurate, age- and comprehension-level-appropriate response in every case. That's not to say that the policy hasn't bitten me on the ass a good many times, but I've never backed down from the challenge.

However, that last Q-bomb of Small Fry's was a big one. If you've ever met a four-year-old boy, you'll have an acute awareness of their mastery of the shock/gross-out power of words - I can't even begin to fathom the havoc he could have wrought with that particular bit of mechanical knowledge on file. Plus, it occurred to me (too late!) that back when Medium Fry was four and dropping all manner of Q-bombs along similar lines, she never asked how babies got in. So Small Fry caught me not only uncaffeinated and groggy, but also completely unprepared. If I had known, I would have studied for the test.

As it was, I couldn't tell him. For the first and only time I completely bailed on a Q-bomb.

You know, life would be so much simpler if I could just refer the kids to the goings-on around the farm in response to their inquiries ("Like that, but with less mooing."), but such is the plight of city dwellers everywhere I suppose.

So with no farm animal shenanigans as a reference point, no educational reference materials on hand, and an unwillingness to invoke the stork, what did I tell him?

I told him that how babies get in is a *special surprise* for when he grows up.

Strictly a Sleepover

Never mind that I let them go to the corner store and load up on enough junk food to choke an Apatosaurus, with nary a warning aside from 'if you eat 'til you puke, you have to clean up your own vomit'. Never mind that I let them watch a PG-rated movie with no P-G whatsoever. And never mind that I let them stay up 'til eleven o'clock, which is a full two hours past my bedtime.

But ask them to clean up their trash, popcorn and spilled drinks from the living room floor, and what do I get?

Sotto voce: "Your mom is really... strict."

Ah, strict. That six-letter, four-letter word that kids toss around like they'll one day toss out off-the-cuff judgments like "bitch" or "asshole" about anyone who knots their knickers in the slightest.

Strict. My gawd, I hear that (and trust me, do I hear it!) and it brings me *this* close to losing my mind - you ingrates! Junk food! Movies! I didn't even make you floss before bed! (Mossy little critters, blech!) Then I waffle - Strict? What if I am too strict? Children shouldn't have to be responsible for tidying up their own messes when they're having fun, should they? Saturdays only come once a year, right? Maybe I should cut them some slack on this special occasion.

But I quickly return to my senses: Hmph. Strict. Strict my ass. Why, back in my day...

Let's consider this carefully for a minute. Strict. The opposite in this case is lenient - synonyms include 'doormat', 'pushover' and 'my kids are going to get knocked up when they're fourteen' - and that's a word I never want my kids to associate with me. You ungrateful little turkeys, I give you tons of autonomy within the frame of acceptable behaviour but you can fully expect me to lay the smack down sometimes, particularly when it comes to your treading on someone else's good nature. How else do you expect to grow up into considerate human beings? Pick up your own damn garbage!

Strict. Suddenly it has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? I hear strict is hot this season - why, it's practically the new black! So all you strict parents out there, roll that delicious word around on your tongue; learn to relish the weight of it on your conscience; wear your scarlet letter S with pride. Because they're worth it.