Power Moms: Joann Lublin on how women in leadership successfully navigate work and life

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Unger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and eighty six, which is airing in late February for the first time. In this one, I'll be interviewing Joanne Lublin, who is the author of the book Power Moms, always a topic we're excited about here. Joanne, it was a longtime Wall Street journal editor who forged quite the trail there raising her children while rising up the ranks of the journal. So she is going to talk about that. We're looking forward to hearing from her. While it is snowing outside as I am recording this, we are thinking of summer. Sarah, have you made your camp spreadsheet? Yet I did start to make a camp spreadsheet. This was spurred on by I read this fashion blog called feather Factor, and she wrote a post about how like her kids had been rejected from camps because they were full. She lives in California, so I'm sure it's just a very different scenario and maybe they have more limited options. But I was like, ah, but then I realized we're not in that scenario here. I don't think any registration has closed, and in fact, the camp that I'm probably going to be sending the kids to hasn't even announced anything or opened. But I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. So I made this whole spreadsheet that involved sending the kids to a camp that was like a little bit of a drive. It was supposed to be like the best, most spectacular camp, And then I realized that we could probably have pretty good for like so much less annoyance factor, like a much closer drive, better fit for all three kids, a comfortable place that we already kind of know, and really like, how bad could it be if they're going outside and doing stuff together and it's similar to school but with more outdoor play, like seems fine. Yeah, So I decided I'm going to keep it very very simple. I may add like a week of horseback riding for Namel because her school actually finishes a week before the other kids anyway, so that's a nice opportunity to let her try something else. But otherwise I think we're going to keep things very very simple, low key. Yeah. For our listeners who are not aware of the camp spreadsheet concept, this is when you have the children on one access, your various camp age children, and the weeks of the summer on the other access. I tend to do the children across the top and the weeks of the summer down the left hand side. This allows you to you know, mark vacations, and then as you're planning where children are at various different points, you know notice how many weeks different kids are, or that you can double up who's in which camp when. So if you have more than, for instance, one child, and your summer schedule does not just involve, like you know, a nanny or one sort of summer daycare type camp or whatever, then this is a good way to keep coordinated about this so you don't accidentally sign three kids up for three different camps that are in opposite directions and you only have you know one driver, or you double sign up for a week, or realize you have no care for one week or something. It's just helps, you know. We love a good spreadsheet here at the best of both worlds, right, Sarah, Yes, And I intuitively set mine. I didn't look at yours, but I set mine up at a very similar manner. But then when I was just looking at like, oh, maybe this could be here, this could be there, I'm like, I am highly motivated for all three kids to be in the same play that weighs like almost any kind of other bells and whistle that could be present. And I know, you know, oh, go ahead, go. I was gonna say, I have not made the spreadsheet yet. I mean I started signing up. But the only camp that I've signed really kids up for yet, aside from one that's offered at Alex's school, like before the public school ends but after his school ends, is the camp that I was very disappointed had canceled last summer and had this sort of not wonderful approach to the whole refund thing, which I get it's a small business, but they had been basically saying we are if you want a refund, we're gonna have. We're gonna hold onto your money for like a year, and then you're gonna get seventy percent of it back, like what they're like. Or you could take a twenty percent credit and enroll the kids next year. And I mean, again, I get it. I was really upset at the time. But on the other hand, since I was going to probably send the children to this camp again, giving somebody a loan at a twenty percent annual interest rate is not bad at all, right, Like that's like credit card style interest. So I was like, Okay, well, I'll just go for that. So I did take a big chunk of my credit for this summer and have signed three of the children up for multiple weeks there, so that is done. But I had done everything by like January first last year, and then of course got totally burned when everything canceled, so I've been a little bit shy about doing that. January first is early. Most of our camps don't even release like information until sort of the February to March time, and this must be a regional thing, because that's why I was so shocked about that California person. I was like, what, Well, it's more that it's not that they would have been full. It's that they offer their early bird discounts right if you sign up by that time. So that was what what made the camp that canceled and was going to only give you seventy percent back a year later. It's like, because you've now had my capital for a year and a half. But it's actually a pretty good investment. It was a good investor. It was a good investment. May have gone out of business. I guess if they didn't do some deal like that, So I guess it's good there. Yeah, No, I get it, I get it. It It was just annoying at the time. But anyways, and I was going to say, we totally understand if in your area, if if you don't feel like you're able or ready or safe to do camp. I mean, I hope, I hope that maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised by summer as rates are starting to trend down and more and more people are vaccinated that hopefully there'll be more options in almost every area. Hopefully. Sounds good. Yeah, but our kids have been back in school for the year, so that's happened fairly well. And you know, so there we go. All right, Well, let's dive into the interview with Joanne Lublin, author of Power Moms, So we'll get right to that. