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.)

By the Skin of Our Teeth

We made it through the second week of what will likely forever be known in our house as the Winter-from-Hell. This waking up super-early is really hard on the entire family. Tot has a cold, natch. I was having some mystery pains and then got my period and was super-bitch yesterday. Absurdist Lover is slogging through his job, which he hates. My father is in the hospital with a bad flare-up of his chronic illness. Fun the whole way around.

I have some stuff I want to blog about my scholarship. I've been doing important things while nursing and praying for my son to sleep, like deciding to name my work Turnip Studies. (He's been going to sleep at midnight and, you have to understand, there's not a lot that can make you smile while you're sitting there in the dark hoping your tot will go to sleep and hoping you will not.)

But this is not the time. I can only describe the mood I'm in as the kind of mood when you decide that it makes sense to go trolling the internet for celebrity gossip. I think I'm going to order some old movies. I'm just tired and grumpy, glad it's the weekend because I could not be kind and supportive to worried students just now (especially those having trouble following my directions!!!). We're a sick house, watching lots of Elmo videos. I haven't left the house in over 24 hours, and I'm sure the Coffee Corporation is suffering without my patronage. We ate all the chocolate in our house last night. It's freaking cold. Grumble, grumble. I'm still here, but not so pleasant. Sorry. I shall return when I have something new to say.

A Bit of a Sulk

I realize I made a commitment to trying to be more positive, but I've also learned that trying to be relentlessly positive is counterproductive and just ignores all the black and blue feelings that need to be dealt with or at least expressed. Though I am still committed to trying to get underneath the snark to what's really going on. It's interesting how I edit myself in this space, though that's probably a subject for another time.

Right this second I feel like night of the living dead. Absurdist Tot is in daycare (yes, he cried again today and it breaks my heart -- the kid who is always all over us when we're there was banging toys in his face -- no, I don't think this helped) and so I should be productive and everything. But I'd like to sit on the couch and zone out to a bunch of depressing movies I've seen at least twenty times. Why? Well, partly I think it is just physiological. I just had a fasting blood test, but didn't make an appointment, so, more vulnerable and grumpy that usual, I had to wait in a waiting room of characters (including a older woman who had had part of her legs amputated but was hilariously whispering about how she told the doctors to "leave her sex so she could have some fun -- after all, she didn't want just to sit around." Clearly, whatever crap I'm dealing with is nothing compared to having your legs amputated! I should just get a grip.) There was also a person of indeterminate gender being wheeled around who seemed only capable of making intermittent cries of our her (I think) rather permanently gaping mouth. It didn't seem that this person had much awareness of what was going on around her. I admit that I'm not always good at being around people who are so seriously. . . impaired. But really it's probably that all this is very out of the ordinary for someone who leaves the house to go to work and the grocery store and that's it. But probably none of this was anything compared to the book I was reading about trauma. So low blood sugar plus blood being drawn plus AT crying plus being surrounded by strangers for a couple hours as I waited. . .probably not a great beginning to the day in which I should be unusually productive.

But then there is everything going on at home. We have practically no money until I get paid again over a week from now. I did the taxes and am expecting a refund, but that is likely to come in at the same time I get paid. Scraping and scratching and paying late fees on things so we can eat just depresses me and grumps me out. Absurdist Lover is sick and doesn't have insurance (no domestic partner benefits and we can't get married yet). He's also up for a job that looks really good, but now we're just waiting and we all know that tension and how it makes everyone grumpy and crazy. (Please cross your fingers, toes, and eyes for us, because it's a perfect job for him.) Compounded with our financial troubles? GAH!

Then there's my sister's wedding. I love her dearly. I want her to have the wedding she wants. I really want to be supportive. But getting to the wedding is going to cost at least $1,000 to get us out to Urban Yuck City if not more. Then there's the fact that we have no place to stay (my fault -- my brother asked first, though he's traveling only 300 miles and has friends in the area while we're traveling over 2,000 miles -- I'm very upset about all this). And then there's the issue of the dress -- she picked out one that I really think I'll look like a cow in, but though I expressed some concerns, I said fine, but that I needed to know how to get it and what it's going to cost. Now, she's going to look for new dresses. I'm really not sure why -- she just announced it to me in an email.

