Me in DC Tonight, Edith Stein online
And your own commitments for the fall
Wanted to give everyone a quick heads up that I’ll be speaking in DC TONIGHT, SEPT 17, as part of a panel on the Future of Work. (Full details here).
I’ll be talking about balancing work and family, and, thanks to my hosts, will be living my philosophy by having a 3mo baby on my knee. Given the location of the event, I will be this woman:
I also wanted to mention a a fall reading group run by the Hildebrand Project. Over four nights in Oct-Nov, they’ll be offering a reading group on Edith Stein’s Essays on Women. I’d been planning to put it on my 2025 reading list, but I can’t resist the chance to read it in community.
Space is limited, and I’d love to see a few Other Feminisms faces there. The Hildebrand project is also offering a three week October reading group on Alice von Hildebrand’s The Privilege of Being a Woman, if that’s of interest to you.
And, with the fall in full swing (I follow the school calendar, not the seasonal calendar), I’m back to work, I’m nearing the end of post-partum PT, and I put 100 miles on my e-cargo bike in 10 days.
It also means we’ve definitively moved from the season of receiving meals to the season of once again making meals for families with new babies in our neighborhood. (One of my casserole dishes has made it home, one is still sojourning, one needs to go out on Friday.)
I’m very grateful for our neighborhood listserv for Catholic women which commits to 10 meals for each new mom. I don’t cook for every meal train, but it means I’m alerted to each new baby, and it’s led me to cook for strangers.
As the seasons change for you:
Baby bouncers, swings, swaddles, swaddle transition pieces, bassinets, etc... they all take up a ton of space and they're SO important for... about three months. So of course these get lent and given and "please please get this out of my basement"-ed. Some friends and I have been talking about organizing a lending library. We don't have a warehouse to store it all, but we're thinking of doing a spreadsheet with columns for... the item, who it actually belongs to, who has it right now, how long it's good for (e.g. newborn to 4m?), and when that person's baby is due/born. Then if you're like "my baby is due in early December and I'm cold but I don't want to spend $$$ on a maternity coat and wear it for a week" you can look at the spreadsheet and find out that, say, Marcella currently has Jenny's maternity coat and Marcella had her baby six months ago, so I guess she probably doesn't neet it anymore and I can text her and ask.
We haven't actually executed this, so if anyone has done something like this, I am very open to ideas!
Good luck tonight!
We're transitioning to a new season here too.
My husband has a new job (a good thing!) but after four years of remote work, thinking he wouldn't have to go back to a commute, the new job is fully and only in-person. We are committed to being a one car family. (Everything is choices and trade-offs, this is the one we chose.) School has started for our eldest (a Catholic classical school we love). There's much to be thankful for AND I feel like a taxi driver. Some days the baby and I are only home in one hour blocks. Luckily, he's super chill.
My best friend (two blocks away with five kids) and my mom (on my street) have both been so generous to have regular 40ish minute playdates for my eldest so she can skip the extra car trip most nights to go pick up Daddy. I am thankful for this new support!