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Joanne Lublin to the program. So Joanne, could you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi? Everyone, I'm Joanne Lublin. I am a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and the author of two books about working women, and your newest one is called Power Moms, which is out around now. Tell us a little bit about what are power Moms. Well, it's a name I kind of made up, but a power mom I define as a woman who has become an executive in a business and also has children. She didn't necessarily get to be the executive level when the kids came along. But in order to get interviewed for my book, you had to have worked at some point for a sizable company with at least one hundred million dollars in revenue. And I didn't care where you were working now, or even if you were no longer working, because a number of those women I interviewed are entrepreneurs, and I ended up interviewing eighty six power moms from two generations, and what did you learn as you were you were doing this, Well, what I was trying to find out is what had changed, what had gotten better in terms of the difficulties of navigating life and career between the Boomer generation which is my generation, and the gen xers slash millennials. So half of those eighty six women were Boomers and the other half were predominantly gen Xers, about two thirds gen Xers one third Millennials. Separate from those eighty six moms, I also interviewed twenty five adult daughters of the boomers to find out what was it like growing up with a mom who was really committed to her career. Did they want to be like mom? Did they want to be somebody else? And did mom end up being actually a secret weapon for those young women as they now are joining or have joined the workforce. So it's interesting because you are one of those Boomer power moms yourself, and I know that your adult daughter plays a role in this book too. So you joined the Wall Street in what nineteen seventy one, right, that's right, and you raised two children while you were, you know, rising through the ranks there becoming I think the first female head of a bureau for the Wall Street Journal. Well, I was actually the first female deputy head of a bureau, okay, but at that point ours was the only bureau that was run by two women, because my bureau chief was a woman who had become the first female bureau chief of a Wall Street Journal bureau in Boston, Kathy Christiansen. She did so well there they made her buer chief in London, and then she picked me as her second in command. So the women were running London for the Wall Street Journal. We were as you are doing this. I wonder if you could just describe for a lot of our listeners, are you know, in the gen X millennial mom phase of this raising children in the seventies and eighties while building a career. I mean, what are the things you think that modern moms might not know about what that was like. Well, one of the things that it was very, very different is that this was something weird. This was strange. Okay. For the most part, women were not seen as being in socially acceptable roles to want to be committed to their careers and equally committed to their children, and so you kind of had to hide the fact that you had children, as you worried about it hurting your credibility. We were very much the trailblazers, and so we didn't want to do anything that would detract from being taken seriously by the guides. And have you found that women who are in that sort of thirty five to forty five age range, of the younger executives you interviewed, are they more open about being mothers at the workforce? They're not only more open about being mothers, but they recognized that the trail has been blazed for them by those boomers, and they believe that they deserve to be accepted as people who have both a parenting hat and an employ or an executive hat. And as one younger woman put it, who I interviewed for the book, she says, we have earned it, and she obviously had read my first book, which is called Earning It. Do you think this is true though for men as well? I wonder, I mean, did boomer men probably didn't talk about their kids much at the office either, And I wonder if this is something that you know, younger men are more open about having, you know, parental involvement as well. I think definitely that is another very significant shift between the generations. But I also think we're still burdened by social expectations, by gendered norms of what men and women alike are supposed to be doing once they have kids, because we live in a society that still puts such a high priority on people who work all hours. The twenty four to seven notion of being always on is something I write about, And when it comes to men, there's still this perception that men's first priority should not be their family, it should be their job, which is why, even as companies have broadened their quote unquote maternity leave to define it as parental leave, you still see a relatively low percentage of men taking advantage of a benefit that is available. Did you find with the younger executive moms that things were kind of different in their households? Do you think that I'm curious if they were still dealing with these expectations as much or precisely because they were so high up in their careers that these issues weren't as important for them. Now what has changed is number one, there is a much greater understanding in the workplace that we don't stop being parents when we start work, whether we're working