Where’s the magic?

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Wow. Haven’t written here in a long time. Single Working Women’s Week is upon us again. Have you been treasuring your single women friends? Now’s your chance – Single Working Women’s Week 2023 is in progress! It started Sunday, July 30 and goes through August 5.

Here’s a post I started during last year’s Single Working Women’s Week and, like the memoir/cookbook itself, it feels a bit lost.

“Do you ever find yourself wrestling with some important question in your life – and watch yourself flail around, unable to find the right solution? I have been trying to write my memoir/cookbook for nearly 13 years (stop, start, stop). Have created lots of material, but have not been able to decide how to present it all. I don’t want categories like “Meat” “Vegetables” etc. because that doesn’t honor the memoir/stories. My original working title was “17 Ways to Eat Your Way to Happiness,” so I thought I’d succeeded at last when I decided to divide the material by feelings. Admiration. Aesthetic appreciation. Fear, Satisfaction, etc.

“But one of my beta readers told me in no uncertain terms to get rid of those. So as I was designing the cover I had to fight my brain over the words I would use to describe my book(s) unifying theme. As of today, I’m trying out a time-centered approach, dividing the books by early, middle and why-the-hell-did-the-term-“golden”-ever-get-applied-to-these years.”

But that way of chunking the material doesn’t feel right either. Writing life stories is cathartic. It’s freeing. It’s often of interest to those who know us well. I know there’s some magic in here waiting to be observed and honored. My heart and arms are open. Come on, magic!

Have a wonderful SWWWeek. Be kind to all your single women friends. And to yourself.

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RANT for Single Working Women’s Week, July 31 – August 6, 2022

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Yes, it’s almost time to celebrate the single working women in your life, including you if you’re one. But wait a second.

I need to vent for a minute.

Are you celebrating much these days? Consider this stuff:

Given the above, I want to spend as much time as I can with the people I love. If you saw the movie “Don’t Look Up!” you’ll remember that was the ending. It’s not a great movie, but the conclusion that all we can do is love one another, is a good one. Since we are all going to die one day, sooner or later – even if we manage to reverse course on climate change – we all face the devastating loss of loved ones dying. So having faith in each other and celebrating our loving relationships now seems like the best thing we can do for ourselves and for each other.

Thank heaven we’re still here, single working women and all! So let’s go ahead and celebrate all the relationships we share – with our neighbors, our friends, our SOs, kids and other relatives if we have them. Plan to have fun together as often as you can – in ways that contribute as little as possible to the existing problems. “Be the change you want to see.” ~Ghandi

Thank you for letting me get that out of my system. Thank goodness Congress is today close to enacting a meaningful piece of legislation that addresses many of these pressing issues and is paid for by a significant tightening of tax loopholes for mega-corporations. It’s a small step forward in the long and hard-fought battle that is costing us all too much.

July 31 to August 6, 2022. Happy Single Working Women’s Week!

 

Single, smart , analytically minded women get the short stick – from everyone

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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Can you believe it? Bloomberg News reports that single women who are analytical and smart are penalized in their careers – fewer promotions, etc. – more than any other type of worker, including single men and married women!

If you’re sharp-minded and not known for your people skills – as are so many men – you will be punished. And check out the paragraph about vacationing with friends versus with husband and kids! Just unbelievable. And, as they say, depressing.


Amazing – though maybe not – that smart single women are still such a threat to so many, male and female, in our society. The way some of the laws around reproductive rights and voting are changing makes me think the next thing you know, smart single women will start getting thrown into bodies of water to prove they’re actually witches.

Here’s the link. Read it and weep. 

Pandemic or not – It’s Single Working Women’s Week 2021!

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It’s that time again to reflect on what an amazing single woman you are. You not only earn the bacon yourself, you also bring home the bacon, cook it, clean it up, and take out the trash. You keep the house clean (in whatever way makes you comfortable), keep the pantry and fridge stocked, and pay the bills. You comfort yourself when you get hurt. You find joy in the small things as well as the big ones.

And if you’re lucky, you have a few other amazing single friends to share your joys, trials and tribulations with. Friends are precious – golden. Chicago has been a gold mine of friendship for me. Happily, we’ve been able to maintain our bond via virtual gatherings/happy hours while we’ve remained sequestered during this pandemic.

If you’re also a single mom, extra-extra kudos to you. There are no words to describe the joy – and agony – of meeting the challenges of single parenthood.

Congratulations on your successful single life, ladies. Hope you are vaccinated and surviving the pandemic with grace and good humor. Even if you haven’t achieved all – or even any of – those lofty goals you hoped you would during lockdown, you’re still afloat. Be proud!

When life narrows down to a small window…

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Our silver necklace to celebrate Single Working Women’s Week

Found out a few days ago I’m in for another open-heart surgery. My trusty 13-year-old cow valve has calcified so much it’s almost closed. No wonder I haven’t been able to walk down the street without gasping for breath!

