name: Andi Williams  

age: 44

current city: Brevard, NC (outside of Asheville) 

living situation: Living with my husband and me in our home are two kids: Boy Child (14) and Girl Child (13). We have two rescue mutt/labs from Memphis and the world’s oldest guinea pig, Wilbur.

Boy Child is brilliant, big and strong, older than he should be, and wants to live off the grid. He cannot put his big stinky shoes away, plays three types of guitar, and will ask for Healing Touch when he is hurt. He has a bear skin on his bed from a bear he shot and is tremendously proud when the game he shot is on the supper table. We have discussions on the best way to take out zombies. He swears I could learn to use a shotgun. I prefer to run over them or use a bat or golf club. 

Girl Child is brilliant in her own way, curvy and girly, will always be my little girl but has an old soul. She talks to angels and has moments of profound wisdom. I expect to write a book one day about her and with her. She is living proof that the things that come out of teenagers mouths are genetically and developmentally encoded. She loves us best one minute, then turns around the next and says, “Watch me” in a talk to the hand sort of way. This is usually in reference to more time watching PBS. 

My husband is lovely, wonderful, and (as most) could be the topic of a whole nutha blog. 

The dogs are middle-aged and lovely, except for the increased squirrel patrolling that is occurring this fall. Wilbur should be dead by all accounts, but continues to show no signs of stopping. 

occupation: I am the Coordinator of Integrative Healthcare at Mission Hospital, Asheville. I have a special interest in Whole Person Theory and Healing Touch and have completed certifications in these areas. Maintaining a balanced life between work and home is not always easy with two teenagers (one with significant special needs). 

how do you structure your time and space? My space has become showroom tidy. Our house has been on the market since April, so a lot of my “stuff” is in boxes. Turns out that we didn’t need so much after all, so we have made many trips to Goodwill and had a garage sale. I would like to say I’m very zen with it, but honestly, I don’t like living this tidily. I miss my packed up art studio and the scatter of books, magazines, and art projects. My desk at the office compensates for this.

I have two email accounts (work and home) and two calendars (work on the hospital computer system, home on the fridge). I commute 45 minutes two times a day with our high school freshman to Asheville, cook once a week for the whole week, and schedule “girl days” with our special girl. I work out while Boy Child is at wrestling practice, then we commute back home, at which point I can hear my husband snoring in the bed. We are ready to move to Asheville if someone would buy our house. 

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? Let’s be literal here. This is the season of SUMMER for me. I am hot often (hot flashes, hot and bothered, hot to trot… you name it). I am often uncomfortable in a new job, new transitions, and new thought processes. I feel new and green and in full bloom in a life role I didn’t really want, but (ha) here I am anyway and stuck to the hot seat.

The highlights of this hot season are learning new skill sets professionally as I switch from being a very task-oriented critical care/resource nurse to being a very holistic nurse/educator/organizer/writer. I am published (as of a few weeks ago) in a national nursing magazine and will be presenting in the spring at a national nursing conference. I’m freaking out (in a very holistic, zen, present sort of way). Breathe….. 

-what season(s) preceded this one? Spring preceded our current season. The kids were young and fresh, and going to the playground was fun and the best part of the day. We were young marrieds then and not worried about much. I was a student, learning and growing and training. There was so much new growth.

-what season(s) might your future hold? Summer is going to last a while.  

favorite family activities: Girl Child loves to eat out. Boy Child goes along good-naturedly for the most part. The oldest has out grown us both in size and strength and engages in risky behaviors that we are no longer capable of or never dreamed of like rock climbing, wrestling, and jiujutsu. The youngest abhors Mother Nature and would prefer to spend her day shopping, dancing, and dressing up. Both fit their gender stereotypes to the extreme. Therefore, we do a lot of divide and conquer type activities. Boys are backpacking and camping this weekend while girls are shopping and eating. We do switch off. Dad can seriously boogie to Abba and Mom can hike a good eight to nine miles without complaining (whining starts at mile ten). We all also like music (got to meet Ricky Skaggs back stage this summer!) and have family music afternoons with the boys on guitar and girls on vocals (loud, not good).

favorite solo activities: painting, pen and ink, yoga, reading trashy novels

source(s) of inspiration: Anne Lamott’s books, my parents, Janet Menken – the founder of Healing Touch, Lucia Thornton, Brene Brown

best MakeShift moment: For Boy Child’s fourth birthday party, the fire department brought the big truck by the house for an hour and let the kids climb and look and visit. I sent them back to the fire station with brunch. We used to frequent the stations every three to four weeks to look at the trucks and visit with the crews. It was cheap fun and civic involvement (we took cookies). Now my kid wants to be a fire fighter (smoke jumper to be exact). Be careful what you makeshift.

Another day I took both kids out on the front porch and let them finger-paint the entire front glass windows and door with cool whip, chocolate pudding and shaving cream. We then hosed the porch and them off. I miss those days. They were fun! Now i can torture teenagers with threats of putting near-naked chocolate-pudding-covered-toddler pictures on facebook. These days are fun too!