from home or working in the office. And at the same time, because of the gains of that boomer generation in the workplace, these younger women have role models of women who have gotten into much higher level jobs and they're currently in when they start having families, and who have made it possible. But the most important change, it seems to me, is that these younger women have different expectations of their spouses, you know, whether it's a husband or a life partner or a wife, and they set those ground rules if they're smart at the outset of that long term relationship about the fact that they want to have this be if they're going to have kids, a co parenting set up, if they're going to be setting up household together. You know, one person should not bear the entire load, especially when it comes to what is called the third shift, which is the mental load, the person who's keeping track of everything. And there are numerous examples in the book of these younger women not only standing up and insisting on this as the sort of prerequisite for getting long term involved with their mate, but pushing back when things don't seem to be going along the lines that they thought everybody had agreed to. I love the example of this lawyer who his husband also has a high powered career, and she says, you know, we're not really sharing on the childcare and child responsibility side of things, like we had talked about. And he's like, you're absolutely right. You know, I can see you're overwhelmed. How about I start making the doctor's appointments and taking the kids for the pediatrician checkup. She said, I think that would be great. And then he says, and what's the doctor's name again and his phone number? Yes, So there was clearly some gap between expectations and what had been happening. We're going to take a quick bak for ads. We'll be right back. So this is Laura. I am here with Joanne Lublin, who is the author of Power Moms, How Executive Mothers Navigate work and life. Joanne spent her career at The Wall Street Journal, leading the many aspects of the paper there writing a column about executive careers. So, Joanne, you know you and your husband, it sounded like you had a fairly egalitarian set up, you know, getting married in the seventies and raising your kids in the eighties. I think it was you actually put something in your marriage contract, I guess about household duties. We did, and this marriage contract with something that was also a little bit out of the ordinary at the time and remained so. Although there are many couples who enter prenuptial contracts in order to protect themselves in case of divorce, we entered into a marriage contract in order to protect our marriage and make sure it would be a long lasting and a happy one. And so the only provision of all the various aspects that we drafted that survived being translated into legal language by the lawyer was the one that my fiancee future husband, Michael wrote, and it was as follows, household duties shall be shared equally, but not necessarily cheerfully. I love that. How did that work out? I'd say it's worked out pretty well, to the point that when our son got engaged to his now wife, I offered them, in fact, sent them a copy of the marriage contract, and Dan came back and said, you know, Mom, we don't think we need anything that's formal, but you know, I did observe the role model growing up, and so once they got married, whoever cooks the other one cleans up and I said, yeah, but when I'm at your house, I always see your wife doing the wash And he said, yes, but Mom, you don't see me doing all the folding. Ah, you weren't observing the folding. Well, it sounds like they picked up a lot from you, and in terms of your adult daughter, because that was an angle of power moms as well that you interviewed, you know, two dozen adult daughters of these boomer power moms. How did it tend to play out with the adult daughters, because it sounded like it could kind of go both ways. Sometimes, you know, young women are like, I don't want to be anything like my mom, and sometimes they're like, wow, my mom has a lot of connections that can really help me if I if I avail myself of that. Well, it seems to me that the adult daughters actually did want their bread buttered on both sides. A lot of them do not want to be a high powered senior executive because they saw how stressful and difficult that was for their moms when they were growing up. But at the same time, they want to be successful in whatever line of work or profession that they have chosen. And when they start to finish college and look to joining the workforce. They discover that guess what, mom knows a lot about the ins and outs of getting hired, getting promoted, getting noticed, and she's hugely networked and can not only arrange critical introductions, but she can be a career coach at preparing the daughter for a job interview, revamping the resume, being the go to person when the first time they run into a huge issue on the job. There's this great example where this adult daughter of the boomer mom essentially summons her mother, who's the CEO of a major business unit at a big company, out of a meeting because the daughter has been told she has to discipline one of her direct reports, and she's never had to do that before. She's a first time supervisor, and she's terrified. She tells somebody that they're not cutting the mustard. Well, mom would be very helpful in that. I'm sure one of the things you you know, C suite moms, CEO moms clearly have resources that are not necessarily available to everyone who's attempting to build a career and raise a family at the same time. And yet you note that the affluence doesn't necessarily exempt you from these work life struggles. And why is that. I mean, I think a lot of people assume that if you have the resources to you know, hire nannies, get your house cleaned, you have no problems. And you're saying that's not true. Well, that is exactly the point that I make in Power Moms. You know, if it's