Grumble Grumble Grumble

It looks like Tot has pinkeye. Which means that all plans for the week, including grading and moving books into my office, getting together with a colleague for a good end-of-year grumble session complete with drinks, and, on Friday, moving stuff into the new house, all of which depended on daycare, are pretty much dashed. Grumble grumble grumble. And Tot woke up in the night and came into our bed, natch, so I'm so frigging exhausted. Family bed be damned, but I can't sleep with Tot stretching and turning and hogging the bed.

I wish I had some eternally patient single friend who would come over and hang out with me while I'm in pinkeye jail with Tot. Luckily, pinkeye has not stopped Tot from happily playing with his cars. That he's not completely miserable is the only saving grace of the whole thing. Instead, I'm the one who's miserable, realizing the serious limitations of coffee. I gave up the Coffee Corporation a while back, trying to save my stomach and money. Now I see the error of my ways.

It would be a whole lot easier to be blase about the whole disarrangement of a week's worth of plans if I had gotten enough sleep. Sigh.

I have to call Tot's daycare, my dental appointment, and his doctor for an appointment. Impossible feats, I tell you. So.frigging.tired.

Update 2:42 pm

Tot was nearly down for a nap when I jostled him too much and though he tried to go back to sleep, now he's up and driving me crazy (throwing rather than rolling his damn ball -- I can't believe that more people don't go insane with toddlers -- how many frigging times do I have to say that he can't throw it but only roll it, and I know he knows what I mean -- grrr).

And now the damn landlord of our new rental is driving me insane with hir antics and crap. I'm really beginning to think that this is the most ill-fated move ever for a variety of reasons. I'm beginning to hate everyone right now, except the sweet blogger-friends who've left me comments. (And, of course, at just this moment, Tot throws another damn ball. I'm just going to melt down, people. Just like the Wicked Witch of the West. Please. Throw water on me.)

Some of Us Never Learn

So Tot is still sick -- ear and upper respiratory infections. AL has also been sick since the holiday. And guess who's sick now?

Guess who still hasn't worked on her syllabus? And is now late with her annual report? And has less than a month to write a well-written article? Remember when I said that being a mom means that you can't leave everything to the last minute because the last minute is when everyone's going to get sick? Well, I may be smart, but I'm not wise. I haven't learned this lesson yet. Luckily, I have the weekend before the syllabi really need to be done. And Kinkos is open 24 hours (somewhere, not near here).

What a dork.

I'm keeping Tot at home because he doesn't look good and because I can, in contrast to how it usually is when I can't stay home unless it's really bad. Also, I'm sick too, though not terribly. It's also super hot; we've been having a terrible humid heat wave.

Tot is trying to say letters to Superwhy right now. He says these sounds in a very staccato way; it's very cute. Poor guy.

Telegram from the Sleep-Deprived

I wanted to respond to this and say something about how parenting is more about contentment and fulfilled-ness and not about participating in pleasurable activities (for frigg's sake: if you want a pleasurable activity, try a movie, a book, pick up a sport -- do NOT have a kid), but I'm too busy hating not just my life but everything right now. After, not one but two nights of sleeping through, Tot stayed up most of last night crying and wailing. I finally got to bed -- with Tot in tow -- around 5am, just in time to wake up and get AL to work by 8. I'm supposed to go to the farm. I'm supposed to get my syllabi done. I'm supposed to be looking for cars. I'm supposed to be a human being. No go on all fronts.

Must call doctor. Must then figure out if I can get Tot to daycare for two hours so I can get some frigging sleep. (Nope.) Must call farm. I'm feeling musty today.

Stop.

Blue Accountablogging

I'm feeling low. My grandfather died last week; while my father was willing to pay for the tickets, I got sick and Tot was just finishing up an ear infection, so we didn't go to the funeral. My father and I had it out, finally, over some unfinished business. Members of my family are having catastrophically hard times right now. Lots of death. I'm just feeling low, like everything's dismal and unlikely to get better. But really I'm probably just worn out, not terribly healthy, sore from working at the CSA, and grieving, not just the loss of my grandfather, but the loss of the way I wish my family were. I know that an important part of being an adult is to accept the way things are and stop getting angry or upset that things -- and people -- aren't different. But I think I need to grieve right now, instead of telling myself I should be over it by now. Which I should. It's just more of the same. But I'm obviously upset about it. I don't have the strength to fight too hard with myself.

Which explains why I've been home for two hours and really haven't done anything that I set out to do. I need to finish up the spring quarter (we have a really late grade turn-in date, mercifully, considering that this is the first quarter that I haven't had everything in more than a week early, but then it's been a very eventful end-of-quarter). I have revisions, final papers, and some other stuff to look at in one class. The other class is just final projects and assigning grades to things like participation. I'm not going to get all this done this week. Not even close.

Then there are other things I really need to get to, like this article I'm trying to write and for which I really should have a draft written by the end of the month. That's not likely to happen, but still. And then there's the annual report, which I really need to pound out. Then there's planning for the summer, but I'm not even going to put that on my plate just now.

There are other things I'd like to do today, like work out, do the dishes, and try to take care of myself, since I'm so run-down and borderline sick it's crazy.

So what to do? Originally I was thinking an hour for research, an hour for the annual report, then two hours for grading. But if I do that now, then it'll be 4:30 by the time I'm done and I won't get anything else done, not even, likely, some working out, which I think I need. Maybe 45 minutes for each, then an hour and a half for grading. Then I'll be done by 3:30. That sounds better.

Here's what I've done so far: made the bed, threw some clothes in the hamper, cleaned up the toddler toys all over the floor, watered the plants and took care of the patio, read lots of blogs and wrote a couple emails. Pretty pathetic.

Here's what I'm going to do:

1. Do dishes, so I get that instant satisfaction that comes from being able to see progress.> DONE!!
2. Work on research for 45 minutes. DONE!!
3. Work on the annual report for 45 minutes. I think I spent way more than 45 minutes here, but it felt good to make clear and visible progress on this puppy!
4. Pump? Eat? Mmmm. Swiss chard. Wow.
   
5. Grade for 1-1/2 hours. Hmmmm. Not so much.
6. Work out.
7. Take shower.

I realize this is the most boring post in the world, but I need that public accountability. I'm depressed; what can I say?