When I think about this wedding, I think how secretly I don't want to go at all and how guilty I feel about that: it really feels like we're going to have to use the very money that would allow us to get ahead (I don't have a car and I feel very trapped plus I want to get my stuff still in storage several states away) just to get and stay there. The traveling and probably the wedding itself sounds like nothing but hassle with AT since the wedding is on a boat and that makes me nervous with a toddler who wants to run around so much. Absurdist Lover and I are still talking about the possibility of only my going, though we know that my family will want to see AT. My feeling is I'm not taking AT without Absurdist Lover because I will most likely lose it and actually go insane if I have to deal with traveling and AT and my family all on my own. Then there's the totally selfish catty stuff. I can't ask my folks for the money to go out there because I already owe them so much already, and they are not actively hassling me about it, though they live high on the hog compared to people like us. Also, this wedding is totally beyond my sister's means. When she sends me links to her honeymoon in Obnoxious Resort City, I'm angry and disgusted. The truth is if Absurdist Lover and I get married, we will probably get married here in Snowy Town quietly -- we may invite my family and his but with the full expectation that they will not come. His, because they have no money. Mine, because they don't travel to see me. And I would never spend so much money on a wedding. I totally get wanting to have a great party to start off a marriage, but to me a great wedding is having all your friends and family at a beautiful outdoor place with food and presents they made themselves (though I'm not immune to the attractions of Le Creuset and KitchenAid - if anyone wants to give me either). So the fact that my sister is getting married in a rather overblown and pricey way totally out of touch with her finances so she can't pick up the tab for my dress and has been telling me to get airline tickets for literally months when she knows that we don't have two nickels to rub together (because I've borrowed $20 from her at time just to make it to payday) -- well it all makes me angry.

And I know that no one is trying to piss me off and really the reason why I get angry is because I'm hurt. It's easier for me to be angry -- anger has energy to it and being hurt feels like such a disempowered and disempowering and deflating emotion. On the one hand, I want my sister to have the wedding she wants. On the other hand, I feel like the concerns of me and the little family that I'm supporting are going totally unnoticed and uncared about by my sister and my folks. And our poverty starkly contrasted with my sister's wedding and my father's million dollar house, the yuppie cars, the kids with the flat screen TVs and play systems in their rooms -- GAH!!! Now, in reality I don't talk to my folks much, so it's not like I've been filling them in on our financial situation. I still owe them money, my father is mad, but both of us are avoiding the confrontation and have been for months. I know I should deal with all this, especially since it's coloring my feelings about my sister's wedding, but I'm not really feeling that adult right now with all the other things I'm dealing with. There's also a long history at work here. It hurts my feelings that my folks don't call about AT. They have no idea that AT needs glasses and that we can't afford them right now ($250 because I didn't get vision insurance for him).

When I mentioned all this to Absurdist Lover (who saw me blogging), he said maybe I should write a list of all we have to look forward to. Good idea.

• The CSA. We're really looking forward to this. Really. I'd be happy if it started today. Yesterday.
• We're getting a refund and that should help somewhat.
• I'm also very grateful that we don't have worse things to worry about. We could have terrible acute illnesses. I don't. AT doesn't. Thank God. I hope Absurdist Lover doesn't.
  

By the way, I've been praying a lot. The old sarcastic me doesn't recognize this me who thinks that as a purely practical matter, it's much more hopeful and wonderful to believe that someone is listening to all these fervent hopes and requests for help and cares about them, even if sometimes S/He says no. To all my atheist readers, if this makes me a weak person: fine. I'm weak. I can live with that. (To all my faith-based readers, you can see I feel really defensive about this. I can just imagine what my folks would say if I ever said I believed in anything. Or that I prayed. Why do I even care what they think? If you have any ideas of things I should read beyond Anne Lamott, let me know. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.)

With all of this stuff weighing down on me, I need to figure out a way to work because I've got things to do:

1. I've got a conference in 2 weeks and need to get a draft to my writing group by early next week, no matter that at the last writing group meeting, it seemed to me silly the way we all sit around and split hairs about theory as if it mattered. (Okay, it matters, but when I'm worried about feeding my family or not being able to pay for AT's glasses, whether Foucault or de Certeau or whoever is the right theorist for whatever point just doesn't matter jack to me.)
2. I want to bake some bread because we're out and because there's something so primal about it. (Though I need to get the rest of the cookie dough out of our single mixing bowl I need to make the bread, which means, I think, that I need to bake those cookies!)
3. I want to work out because that's something I can do that will make me feel better in my body.
4. I wanted to practice driving AL's car, because if I can just figure out how to drive a stick, I can occasionally get out of the house without making AL come with us. (SCARY!)
   