still hard for these women of privilege to make this work, just multiply that ten, twenty fifty, one hundred times. You know, for the single mom who's working maybe two jobs, they're both minimum wage and has you know, little resourcess to fall back on. And the reason it remains difficult in different ways for these women of affluence goes back to this whole notion of the fact that we have unconscious biases and gendered expectations as to the roles that women will play in the home. Plus, the men don't get a lot of support from their male colleagues for wanting to be highly involved dads, and so they too are not necessarily there when needed or you know, keeping track of this or that appointment, or knowing the pediatrician's name and phone number. And so the whole idea here is what we are evolving as a society. We've come so far, you know, from what the baby boomer moms we're experiencing when they entered the workforce and when they started having kids. But we still have a long way to go. And the way to make it happen faster is to have employers recognize the needs of not just working moms, but the needs of working parents, and more broadly of the need to have maximum flexibility and how you treat your employees. Because everybody's got a life outside of work, whether it's children, dogs, elderly parents, or whatever. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about work life sway, because this is a phrase I hadn't heard used before, but it's that part of you know, modern technology enables us to go in and out of work and life rules, and so that changes the equation a lot. How is this playing out in people's lives now? Well, it's also a phrase I had never heard of, but I became so enamored of it that I wanted it to be the subtitle of the book. I wanted the original title to be Power Mom Secrets for Practicing Work Life Sway, and the publishers like, uh, nobody knows what that is exactly. Those were her words. She's like, nobody will say, all right, what is sway? Define it for us then? And I was introduced to this concept by the very first you know, younger generation executive mother that I interviewed for the book. And so the whole idea here is that work life balance is a completely impossible ideal. It's like maintaining a yoga pose for twenty four hours on one foot. And so because we know that work life balance is an impossible ideal, we instead aspire to practice work life's way. And that's the concept that when we have to be totally there for our job, will be one hundred and ten percent in the moment focused on that work task. But if life such as the needs of children in truths, we're not going to get all bent out of shape. We're going to go with the flow and we're going to sway to that part of the focus of our life. And when we end up working from home all of a sudden, we have to be playing work life Sway lots of times during the day and not get all bent out of shape and instead be willing to go with the flow, but perhaps invest in some really high quality noise canceling headphones. That is definitely something that a lot of people are feeling the need for now. But you know, technology is kind of this this double edged sword, because you know, one thing I see that a lot of people are able to do is leave the office at you know, back when people went to offices, but leave the office at a reasonable time, go home, spend the evening with their families, do more work at night after the kids go to bed in a way that would have been far more difficult before the advent of laptops and cell phones. And you know, high speed internet connection from the house. I mean, where do you come out in this? You know, is it good? Is it bad? Is it both? It's a mixture of both, I can tell you. You know, dial up was slow when we first got it at home, and so you were actually inclined to stay late at the office if you had tasks to complete. And you know that meant that you didn't get to see your kids for very much if you had to work late. Thanks to advances in technology is another reason why these younger executive moms are able to flourish on their jobs and with their families. But it comes at a price, and that is you can be always on. There were several of these women in their thirties and early forties who not only keep their cell phone on, but they sleep with it by their bed or even under their pillows. That seems like it would be slightly uncomfortable, not to mention when it rains at two o'clock in the morning, but they want to be reachable. No, The whole idea here in practicing work Life's way is that you too who to be where you're putting the focus of your attention, and if necessary, you draw boundaries, okay when when appropriate, and that does mean you turn off the darn phone and you certainly don't sleep with it under your pillow exactly. So I enjoyed one particular, you know, reading the book and reading about your career, the various decisions you made along the way. So you were willing to move your family to London. You know that family could relocate with you, but on the other hand, you were not. You wound up not going into space. There was a potential to be a journalist going into outer space. So let's talk about what is outer space? Not? Okay? Moving the family to London was okay, Well, the distance was a little bit less to go to London, although I have to tell you, you know, our older child, who was then seven, Our son was very upset, did not want to leave the only home he had ever known his entire life. You know, his second grade elementary school was two blocks away. You know. He basically locked himself in his room and announced that he wasn't going. And we said, well, we're selling the home and he yelled back, you'll have to sell me with it going into space. Yes, So how we dealt with that. I sent my husband in to go deal with Dan. It was more than I could handle. And he told Dan that he should look upon this as a four year vacation. And Dan said, oh, okay, so when we come back from London, when we come back to our house, and his father