well, i made it through a week at work. it was good to be back! we had our national sales conference this week, so it definitely wasn't a regular week. most of the week was spent at a hotel downtown, hearing big picture product updates, sales strategy, bonding with co-workers etc. it was a really good week to come back, from a mindset and strategy point of view. it was a really shitty week to come back, from a "mommy-needs-to-get-in-a-routine" point of view.

highlight: seeing demonstrations of upcoming products. i work at an amazing company! it was inspiring to not only see what the engineers are working on, but to see how excited they are about their mission of "organizing all of the world's information". and our ceo is always a great down-to-earth yet inspirational speaker. i love working for him (vs the dork that i worked for at domino's).

low-light: having to find a way to pump breastmilk during my team's offsite at a bar. the bar put me in a weird little corner near the kitchen where they store condiments. despite putting up a pseudo-curtain, every busboy in the restaurant somehow needed a bottle of ketchup during those 10 minutes! argh.

i have a lot of friends who have attempted the "working mommy" thing, and while most are still doing it, it bears mentioning that even for such an amazing group of women it's been difficult. i've been really grateful for their honesty about the challenges we all face. here are some of their situations, in my own words:

- m. returned to an uncertain situation with her position at work, and her baby screams whenever she leaves the daycare. she's wondering if it's worth it.

- c. feels that she's been passed over for the meatiest, most interesting projects at work as she's decreased her hours to part-time. it's been tough to reconcile her abilities with the lack of new challenges that she's getting at her office.

- h. had a great job that she loved. it was *PERFECT* for her. she wanted to go down to part-time once she became a mom but wasn't allowed to, so she left the position. ironically, it eventually lost funding and became a part-time position after she'd left the job.

- b. has been a stay-at-home mom since her kids were born, but now that they're older decided to open an at-home business. while her work-from-home husband was mostly supportive, they had a lot of discussion around how he'd help with the kids while she worked. somehow it was easy to understand that she'd watch the kids while he worked at home, but less obvious how she'd get kid-free time to pursue her career out of their home.

- c. was filling in for a higher level position (her next obvious step up the career ladder in her job) while it was open. she was then told she wasn't in consideration for the position on a permanent basis. she's adjusting her mindset from career-climbing to achieving work/life balance in her current position.

supposedly the company i work for is great for moms. however, i'm on the moms email list, and from what i can tell i think that's pretty true in some positions that allow things like job sharing, such on engineering, and perhaps for sales, where you can be assigned fewer accounts to call on. i'm not sure how it will work for me, since our team supports the sales team's needs and therefore it sometimes seems like "more hours = better employee". i guess we'll see how it goes. i'm heartened by the fact that i'll have lots of mommy friends going through it to discuss it with, and that most of co-managers on my team are parents too (one is a father of a 1 year old, one has a 12 year old boy, and the last co-manager has two kids under 1 year old). i'll keep you all posted.

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on a lighter note, here are some things i enjoyed this week:

- great marketing ploy! lombard street was turned into a giant version of a candyland board

- an 11 year old gets the opportunity to interview president obama. here's an interview with the 11 year old.

- most of my friends know that i LOVE star wars. i found this blog about poor design in star wars hilarious.

- i always find misplaced online ads hilarious. here's another compilation of them.