TAPP Blog

We asked working mother, Ariane to tell us about the arrangement she has made with her company to work part-time and how it has impacted her life.

Aahh! Just picture it: the air shimmers through the heat rising off the hoods of a seemingly
infinite line of cars and trucks crawling along a crumbling expressway like a giant, exhausted inchworm. The steamy interior of a city bus on a rainy day – elbows, backpacks, and umbrellas jabbing you as your arm falls asleep while you hold on for dear life to a virus-ridden bar over your head. Squeezing your way onto a train car, the scent of body odor and who knows what else in your nostrils, while you futilely attempt to avoid being touched by too many strangers.

I recently had dinner with a friend ‘Emma’ who is expecting her first child. A very exciting time for her and her husband. I asked her whether she had decided what she was going to do after the baby was born – stay home, go back to work full time, or work part-time. She said that her company didn’t have part-time as an option and she was planning to go back full time. I laughed and said that there was a great resource I had heard about – TAPP- which might be able to assist if she decided she did want to work part-time.

One only needs to walk in my front door or glance into my car to know that I am not an organized person.  I love everything to be clean and in its place and though it’s how my mother raised us to be, I am just not capable of it.  My sister inherited the neat gene leaving me surrounded by dust and clutter.  I take offense at well meaning people and magazine articles that tell me I should just do this or that and everything would be so simple and so much better.  Just take 5 minutes a day to run a cloth over the furniture or convert empty shoeboxes into the most adorable toy holders.  If I had 5 extra minutes a day I would put it to better use – like showering, or cutting my children’s nails instead of letting them grind down naturally like rodents.  So, I’d like to take five minutes to tell you what I do to get by and stay sane with 3 small children and two jobs.  And it has nothing to do with shoeboxes.

You recently published your first children’s book. That’s exciting! What is the story about and what was your inspiration?