Cards for Couples

Jason and I have started playing a hand or two of rummy after getting the kids to bed. Figure it would be good to spend 15 minutes a day together where we’re not talking about them or Ballhype. It’s been fun, especially since I am winning. Yes! A game that I consistently beat Jason in. After 9 hands, I’m leading 805 to 565. I’m 97% sure that he’s not just letting me win.

Posted by Erin 02.Aug.07 Relationship Read more Comments (2)

You know you need a date night when…

You find yourselves arguing about who offered the child alphabet cookies, thereby undermining the authority of the parent who was getting him down from the dinner table. We realized we hadn’t taken a real night off from work in a month, so on Saturday we put the kids to bed and watched Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. Really, really funny and some great music too, from some of my favorite hip hop artists. And you just get the sense that he is a genuinely nice guy to be around. I love how he went back to Dayton to look for some people to invite to the block party (in Brooklyn) who wouldn’t normally go to a rap concert, like the older lady who works at the corner store. Anyway, it was fun to just relax and reminisce about the days when we used to go see bands like the Roots.

Posted by Erin 04.Jun.07 Relationship Read more Comments (0)

Happy Mother’s Day

I just spent the last hour online looking for a florist that can still do a Mother’s Day delivery tomorrow. Finally found one, so I can go to bed without leaving notes all over the house for me to call florists in Rochester (Minnesota) tomorrow morning. I probably would have forgotten to research tonight except that while we were watching the Spurs-Suns game 3, I noticed some flowers on top of the cabinet in the family room, hiding in plain sight. After arguing with me for a few minutes that it wasn’t Mother’s Day yet, Jason got up and gave me the flowers. I figure flowers have a limited shelf life so I may as well enjoy them as long as possible.

It’s a good weekend around the Gurney household for several reasons:

  1. The Warriors had a spectacular win over the Jazz on Friday night with an amazing performance by their own human highlight reel, Baron Davis. There is now a decent chance that Jason won’t have to explain his hair to the neighbors or to potential business partners.
  2. Site traffic is really picking up. We have Baron’s dunk over Andrei Kirilenko, some incontinent Brewers fans, and Amanda Beard’s upcoming photoshoot in her birthday suit to thank.
  3. And, this is not insignificant, Jason remembered Mother’s Day.

Posted by Erin 12.May.07 Relationship, Other Read more Comment (1)

Someone did not get the memo

Last night I wrote a nice little entry about deciding to call the nanny agency to start looking for a part-time nanny. As I was getting ready to publish, I sent the link (as a courtesy preview — we don’t approve each other’s posts, although we do offer feedback sometimes, case in point) to Jason, who IM’d back: we’re getting a nanny?

I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. We both remember talking about it, but we came away with different conclusions. I would not have thought it possible that two people spending this much time together could miscommunicate about a fairly weighty matter. Anyway, quick clarification of points of view followed, and I agreed to hold off on both the nanny search and my blog post for now.

Posted by Erin 09.Apr.07 Relationship Read more Comments (0)

Division of Labor

For me one of the hard parts about deciding to stay home after having a baby was knowing that I would be reinforcing traditional gender roles. This is coming from a person who normally doesn’t mind cooking or cleaning and certainly loves being the primary caregiver for our two small children. Don’t get me wrong - I wouldn’t change a thing and am grateful that we have the choice in the first place. And now with Ballhype, I don’t have to worry about that part of my brain going soft or dealing with a gap in my resume.

Our son’s view of the normal state of the Gurney household is that Daddy works (now upstairs) and that Mommy takes care of him and his sister. Never mind that Jason makes considerable effort to spend quality time with the kids or that I work on Ballhype when they’re asleep. Our children have no idea that I do anything other than take care of them. That’s fine — they’re 2.5 years old and 10 months old, after all. Tonight, however, I was trying to wash our son’s face as he looked at a book and he twisted away and said, “Mommy … [pause while he tried to think of something to distract me] clean kitchen!” I laughed, but it made me realize that after things settle down a bit after launch, we really do need to mix up more of the jobs around here.

Posted by Erin 29.Mar.07 Parenting, Relationship Read more Comments (0)

Who’s the Boss?

For the second time in as many days, the question of who’s in charge has come up. The first time, my friend asked which one of us is the boss; and today, one of Jason’s former employees asked what it was like to work for him (note that he did not ask what it was like to manage Jason). This will sound odd, but it’s true: we haven’t talked about it, at least not seriously. When it comes up, Jason usually jokes that it’s clear that he works for me.

On the incorporation documents, which by law require you to fill specific offices, like one Chairman/President/Ceo and one Secretary/Treasurer, I put Jason down as President and myself as Secretary. These titles do not need to correspond to how you actually structure the organization, and I obviously wouldn’t put that title on my business card. When we were at the Wells Fargo branch to open our bank account, however, the young man asked for our titles and I said mine was Secretary since he had our Articles of Incorporation right there in front of him. I’m pretty sure he thought this meant that I pick up Jason’s dry cleaning and sort the mail. For the record, I do the laundry but Jason handles the mail.

Regardless (or as Paulie Walnuts likes to say, irregardless) of titles, we’ve been working collaboratively. It’s been obvious who drives a decision or we talk it through until we get consensus, which doesn’t take as long as you might think since there are only two of us and we’re both aware we don’t have time to sit around and debate all night.

I think that if, no, let’s be realistic… when we arrive at a true impasse, as long as I feel that Jason’s listening and respecting my input, I should be able to disagree and commit, as we used to say at Intel. Besides, if I concede the occasional Ballhype disagreement, he’ll probably feel compelled to give in on questions of where we spend the holidays.

Posted by Erin 21.Mar.07 Relationship Read more Comments (2)

Working Relationship

I haven’t yet written about what it’s like to work with my husband. Mostly, it’s fun. I’d say that 97% of the time, we get along just fine due to the following reasons (more on the remaining 3% later):

However, being together in the same house now 24×7 with two kids 2 years old and under does present challenges. We have to remember to carve out time for the two of us that is not related to work. So far we don’t do this enough. We were going to schedule a date night every other week but at the most we’ve managed to take a break and watch a half hour of TV twice in the last month. Our Tivo is running out of room to save any more unwatched Daily Shows and Colbert Reports. But we do have a babysitter lined up for this Friday’s Warriors-Wizards game — combining our first night out with our first feet-on-the-street marketing event! We made up some baseball-style trading cards to hand out.

The other big issue right now is that our son has figured out that Daddy is upstairs and if he cries loud enough, he’ll eventually come down. No slight to Jason, but this behavior is driven equally by wanting one-on-one attention from anyone and wanting Daddy in particular. So we’ve got a bad cycle going here — Jason isn’t used to hearing the kids cry very much and therefore responds too quickly, and our son is crying more than he used to because he gets a reaction. The good news is that Jason and I have talked about the need to nip this early before it becomes established habit, and I think given a couple more days, we’ll all be comfortable with the new routine.

I will admit that while I enjoy working on Ballhype more than any other (paid) job I’ve ever had, there are times when I’m really tired, or wish that we could just be like *normal* people and eat dinner, put the kids to bed, and watch a movie or sit around and talk. And if I’m cleaning up at such a moment and Jason is back at the computer, then a fleeting thought crosses my mind: Did he ask me to do this start-up with him so that I couldn’t complain about him working all the time?

Posted by Erin 17.Mar.07 Parenting, Relationship Read more Comments (0)