Trying to Honor My Emotions while Focusing on What I Can Control

So, there's a lot going on right now -- and as is usual probably for all of us, that which has been most tumultuous is pretty much unbloggable. But beyond that, I've been feeling pretty hemmed in by my life lately. AL drives me to work, then I'm inside my building teaching and running around until pretty much the second that AL comes to pick me up. Then we pick up Tot, and I'm mom again. What I'm saying is that I get very little time to myself. I guess this is what my chair meant when s/he said that being on the tenure track and having kids at the same time takes discipline. What's made it worse the last few days is that I've been grading, grading, grading -- and so even when I'm home, I'm holing myself up in the bedroom trying to get stuff done. I really don't feel well in my body and know that the answer is going to have to be to get some exercise, but I'm really struggling to figure out when I'm going to be able to do that. I know I'm not completely insane, because a colleague who is also junior faculty says that she doesn't know how I manage at all, because she's running around like a beheaded chicken without a child. Still, I'd really like to live to see my child grow up. And I really feel like I'm run down in a serious way. I'd rather not wait until the heart attack happens. But when? When am I going to fit in some exercise? And how without putting the entire household out? I'm sure that this one is going to take someone else to figure it out, someone who is not staying up late blogging after grading after a particularly hellish day.

Sometimes I don't know whether I'm an idiot for the choices I've made. I guess that's not a very productive thought just now though.

So I'm going to meet with my mentor about the big picture of what I'm doing from now until I go up for tenure. I have to say that lately I've been dealing with the minutiae, really just running from thing to thing and hoping it's enough to keep everyone happy. (Can I just indulge in my bleak mood for one second and say that my running around lately has not been focused on whether I'm happy? But then, that may not really be fair. I'm happy when I'm looking at the six goslings following their parents. I'm happy when I look into Tot's face. Sometimes I feel a wave of love for my life; I'm just tired now. And achy. And dispirited.) So the question of what I want to accomplish and how my goals for P&T fit into that has been interesting and productive. While I thought last year when I was writing out my plan that I really would write the weird fat book where I discuss three different related heads of the hydra, I've thought lately that even though the weird Three-Headed Hydra book would be super-cool, and there would definitely be productive and cool stuff to see when I put the heads together, it really would short-shrift each Hydra Head. And because of stuff going on in my midst lately, it's clear I have even more to say than I thought about one particular Hydra Head. Even in the diss, this Hydra Head was pushing at 50+ pages; one of my readers commented that he thought that the overstuffed chapter probably suggested that there was a book in there waiting to come out. So now I'm thinking of writing the obvious and more conventional book: One-Headed Hydra. It's hard to figure out whether it would actually sell, but I'm not angling for the book by tenure, only a realistic plan for articles by tenure.

There's another set of concerns I'm interested in -- and these I'm sort of collecting into a second book. So I can write aspects of either and still feel like I have a trajectory. I like this. I like feeling like there is a plan. Like I actually have something to say to my mentor. This is exciting.

Good Friday

I'm working in slow motion, trying to ready myself for next week. Next week! Sigh. Absurdist Tot went from totally okay and running around during the day on Wednesday to snotty and watery-eyed Wednesday night. So no daycare yesterday. And today they're closed, but it doesn't matter because AT has green gunk coming out his nose and yellow out his eyes. Poor thing. He's napping now -- one of God's small miracles. Yesterday, we had to resort to sit up nursing because the pressure in his head when he was lying down made nursing impossible. Poor little guy.

So I did manage to get some work done yesterday -- solid progress toward the new quarter -- all thanks to Absurdist Lover. So with the wee bairn asleep in the middle of the floor and the beautiful day shut out (we'll take a walk later -- Absurdist Tot loves going out for walks), I'm asking myself what small step I could accomplish at this point that would make me feel a bit closer to the goal. Yesterday I managed to roughly outline the quarter -- wow, a quarter is a short period of time! I always worry that there are better readings out there somewhere, but clearly I won't be able to even use all the ones I'm excited about. Well, it's a new prep, an experiment. Some of my favorite classes (gosh, maybe all of them, now that I think about it) have been experiments. I guess I could start to order the stuff -- or I could start some of the other aspects of the syllabus. It's easier to just open a new tab and start looking for even more texts and films. I know! I wrote some stuff down longhand that needs to be typed. That kind of super-easy stuff is definitely what I should do. (They're actually learning objectives -- and our campus, like so many others, is very hip on including learning objectives on the syllabus.) So that's a big step in the right direction!

I made bread today, though this one looks funky. Mostly, we're just mopping up Absurdist Tot, though AL has his usual long list of projects keeping him busy.

By the way, if you need to laugh -- and who doesn't? -- read Paul Reiser's Babyhood. This guy knows what he's talking about -- but he's so frigging funny that I'm reading and trying to hold my laughter in so I don't wake the baby. It's the kind of funny because it's so true. Oh.my.god. So frigging funny.

***Update 5pm***

When I finally settled down into typing out those handwritten learning objectives I was talking about above, AT woke up from his nap crying. I was in the bedroom with the door open -- a pretty normal occurrence and he usually just toddles in to me, but this time he was looking for me in the kitchen and wailing. He had all this gunk coming out of his eyes. When I tried to open the blinds, he shut his eyes tight for ten minutes, even when we closed the blinds and put him down on his boppy, even when he was nursing. The gunk kept coming out of his eyes. AL suctioned his nose and two seconds later it was running green again. Really, he's about as sick as I've ever seen him, with big red eyes. When I went to call the doctor and handed him to AL, AT started wailing again. This is not my usual active child. He didn't want to be put down until, finally, he saw that he had unimpeded access to a couple of DVDs he likes to play with. Then I figured he would be okay. We started up Follow that Bird, and -- get this -- he looked to me when the Grouch's Anthem started up. (I like to sing it. See what kinds of madness I start?) I even got a glimpse of his usual sparkley-eyed self when I sang it. Now, he's watching Big Bird's adventures and hanging on to one of his socks. We now have a doctor's appointment for noon tomorrow. Poor guy.

Note to self: You can no longer wait until the last possible moment to write a syllabus, because that's when AT's going to get sick. Or you're going to get sick. Or whatever. Moms are more organized because of their extremely limited time. You're a mom now. It's time to realize that the last possible moment is about two weeks before you think it is.