  [if you know someone who would make a good “mothers of invention” feature, check out the nomination process and questionnaire located on the sidebar to your right.]

living situation: I live with my husband of four years and our daughters – Christina (3), Rebecca (1 year, 9 months), and Allison (5 months). (These are, of course, their online secret identities, but the names are close enough.) We bought a house five years ago before we married, and wound up with one much bigger than we’d planned. Luckily, it turns out we were able to fill it pretty quickly.

occupation: In addition to being a manager, wife, and mom, I am a full-time attorney, doing primarily transactional and non-adversarial work.

how do you structure your time and space? I do this in pretty much the same way working fathers have for many years. I returned to work quickly (six to seven weeks) after my children were born, and I have a nine to five job with a commute. Though lawyers often work long hours, I leave at five and manage the work by bringing much of it home to do after my girls are in bed. 

My girls all go to the same day care near our house, in a small town. We’ve never had a single problem with the center, and the kids love it. Our oldest is getting a preschool curriculum there now. My husband works slightly earlier hours than me, and is able to pick them up and bring them home each day.

I’m not cut out to be a stay-at-home-mom. I need to be on the go. One of the things our marriage depends on is a certain equality – we both work to support the family, and we both parent. Though those roles are different at different times, we take them relatively equally (except that he doesn’t have to carry a breast pump wherever he goes, which is totally not fair).

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? The biggest challenge is that I’m very tired all the time. When there’s too much to do, sleep is sacrificed. I’d compare it to the holiday season — it’s run run run, all the time. There is so much to do and so little time, and I’m always working on a clock and a to-do list. However, it’s also just full of fun, and happiness, and sparkles, and candy, and hugs. Every time I come home feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus and thinking about all I have to accomplish that night, I get tackled and swarmed by two toddlers who just want to love on me, and I hear baby giggles. My husband pulls dinner (which I made the night before) out of the oven, and all is right with the world. 

-What season(s) preceded this one? Our previous season began when my husband and I, after six years together, finally grew up and put things in order. I moved to be near him in 2004, we bought a house and got engaged in 2005, got married in 2006, and then were pregnant within 2 months. 

-What season(s) might your future hold? I’m hoping more of the same, though with a bit more sleep.  I wouldn’t mind the pace slowing as the girls get more independent and need my help less. I’ll be glad to fill any extra time with sleep and things I want to do for myself, and I’m looking forward to knowing my girls as people instead of babies. I think I’ll get to see a little more of the old, pre-kid me, and I’m looking forward, ironically enough, to sharing that person with the kids.

favorite family activity/activities: I love Friday nights, when we make chicken fingers and watch movies to celebrate the start of the weekend. My husband and I drink a couple of beers, the girls rocket around the room and beg for “dark sauce” (teriyaki) for their chicken, and then everyone collapses. I can’t wait until they’re old enough to help pick a movie that we can all enjoy. (Well, I did enjoy “The Princess and the Frog”… the first ten times!) 

I also love giving the girls bubble baths. We have a huge garden tub, and have never owned a baby tub. I just bring them in with me, taking turns. We use high-end bath products, and I condition their hair and let them use sparkle lotion. My girls ALWAYS smell great! 

favorite solo activities: more bubble baths, but alone; blogging; reading sci-fi and fantasy novels; the lore and novels of the World of Warcraft, a game my husband loves; keeping up with old friends on Facebook; dreaming of hobbies I wish I had. 

sources of inspiration: I’ve been searching for a Everything Role Model for a while now – a woman with a professional career who worked while her children were babies, has a stable marriage and three or more kids, and who still looks good and manages to sleep once in a while. I can’t find her. 

So instead I get inspired by my mom, who does a million things and looks great while doing them; my father, who taught me about work ethic; my husband, who can take anything in stride, even being mobbed by toddlers; my boss, who is what we call a Zen Master; and my paralegal, who never stops smiling and has enthusiasm for everything. I just need to surround myself with positive people, and positive things will keep happening.  

best MakeShift moment: When my youngest was a month old, she had a case of the sniffles and a cough, which turned into a respiratory arrest in the emergency room. She spent six days on a respirator in the pediatric intensive care unit at the children’s hospital and four more days in a regular room being weaned off oxygen. (Her official diagnosis was non-RSV bronchiolitis — basically, a bad baby virus).  

I had two toddlers at home 40 minutes from the hospital, a very sick new baby, the responsibility of pumping to keep up the milk supply until she could nurse again, terrible cold weather, plans to work from home on maternity leave, and the holidays to contend with. This could have really sucked. 

Instead, it wasn’t so bad. After the arrest, I was just so on top of the world that Allison was alive and going to be okay that nothing else seemed to matter. So that Alison wouldn’t have to be alone, my  husband and I trucked the older girls to and from the hospital in their pajamas while we switched out shifts. The situation was rough on them, so we did whatever it took to keep them happy, including letting them wear tutus everywhere.

I spent almost every night in a chair at Allison’s bedside (including New Years’ Eve), pumping every two hours and holding her hand every time the hospital staff had to do something to her. My work assistant brought me boxes of files for review so I’d have a productive way to spend time (and earn money) while I just played the waiting game. My husband and I changed out clothes and phone chargers and toiletries and hardly saw one another for a week and a half, except in the parking lot of the hospital. 

And it was really okay. We just camped out and powered on through, and Allison came home alert, healthy, and a pound and a half heavier than when she’d gone in. (If you did nothing but sleep for a week and have food pumped into you, wouldn’t you gain weight too?) 

[check out www.highheeledmom.com for more  of lindsey’s musings on motherhood and life.]