I have a class today. Unlike Janiece, I’m not actually learning to save the world, or even my company. I am probably going to emerge with a blackout card on buzzword bingo.

The class? “Strategic Portfolio Management”, which means “portfolio of projects” rather than “porfolio of investments”, the latter of which is hopeless in this bear market.

The objective? Learn a little, earn continuing education credit toward my certification, and support my professional organization’s fledgling satellite group in the West Sound area. I am actually very excited to not have to commute a couple hours to a Seattle location for professional networking and training - it’s worth a Saturday.

So, enjoy your Saturday. I’ll be working on my bingo.

Recently, I wrote about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who is expecting her fifth child while serving in elected office. The whole childbearing, child-rearing issue has turned out to be polarizing, not just here but in the press and court of public opinion.

Women have come a long way:

• In 1839 in Missippi, women were first declared by the court to be legally able to independently own property. Other states soon followed suit.
• In 1916, Jeanette Rankin was elected to Congress.
• In 1920, women were given the right to vote in the USA.
• Not until 1965 was the last law banning private use of birth control struck down by the Supreme Court.
• In 1973, Katherine Graham of the Washington Post became the first woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
• In 1981, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female judge appointed to the Supreme Court.
• In 2008, the US has its first viable female candidate for President. (No comment on whether I’d vote for her – my point is she is a serious contender for her party’s nomination.)

My mother’s generation fought for the right to choose to work outside the home. My generation grew up with the expectation that we should and would work outside the home in a professional capacity. My sons’ generation has returned to a more balanced perspective, encouraging women to choose that path that’s best for them.

For feminists, where is it written that choosing to stay home with your children is a defeat? And for traditionalists, where is it written that remaining in the work force in one way or another is a transgression? Didn’t the women of the 20th century fight for our right to choose work or parenthood or some combination of both?

There are some erroneous assumptions floating around about women’s roles. Some critics suggest that women in the workforce are unhappy, forced into the role by today’s economics, and that given the chance to stay home with their children they gladly would. Others criticize that women who stay at home do so only because they have no professional skills, and are betraying the hard-won equal rights gained in previous generations.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! The constant condemnation on this front helps no one. Women’s perspectives and women’s roles today are infinitely more complex than that… as complex as the women themselves.

I adore my husband and children. I couldn’t be prouder of them if they’d invented the light bulb. I value the time I spend with them and make their events, needs and successes a priority. I work outside the home; I juggle parenting and my home and my job, I always have and probably always will.

I have immediate family members and friends who also adore their husbands and children. They work at home, work hard at home, as stay at home mothers to their children. It is their calling, and they make parenting their children and keeping a beautiful home an art and a testimony to their beliefs and values. They may choose that role for a lifetime, or they may choose to someday re-enter the workforce, but it’s their own, very personal choice, made consciously and requiring discipline and sacrifice.

Does the existence of one make the other an invalid choice? Are we as women so insecure in our roles that we need to tear others down to make us feel bigger and more confident? I hope not. The struggle to balance it all is never easy, no matter which path a mother chooses, and censure rather than support only makes it harder for all of us. The blanket condemnation of “you shouldn’t have children if you’re not going to raise them yourself” is an ugly and painful criticism that is completely unconstructive.

Personally, I had planned to stay home for a significant period of time after having children before returning to the workforce. I found, after remaining home with each baby for six months, that I could not function, could not cope in that environment. Being a full time mom was not only not my vocation; it was hazardous to my health and my family’s stability. Faced with the choice of going off the deep end into major depression and complete shutdown, or picking up a bottle of antidepressants and getting back to work, I chose the latter. I’m a much better parent now than I would have been as a full-time parent who was a low-functioning, mentally ill basket case.

I also had to support my family as primary wage earner after the birth of my second child, then later as a single parent. I’m very thankful that I had the education and the career experience to make being a financial head-of-household possible. It happens all too often and being prepared – having professional skills, understanding family financial management, and developing a support system for you and your children – can help.

