About this author:
Cindy Bailey is a freelance writer who has written for Glamour, The Washington Post, City Sports Magazine, and other publications. She is also editor-in-chief and co-founder of LitRave.com, a webzine for literary San Francisco, and has taught workshops in creative nonfiction. She’s read her work to audiences at various venues, including San Francisco’s LitQuake festival, and is currently completing a novel.
After graduating from U.C., Berkeley with a B.A. in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science (believe it or not) and a short stint at Hewlett-Packard as an engineer, she fled to Washington, D.C. to become a freelance journalist. She succeeded in publishing 60+ articles that year, covering mostly business and technology issues.
Big on story clips but low on funds, she fled back to California to create what would become an award-winning corporate writing business, Bailey Communications, and ran it for 15 years while continuing to publish articles on a variety of topics. For her firm, clients have included Warner Bros., Mattel Interactive, Airtouch Cellular, Los Angeles County, Alexander-Ogilvy Public Relations, and many others.
Besides traveling and outdoorsy sports—like rock climbing and kayaking — Cindy enjoys her family. She’s lucky to be married to the greatest husband on the planet and has a young, active son.
March 25th, 2009
A couple of months ago I got a call from my son Julien’s preschool requesting a meeting with both parents. We figured it was about his speech delay, which we weren’t yet worried about, given that he was learning two languages at home.
When we met with the director and our son’s teacher, they handed us a list of seven behaviors they felt were unusual. Three of them had to do with speaking, as far as we could judge, two of them had to do with zoning out and distractibility, to summarize. One had to do with motor coordination and the last, with drooling.
All of these items might be normal in a much younger child, they said, but Julien was three. These items had nothing to do with his cognitive abilities or intelligence, they assured us, and they agreed that he is an intensely social, affectionate, empathetic child.
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February 6th, 2009
I’ve been working a lot lately and I’m not seeing my son enough. That bugs me. He’s only three. How can he be spending more time at preschool than at home? What kind of mother am I?
This is not the first time I question my work/family balance. Even when I’ve got the balance right, there are still days it gets thrown off, either because I’ve added to my work schedule (less time for family), our son is home sick unexpectedly (less time for work), or I just feel the need to spend more time with our son (no change in time, just want more of it).
Lately, I’ve added to my work schedule, so our son no longer stays home with me one full day a week. Instead, he’s in preschool full-time. Ack, I feel guilty just writing this—even though I know he’s happy there, loves it, and it’s a great place for him. It’s not him I’m worried about, really; it’s me.
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December 16th, 2008
In the many years I’ve been struggling to get pregnant (and I succeeded once), I’ve never taken a pregnancy test in hopes that it would be negative.
But that’s what I did last week.
A couple of months earlier I took another pregnancy test. I took that one because I was about to begin a medication for a sports injury and the pharmacist warned that you can’t take it if you’re pregnant.
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October 27th, 2008
My almost three-year old didn’t want to go to school this Monday morning. He had too much fun over the weekend with Mom, Dad and Grandma, and he just wanted to stay home and do all those fun things again.
“I want pancakes!” he said to my face in the dark while I slept, or tried to.
“We can do that,” I told him, pulling myself out of bed.
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January 14th, 2008
My latest obsession is celebrity gossip. I have always been interested in famous people and have been known to pick the longest line in the supermarket in order to read the latest people magazine. I also arrive early for my regular dental cleanings, and for my monthly pedicures I gather a stack of trash that last till the final coat dries.
It is not a coincidence that all of these excursions are without my children. The childless errands are a break but the gossip itself is a total escape from my reality. Well, most people’s reality. I find the world of the rich and famous irresistible and almost hypnotic.
But now I have discovered the ultimate distraction and I do not need to go to the supermarket or have my teeth cleaned. Celebrity gossip Websites. I have several sites that I check first thing in the morning and they succeed in grounding me in a way that the “real” news does not.
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May 6th, 2007
When I went to Yahoo!’s home page a few weeks ago, something startled me. It was a picture of astronaut Lisa Nowak next to a bizarre headline about her attempting to kidnap the rival for her love.
I almost jumped out of my chair. I know Lisa! I went to high school with her in Rockville, Maryland. We ran on the track team together. I remember her as smart, ambitious, and very competitive. In her senior year, Lisa won the prestigious student-athlete award and told us that all she wanted to do was fly. Continue… »
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