The Count is counting the telephone poles. All is right in the world. ("Once you set your heart to moving on. . .there ain't no road too long." Words of wisdom.)

Today Is Brought to You by Day and Org: Daycare, Organic Food, and Organizing My Day

It's official. Before Absurdist Tot is old enough to move into the next room at daycare (which is maybe preschool -- and I guess there is time), I'm going to have to find a new daycare. When we dropped him off today, I heard the teacher (who is not the usual teacher, but still a pretty decent one) tell the kids that because they were good at whatever they were doing, they could go get a sucker. At 10:30 in the morning! I'm sorry. I know I'm probably much more extreme about controlling what my kid eats than a lot of parents (organic everything), but I think giving kids sugar (not to mention HFCS and food dye) and nutrition-less food as a reward for good academic behavior at 10:30 AM is. . .well, not criminal, but certainly going to set up crap behavior as well as sugar-related behavior problems throughout the day. It's not that I want to keep AT from candy forever -- it's really just almost impossible -- but not as a reward for school and not before lunch. I'm sorry. No. I don't like it. I don't want my kid eating that toxic crap, and I don't want him to feel excluded from having what everyone else has.

I also just feel like they have too many kids in AT's room. I believe the official and legal ratio is 1 and 6, but some of the other daycares we looked at had 1 and 4 at his age. I like our daycare, how it doesn't feel all clinical and institutional and the people are warm and friendly, but I'll be very happy next week when the woman who made us fall in love with our daycare will be back.

One of the reasons we went with this daycare is because the food was up to us, so AT wouldn't be eating a bunch of organic-but-state-approved food. Sigh. Food and daycare. What a nightmare!

I wish the whole organic thing weren't such an uphill battle, especially when the argument is, at least to me, so obvious. Kids eat a lot more vegetables and fruits than adults do. With their more vulnerable and still developing systems (remember, we worry about when to give them milk and peanut butter and all that because their systems are fragile and they could develop an allergy at that age that they would not have later), pesticides are much more difficult for their little livers to deal with. There's research on this. Dr. Sears's Baby Book and the website contain wonderful discussions on the dangers of pesticides for children and how pesticides include brain-damaging toxins! The Pesticide Action Network (yes, a special interest group, so they are biased, but then so is our conventional food system who I swear is putting out propaganda suggesting that organic is only for effete upper-class individuals who have the luxury to buy gourmet food -- damn it, organic is not gourmet! it's old-fashioned, non-toxic food! and you know what? my organic salad fixings are really not that much more expensive than the conventional, even in winter across the country from the state that's putting out most of the organic stuff in winter -- and I don't have to worry that I'm going to be paying later in health costs) also has great info and research on the harm of pesticides on children. And yet state-mandated food for daycare is not organic. It should be. It should be, dammit.

So AT is at daycare. Which means it's time for me to be productive. I don't feel like night-of-the-living-dead, as I've felt on and off for the last few days. In fact, AL suggested doing something fun, but something in me was immediately against it -- maybe because daycare is supposed to be when I get things done, and I have a long list of things I haven't been doing and while I don't exactly feel like a failure in every direction (because I did get that conference paper done for now), I know I could feel better about my workload. So.

1. I want to read some research and take some notes. I've got two different articles I could read for. I haven't decided which I'll read for, but I know if I do this, I'll definitely feel like I've gotten something done. DONE: That is, I looked at two smaller pieces of research, only one of which is at all really helpful. I want to look at the big piece for the other article, but it's clear to me I don't have time today. It's okay. Really, Earnie, it's okay.
   
2. I really need to try driving the car. If I could drive that car, it would make a huge difference in my feeling of freedom and independence. I'd be able to go to the store when we need more food. I could run to school when I need to rather than dragging the whole family. Can you tell I'm trying to convince myself here, because driving a 5-speed is just so damn scary? I tried driving with AL, but it freaked him out and so we never got out of the complex. I'm super-frustrated. Am I going to have to pay money to pay someone to teach me -- someone who is used to people being unsure and vulnerable in order to learn how to drive the damn car?
   
3. I've got to work on the elective. I haven't firmed up my reading list and need to. Because so many of my books are out of reach, I'm going to have to ILL some books in order to make copies. It's so damn stupid, but there it is. I'm also just plain having trouble coming up with some readings.
4. Workout? DONE
   
5. Pump, since I'm going away soon and AT needs a cache of breastmilk. DONE
   

I feel so much like that moment in Parenthood when Steve Martin is having a super bad day, having just found out he's not getting the partnership at work and has quit and his wife says she's pregnant, but he's got to go coach Little League and she asks if he really has to, and he responds: "my whole life is have to." It's not true in my case, of course, and I love AL and AT and my job, but. . .well, sitting in a hotel room watching bad TV without having to worry about whether it's scrambling AT's brain and making him ADD sounds pretty good right now.

It's ridiculous. I'm all stressed out. But if I just spend an hour on each of the above things, it'll be time to pick AT up. (No time for fun -- waaa. And it's so sunny and nice -- the snow has completely melted off our patio.) So I better quit whining and just get on it! Why is that so hard? (I think because I used to have so much time to explore my feelings and get my inner house in order -- and now there's no time for that. And I have a pretty messy inner house. I've got to get things done now or they don't get done.)

Please remind me to write about the following things: being on a search committee, because some of the things I found out really surprised me and would be good, I think, to share, and the book I'm reading on boys. Let me know if either of these pique your interest.

*****
*Pouf*

Tot's in Daycare, So I Should Work: Blogging for Organization

Okay, my beautiful child is in daycare for the day. I did NOT like that I saw the older kids watching TV with popsicle sticks in their mouths at 10am! I realize this is not the worst thing to see in a daycare, but what's the point of being so careful about organic everything at home if he's going to get high fructose corn syrup and other poisons at daycare? I don't like it. Absurdist Lover does not thing it's the worst thing in the world.

I also did not like that Absurdist Tot starting crying again today as we left. He got this panicky look even when he got into the room. It's just a phase, right? Please let it just be a phase. Please let this not be some signal that he's got good reason to be unhappy there. They always say that he has great days there; that he only cries for a few minutes when we leave and then he's fine. Of course, if there were anything bad going on, that's exactly what they'd say. Not that I really think there is anything bad going on. But it's very hard to know. Oy!

