Entries Tagged 'Economy' ↓

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the presidential nominee of your choice won this election? Of course you have - and I have too. I have been thinking about it a lot recently. Well, maybe “fantasizing” is a better word to describe what I’m doing. Every time I hear about gas prices creeping up or more foreclosures or famine or floods or earthquakes, I like to sit back and think about something very hopeful - Obama being elected as our next president.

(Cue dream-like chimes and fuzz the picture in your minds…)

I imagine election night, with my husband, at home, eyes glued to MSNBC, hastily gulping down my glass of wine – hopeful, hopeful, hopeful as the returns come back and show red states turning blue. And then I go further and imagine a landslide victory and sending my husband out for champagne (I could never buy some early, I’d jinx the whole campaign!) while I gleefully jump on the couch and scream and kiss my sleeping kids and call my friends and family. Because that win would be so huge, so tear-worthy, so much bigger than even the Red Sox winning the World Series (the first time). I know I would feel so much relief and optimism. I picture the celebrating in Washington - shoot, I’d want to have a party myself (c’mon repub friends, join the fun!), I’d want to dance in the streets, I’d jubilantly bust out “The Cabbage Patch” AND “The Running Man” in a fog of champagne and joy in front of anyone who’d want to see. And you can hold me to that too.

I can also imagine McCain winning. I have to, there’s nothing to say that possibility couldn’t happen. NOTHING surprises me after our last election. I can picture my husband and I sitting on the couch, quiet. I would probably be gulping that wine then too - and, yeah, that moment would be tear-worthy also. While impossible to imagine, it would actually feel so much worse than the end of the Superbowl when the Patriots managed to “poop the bed” and experience the biggest upset in NFL history. But as I did then, I would turn the TV off right before the end to avoid the celebratory speeches from the McCain camp; I’m not sure I could even bring myself to watch Obama’s concession speech either. That night, I’d probably have nightmares and fall into a stressful “when is it ever gonna end” slump for a bit. It would suck. Royally.

When the fantizing is over, I do actually think very hard and very realistically about what our next president is up against. Right now, along with many other fellow citizens (c’mon admit it), it is very easy to blame all horrible things on Bush. Granted, his antics, horrid judgement calls and general stupidity make him target rich material. So, the logic follows in my mind that everything is his fault. The value of my house went down $50,000 – it’s all because of Bush. My favorite bread rolls went up a whole dollar, Bush strikes again. I stubbed my toe on my bedframe, that asshole Bush, that never would’ve happened if he wasn’t president.

And as much as I blame Bush for all things evil, I often ask myself if everything is then fixable just because we elect Obama? I worry a great deal about all the eggs we have in his basket. While I know he is the best choice for president, let’s not forget that the actual act of electing him will NOT solve the gas, the floods, or the real estate issues come January 20, 2009. Yes, yes, having him president will bring us a great deal of hope for change. But, those are just dreamy, inspiring words. We need to prepare ourselves for all of the work ahead and keep ourselves in check here. We are so so many miles up shit’s creek, and Obama is a paddle that will have to bust it’s ass, like no paddle ever has, to steer us clear of the mess we are in. Let’s stop, think and truly consider what an enormous burden he will be taking on.

For many years, the world according to the Bush Administration has been an oversimplified, black and white, “you are either with us or against us” cowboy story. There is no complexity, there is no grey area. Uh huh. Well, just because you say there is no grey area, Dubya, does not make it so. It has been sitting there toiling and unheeded for far too long. Obama is staring this breathing, living, disenfranchised ”grey area” right in the face, and probably muttering – however eloquently – some version of “What. A. Clusterf*ck.”

(Can I digress here quickly? This mess? This grey area? I find myself picturing a Star Trek episode called “The Devil in the Dark”. You know the one where the moving rock is eating everything up, people included, and Spock mind melds with it to find out that people have been killing the rock’s eggs? Yeah, that’s what this mess – this angry mass of grey area - really is. …And please tell me you know what I am talking about and I am not just coming across as some Trekkie geek, ok?)

So what exactly does this complex grey area comprise of? Well, here’s only a small slice of it; you should all recognize it well enough. 