said, no, but we'll come back to an even better house, and then he was willing to move. Our daughter was only three and a half when I got the promotion. She didn't really understand. She told people that we had to fly to London because it was too far to drive, and that when she got there she was going to have tea with the Queen. Fast forward, Fast forward, when we moved back to New York. She's the same age as her brother had been when we left London, the same hysterics. How can you take me away from the only home I ever remember? Blah blah blah blah. So, in terms of your original question, which was about out of space, there was a competition held long before I got the opportunity to move to London, where they were going to pick a journalist to be an astronaut. And I thought this would be really, really cool, and the kids did too when I first told them about it. I never got as far as, frankly, as filling out the application because they I then had to explain to them that I would be gone not for you know, one or two days, which I occasionally did for reporting trips, but probably for weeks and months to be trained to be an astronaut, and that was not something that they were willing to accept, and I realized it wasn't something I was willing to accept either. But frankly, my chances of getting chosen would have been slimmed and none. So it wasn't a hard dream to put back into the Let's dream about it at night and not do it during the day. Well, you know, I can't say that I'd be really excited to get on a rocket either, So that will probably not be part of my career plans either. So, Duanne, we always end our interviews with a love of the week. So something that has been exciting for you lately? What's really cool in your life right now? Well, I think the most exciting thing that has happened to me lately is that the Wall Street Journal, where I remain a regular contributor, not only chose to publish an excerpt from my book, an excerpt that described ways to ditch working mother Guilt, but they highlighted it with a promotional blurb on the front page of the journal, and it featured the photo that ran with the excerpt and my name and the description of the book using the subtitle, which said something to the effect of Joanne s. Lublin talks about how executive mothers navigate work in life. And so getting back on page one of the Journal having not been there for a couple of years was pretty exciting. It's always good to be all right, well, we have to go really quickly into all right, are we going to ditch the work mom guilt? Like you have the answer to that? Oh, absolutely, and I think the younger women have come up with some pretty clever approaches, ranging from essentially taking one or two days vacation every quarter as mama days and spending each of those days with one of your children, to making sure that you set aside me time. You know, whether it's two hours every Sunday morning, and your partner or husband or wife is in charge of the kids and you have total time to yourself. These are lots of ways of ditching working mother guilt. Sounds good, well, Joanne, Thank you so much for joining as and our listeners can check out Power Moms how executive mothers navigate work and life. Thanks for joining us, Thanks for having me. That was awesome. And now we are going to go to our Q and A. And this one was sent in by Diane. This is a fairly long question, so I will try to abridge it a little bit. Oh. Actually, I have an announcement that I didn't put on here. If you would like to leave a vocal question, there's a link on my blog. It's actually under the best Laid Plans page, but I will put it on the best of Both Worlds page as well, so that if you would like to hear your voice on this podcast, then you could actually click on that link and send in a audio question. Okay. Sorry, that was a surprise for Laura, but exciting to have that capability. I could use it for either podcast. Okay, So the question is, I've been trying to track my time while unemployed, and I'm finding that there are sometimes large chunks of my day that I don't have any recollection of what I was doing. Usually they are the one or two hour chunks that can be summed up as putter and watch kids, and sometimes it literally says that on my log I don't feel great about these chunks, and I'm not sure if I need to shift my thinking about my time or do I actually just need better strategies for what I do with my time when I'm with my kids. My kids are nine, three, and one. My nine year old needs some distance learning supervision to stay on track, but the three year old is pretty good about playing by themselves. But since they've taken them out of preschool because of COVID and because of the mom being unemployed, currently they're doing about thirty to forty five minutes of preschool curriculum per day. They're one year old alternates between clinging barnacle and destructive terror, and does not nap consistently, which is all to say. I find myself with lots of times when I have to be vigilant but not necessarily interactive. She's thinking, there must be more I can do right now. At times, I have projects I want to work on. I've started a blog, I sign up for online classes. None of these things are really related to my job career, and they all feel like vanity projects. But there are things I would like to be spending my time doing, so I feel like I'm stuck between a narrative that being a mother is enough and an alternative one that we can fit everything into our lives if we prioritize and are efficient with our time. Here's an interesting sentence I'm going to include. Ironically, I felt happier with how I used my time when I was working sixty hours a week. I know you guys usually deal with issues of work in life, but wondering if either of you have thoughts as to what the balance is when one isn't working and just being a full time parent. We thought this was a great question. Yeah, well, and even if you are working, if you have a one year old, I mean, you have many hours of small child vigilance