But anyway, he's in daycare today. Which means I cannot waste the day reading blogs and being slothful, which is what I want to do since I'm still sick. I must get organized. Since having him in daycare is supposed to be about getting work done, I need to make some movement on my conference paper. It would be nice to get something done on other projects as well, but I'm flexible on that point. I also want to bake some more bread because we got organic flour and butter -- and we just need bread! I also need a shower. (I know, probably TMI, but I'll tell you -- with an active toddler just as with a baby, it's very hard to get away long enough to take a shower. And when the baby is sick too and wants to nurse and sleeps with you in the bed again because he's having trouble sleeping on his own, well, watching movies all day is a cinch, but taking a shower or keeping AT away from the tissues is very very difficult.)

I'm having trouble organizing all this disparate stuff I want to do, so I'm going to do what is best for me (and probably boring for you), and write through it. Bread is great because it takes so many different steps that I can work on it, then go to take a shower, work, read, work out (something else I wanted to do today that if I do manage this I should do this BEFORE I take a shower), and come back. So, here's the list:

• Bake bread. Done.
  
• Work on Conference Paper. Have typed in notes for all 20 pages. Need to make some decisions about how to focus the thing. Probably need to print it out again so I can see what there is. I wish I could do more, but this is probably it for the day, since it's already 3pm.
  
• Take shower. Done.
  
• Workout (maybe). Amazingly, I worked out. I'm exhausted.
  
• This is as far as I got in my list. I'll have to do the other things betwixt and between. Gotta go pick up the kiddo. (Do you know -- I don't have much time to contemplate this, but I can't believe I have a child?!)
  
• Think about submitting something to Cool Little Conference.
• Look for any open and interesting panels for Big Icky Conference that is in Urban City and so would at least pay for my ticket to Urban City.
  
• Do some more research work?
  

On Writing

So this week has been totally useless for writing. There's no way that I'm going to be able to make up the amount of pages I wanted to get done this week today. Especially since we're going to the new-to-us natural foods store. We're actually very excited about this. I hope to find some granola element to this town -- but not too granola. I did an internet search and found a meetup list for people doing attachment parenting and other "alternative" stuff. I would totally categorize myself in that camp, especially when it comes to my commitment to organic food and breastfeeding, but we don't do cloth diapers (which they listed as one of their commitments) or much babywearing (mostly because from the get-go Absurdist Tot was very active and it didn't seem safe to have him flopping around in a sling, which wouldn't hold him anyway, though I did walk 10 miles once with him in a Bjorn on a pilgrimage, which I think should prove my alternative cred, but doesn't). So we're like attachment parenting with a practical bent. Why do I think we're not granola enough for them? Sigh.

Anyway, I really did want to write about writing. Since Dr. Crazy was writing about her writing process, I've been thinking about how useless the word counter on the left of my blog is. There are really two phases to my writing. One is freewriting and dialogue. Basically I write a lot of crap for a very long time as I attempt to write through my ideas, figuring out what they are. I outline a bunch of different organizations, usually, because that's usually the hardest part for me, since everything I think seems connected to everything else and I really wish sometimes I could write in a non-linear way (which I know is the promise of hypertext, but I haven't done it). The other part of this is that I research and read related texts, pulling out quotes that are interesting to me and writing in response to them. Then there's the second phase. Way late in my process, I finally figure that I have to put something together and maybe I steal from the actual text of my freewriting and dialogue or maybe not. Often this is a rush job. In the best case scenario, I put something together and then ask a writing group to read it. With the piece I'm working on now (if ignoring it for over a week can actually be said to be "working" and I think it is because I'm "getting some space from it" which counts as working on it, if not actual writing, in my book), there may be no writing group on it, just a frantic click of Send.

Anyway, all this means that word counters are actually only useful when I get to the "putting something together" phase. But I'm writing, really I am, even while I'm doing all the freewriting and researching. I want a way to be able to document that I am writing, just not coming up with stuff for some final word count.

My goal for this quarter is to write 100 pages of crap, which means 10 pages per week, obviously starting next week. I think, unfortunately, that the freewriting has to be counted in this total, though wouldn't it be wonderful to come out of 10 weeks with 3 or 4 articles? Alas, it is not to be. Not for me. But if I wrote 10 pages of crap, even freewriting crap, for the article I'm working on now, I feel sure I'd be quite far on the article by the end of that. Because there really is no rushing my process (I need so much time to mull!), I guess I should just accept it. Just as I have to accept that this week's not included in my goal. Obviously when Absurdist Tot is actually in daycare, I'll be able to get this writing done. Until then, I've got to carve out some time to work. But probably not today. We've got too many things on the docket. And soon, AT needs to have his nap so we can get going.

Back to Normal

The world is going back to normal. My colleagues are going back to campus. Workers have been industriously clearing snow from the drives, pushing it around with big red scrapers and throwing salt on the ground like chicken feed. It's snowing. It's coming down diagonally, sometimes sideways, out my big sliding glass door. (It frosted on the inside of the sliding glass door yesterday morning. We have a major draft and circulation problem in this place. Talking to this place's central command is one of the many things on my list.) Unlike many, I am blissfully indoors, cozy in my thermals watching Dinosaur Train and occasionally spooning yogurt into Absurdist Tot's mouth, when he comes around. (I know. Absurdist Tot's only fourteen months, and TV is not recommended at this age. I'm a terrible mother.)

Back in Grad City, it's -10 degrees. Here it's about 15 degrees, not that I know it in my bones.

Yesterday, I felt ill most of the day. Today, my sore throat is gone. Yay. (Knock on wood.)

Back when the world was shut down, we had Big Plans. Now, I just think cozying up in the house sounds like a great idea. But I haven't been out of the house since before Christmas. I'm sure I should get out.

(Forget it. Domestic tranquility is blown. AT just shook the table and spilled my coffee. Oy!)