• Obama has to get our troops home before any more are killed – but he must resolve the mess we’ve made while bringing stability to Iraq. And he can’t forget about Afghanistan – you know, where Al Queda originated from, poppies grow throughout and Taliban are thriving currently? Yup, the same place where, ironically, there are hardly any troops, support or resources available? Um, it’s kind of an important country too.
• He has to focus on the environment, global warming and alternative fuel resources – but also smooth talk those oil companies into bringing gas prices down to something reasonable so we can actually afford to get our butts to work in the meantime.
• He has to sort out the gridlocked rat’s nest that is our economy. Oy vey.
• He has fix healthcare – and that’s like saying he has to fix that huge crack down the middle of the grand canyon.
• He has to carefully and sensitively repair the remains of international diplomatic ties around the globe while assuring them of economic security and domestic investment promise. The dollar needs to be worth the paper its printed on again, and he has to convince the angry mobs outside our borders that it is.
• Oh yeah, and borders, what are we going to do about those? We need migrant workers, they are part of what makes our economy work, right? According to farmers in California they are. But wait, do they get the same rights as American citizens if they’ve entered our country illegally?

Oh, its a grey grey world and Obama has to find some sense of color and reason again within it.

I was in Washington D.C. when President Clinton was elected for the first time. That city was practically fanning itself from the exhilaration of hope, optimism and saxophone playing it had riled itself into. It sort of scared me. Would he live up to these expectations? Could he get all that work done from up top of such a high pedestal?

I worry Obama’s inauguration would mirror Clinton’s - but 100 times over, feverish with expectations and jubilation, frenzy and froth. Election night will not, in of itself, get this figured out. Let’s welcome him into office and then think carefully about what we, as a whole nation, can do to work these complex issues out. He is only a man – with extraordinary potential, YES – but he is only a man, becoming president for the first time, bringing a green yet talented team together. It’s going to take a little time and heaps of work on all of our parts to make the change we hope to see. Grey area, folks, don’t forget.

And if McCain wins, we all better take some deep breaths. Yup, this election is as partisan as it gets. But democrats everywhere can not take their ball and go home to pout if we don’t win. We will need to buck up and work harder than ever before. We have a supreme court on the brink. We have an environment that can not go ignored any longer. We have oil companies ruling our lives. We have a religious right butting their noses into government. We have citizens not being treated equally. We have rich folks staying rich but poor people getting very poor. We have to do everything we can to come together and fix this. It may even take some version of bi-partisanship to do anything and everything to push, ease, cajole, and even beg McCain in the right direction. But, if he is elected, we won’t have much of a choice, will we?

Granted, this sort’ve reality check is honestly no fun during a time that is “cheek to jowl” (as my mother would say) with sobering reality checks. I would much rather just let my mind wander back to that uncoordinated display of joy in my living room on November 4, 2008. Couch jumping, “The Cabbage Patch”, and I think my husband even knows how to do “The Worm”.

So, positive thinking folks. Drag your friends and neighbors out to vote and shine up your boogie shoes, we can win this thing. Those dances of jubilation ARE a reality. And, with work from all of us, so is cleaning up this mess. It has to be.

OK folks, I think I have the answer. I think I can solve all our expensive gas woes. I honestly have NO idea why anyone hasn’t thought of this before. And I should know, being entirely uneducated in car design, or the business of running and fueling one. But hear me out. I am telling you, THIS is the answer we have been looking for.

The first step is a bit tricky. My plan requires that we run our cars on straight vegetable oil. Yeah, I know. Not exactly the quick fix you were hoping for. This step requires that we either buy cars with diesel engines (um, ok, those are super easy to find) and convert them, or buy cars already primed for biodiesel that would run entirely on vegetable oil (again, just as easy to find – but that could change with enough demand).

Now, here’s the step I am most excited about. Where do we get the bio-diesel easily? Obviously this is an infrastructure issue. We have gas stations on every corner. But we don’t have vegetable oil stations on every corner. But you know what we DO have on every corner? McDonalds! They are probably MORE common than gas stations! And can you even IMAGINE the kind of vegetable oil they go through and toss out? All we need to do is get Mickey D’s in on the plan. They just need to work it out with the bio-diesel experts and design some sort of fancy schmancy fuel pump that will process, clean and recycle their oil so that it is ready made for any bio-diesel car that runs on pure vegetable oil coming through the drive through. Do you have the visual yet? “I’ll have a big mac, a small fry and fill ‘er up.” All for $10! Brilliant, no? So, your car will smell like McDonalds. That’s a heck of a lot better than your car smelling like the regular unleaded it does now.