Makes you think. When you’re told you’re heading for a life-saving/life-threatening operation, you have to start weighing priorities. So many tasks and dreams to postpone…

Thank heavens for my loving family members who are clearing their schedules to be with me – even though the hospital rules aren’t allowing anyone to come back into the prep room! Glad they’re being proactive about the virus, but it sure sucks not to have my loved ones back there with me. But positive thoughts anyway!

Hoping to get at least a small version of my memoir/cookbook – working title 27 Ways to Eat Your Way to Happiness: Recipes and Kitchen Stories from a Single Working Woman – done before the date. Thank God it’s spring. Now hoping the building will turn on the central A/C early with this 80-degree weather in early May!

3 secrets to living alone in a pandemic

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Tumult and trauma around the world these days with COVID-19 raging. For many single women and men who don’t have to be out there in frontline jobs (thank you, folks who are), we’re talking alone at home for what we thought would be weeks and now turns out will be months on end. Thank heaven for our technology-assisted telephone and virtual electronic socializing.

How are you coping? Here are a few of my secrets for living alone successfully in a pandemic:

1. Worried about weight gain? Try eating regular doses of bread and pasta. What? Yes, you could’ve knocked me over with a box of spaghetti when I noticed the scale inching down despite not being able to hit the gym. Never expected that.

Normally I try hard not to eat processed carbs, and yet now, doing so seems like an answer to a prayer. Just as I was writing this I relished an afternoon snack of a little chunk of crispy 9-grain garlic bread with creamy melted extra sharp cheddar and some grape tomatoes. Tonight I’m having a big bowl of cavatappi (curly, ridged macaroni-shaped pasta – frankly, I like long noodles better) with jarred marinara sauce (Rao’s works well), speckled with spicy Italian sausage bits, caramelized onions and peppers, and sauteed mushrooms. and frosted with a heap of finely grated imported Parmiggiano-Reggiano. It’s all about balancing your calories and macros (carbs, protein, fat) and tracking your exercise.

2. Position your phone/tablet/laptop or whatever up high enough (a shelf in an open kitchen cabinet works) that you can read free ebooks (Bookbub.com) without bending your neck while you step or march to rockin’ tunes on Pandora. Painless and free way to get your steps in.

3. Play online games with your friends/family. Love that games bring people together without the need to discuss, dissect, dissent, diss or otherwise discombobulate relationships in these fractured times. A friend of mine plays almost every day of the week with her singing group pals multiple rounds of Trivial Pursuit – a game that shows just how pathetically unobservant I am. But a few of us in my family play skribbl.io together each week. One person starts the game, then makes a group call to the rest of us. That’s so we can hear each other laugh at our wonderful drawings and give each other hints (even though that’s not officially allowed). We don’t care about the score. It’s all about laughing and enjoying seeing how others think. Here’s a link to 10 other free online games to consider.

Hope you’re working with a few favorite strategies of your own.

Single Working Women’s Week

If you’re a single working woman, get ready to celebrate your holiday this Sunday August 2 to Saturday, August 8. And there’s also Single Working Women’s Day on August 4. Last year the author of an article talking about this holiday wondered why such a random date for it. I’ll tell you why. The date is the birth date of a particularly vibrant, successful and kind single woman/mother who’s an important part of my life – my younger daughter. Happy upcoming birthday, Perri, and happy Single Working Women’s Day to all you courageous, creative and passionate single women around the world.<

Register to vote. Sign up to vote by mail. And VOTE 2020!!!!

The times they are a-changin’

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Nothing is or will be the same.

Anybody ever read Lord of the Flies? In my innocence, as a young woman struggling to attend college (I made it through one semester in 1965 and then ran out of savings and had to return to the secretarial job I had left out of boredom – a whole ‘nother story)… In my innocence, then, I could not believe the horrors that came out in the story about the groups of – I think they were all one sex – boys who were marooned on a desert island. They became savages, trapping and killing each other with abandon.

Scarce resources can easily make enemies of almost anyone. We human beings – and single women can lead the way here – are in a position to call upon the greatest good in us during this Coronavirus threat.

Bertrand Russell once wrote, “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”He also wrote, “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

Exercise caution and make responsible choices, but don’t let fear into your life. Keep centered in your heart.

Why Single Working Women’s Week is tied to August 4

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Well, ladies and gentlemen. it’s that time of year again. Single Working Women the world over, hurrah! According to Chase’s Calendar of Events, an entire week is officially dedicated to celebrating the courage and creativity of single working women everywhere. “Single Working Women’s Week” takes place this year between August 4 and August 11 (and every year during the week surrounding August 4).

