Working Mom: Volume 2, Issue 1: Office Pot-Lucks

It's nearing 11 pm, and I've been up since before dawn. It's been a long, albeit productive, day and I'm ready for it to end. Too bad that won't happen until tomorrow.

A couple of weeks back, the office secretary went around asking everyone *what* they were bringing to the chili cookoff planned for tomorrow. I usually bow out of such things. I have enough on my plate in my cube and at home to bother piling on beans to it all. But, we have a new big boss man, and it was his idea, and the secretary was rather insistent (although I can understand her frustration with a two-week old empty sign-up sheet hanging on the breakroom refrigerator), so I really didn't see much of a way out without finding myself in the middle of office politics, which I so studiously avoid at nearly all costs, except, apparantly, for late nights at the stove.

I could have just brought store-bought cole slaw. But, like a fool, a non-conformist ochlocrastic (thanks, Pops!) fool, I had to buck the system of all those Texans and North Dakotans who think they know chili (Green chili. What the hey? Who ever heard of green chili?) and said I'd bring Cincinnati chili. My dad introduced me to the concoction when we'd head down to watch the Big Red Machine play. It's glorious stuff.
You know, REAL chili. Or, rather, as I found out while trying to find a recipe, real Greek-immigrant stew. But it's called chili, damnit, and Cincinnati chugs out more quarts of chili than any other town in the world, so I'm justified. So Google tells me.

Thus, after a full day of work figuring out the minutia that makes dynamic text in Production Line Tool Set work, coming home and grabbing all three girls to head out for five hours of errands involving Halloween candy, costume paraphenalia and two-month-late birthday party planning, then dropping off birthday party invitations to a house I haven't visited in a year and another house I've never visited and lost the address to, an hour of wind-down and bedtime ritual stuff, I now am faced with making about two quarts of chili I've never made before.

We have our own family recipe we call Dam Chili (due to the proximity of a dam nearby). It's like Cincinnati chili, except we don't stew it for hours. Rather, we just spice up some browned ground beef and kidney beans and throw it all on some spaghetti with a pile of cheese and call it good. But, the real deal seemed more, I don't know, professional. Like a chili cookoff at lunchtime can really be called professional. Obviously, I'm a little confused on what "professional" means. I think I should just own up to it and admit it simply seemed more interesting and flamboyant and therefore worth doing, as well as better meets some definition of "chili".

Anyways, this whole exercise is yet another example of Working Mom vs. World. How many of us working moms avoid office pot-luck parties because we don't want to put in the work to theoretically make something folks will rave about, and/or don't want to admit to ourselves or others for having brought the Doritos. What? I'm the only one? I'm caught between unrealistic dreams of Martha Stewart grandeur and just wanting a few hours of sleep.

Is there a happy medium somewhere? This elusive "work-life balance" so oft mentioned? Where work is energizing as well as financially rewarding enough to enjoy the time with your family instead of trying to make ends and chores meet? Maybe, just maybe, there really IS no such thing as work-life balance. No Ying of employment to Yang of enjoyment. Maybe it's just some utopian ideal we're all taught to buy into, like model-perfect bodies and quinoa. Both are supposed to be good for us, but end up being impossible to acheive and just leaves a bitter taste in our mouths. Perhaps we, ok, maybe it's just I, should just let go of the guilt of not being perfect and just bring the bag of chips.

People like chips.

I don't, though.

At least, not without salsa. Which would lead me to making my own salsa (jarred stuff: ICK!), and I couldn't just pair my fabulous tomato-celantro concoction with any old chips, I'd probably have to make my own tortillas and fry 'em up so they'll still be warm.

And thus the cycle begins again.