Ok, so I am suuuuure there are a thousand holes that someone can poke in this plan. Plus, there needs to be a huge, guaranteed demand for a new fuel system - as outside the box as this one - to actually succeed. Mega corporations across the board need to work together to make something like this move forward. Consumers need to be mentally ready: they need to trust that this will work, they have to be on board with a massive overhaul, and they need to truly understand that the gas we know and hate right now is NOT the best fuel for our cars.

And it would certainly not surprise me if the oil companies did everything in their power to undermine a massive change such as this one. You and I both know that they sit smugly in their secret lairs, with their Mr. Bigglesworth kitties on their laps, cackling evil cackles and pushing buttons to up the price of gas everywhere. After being so used to running the universe, I am SURE they’d be a bit miffed if they lost business.

But here’s my bottom line really. This idea may be impossible on many levels (I’m not sure which levels but what clue do I have) and I get that. But if we don’t start thinking up crazy ideas like this soon… if we don’t start taking our fuel crisis seriously and stop assuming “oh it will get better, gas will get cheaper, we’ll be fine”… we will never find a dependable, renewable source of energy to run our cars. Folks, being concerned about fossil fuel consumption is not for hippies and earthy crunchy types ANY longer. (Check out today’s article on MSNBC to prove my point.) THINK, people. We need to come up with something – FAST.

Until we get an alternative source of fuel and we can escape the choke hold of our current gas guzzling, money eating, gross emissions spewing, rattletraps we all own and curse, I will fantasize that one day, the car I drive, smells exactly like one ginormous french fry. Please pass the ketchup – let’s go get a clue.

Its no shocker and hardly news to report that having children changes you. The topic of life after children could be tackled from a thousand different angles – the changes we experience emotionally, or physically, the extreme limits we are pushed to and the kind of immeasureable joy they bring us. That stuff alters us – permanently. But I need to talk about another type of change I am expereincing since becoming a mother and it has left me at quite a loss. Staying home with my children over the past five years has morphed me from a fairly confident capable working woman into a quivering girly-mom completely clueless as to how I would ever make it in the big, bad, working world again. Yeah, not good at all. This is a 35 year old identity crisis of epic proportions.

I’ve mentioned it before. I am a proud graduate of a very cool women’s institution called Mount Holyoke College. It is undeniably unique – it loads up college aged women with confidence, strength, smarts, and ability and then pushes them out into the world scrappy, ready and willing to take anything on. That was me in 1997. For the following 8 years, I worked in undergraduate college admissions.  And I was pretty good at what I did. I think.

But then I had T. I pushed my suits to the back of my closet and adopted breast feeding t-shirts and draw string pants. I think my backbone got tucked at the back of that closet too.

So my job title became: Mother. My office was my home. No co-workers chatting about their weekends (Weekend? Monday, Saturday, whatever… it’s really just groundhog day again). No boss telling me they are lucky to have me. A three month old baby awake all night was hardly a positive indicator that I was succeeding at my job. Now 5 years later, my boys and I are in a routine, I am the captain of this ship and I think I have it under control.

By the way, please note: this is not a bitch-fest post about being a stay at home mother either. I love being with my kids. I feel like I pulled some sort of golden ticket that has baaaarely allowed us to finagle a way so that I can stay home with my boys. Thousands of women would give anything to do the same. This is not about that. This about LEAVING that.

So back to my point. As T. starts kindergarten in the fall, the economy goes further into the crapper, and the shoe-string budget that we depend on has unraveled to more of a thread, I can’t help but start to plan on going back to work at some point soon.

Ugh though. I mean, do I HONESTLY think I have a clue as to how to function in the work force again? I feel completely out of touch with that sort of environment. Sure, I am the master at putting my child in the “cobra clutch” while changing a poopie diaper. I can smoothly talk through a time out and have the boys back to playing nicely in 5 minutes flat. I know what gets crayons off the walls (magic eraser), pencil off my frig (magic eraser) and marker off my table (magic eraser). I think I am doing ok as a mom.

But a job? That I commute to? With ONLY grown ups and in grown up clothes? Smart people who expect you to think fast and use a big girl, I mean, ADULT vocabulary? They would expect me to be witty, up to date and relevant when I might still have a sippy cup of rotting milk in my purse? They would expect me NOT to have brains for mush… I mean, mush for brains? For real, my friends, I am in big poopies. (Oh, that’s right. Grown-up words…) I mean I am in big bowel movements.

