Outdoors at Noon on a Wednesday

 My company's parental leave policies aren't great. Birth parents get eight weeks paid short-term disability leave, and non-birth parents get THREE DAYS paid leave. Any new parent can use FMLA leave, which is unpaid for up to twelve weeks (and runs concurrently with paid leave). I've tried talking to my boss about how painfully inadequate these policies are, especially for dads, and his responses have been:

• "You probably have a skewed frame of reference because you're comparing our policies to your husband's company's policies." (Um, sure, he works for a software company, but they're not particularly progressive, and actually they have zero paid leave for dads.)
• "Oil and gas is a conservative industry. I think we're about average for the industry." (Multinationals do appear to have better policies, but we're not that big, so, fair. Why not be better, though?)
• "I think it's five days, isn't it?" (A. It's three. B. AS IF FIVE DAYS IS ENOUGH. Have you met a week-old baby? A one-week postpartum mother?)

When my first baby was born, I asked for additional paid leave, and the company said no, but countered with an additional six weeks unpaid leave to be taken any time during the next summer, our slow season. We used some of that time to take a three-week vacation, and it was lovely. My salary took a big hit that year, but it was worth it to spend that little bit of time with my family.

I asked for and got the same extra time with my second baby, and that summer is now. Covid means no vacation, so instead I've been taking most Wednesdays off. I've spent a couple half-days with a kid, but mostly I take this time for myself. Between pumping, and doing errands around the house, and sometimes doing a couple hours of work-work to give myself a break during the rest of the week, these free hours often feel like they slip away before I gotten started, but a couple of times I've managed to work on a personal project.

What I want most is to work 30 hours a week. Having just a few hours a week when my kids are in daycare and I can be anywhere I want, including at my own house, makes such a difference to my quality of life. But jobs like that are hard to find, especially ones that pay close to what I'm making now. But for this one summer, for these 240 hours, I get to dip into that dream.

All that to say that it's a Wednesday in September, and the weather's finally cooled off a teensy bit, and I'm sitting outside at a coffee shop. There's a huge tree here that's filled with cicadas, judging by the cacophony of buzzing that swells every few minutes. I've been timing the rhythm of these swells to see if there's a periodicity to them. So far nothing obvious. Might plot them later -- my new hobby.