I am a wife and mother, a project manager, a writer, a friend, an idealist, a voter, and a feminist. I’m thankful for what I’ve been blessed with, and I’m committed to the path I’ve chosen.

So, back to Sarah Palin. And all the other mothers in the land with big hearts and commitment and dreams… Go, do, achieve, and I wish you the balance you’re looking for.

No, there’s no cause-effect relationship there - just two subjects I’m writing about. “Hey, honey, I have been struck by laryngitis because I procrastinated doing the taxes. Damn, I’ll never do that again!”

Seriously, I hate doing expense reports, and mine are significant because I travel so much.

I always wait until the last possible minute to do them, just when I’m on the verge of getting some, err, attention for not completing them on time. I don’t know why – I don’t typically procrastinate any other professional deliverables.

Part of the problem is retaining receipts. I am a compulsive purse and wallet cleaner, and all too often I’ve mindlessly thrown out a necessary receipt because, well, it was a piece of paper that was cluttering my wallet and in the way.

And part of the problem is just how darn long they take to do. At our company, first we do the accounting coding and notation online – that I do right away, at the end of every month. Then we have to do the old-fashioned correlation of receipts, including taping them up on letter-sized paper.

Every report can take a couple of hours – longer if I’m missing a receipt and need to track it down from the vendor.

So, now I’m reaping what I’ve sown, and am doing more than one to catch up. And, not surprisingly, my receipt retention drops the further back in time I go. Ugh.

And, on the home front, I seem to have developed laryngitis. I don’t really feel all that sick – just a nagging itchy throated cough – but I’m losing my voice. This is a bit of a challenge when much of my day consists of phone meetings. I think I’ve had five cups of tea already today – black tea, peppermint, lemon zinger – my eyeteeth are floating.

I also left my glasses on an airplane in December, and need to get them replaced. I have forty-something year old eyes, I can’t see well at reading distance anymore, and it’s annoying. I can’t wear contacts, although I can make do with reading glasses, but progressive bifocals are much more useful. (and expensive) So, while I shouldn’t share the laryngitis bug, it’s off to the optometrist this week.

Over the last week, my office has moved. The new office is pretty fabulous- it’s in the white building right behind the plaza.

We used to be in the lovely and historic Smith Tower, on the edge of Pioneer Square. Because the building has applied for permits to convert to condominiums, each office must move out as its lease expires.

Project managing the details of an office move is annoyingly tedious, especially when your resources are limited. The various bits & pieces include:

• lease details
• the improvements and refitting of the new space
• office layout design
• the physical move
• the fairly complex technical details
• disentanglement from the old space.

We had a point person on the refitting, office layout and physical layout – and he rocked! My focus was the technical detail and implementation, which didn’t come together quite so smoothly because it was late getting kicked off and we had some service delivery issues. It’s almost done now – we’re just missing a few little details like a printer/fax machine (tomorrow). And Seattle dial tone.

The location is lovely, in the heart of downtown, right across from Westlake Center mall and fronting Westlake Park. We have huge glass windows and can watch the fairly fascinating park happenings all day long. We see leaf blowing, downtown volunteers assembling, the fountain being turned on (and back off, when a prankster puts soap in it), goth kids, executives, homeless, transvestites, retail fashion victims, street musicians, preachers, drug dealers, and many, many pigeons. On Saturday (move-in day) there was a zombie march and choreographed Thriller performance in the park.

There is a fabulous coffee shop across the street in Westlake Center, Dilettante Mocha Café, with 8 different varieties of mocha. I highly recommend the 63% dark chocolate mocha – and will have to ration myself. The mall also boasts an excellent international food court with about 20 different small, inexpensive restaurants.

We are a couple blocks from Pike Place market, Pacific Place mall, the major downtown hotels, the convention center and the opera house. There are so many shops and restaurants in a 5-block radius I could live here and never send a dime of my paycheck home. I may be trekking across to work in-office more often – and my kids will be volunteering to go to work with me for the day!

I feel like this! Too many nights spent working rather than sleeping… and tonight, again, could turn into an all-nighter.