It has been a looooong time since I have felt like a confident, smart, able contributor to a working environment. 5 years! And hardly a whipper snapper any longer, I am on the verge of 35! My resume is sound asleep at the back of my computer in some dusty old file last used in 2004. I don’t know what I am doing. Ooooh and just you watch. I know office politics would take fast advantage of naive little me, they would chew me up and spit me out only to be cackled about over the water cooler. “Did you see that Caroline woman? What is SHE about? She doesn’t even own a blackberry! Yeah, she used a pen and paper to take notes at the meeting. Ew. And if she thinks she’s better than me because she’s ten years older than me, she can go back to mommy-land. Did you see what she was wearing? I SWEAR there were shoulder pads in that dress. Is that a purse or a diaper bag, by the way”. I am in way waaaaay big trouble.

And you know what’s even worse than not knowing how to work in the real world? I don’t even know WHAT it is that I want to do in the real world. A position in undergraduate college admissions is usually three jobs rolled into one: traveling saleswoman, around the clock resume reader and events planner. This sort of job doesn’t fly for any mom needing to work regular-ish hours so that she can pick up her kids from school or daycare. Plus they like fresh faced, smart looking, recent college grad types to represent an undergraduate college. Go get me my Geritol, I don’t fit that category any longer.

And what, pray tell me, is parent-friendly out there these days and actually pays well. WHAT? Because if I start over with a new career, does that mean I begin at the bottom? Will my starting salary match what I made in 1997 (which, at 23 years old, seemed like a million dollars at the time – snort - when gas was 99c a gallon). And during my first week of shuffling papers in my office cubicle, will some condescendingly brilliant corporate type tell me I have to work late because he is meeting his buddies to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday? I’ll take a Diaper Genie full of poopie diapers ANY day over that sort of back to work crap. 

But, really, what has motherhood reduced me to? Where is that cool, confident Mount Holyoke grad? She seems far far gone. Parenting has morphed me into something quite different. My confidence seems at an all time low. I adore being a mother but - I admit it  – I am afraid of the working world. On top of my daily mommy tasks, how could I possibly handle deadlines and pressure and asking myself “is it good for the company”? You might as well move me to Bali because the working world seems just about as foreign a concept to me.

Actually, do you know what it is? Do you know what I am really truly afraid of?

How will I even care?

How will I not pine away my work day, counting down the hours, wishing I was with my kids again? How will I bring the same sort of work ethic I prided myself in – before I was a mother - to my current job when I know this silly work stuff means nothing – NOTHING – compared to playing Candyland with my child and watching him grow right before my eyes. Deadlines can bite it, get me home to my children.

So thats it. I just don’t think I will care. I just don’t think I can live with doing anything half-assed. I don’t want to try to look the part for some corporate gig when I am really a MOTHER, proudly toting her big, practical diaper bag, just doing what she loves best.

But there may not be a choice here. I need to buck up and figure out how to be both. Women do this alllll the time. They jump back in there, apply the multi-tasking skills they have since adopted as moms, get it done and get back home. Working moms probably DON’T care about “whats good for the company” as much as they care about whats good for their kids. As they should. Balance happens – somehow. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not easily. But it does because it has to.

So where does this leave me? My always sought after “bottom-line” is needed right about now. Well. I think this simply boils down to a petulant identity crisis. I think I should hush up and give myself more credit. I think I will be good at whatever I do and still have the skillz to dodge office politics like a trained Olympiad. I think when it is time to start back to work, it’s simply a matter of jumping in and doing it. Wish me luck. Tell me I’m right and that I can do it. Tell me how you did it. Tell me you know the lyrics to “Let the River Run” from the movie Working Girl because that song is absolutely stuck in my head right now. ….”Come! The new Jerusalem!!!”

It was a beautiful day today, so I went for a walk with my sons. And I brought my camera. These are some examples of what is happening in my neighborhood, to beautiful perfectly good homes. Many of these homes are also standing absolutely empty.

Friends who work for home builders and realtor companies are on the cusp of losing their jobs, large sections of land being built on stands vacant, gas prices are soaring, food prices are soaring, health insurance costs are soaring. Are we in a recession? Nahhhhhhh….

Bush’s view of the economy was decidedly rosier than that of many economists, who say the country is nearing recession territory or may already be there. “I’m concerned about the economy,” he said. “I don’t think we’re headed to recession.”