Compartment 14B

A few observations related to returning to the corporate world. 2009-09-25 - 3:37 p.m. A few observations about returning to the corporate world. 1) I feel like an absentee mother; like I never see my kids. When I came back from my first year-long mat leave it was an adjustment, but I didn�t feel like I almost never saw Grommet. BUT I lived downtown so the commute was much, much shorter. Once I add almost an hour each way it seems like the length of my workday has passed some mysterious tipping point, beyond which I, well, feel like I never see my kids. It probably doesn�t help that two out of five evenings a week I teach at the gym right after work, meaning I don�t get home until their bedtime. I have taught 2 classes a week at the gym for years, but one of the two has always been on the weekend. So the trade-off is that I get my weekends free, but don�t really spend any time with the kids at all on two nights of the week. 2) �Lift and separate� used to be the job of bras. When did it become okay for pants to do this to ass cheeks? I�m not just talking jeans-clad women on the bus � I�m seeing young women in suits at the office with way too much of their behinds defined this way. It�s a faux pas to have a visible panty line, but it�s okay to wear pants that scream �I�m either in a thong or going commando!�?!? Seriously??? To all you rear-camel-toe ladies out there, do you really like the feeling of being permanently wedgied? Do you think that look is sexy? What about appropriate for the office? 3) If the backs of women�s pants are getting higher, why are men�s heading south? I admit I�ve seen this before but I haven�t noticed it as much as I do now during my commute: the pants on young men seem to be belted around the middle � and in some cases even below � their butts. Fortunately, they have boxers that come all the way up to their waists, but still, why visually shorten your legs to the point you look like your enormously-long torso is gliding around on little tiny stumps? At least this hasn�t happened with business suits and it�s only the young fellahs in jeans that I see this on. Don�t get me started about the hair sculpted to deliberately look like hat-head that hangs in their eyes. Is it a sign of getting old when you scratch your head at the fashion choices of the young? Before - After All content � Shawna 2003-2010 That means no swiping my stuff - text, images, etc. - without asking. P.S. If you're emailing me, replace the [at] with @ in the "to" line. Oh, and if you put the word "journal" in the subject line it'll have a better chance of making it past my junk mail filters. recommend me HTML and design help by Jo hosted by Diaryland