There's no way I'm going to get all this done before we need to go pick up AT. It's already 1:30! Having a good sulk takes time. So I'll bake cookies, start the bread, work on the conference paper, and get some working out done. Maybe no car today, though I really should. I'd really like to be able to drive myself to Starbucks or wherever. Not that we could afford it. But it's the idea of it.

Thanks for listening. I feel better.

Still Sick

I was going to write everything in bullets, but then I realized that everything sort of bleeds into one another, which probably means that while my life might be particularly messy, most likely it's that I'm unable to divide, organize, basically control or make sense of my life. Yes, that is definitely true. I am definitely feeling my life is happening to me, wave upon wave crashing over me. It's not a great feeling.

First and foremost, I am sick. Really sick. I'm sure I have an ear infection because I'm hearing all sorts of weird sounds in my ear. I got it from Absurdist Tot, who got his first ear infection and is on antibiotics. I am not thrilled about his being on antibiotics because of the merry-go-round of sick-antibiotics-sick that so many kids end up on (where's the preventative medicine, dammit? but I guess that's all the good nutrition we're forcing on him). Anyway, since he's on antibiotics, he's actually fine, going to his second day of daycare on Thursday. They sent home three artworks of things he was working on (I don't know how they did this, because he's fifteen months and super active) on "four" and "yellow" and when I saw them I just started bawling. His first artworks! His first lessons! I'm weepy just thinking about it. We don't do anything like this at home. I mean I point and say things and try to get him to make connections between the color red in the book and the red Elmo doll, but all this really leads to is his throwing the Elmo over the gate and trying to bite the book. I confess I haven't really done enough to try to figure out educational activities for him. Mostly he runs around and plays and eats. I'm already exhausted, have very little time to read, and have no extra money to get books on development or games. But clearly I need to at least know more about how to teach him things. I don't know. The thing I'm really trying to encourage with him right now is communication. I want him to learn more words, since he's only really got two down. But I guess it's okay that I'm not doing the same thing as the daycare.

We took him to the eye doctor because one eye looks in toward his nose, and they want him to wear glasses all day every day. I just don't think this will ever work. He likes to pull my glasses off my nose. And he can't get at them all the time. Absurdist Lover and I haven't officially discussed it yet because I'm too sick right now. I'm sick still because not only have I been doing search committee work that has had me running around and because I don't have a doctor and when I tried to find one, first the local provider list on my HMO's website was completely wrong, listing doctors at locations where the people had never heard of them. Then I called doctors in the booklet. One number was disconnected. Another was taking no more managed care patients. Two more were closed that day. Finally, one is taking new patients but schedules a meet and greet so she can explain her policies. Why do I, who already distrusts medicine in general, have a bad feeling about someone explaining her policies to me? I just want to say look: you work for me. Not the other way around. But I've got an HMO and the real plain fact of managed health care in this country is that the doctors work for the insurance companies. Anyway, I'm still sick and am going to beg her to please look in my damn ear rather than just tell me her damn policies.

There's an unbloggable situation at work concerning other people, not me, but it's completely inflamed my imposter syndrome. Now I think: are they going to remember that I wore jeans come promotion time? I swear I really think this, often freaking out about clothes and how I present myself and what the full professor who wears suits and ties everyday (and, while nice and reasonably friendly, is sort of a caricature of a professor type) must be thinking about me. I feel like I'm just not presentable. And let's face it: with bunched up snotrags in my pockets, I'm probably not. I should not be at work. Of course, the head of the committee wants us to meet again on Monday. And though I think it's important to have my voice in the mix, I think I may bow out. Everyone who sees me says I should be at home (except my colleagues on the committee, of course). OY.

What else? I pretty much have a bleak and dire outlook on everything right now. Much of our lives seems hopeless. Of course, it is February. There's a reason why February is the shortest month. But it's probably really that I'm sick and that AT's two days a week at daycare (we can barely afford that right now) end up getting taken up with committee stuff. I've been trying to get work done on my scholarly projects. But I'm now so sick I really can't do that. Today, I got a nap because AT needed a long nap after waking up early and being tortured by the eye doctor. Glasses for AT! We can't even afford to pick up my glasses, making it good that the frames are on backorder. And I'm so stupid, I didn't sign him up for vision insurance because I figured, ineptly, that what kids needs vision insurance and I was trying to save every little bit of money for our monthly living expense. Stupid stupid stupid.