Though I've been in the house for a long time, I didn't get depressed and listless very much -- instead I've been working on projects, mostly getting AT on a decent sleep schedule. He was going to bed later and later; a good night was 11pm. Now he's going to bed around 9, with the attendant waking up at 8. And though I know I'm about to jinx it big time, the last two nights he's actually slept through until morning. I'm pretty sure that this reversion to night waking has been because of teething. I love sleeping through the night. I really do. Mostly because I stay up late. It's happened many times that right at the moment I'm tired and ready to go to bed, AT wakes up and wants to be nursed and coddled, often refusing to be put down. I'm all into attachment parenting and stuff, but actual co-sleeping, with AT in the bed, means I get very little sleep. Not because I'm a worried mom, though there is that - I don't want him to fall out of bed, and since we don't have a bedframe and are perennially poor, we can't and don't want to install rails -- but because he's a very fitful sleeper, sometimes sitting up and falling forward, often turning over in strange positions until he's perpendicular rather than parallel to us other people. It's really a nightmare for me.

Our Big Plans really are all about Building (my theme of the year, following Profgrrrrl's lead) on the foundation we've lain last year. We need to get caught up with doctor's visits (regular for AT; doctor, dentist, and vision for me) and start visiting daycares. We're determined to get AT into daycare by the end of the month. And I have Big Plans too. I have to prepare the elective I'm teaching in spring quarter -- and there's a lot of stuff to do and read there -- and then there are my Big Plans for scholarship. I really want to get some Serious Work done. My dissertation was complete and defended two and half years ago, and I've yet to publish an article on it. Lately I've been doing a fair amount of reading and researching for various articles I'm proposing, and I believe in that work more than ever. Now that's a great way to start the new year! So I want to get regular writing done. Over the next three months, I want to write 100 crappy pages. It sounds like a lot, but really it's only a page or so each day. And I also need to catch up on my reading. I read an article last night. I really need to do that daily or as often as possible in this parenting life.

Okay, I don't think Sesame Street's focus on hibernation today is helpful to my sense of get-up-and-go at all. Of course, AT's biting all his toys rather than watching anyway. He doesn't sit still long enough for me to read him a story! He thinks books are for eating. He's pushing his toys around the room. What a nut.

As discombobulated as this post is, I think it's the most accurate representation of my life. I look at the window and think of my research, my crochet project, the doctor, teaching. Then I snap back to whatever Absurdist Tot's doing, his need for food, a new diaper, whatever.

I think I have to go. The entire family likes poached eggs on toast. And that means the Cook's got to get in the kitchen.

One of Those Days

You know the kind -- where even though the baby's happily playing in his crib instead of crying and really you could sleep longer all the myriad things you have to figure out how to do in one day start flapping their wings at you so sleep is impossible and so you grudgingly get up because you have to write them all down so you can get the damn flying to-do birds landed and pinned on paper.

So today I need a list. Forgive me for such boring blogging.

1. Meet with IT .
2. Fill out dumb paperwork again because the last time wasn't perfect and walk it over to the appropriate office for reimbursement. FOILED! Needed a new receipt and won't get it until tomorrow morning. Which means I won't get reimbursed for a whole other week. GAH! But at least it's off my list for now.
   
3. Meet with MIA student. Got stood up.
4. Write up course description for my spring elective.
5. Grade at least three projects.
6. Send email with assignment to both classes. -- DONE!!!
7. Work a teensy bit on my article (though I did do internet research last night when I should've been relaxing and figured out that looking up everything that's ever been written on my topic is really not going to help make my argument).
   
8. Prep.
9. Meet with colleagues for writing group.

You know, it doesn't seem like so much now. I just have to get it done in about 3-1/2 hours of focused amazingness, though maybe some of it doesn't need to be done while at school. I'm not an organized person by nature or nurture, but I'm really liking being more organized now. I'm figuring this out, how much I like to have things in some kind of order, but more so how much I like to have tasks written out. Without tasks written out, I'm lost and overwhelmed. Weird. I think this is part of me figuring out who I am as a scholar-teacher-colleague.

Telegram from Apartment on the Pond

We moved. Or are moving. In slow motion, really. This complex is right near a pond, so we've got geese and ducks honking outside. And the friendliest squirrels ever, who came right up to our door. It's rainy and autumnal and green. I love the fall. I love wearing more clothes. I love being cozy.

I had a good talk with my department chair, who said assured me that getting tenure and parenting are both doable, but require self-discipline, something I've never been long on. But it's clear to me that when I've got an hour to do something, I can sure get it done without all the hand-wringing that used to take hours upon hours. So I'm pretty hopeful I can manage everything. My big goal for myself and for this here blog is to start working on my scholarship in earnest and recording my progress.

Absurdist Baby is so funny. He's sleeping on his boppy on the floor and keeps rolling around and stretching, then turning over and trying to go back to sleep. Will he, so I can blog? Nope, now he is up.

That's all folks.

Random Non-Bullets of Crap in Which I Try to Talk Myself into Working

Yesterday, I was just about to write about my thoughts about being an academic and a (new) parent, but right at that moment, Absurdist Baby woke up from his nap. And now Absurdist Lover just looked in on me and now I'm staring at AB again through the gate that separates the kitchen/baby area from the computers. Clearly it's not going to happen today either.

I have grading to do. Revisions on one project and then another project. We're on the quarter system here, so I think this blah I-don't-want-to-do-work-and-can't-seem-to-fret-myself-into-a-good-panic-about-it feeling is just the usual mid-semester blues I'd be feeling if I were on the semester system. (Obviously, this means I'm totally out of sync with the rest of the academic world, most of which just started a couple weeks ago --and the honeymoon period is just ending for you and your students about now, meanwhile my students and I are staring at each other with wild eyes scrambling for the escape hatch.) I really need to do this grading today, which means asking Absurdist Lover to take care of AB. The truth is I just want to lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling -- especially because when I woke up, the baby was in bed. AL tells me that he woke up at 3am and was inconsolable (natch) and came to bed with us. Usually I don't sleep through such things. But I don't remember.

So I've got a case of the ughs. I need to work and don't want to.

I also need to call my grandmother today. She was diagnosed with breast cancer a while back and it's now in her spine. I found this out from my brother's away message on IM. Not only am I unhappy to hear that my grandmother has an inoperable (but slow-moving) cancer, but I'm not thrilled that I was only lucky to find out. Now she's in a special nursing facility where they are going to treat her ancillary problems in order to strengthen her so she can undergo more chemo. The last time I talked to her, she sounded a bit drugged up.

In happy news, we're moving to a cheaper place. We're ecstatic because this place we've got has some major problem with the water system. The water comes from a well and smells all sulfury, which I'm told is normal. But the plumbing in this place is totally substandard. There are leaks all over the place. The plumbing was better in the travel trailer. Seriously. Even I can look at the plumbing and tell you it's crap.