A few media outlets have asked the question: Why is this holiday connected to August 4? That date, August 4, was designated Single Working Women’s Day because it’s the birthday of the woman who inspired this movement, Perrine Knight – a talented, young woman who bravely faces the challenges of single womanhood – and the even-bigger ones of single motherhood – and who was also the woman to notice that although there are holidays for relationships of all sorts – mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers, bachelor/bachelorettes, brides, grooms, weddings, and wedding anniversaries – nowhere in that long list is anything to celebrate what it takes to live, work and sustain mind, body and heart through life as a woman on one’s own in our society. And that seems an especially egregious omission given the realities of doing so on the generally 1/4 to 1/2 less money many females are paid for their labors.

The unique challenges of single life for a woman tend to be even larger in the realm of human interactions. The glass ceiling in business is still a grim reality, despite some improvement in middle management levels. And despite anti-discrimination laws, which tend to be sidestepped by disguising prejudice as something else, single women are often singled out for less desirable assignments and to endure other subtle forms of injustice. Read specifics on how these types of prejudices manifest themselves in single women’s lives at Psychology Today’s column Living Single by Bella DePaulo, PhD.

Socially, single women tend to be bypassed when coupled colleagues, friends and family get together. Single men usually continue to be invited – friends even work actively to “fix them up” – but single women are often excluded. So the happy single woman finds ways to connect with other single women to enjoy life. Though, of course, she often finds herself in a restaurant being offered the dining table by the kitchen door, or told she must pay 25% to 50% more for the privilege of being a single passenger on, say, a cruise, etc.

So if you have a single working woman friend, consider this holiday your opportunity to appreciate her for all she does. Take her out for a drink and compliment her on her resourcefulness and her guts. Tell her how much you admire her courage. Even better, do a task or an errand for her – although be sure to ask how first, as single working women tend to be fiercely independent and, like many women of all stations, often have very specific ways they want things done!

God willing an’ the creek don’t rise, life is getting a little better for single women. All we can do is keep up the good fight. Time will tell if we’ll be able to make enough more progress to matter for single women, people of color, LGBQT people, and so on before the looming disastrous consequences of global warming make all our questions and struggles around fairness and equality simply moot.

Celebrating women’s work

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I love waking up in the dark of early morning. Used to do it every day of my life when I worked, until the last decade or so after I moved to Chicago and couldn’t find any aerobic/step classes I liked at 6 am. Gradually began sleeping later, until now I consider myself a serious ‘bones because I sleep until 7, 7:30. I miss being out and about in the dark. Feels special to be up ahead of most of the city…

Woke up early this morning. Lying abed ruminating from 4:53 (according to my Fitbit sleep tracker function). Finally decided to get up at 6-ish (didn’t check the tracker or ask Alexa for the exact time). Lit my candles and settled in with my journal and my mini-flashlight. Not sure what journaling actually does for me/anyone. Sometimes it just feels like a boring recitation of what’s going on – the mundane stuff of life. But that’s part of what made the diary of Samel Pepys so compelling – his extraordinary attention to the little details. Anyway, it just feels good sometimes.

Discovered a program last night on PBS called Makers: Women Who Make America. All about women’s work in various fields. One episode covered women in comedy. Excellent! Didn’t realize that so many groundbreakers were in comedy: Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne Barr, Sarah Silverman, and so on. Another was on film/TV. The interview with Jane Fonda was powerful. How she grew in professional stature and in her ability to be in charge of her own content. To make movies about topics she truly cared about.

But my favorite part of that one was the interview with Marlo Thomas about the ending of her series, That Girl. She explained that all the (male) studio executives wanted her to end the series with a wedding to her long-time boyfriend on the show. She balked. They argued. She finally told them, look, ending this with a wedding sends the wrong message to all the young women/girls out there watching who are becoming convinced of the joy of being an independent woman. No, she said. There will be no wedding. In her final episode, That Girl took her boyfriend to a women’s liberation meeting.

Thanks, Marlo. And all you wonderful women who care enough to keep opening doors for all of us.

Happy Galentine’s Day!

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Yes, you read that right: Galentine’s Day. Finally, a mere 15 or so years after Psychology Today started its Living Single blog and SWWAN came into being, society is accepting an alternative name for one of the most manufactured holidays of all time – another one of the many bows to romance/coupledom.

Society is at last beginning in a small way to integrate the power and realities of single life into the social structure. Perhaps now the previously unchallenged penalties for singles woven into that structure will begin to unravel. The price penalties for solo travelers, the subpar seating/service for solo diners, the insurance penalties for singles, the tax penalties for single filers, and so on.

Next step. Let’s stop pretending it’s an aberration to grow up with a single mom. According to the 2017 Census Bureau, 80% of the 12 million single-parent families in the U.S. were headed by single moms. Time to get real on the benefits and policies in our workplaces – ‘cuz these moms are raising the next generation of employees for your companies.

Happy Galentine’s Day, everyone!