I want to be one of those women who can't be defeated, like Julia Child or the women in Steel Magnolias (and what else? What else should I be watching and thinking about for inspiration??? Let me know!), but I'm thinking I'm not a strong person -- or the kind of strong I am is flexible, if at all. I want to be one of those people who are just determined and positive and optimistic when things happen, just fighters, unable to feel defeated and sorry for themselves and like the whole world is out to get them. How does one become like that? I'm thinking I need therapy or to get religion or something. Well, first, I need to get well. Except for today's nap, I haven't been able to take care of myself and sleep in. My life just doesn't allow me to do those things. I need to nurse. I need to get up with AT. Absurdist Lover does help and do a lot, but I still don't get left alone much (not to mention the one room where I could get away if AL watches AT is the bedroom, which has poor light and is very cold and without money to rectify those situations -- well, this is what I mean by everything seeming hopeless). I told AL that I want to sleep in, that I'd nurse AT, but then he could watch him and feed him yogurt, etc. We'll see what happens. I'm sure once I'm reasonably healthy, my outlook will improve. Right now, everything but AT sucks. And the poor boy has my eyes.

So my friends you can see that I'm not altogether here. Absurdist Lover is also sick, but doesn't seem to have stuff in his ear. Of course, he doesn't have insurance, since we're not married and he's unemployed, so it's good if he doesn't need antibiotics. I clearly do.

Still I recognize things could be worse, and I'm thankful they are not. I'm trying. I really am.

Venturing Out of the House of Sick

I've been in the House of Sick and Snot for five days. We were going to start Absurdist Tot at daycare on Monday, but on Saturday he came down with a cold. A feverish, snotty, and now rattling coughy cold. Poor guy. He's in so much pain that he only sleeps a few hours at a time. Our usually happy baby just cries and cries for no outward reason. Of course, then he charms us with one of his cute smiles. Then cries again. It's really heartbreaking.

Of course, AT being sick means that I've been basically trapped in the house, on the couch, where he wants to nurse basically all the time. He doesn't want to be put down to sleep, so his naps are on my lap. I haven't gotten much sleep now that we're back to co-sleeping. (I feel like a retch for not liking co-sleeping that much. I swear I'm a better person when I get good sleep. And worrying that AT is going to fall off the bed is not conducive to good sleep.)

So today, when I've got an overstuffed day full of search committee stuff, I'm sick (oh my throat! no wonder AT cries!), tired (I woke up two hours before the alarm and tried to get comfortable while listening to "Interplanet Janet" loop in my head: which means I got about 4 hours of sleep), and lazy (I've been officially up for 40 minutes and haven't gotten in the shower and would really like to spend the day quiet and contemplative alone with my thoughts and my computer and no snotty whinings or indeterminable signs for. . .what? comfort).

In other news, on Monday I started the first day of Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks. I was trying to fit in each day's tasks around Comfort-Giving, but yesterday everything fell apart. Being sick is not helping. But I think day 3 or 4 is about committing to a writing schedule, which in theory of course I support. But in practice? Well, this author and writing guru is not thinking about those of us whose schedules are at the whim of infant-toddlers. I'll get time to work on my article when he naps and when he goes to daycare, both of which require his good health, so right now I'm lucky to get an hour to myself all day. I read a wonderful essay once on creative writers who are stay-at-home moms and how one way to remind yourself that you are a writer is to open up your work file in the morning and leave it open, coming back to it as is possible. That's the schedule for me, at this point in my life. Of course, I don't really want to do this with an article, really living inside an article for 12 weeks while I steal time from babycare. I'd feel differently I'm sure if this were creative work, if this were a poem or essay I left open on my computer all day. All the time I'm nursing and staring out the window has to count as writing or at least working, right?

At this point, I can't think about the future, about Cool Elective, which I need to work on, and articles and conference papers and everything, because I feel like I'll never get back to any of it. But the truth is, AT will not be sick forever. And neither will I.

I've got to get my lazy butt up and into the shower. Listen to this: I've decided I'm not going to wash my hair because I've got a lot of hair (the kind haircutters always look at, eyes bulging, and say, "you've got a lot of hair") and it will stay wet and cold all day, which will make me colder on a day like today, well below freezing. Crap. I hear AT. I hope he's just coughing and going back to sleep. I bet he's going to want a last-minute nurse. Oy.

May today be an easy painless enjoyable day, no matter how much work we have to get through! (At least I get to think that all my bloggy friends are out there too! Makes it more bearable that way!)