Maybe I should take a shower and get up and fake it. I surely shouldn't go on kvetching. Maybe I'll grade then take a shower as a bonus. AB is laughing hysterically. I want to catch some of his sweetness.

Promises, Promises

I've been wanting all weekend to write a post weighing in on being an academic and a parent -- a subject that exploded around the academic blog community last week -- but I got caught up in a classic academic parent problem: my time is not my own on the weekends and so I never had clear-headed time to post. I'm hoping to catch up on that soon, because I co-opted Profgrrrl's comments and clearly have more to say/explore.

In other news, I'm getting together with colleagues for lunch (yay! having lunch with people like I'm a person rather than a teaching drone!) today! And AL and I are also trying to move so that we can have more money per month and so get AB into daycare.

More blogging coming soon. I hope.

August: Getting Down to Business

Suddenly, it's August. It's back-to-school time. It's back-to-the-job market time. It's where-did-the-summer-go time. Time for all that self-recrimination. I think I'll just skip that for now. It's pretty useless anyway. With working two jobs, getting bigger and more unwieldily pregnant, and family and Absurdist Lover stuff, well, I've been doing my best -- and to anyone who has anything to say about my not doing enough, I can only say sorry and then, more defensively, tough.

So I promised myself that when August came, I would get down to business with job market stuff. What does this mean? I need to revise my letter, my STP, and other materials, but really this means getting some articles done and out into the "under consideration" world. I have the article that I was working on with Senior Scholar (for a couple years now actually) that I'm determined to get into some sort of shape and send back to him for his comments and revision plans. I also want to revise my first diss chapter into something fit for a journal that I greatly admire. I'm going to do my best to work daily, even if that means doing something wittle and teeny-tiny. As luck would have it, yesterday, the first of August, a.k.a. the month of getting down to business, a friend overseas IM'd me and asked me to help her out with some research. Then she sent me some of her writing, and I sent her some of my writing -- and we made a promise that by the end of the month we'd get drafts of our pieces done. Making plans counts to me as working. But what have I done today? I'm committing to working daily in a public way. And then I'm going to consider what really needs to be done -- and probably check some resources for any recent scholarship that I may have missed. That's enough for one day, I think.

Plus, I have limited time. Absurdist Lover is away for the weekend on a retreat of sorts, so I'm on my own and can devote some time to this work, which is very lucky since often I just want to hang out with him and do nothing that approaches productive anything. But I do have to attend a performance that my littlest sister (get this, ten years old) is very excited about a bit later today. It boggles the mind, but the tickets are $15. $15 for a kid's play!!! As in $15! I can't quite wrap my head around it. Also, there are BBC comedies I want to watch this evening -- and cross-stitch I want to do. So even with this late start, it's a full day.

Aborted Post with Amendations

Post from Sunday included here by the sheer luck of the blogger save feature:

Get this. I know that Sunday is my only day to get the copious SAT homework done -- I might have to do any one of over fifty, maybe even a hundred, dreadful math problems on the board at the drop of a hat. After all, the students will only choose the ones that are hard or complicated or tricky to review on the board. I know as days pass that Sunday is the fateful day. It is 8:38pm. Have I done the homework? No. Have I even cracked the book? No. The book is in the car. I have not retrieved it. This is bad. This is very bad. This is exactly the same as me having a stack of papers. Luckily, I don't actually teach tomorrow, so I have a little bit more time, but really I should've done it today because I won't have that much time tomorrow, even with staying at my folks' place so I don't have to spend the evening driving back home.

Why didn't I do my homework? Partly because I am a procrastinating fool. Partly because I am catastrophically depressed. I don't know what to tell you, how much to say, especially if AL reads my blog (which I doubt), but basically he and I are not together. Things are bad. Very bad. I'm crying all the time, which is basically what I was doing when I was too busy to be doing my homework. (This has been the first free day since the shit hit the fan when he returned from seeing his kids -- yesterday I had to go to both a bar mitzvah and a play, so I couldn't just mope and cry hysterically as the main event of the day -- though I cried in the shower, which is a very good and inevitable place to cry, by the way.)

I am now staring down being a single mom. Of course, there is nothing wrong with single momhood -- in fact there is a good organization called Single Mothers by Choice that I once looked into -- but the point is that this is not by choice. Had I planned to get pregnant on my own, I would've chosen a time when I was more settled, when I lived in an apartment or, heaven help us, a house, rather than a camper and had a good full-time job, rather than two part-time ones that in blasted Urban Home City are STILL not enough for me to get an apartment closer in (I can almost afford an apartment near here, but the commute would still be the same, if not longer). Have I mentioned that I'm pregnant and bloody tired? The financial aspect of not being able to get out of the camper is driving me nuts ("look, here's all of our stuff, our bed, our outside chairs -- all the stuff that reminds me of ours, ours, ours") and the emotional part -- well, I'm not well. Who's going to rub my back when it hurts? Who am I going to show my growing belly to? Who is going to comfort me and tell me that everything will be all right when I'm scared? No one. Maybe I'm wallowing in self-pity here, but. . .my life has turned into a bloody talk show, and though I feel like I should have some spine, I'm really no longer sure why.

So the SAT class is not going well. I'm considering explaining to the office that the first week of the SAT class happened to coincide with the complete shattering of my present and future life (poor Absurdist Fetus) -- and that's why things are not going so well in class. Like I told the students that the answers to the homework were in the back of the book. They weren't. The students couldn't check their own homework. Of course, there was no outcry or anything, which led me to the inevitable conclusion that few students actually did their homework. We're also totally behind the syllabus. And I suck at teaching the math because I don't know the problems very well. (I'm pretty well prepped on the book I was trained on, but this is a different book. I was supposed to prep the book out before the class started, but there was too much going on and I felt like shit so I didn't, figuring that I'd be able to prep it before each class. Well, my life ended on Monday night, which happened to coincide with the night before the SAT class started. So, I've been a wee bit distracted. I also started the accounting job last Monday. Basically last week was nothing like the week before it -- and I was totally ill prepared for any of its revelations.)

The accounting job is fine. Everything was in a serious mess, but I've got most of the accounts payable under control.