on your schedule, and yes, it is tough to use it for much of anything, though again the kid and I totally get what she's saying, Like the kid will play independently for a while, like you are just sort of sitting there watching them, and you're like, well, I could use this time to do something. But then, of course, you know, then they try to wander off and fall into a door, and you know, to watch and so you can't really get involved in anything, but you feel like you could do something, So of course what do we do. We wind up scrolling around on Instagram and then feeling like, eh, you know, like life is passing me by as I am looking at people's carefully posed family photos and matching shirts. Right, so just to say, we totally get it. Sympathized. And you know, whether this is because you are actively you know, your job searching, or you're you know, taking some time out while your job has ended for a bit, or if you're just this is what you spend your weekends doing, Like, yes, this is this is part of the nature of having one year olds, and we're there with you. Totally there with you. I would say that it's probably more mental than anything else. I think she should make herself a very very short list of things other than one year old care that she wants to do on any given day, and after she has done, let's say those three things, to just relax, Like, if anything else happened, it's great, But the feeling pulled in multiple directions and feeling unhappy is largely an expectations game. Like if she feels like she's going to be doing a million other things and she's not because she's taking care of the one year old, then she's gonna be unhappy. Whereas if she's like, Okay, I just need to get these three things done today, she'll do those because I mean, presumably the one year old does nap at some point, even if it's inconsistently. She has a significant other, so that person is working full time for sure, but can also you know, contribute some on the evenings or early mornings or weekends or whatever, so she can have some time to do things. But just keeping that really really low and then having something that just gets them out of the house to do something a little bit different so you don't feel like you're constantly just watching your kid play on the same toy kitchen as you're scrolling around on Instagram. It can help you feel better. Yeah, that's so true. I don't think I have that much to add except that you know that it is such a I think. I think the age of her kids says a lot. I think if the nine year old's probably not that much of a factor, but having a three although if the nine year old is, I think you said, doing online school that kind of structures the day and sticks you in the house. And now you're stuck physically in the house with your three and one year old, which kind of adds to the stress perhaps, But having a three and one year old a very difficult and trying combo. And I think that puttering around and surviving and waiting for it to be over is sort of, to some extent, just part of how it is for many of us. But it does get better, like relatively quickly, and that's no souls while you're in it. I get it, I remember it, but it's like, I mean, my kids aren't that much older, but I already feel like it's like ninety thousand times, like I can do a lot more when they are occupied than I could just two years ago. And you will be able to too, yep, because you're gonna have a three year old and a five year old and two years so there we go, and a four year old and six year old in three years and so that will open up a lot. So we'll do our love of the Week now. I did ask Joanne for her Love of the Week at the end of the interview, but I'm pretty sure I forgot to give mine, so Sarah will. This gives us an opportunity to have Sarah do hers as well. Yes, So I really like the face masks from ag Jeans, which is really funny because they're a designer jeans company. But I got one of their masks free with a jeans order and was like, this is a great mask, and then looked up and I'm like, oh, you can also buy these, And now I have like four of them, and I either wear them like alone, and they're like nice and breathable, and you know, in a lower situation it's great. Or if I'm at work and I feel like I need to show that I'm being more conservative, I put on a surgical mask under it, and then that's kind of a nice comfortable combo and they're great. So the face masks from ag Jeans. I will put a plug in here for a previous sponsor of this podcast, the Creola School Mask Pack. They sent us our first pack, Freddy back when we were advertising for them, and I have kept buying them because Alex will wear them and he has to wear masks obviously all day at school. He's in full time school, five days a week. I was so nervous about this idea of like my energetic kindergartener. You know, he will throw down a fight about like eating an apple. So I'm like, oh my god, how am I going to keep a mask on his face all day? And he has not set a peep about it. He likes them, he wears them, he's got his favorite colors. So that's that's my love of the week there. It certainly made my life easier. We'll see though, if we're out of this by you know, everyone's like, oh, under two right, and I'm like, oh, yeah, under two. I have a baby. I'm like, wait, in ten months, he won't be under two, but maybe you won't need a maky maybe we'll be back to normal by then. But you know, maybe I can convince him to wear one and crowded situations and I'll never have a baby with a cold again. It'll be fun. We buy the same ones, and that lends credence to our theory that most of our sponsors just want to make us customers, and they earn as much from our own purchases they do. Oh my gosh, the money I spend on sun Basket now anyway, all right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with joe Anne Lublin about power Moms, also about camp spreadsheets and how to deal with long hours with a one year old and three year old. So we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.