Grumble on Academic Publishing and Citation

Now I don't expect anyone to remember, because it was eons ago, truly, but there was this article I was really excited about that I wrote and was accepted. I turned in everything on time. I was given revisions, I revised, and again I turned in everything on time. A year and a half ago. I turned in the revision a year and a half ago. Before AT was born. The article hasn't come out yet.

Now I realize that is pretty normal (though I was originally told it would come out in 2009). Things happen. Plans change. But because MLA in its infinite wisdom has changed the citation rules, I now need to submit a new Works Cited. Blech. I am, by the way, no great fan of the changes in MLA citation rules. "Print," my butt. So I was starting this unlovely task when I decided I better check to make sure that some of the quotes I had from web sources were still accurate. And, of course, because things do actually change over the course of years, the quotation that I had from a website is long gone. (The website has been beautifully updated actually.) So because I don't think it's professional to have a source that is totally out-of-date, I have to go back into the article and revise it. Not that the article wouldn't benefit from a pretty fresh eye at this point, but, you know, this article's promise of publication helped get me my job and so doesn't count for tenure. And I have a deadline for another article I'm writing (granted, on spec).

And of course they need it now. Like yesterday. It's this big hurry-up-and-wait process.

Sigh. Grumble grumble. Dare I mention that Absurdist Family had tentative plans to go outside and enjoy the snow today? Grumble grumble.

Back to Blogging: Update on 2009

So I've had enough of this sparse blogging. Of course, it's because I have so much to do already that blogging has just sort of dropped off, but I'm going to try to blog and write more often, mostly because my mental health seems to demand it! I'm just grumpy when I don't write. (Ask poor Absurdist Lover!)

So what's going on? Well, too much, as usual. I've started an intersession pre-transfer writing course for Community College. It's five weeks and a whopping three hours a day three days a week. I come out of there exhausted. I find myself muttering about how much I hate it, when I think I'm just tired. But truly it's not my favorite work: at Grad City U freshman comp classes weren't very structured -- the Aim and Scopes were so broad that we could really do what we wanted -- and though of course the class was a service course, the program did not just view it as an academic discourse class. At Community College, it's all about academic discourse -- and not really a very nuanced and intellectual version of it -- but really a very structure- and mode-based (compare/contrast essay; cause/effect essay) version of college writing. As in the thesis statement must be the last sentence in the introductory paragraph kind of college writing. At Grad City U, students were encouraged to find their own purposes and genres for writing, so we weren't working that same structure to death. I totally understand the reasons for hammering this structure at students who are considered developmental or basic writers. But that doesn't mean it's my favorite teaching either.

So that's the beginning of my week. I take Absurdist Baby over to my folks' house where their babysitter takes care of him. She totally over-dresses AB in this theory that if they are warm, babies will sleep more. She put socks over his sleeper feet! I think I should explain that I do not live in any of the parts of the country that are currently blanketed with snow. In fact, people come to Obnoxious Urban City because of its temperate (boring) weather. Its lack of weather, I say. Shouldn't babies be encouraged to be awake and learning? AB spends a certain part of his day now eating his hands and batting at his toys. I realize that he's an added burden to Babysitter's day at this point, but when I come home, Absurdist Lover (who picks AB up after his workday, because he gets off before I do) usually has AB down to his onesie, worried that he's totally overheated. I don't know what to do. On the one hand, my dad is helping pay Babysitter's extra fee for taking care of AB and I know she comes highly recommended by them and I'm very grateful to have someone so trustworthy taking care of him; on the other hand, she's overdressing my baby! I tried to mention it, but I got the feeling that either she thinks I don't know what I'm talking about or that she's going to do what she wants no matter what because she's basically doing me a favor. My stepmother (SM) also seems to think that Babysitter knows everything (SM said of course Babysitter knew how to hook up the carseat, then Babysitter asked AL how to do it when he came to pick up the baby), so there's no help there.

SM is basically one of those people who thinks she knows everything. She interrupts and steals every conversation. I find talking with her exhausting because I have to fight to say anything. She means well and is typically very generous to me -- I'm not her daughter, and she has no duty to me. Her latest idiocy is now the running joke in the Absurdist Home: at Christmas, she told my half-sister, her daughter, that AB couldn't hold up his head or grab things. She said this based on his age, not observation. Of course, he could do both. When half-sister was helping take care of AB, she noticed that he could and said, "Our Mom [she can't seem to make the leap to understanding that her mom is not my mom] said AB couldn't do that." It was a beautiful moment. (Then she told Dad how advanced AB was.) So any time I'm annoyed with them (which is often), we say: "of course, AB can't hold his head up yet." I know. I'm a terrible person. They've been very generous to us. I don't care. SM's know-it-all attitude drives me crazy.

