Lollipops & Laptops

The Sticky Life of a Working Mom

Month: July 2017

Motherhood of the Traveling Book

Motherhood of the Traveling Book - Lollipops & Laptops

It was 10:45 pm on a Thursday night. My husband was out of the country on business since Sunday. There were two days left in the fiscal year at work and I was slammed. The baby was teething. The toddler was being a contrarian about everything. I was exhausted. And I was lonely. Not just I-need-a-hug-from-my-husband-or-a-friend lonely. Lonely in a deep, deep place. I felt lost. Overwhelmed. Like no one understood me. No one knew what it was like to be me. In that moment. Drowning in a sea of responsibility and expectations.

I looked over at my nightstand to check the monitor to see if I finally won the battle of getting the toddler to bed and a book caught my eye. It was a novelty item I was gifted. A parody of a children’s classic. I had flipped through it once and set it down, not knowing whether it was something that should be placed on the bookshelf, re-gifted, or frankly, tossed in the trash. And an idea struck me.

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How I Changed Careers at 30

How I Changed Careers at 30 - Lollipops & Laptops

You know what feels like a crazy idea? Moving into a non-legal career after spending five years as a lawyer and almost $200,000 on law school. But I did just that. It was scary, exciting, and filled with the thing I hate the most–the unknown–but I came out the other side with a job I love and a new career track that felt right for me. 30 might seem young to some, but after seven years in higher education, it felt like a huge step backward in my career. In hindsight, it was more of a side step, but it was the best move I could have made. Below is a rundown of the dirty details of my career change.

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Podcasts on Regular Rotation

Podcasts on Rotation - Lollipops & Laptops

I’m totally late to the podcast game. My husband has spent years mentioning different podcasts he was listening to, and I just didn’t have an interest. But one day, while driving to work, I was listening to some morning radio and realized what complete trash it was–both the talk and the music. Although I’m sure I could have found a better station, I decided that I’d look for some podcasts instead. I picked up a few based on some quick internet searches at work, and I’ve added to my queue mostly through recommendations.

I listen to podcasts on my way into work (less so on the way home since I have the kids in the car), at the gym, while doing dishes, folding laundry. It’s a great way to immerse yourself in interesting and relevant topics when you can’t necessarily sit down and read a book or article. I listen to mine on the pre-loaded podcast app on my iPhone, but my husband prefers Overcast.

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Indoor Plants for the Black Thumb

Indoor Plants for the Black Thumb - Lollipops & Laptops

Graphic via Love the Garden

When I say I’m not a green thumb, I can’t stress it enough. I kill plants faster than they die naturally. How long is a bouquet of flowers supposed to last? More than two days? Could have fooled me. I’m not really into plants, except for the whole life-giving-oxygen-provision thing. So I have happily gone about my life without them inside my house. I tried to get some fake stuff, and to be fair, I’ve recently happened upon a few decent-looking items here and here. But I started to look around our house and feel like it was looking a little, well, dead.

My colleague recently gave me a little potted bamboo plant, and after a few weeks of successfully keeping it alive in my office, I decided it would be a nice addition to the abnormally large counter space behind my sink in the kitchen. I’m happy to report that the thing is still living five months later! My new confidence of keeping living things alive (toddler and baby included) led me to do some research on plants that aren’t high maintenance.

I’m all about practicality, so I decided if I’m going to put effort into keeping anything alive in my house besides my kids, I might as well make them useful. So I focused my research on plants with air cleaning or other good qualities. Thankfully, NASA already did the work for me. Check out my list below for some mean, green, hard-to-kill, poor-air-quality-fighting machines.

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It’s Not You, It’s Me: Prenups in a Modern World

Prenups in a Modern World - Lollipops & Laptops

The prenup. That dirty little word. In all honesty, before I went to law school, I had the same reaction. “Why are people getting married if they’re preparing for divorce?” But if you think about it from a different perspective, it starts to make more sense. You don’t buy homeowner, car, or life insurance planning to need it. It’s there in case the unexpected happens. Just like estate planning, you hope you won’t need to utilize the documents (at least in the short term when it comes to estate planning). But being prepared can save the headache–and a hell of a lot of money–down the road. Unlike an estate plan, which everyone needs in some form, not everyone needs a prenup. So how do you know if it is right for you? Here are a few considerations.

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Summer Cocktails for the Lazy Hostess

Have we established yet that laziness is my mantra. Okay, let’s go with a nice euphemism: efficiency. I’m not a big drinker, and if my day/week/month has been one where I need to knock a few back, it needs to be as simple as popping off a bottle cap or a quick twist of a corkscrew. But I have had house guests that prefer a little something stronger when the clock strikes six thirty, so I’ve made a point of trying to stock a bare-bones bar. I don’t want to stock hundreds of dollars of liquor, mixers, and garnishes if they’re not going to be used. The key is to stick to a few classics that are likely to satisfy the broadest number of potential imbibers. Check out my summer cocktail bar–a minimalist bar utilizing a few key liquors and a host of things that should already be in your kitchen.

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9 Reasons Why Managing Employees is the Same as Parenting Toddlers

9 Reasons Managing Employees is the Same as Parenting Toddlers - Lollipops & Laptops

A recent promotion at work has me managing a few new employees, and I realize I’m uniquely qualified for this big task because I parent a toddler. These scenarios are interchangeable for me whether I’m in the office or at home.

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Monthly Challenge Review: Book Blast

Monthly Challenge Recap: Book Blast - Lollipops & Laptops

This was a very bad idea. Setting a time-consuming goal two weeks into adding blog writing on top of a full time job while parenting a toddler and baby was a bad idea. I’m not really sure what I was thinking here, other than I really wanted to catch up on the 50+ books that continued to stack up inside and on top of my nightstand. I challenged myself for the month of June to read one book per week for a total of four books.

I don’t read particularly fast, despite my parents’ investment in a speed-reading course in high school, and I know very well how little time I have outside of work, parenting, and now, blogging. And yet, I delved into my first book with high hopes. On June 13, I was 60 pages into 234 of book one. Out of four. Did I cut myself some slack and cut my goal down? Hell no. Within 2 days, I finished book one and was on to book two.

And by June 30, you bet your ass I finished All. Four. Books. Aside from learning that I can function on very little sleep even when it’s not baby related, I actually did manage to enjoy most of my reading. I tried to hit different genres for each book to push myself out of my comfort zone.

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Mentor Mistakes and How I Fixed Them

Mentor Mistakes Fixed - Lollipops & Laptops

Like most students, I was pretty wise to the concept of getting a mentor from early on. I read a lot about how to find a mentor. I was good at pursuing the relationships. And yet, I let a few potentially incredible mentors slip through the cracks because I didn’t properly cultivate the relationship. Luckily, I’ve adjusted my approach and been able to find some fantastic mentors despite my initial mistakes. Keep reading for some of my worst mentor-seeking offenses and how I’ve succeeded at finding a few great mentors since.

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