It was at that point that my laptop decided to go black. I burst into tears. Everything's broken, I cried. The laptop hasn't turned on since. (Absurdist Lover -- or perhaps I should call him Absurdist Ex -- agreed to look at it. We're sharing the camper -- he stays there when I'm at my folks' place.) Tonight I did my taxes. Of course, I owe $1,000. Inevitable. Last night I couldn't get the folks' TV to work. It's just been one thing after another. I wonder if I should change my blog name, because the absurdity is getting too high for me to keep a sense of humor about it. (Could the blog title be a lightning rod for all absurdity -- from long lost lovers to electrical shorts? You can tell I'm in trouble when I get this superstitious.)

In more recent news, I found out today that some SAT students had done some of their homework; none had done all of it. If their scores fail to rise, it will not be my fault. I indicated to the SAT office people that I was having a really hard time, that last week didn't go well.

I got back the comments from the chapter I completed in January. They didn't say anything too awful, but I don't think I should think too much about their constructive criticism right now. I just can't take it. Dear readers, if I wrote overly harsh comments on your blog in the last ten days, please know that I've been very depressed -- like I'd-like-Zoloft-but-I'm-pregnant-and-don't-trust-it-despite-FDA-approvals depressed. Like I'd-like-to-curl-up-into-a-ball-and-not-come-out-until-it's-time-for-my-cremation depressed. But I'm okayish now, trying to get through, keep calm, and cultivate useful delusions of competence and love. I'll keep you posted, if I can.

Sleepy Sunday

So I didn't make a total ass of myself administering the exam -- only about half an ass, which isn't bad. I did hold them for fifteen extra minutes, which I felt bad about on a Saturday. But beyond that, there weren't many hiccups. I then went over to the Fam's and hung out until way later than I expected to. The drama with brother in his twenties is continuing, and we decided that we're all ADHD.

On Monday, I start the accounting job. On Tuesday, I start the SAT class. At the test yesterday, the students seemed interested in what we were going to learn and do. I have a whole bunch of prep to do before Tuesday, but I'm so so tired. My sister and I have plans to do something this afternoon, which I know I should cancel, but I'm hoping that if I go, then maybe I'll have that tense, focused energy that helps me do things quickly by the time I come back. Also, I do have some time tomorrow, but. . .. I never see my sister -- she has two adorable children, goes to work and school, and lives a very full life back in the same little 'burb where she and I grew up. (Okay, I grew up there. She went to elementary school there. We have a huge age difference and when my parents got divorced, she was still a kid, while I was already in college. Now, the age difference doesn't seem so large.) Strangely, she likes it there for all the right reasons -- the relative safety, the good schools for her children. Of course, I think of it as ticky-tacky houses, probably the very model of Weeds's Agrestic. My stepmother told me that motherhood would change all of my ideas about suburbs, Wal-Mart, getting a pedicure at the mall with all the other moms, pre-packaged experience a la Chuck E Cheese. We shall see.

I'm tired and procrastinating again. But I'm so glad to be teaching. Even though I was so tired it's insane, I didn't get tired at all in the classroom because there were all these not-so-fresh (at too early in the morning on a Saturday) faces who I was going to get to know. And help, hopefully. If they don't figure out that they know more about math than I do. Grrrr. Well, I know more about the SAT than they do. Maybe they can teach me some calculus. Like what it's for. (I watched one of those great science shows like Connections that I think said something about calculus having been developed to make cannonball firing more accurate. My quick look at Wikipedia doesn't seem to bear this out, sadly.)

Mr. Tabby is stretched out, sleeping next to me. Sleeping more sounds like such a good idea. (I can hear the bikers -- must be hogs -- on the main road. Sunday is biker day in the mountains, no doubt about it.) Obviously, I'm procrastinating getting up and getting myself together. It just feels so good to be a blob for a while. I'm not going to get to blob out much during the week from now on, since I have two jobs. Two! How am I going to balance two jobs with being tired and pregnant? (People keep telling me to hold on for another couple weeks, that I will get this Second Trimester Super-Energy soon. I can't wait. Can I sleep until it arrives?) I'll just keep whispering one word to myself: apartment, apartment, apartment.

But lookie! I have already been productive. I have finally migrated from winter to spring! I have a pseudo-plan! And if I've written it on my blog, well, surely it will happen, right?

Morning Is for the Birds

Especially early morning. I can hear the damn birds tweet-tweeting outside the camper. They sound very happy, no doubt because they did not wake up at 4:30 having to pee then finding themselves unable to go back to sleep for one last hour of rest before having to get up and somehow turn into a human so they could proctor an exam for a zillion hours today. (Birds are too smart to turn into humans or agree to administer exams at high schools 45 miles away from home by 9am.)

What's more, I'm alone in this exhausting endeavor. Absurdist Lover went to visit his kids for the weekend. While I have been totally for his going up north to see them, dealing with all this without being able to go and get rip-roaring drunk this weekend is very trying. Oy.

Cross your fingers that I find the room (no map online!) I'm supposed to get to without any trouble. In fact, cross your fingers I don't make an ass out of myself before 1:30. After 1:30, I can be my usual bumbling self again.

Sadly, I now have to shiver myself to the shower.

Pensive Thursday Update

So I found out from my father last night that though it was the business partner's idea to bring me on, now he's very ambivalent. But their accounting is in a mess, so they need me to come and fix it so they can see how much money they are making. So they are bringing me on as an independent contractor until they get a sense of how much money there is. Dad thinks there is still a good shot of my getting hired and therefore getting insurance, but my optimism is receding fast. I start on Monday. My SAT course starts officially on Tuesday, though I'm proctoring an exam on Saturday morning, unfortunately not very near here on some high school campus I've never visited, but need to tomorrow so I don't freak out on Saturday. In both cases I need the money and can't afford to say no. But with our financial position in flux, I still have not been able to see a doctor. The two social services options include having to go and prove how much money I have way before I can see a doctor/midwife -- and I confess I was hoping to avoid the whole problem of having to have this baby without any options. But I'm almost thirteen weeks. It's making me nervous. And I'm trying not to be negative, because it really bothers Absurdist Lover (not to mention me), but I'm starting to feel desperate again. So I think I'm going to out and out ask my folks for the money to go see a midwife associated with a birthing center. What's not clear to me is whether a nurse-midwife can do all the tests that I'm going to need. Do I need a doctor and a nurse-midwife? I just don't know. I suppose I need to call a birthing center and find out how all this works.