In other news, I'm wiki-watching. Two of my interviews have already gone on in the process without me. Of course that doesn't mean that they might not call me later, but there it is. So I expect to hear/not hear about the others for the rest of this month. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get up the energy to apply for more jobs and work on job talk stuff so that if I do get the call, I'm not going quite as crazy as I could be. There is also this proposal due next week. Mr. Tabby is sick with a lump on his chin. It takes me at least three pumpings to get out what AB drinks in an afternoon. I've got a dilapidated loaner car right now while my transmission-dead and death-trap car is being turned into a safer car. Dad is willing to pay for the car because I said I'd give it to my half-brother (who'll be seventeen then) instead of taking it with me when I move for a job. (As with so much with my family, I'm grateful and hurt: it's not worth fixing the car because his daughter and grandson need to be able to get around, but because his teenage son will inherit the car. On the other hand, he'll get the car totally overhauled. It seems impossible to say to my father that the reason why the three older kids feel that there is favoritism toward the other two much younger half-siblings is because: there is! No kid needs their own flat-screen TV, TiVo, DVD player, and computer in their room.)

So there's a lot going on, and it's tempting for me to just end up listing it all and ending up bug-eyed and overwhelmed. AL is working full-time now, I've still got the two jobs, and things are beginning to look up for us money-wise. We are very hopeful that 2009 will end with us in a new-to-us, much- smaller town. And after the sleep-deprivation and wildness of the last few months, I feel like I'm just waking up out of that huge fog. I plan to blog more, even if it's just to do lists (which have started to rule my life because I now forget things).

And now AB is up. Gotta go!

Still Pregnant

What else is there to say? Doesn't the little bugger know that 19 is a very good number??? My body tricked me this morning when these hard contractions woke me up. It's a very strange thing to be anxiously awaiting pain! All through the breathing, I was hoping, hoping, hoping that today would be the day. Nope. I did, however, ask my subs to take over my classes. I need to not worry about school right now. Of course, I also need to worry about the job market. Sigh.

I hope to have good news soon, my friends.

Waiting Game Stats

• 3 job applications out
• 0 baby arrived
• 4 days overdue
• 2 friends of friends given birth on or since my due date
• 2 feet of unusual size
• 2 medical practitioners telling me to be very careful about what I eat because I wouldn't want the baby to get huge while I'm overdue
• not anywhere near enough contractions
• not 1, but 2 giant stacks of paper to grade not to mention the little stacks that students would really like to get back asap
  
• 1 grumpy absent-minded pregnant lady who feels like a pink hippopotamus: you know, sorta cute, but in an ungainly dorky way
  

Still Here, Still Pregnant, Still with Elephant Feet

I know I should be updating the world -- especially about how I have these fabulous friends in Grad City who totally surprised me by loading two boxes full of stuff that I then got to open at my shower, some 1,800 miles away. They are so sweet. As is One Tired Ema, who sent me a wonderful package as well. I, however, am not sweet. I am big and pregnant and grumpy. I am sick of myself and of being the hugest person alive. I just sent Absurdist Lover for chocolate -- no better direction than that. I don't know what I hope he'll bring back really, except that it should be chocolate and there should be a lot of it. According to the midwife, I'm due a week from today and look like I will go to term. I'm also uninducable at this point, at least as of Wednesday. I get non-stress tests all the time now and checked every five or so days. I'm ready to be done. I also spent a big part of the day in Grading Jail. Waaaaaaa. I'm just too grumpy to post right now. Did I mention that I'm also preparing job materials? Teaching two classes of unmotivated students who think they are still in high school? See why I don't post more often? I hope I'll have something nicer to say soon. Until then, I should probably only talk to the two people who can deal with me right now. Absurdist Lover will soon lose his patience. And I can't blame him. I'm awful.

Absurdity: Example Number 4,326

A number of moons ago, when we moved into this apartment, we were told that the painters would need to come in to fix some water damage in the baby's room and the dining area. I was assured the maintenance people were very prompt and thorough (a claim almost instantly disproven by a number of instances involving standing water and broken air conditioners). The maintenance people called me and told me that I should be expecting a call from the painters. Never received a call. When I faxed subsequent maintenance requests (basically the only way they'll take maintenance requests -- what if I did not have access to a free fax at work???), I always included the fact that the painting had never been completed. They never addressed it. And in the course of life, I let it go.

Fast forward to this morning. There I was slowly waking (also known as fretting about how to pay the rent, the storage unit, and the bills this month, not to mention the IRS, figuring that I have no choice but to cash in my fledgling 401K), when I smelled paint. There were also voices very close, as if the cops were about to barge into my apartment. I got up -- there was a guy painting the ground outside our patio door, the fumes coming in the open window. We were not notified by the maintenance people to expect people literally on our doorstep. We had not moved the copious little things we keep out there, including a stool so Absurdist Lover can smoke out there, a bunch of herbs, and a couple rugs we need to get drycleaned before we can bring them in the house (do I even have to say they've been out there for months because we cannot afford to get anything drycleaned? on the other hand, a sweet neighborhood cat likes to sleep on them) nor did we know to keep the window overlooking that patio closed. It still smells like paint in here.

This happened at 9:30, when all the maintenance and official offices I could call were still closed. I was incensed. I called and left messages everywhere. We can get spontaneous painting done, but not painting promised to us when we moved in. Now they're dealing with a very pregnant woman in the advanced stages of needing-to-nest (which is different from nesting, because of course a nesting person would actually have the things she needed for the baby by now, rather than a panicking person who still doesn't know how she's going to get the rent together for the month, plus the stuff for the baby). I would say these people are screwed, but let's face it -- they haven't called me back either. I'll probably get no traction on any of it, because, though the apartment is pretty and the managers pretend at being high-end and responsible, the management has proven itself to be slumlordish.

Still have not heard from DC. Must call. What's the point of going to some coordinator's house if I'm not teaching at CC anyway? Must find out. Am s.t.r.e.s.s.e.d. and I don't like it.

GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

So on Monday I received an email from my new Department Chair saying DC would get back to me about whether or not one of my classes was going to get cancelled. When I heard nothing by the next day, I sent an email saying that if my class is cancelled, here are some other possibilities that may not have come up before -- because we had received an email the week before listing classes that were still not assigned. I still have not heard from DC! STILL! And when I checked online, it seems that the class that I did have has now been given to someone else. I realize that it's hard being a department chair and DC is probably going nuts trying to schedule -- but can I say it's also hard being a brand-new adjunct who doesn't know what classes she is teaching the Wednesday before the Monday she is to start? Since I now don't know if I'm even teaching the class that I thought I was, there seems no point in even doing anymore work on it -- though I spent a big chunk of yesterday working on it and considering my options and figuring out what questions to ask at the coordinator's get-together tomorrow.

I hate this. I really hate this. Am I even teaching this semester, or what?

Quick-Fire Bullets

I'm in such a hurry this morning, but I really want to write something here because I think it will make me feel better -- more like a person to be in touch with my blogworld. You know what I mean?

• After posting a comment on Ianqui's blog about how my family isn't into my pregnancy, something that has really been bugging me lately, my step-mother offered to throw me a baby shower. Now, I know about six people here in Urban Home City so it will be the tiniest shower ever, but still I feel bad that I characterized my family that way. I know that everyone has other things going on, especially related to bullet number 2. I just wish that I felt like there was going to be this warm happy set of people to surround this baby with. Maybe everyone feels this way.
• My grandfather is still in the hospital, recovering very slowly from abdominal surgery. He has colon cancer that they figure is fully treatable, but we're very concerned that he has already given up no matter what the prognosis.
• I have an interview tomorrow for an adjunct position at a community college that I applied to ages ago back when it was virtually the closest around. Now it's a bit of a hike and there are definitely closer ones, but then they called me for the interview. The HR person was talking about how there was a "topic," which I think means a teaching demo. I haven't received the "topic" yet, so they are going to get the shortest prep time on record, since today I have to go teach the college admissions class, go to the office, then go teach the essay class tonight. It's the last of these crazy days, thank goodness. Of course, this also means less pay for less crazy days. And Absurdist Lover is still not working yet for the new job -- in fact, he's nervous even about the background check, though he's got nothing to worry about. Money is the single greatest stressor here at Chez Absurd. We don't have a toaster, an air conditioner in the bedroom (which is the baby room and where we don't sleep anyway), a new bra for me, nothing. We're basically at the starting point like a couple in their twenties who has nothing. Our bookshelves are broken cast-offs. Meanwhile my family is about to go to Honduras while their upstairs gets remodeled. It's really hard being so broke and watching other people spend so much money just on lunch. Sigh. I hope to soon not be running around so much -- and able to focus on the impending job market. Anyway, I don't know if the community college will want to hire me when I'm due in October and would definitely have to be out for some length of time, but I figure it's worth a try, especially because teaching this essay class has reminded me how much I love teaching writing.
  