What else? I borrowed money from my family before I came back here last Friday, but now I'm not sure how we're going to pay the rent. Absurdist Lover is talking to someone about selling one of his treasures, but now the guy is playing hard to get and AL's growing more desperate daily. He needs to go up and see his kids. I need him to go up and see his kids. It's actually a big piece of our game plan, so that he can see if and how he can make all this okay with himself.

My teenage brother's girlfriend came back from her spring break trip and broke up with my brother. He's crushed. He's really super-smart and verbal and quirky and is only interested in girls who are not spending all their time playing with clothes and going to the mall. My stepmom is already trying to tell him that he won't feel terrible forever, but it's too soon. So I guess things could be much much worse. There's other family drama, like my other brother, who I am too pissed at to even deal with. He's in his twenties and living at home, but refusing to deal with the problems he's created, not even coming out of his room and talking to the family. Oy. I can't even deal with any of that. When I think of him and his depression and narcissism and sense of entitlement, I think my problems aren't so bad.

I bought Hallowell and Ratey's Delivered from Distraction after reading most of their first book, Driven to Distraction, at Borders yesterday. It felt so good to sit in Borders and read! I know that lots of people with ADD have problems with reading, so maybe I don't have it -- but I'm a terrible inveterate procrastinator and the most ridiculously disorganized person in the world. When they start talking about how ADD people just stick their worlds in piles, I felt known. In fact, a lot of me started to make sense to me. Maybe the volatile mood that people have seen in me (and that moodiness I've certainly experienced in myself) has something to do with boredom and attention-wandering and serious frustration. On the other hand, maybe I'm seriously demented too. Without money or insurance, I could be very well barking up the wrong tree, but I figure if some of the structure and lifestyle changes can help those with ADD, well, then maybe they can help me too. I feel like I've got to do something to help me deal -- I'm having a baby and while there may be little I can do about s/he being born into poverty (though if the job and insurance doesn't work out, I'm going to have to try to get another one), I can at least not be a total space cadet who feels like I've wasted my life, never living up to my potential. A PhD and "not living up to one's potential." Oy. I know this imposter syndrome is endemic to the academy, but why is that super-cool research project gathering dust in the corner when I could be transcribing interviews and analyzing data? In fact, why am I not prepping on the SAT course that's starting next week? Oy! Procrastination. I swear I think I get bored of doing things at regular intervals, doing a little each day though I know that is the most productive way to get things done. I think I love the thrill of the panic and rushing to the deadline. Why else do I do it that way all the time? I hate to do things when I am "not in the mood." It's just slogging. If I'm in the mood, it's one big whoosh and whirl. It's fun. I like fun. Aren't I too old to be this. . .immature? My poor child doesn't have a chance.

But one thing that I know is true is that I need to steer clear of isolating myself, which will only lead to depression and negativity. I feel so much that I'm in a stupid, mostly-avoidable situation, both with Absurdist Lover and with being pregnant right now that I haven't been bursting with the news except to my most understanding and nonjudgmental friends, which includes the blogosphere, which is strange when you consider that I can't control how people react to my ridiculous life. But there it is. Lest y'all think I'm totally paranoid (I am, of course, but not totally), I have experienced people being totally judgmental and shitty to me, about me, and about my decisions. So with that kind of crap out there, it's not surprising that I would want to protect myself in a cocoon. But it's not healthy. It's not. This is a good time, I guess, to see who my friends are and stop spending energy thinking about people who are not friends. Not that a good friend doesn't occasionally tell you a hard truth about yourself, but I don't think a friend does it in a mean and judgmental way. (Remember that there was an unbloggable situation that had me thinking about what being a friend is? Well, I'm still obsessed with that question because I haven't dealt with the situation that started it! We can call it procrastination, or we can call it pregnant tired brain not wanting to deal with any crap that's not absolutely necessary. But I need to deal with it soon. This person and I don't really talk on the phone anymore -- and I frankly don't want to waste my phone minutes on this. An email is okay in addressing big gnarley issues, no? What say you?)

Hey! When is this blog going to go back to being funny, dammit! All this heavy shit all the time! Let's do something fun! Like start working on a campaign to get Sisyphus considered for UC President!

Daybreak Post

So here I am, uncharacteristically awake and up by 6:43 am. But what makes this totally unsurprising is that I'm up now because of my ridiculous procrastinatory approach to writing a conference paper. Last night I put together my ten pages for Upcoming Conference that I Can't Afford to Attend, but then I really wanted to watch Batman Begins with Absurdist Lover who hadn't yet seen it. So I figured I would let it set overnight, and I'd revise and polish it this morning in time to send it to the panel chair who is going to read it for me. The fact that I woke up without any prompting shows that at the very least I internalize these deadlines. But this is exactly like finishing my research paper a few hours before class. Apparently, having been in school for the greater part of my adulthood, earning a PhD, and learning through the writing of a dissertation that the best work is not written at the last minute have not at all changed my ways. It's time like this I wonder if I'm cut out for the academy. Surely I should've figured out a more adult and organized approach to doing work, no? The best spin on this is that I'm ADD and just can't be organized. (I better go and have that tested at some point if I'm going to use it as the best excuse ever.) The fact that I've managed this far like this explains why I have never really learned any other way. Procrastinating until the last minute works! But it does mean that my conference papers are never really that great. I wish this conference paper weren't going to be sucky, since someone else is going to be reading it aloud, someone I care about and respect. But now I've cornered myself into only being able to think about getting it done in time to send it before Panel Chair gets on a plane. Surely creating a situation where I don't have to fret about the quality being good is exactly why I procrastinate, no? In any case, I can hear the ducks quacking and birds chirping. Happy morning everyone. I've got a conference paper to revise!

***Update 9:00am***

I'm done with the conference paper. I hope it doesn't totally suck. Maybe if it does, I can tell Panel Chair April Fools! Uh, no. Anyhoo, it's freezing cold in Camperland. Believe it or not, the weather bureau says it's going to snow above 6,000 feet. That's not us, but we may get some rain. I feel so free without this conference paper hanging over my head. No doubt I should get some articles in the works. No doubt I will lollygag instead.