• I'm also mad at my SAT prep company. On Friday, the teacher of the other class called me an hour before class and said that he was sick and could I please take his class? Well, of course I want to help out and how could I say no? I totally refigured what I was doing in my class so I could present things the other class hadn't already done when I put the two classes together -- and it was a zoo, I tell you, a zoo! Too much! When I called SAT prep company and asked if I would get additional compensation they said no because I hadn't worked any extra hours and "thanks for teaching a larger class today." These classes are not like the SAT classes, structured and set by the SAT prep company at every step. These are more like regular classes where you have a certain amount of material to cover, but how you do it is going to be different from the person down the hall. I realize I didn't exactly sub a class that wasn't mine -- or work extra hours. But getting nothing is like them telling me that it was nothing for me to have an hour to figure out what on earth to do! I'm really upset about it, but though I intended to deal with it on Friday by asking a trainer I know what to do, then I went and saw my grandfather in the hospital and tried to convince him that life was worthwhile and that frankly sapped all my energy.
  
• I'm also really angry at my doctor's office. I need my records because I'm going to see the midwife on Wednesday. (YAY!) I've never had a doctor's office balk at faxing the records, but they are. They want me to go over there (which is a total shlep into a different area with a lot more traffic and a pain to boot), sign a form, and give them $25. Now, I'm angry at SAT company for not giving me another hour's worth of my salary, which is little more than $25. I'm poor and think $25 to be a lot of money. I wish I didn't. But this feels like extortion. I looked up the statute for the Stupid Overpriced State Health and Safety Code and it does say that doctors can charge up to $.25/page plus reasonable costs in attaining records (I take this to mean charging if people need to go into storage). I've been seeing these numbskulls since May or so -- there is no way that my file is 100 pages long. I'm ready to write a letter to the editor over this one. This really pisses me off because when I had to get a mammogram in a country typically thought of as third world they gave me my own films because, their thinking was, who is going to take better care of your records and be more interested in your health than you? Here in the U.S., we think that people aren't responsible enough to have their own records -- or often be told exactly what their test results are beyond whether there is a "problem" or not -- and then we charge them just for getting them! It's totally ridiculous. That $25 charge is the bra that fits instead of me squishing into an undersized old bra every day! Grrrr. I'm too poor, tired, and pregnant for all this.
• I'm 27 weeks as of last Friday, which means I'm officially in my third trimester. Please, please, please dear G-d and heavenly minions let Absurdist Lover's job start up in a real way so that I can stop working so hard and relax a little before this baby is born -- and not have to put the baby in daycare as of Day 1.
  

Whoa! An Academic Post? It Must Be Writing Time!

It's Sunday before the weekday of a writing deadline. So of course this is when I start. I have to revise this article for Edited Collection. Revise, as in "to see again," as in gut this puppy and make it into something new. As in, oy, it's way too hot and I'm too sick and pregnant to do this, as in I must blog before I can even get started.

This, assuming that it doesn't totally suck and get pulled from Edited Collection, will be my first academic publication. Not my first publication, because I've published other kinds of things -- encyclopedia entries and creative writing, whatnot for which people didn't seem to think I was a total loser when I was done. I feel now though like a total loser. I think part of it is that I feel so far from the academy, from the university scene, even from anything remotely close to that work, though I did renew my memberships to the big organizations and have even read an article or two in the last month. On the other hand, this fear and loathing of working on this article probably has nothing to do with distance from the academy. This is probably the usual self-hate cycle that allows me to progress from worrying about whether I can actually produce anything mind-blowing and original, destined to blow open the field, to then worrying about writing anything remotely decent -- both of which are a lot of pressure to put on any one piece of writing, especially one that needs to be worked on immediately -- to worrying with mounting anxiety whether I can get something, anything, done so I can get it in on time and not reveal myself to be a total flake. Dude, this is my process. It's not a good process, but it's a process. No matter how much text I generate and even when I work on things on a regular basis (though I can't really remember when the last time that was, except for the dissertation, which was more aberration than pattern), I can't seem to get myself to get down to it to order anything or really take it apart and put it back together until I work up a good self-and-writing loathing.

Okay, I don't know if self loathing process crap is really true. But it feels true.

I am grumpy at everyone today, starting from the moment I began doing things related to this article. Absurdist Lover remarked yesterday that one moment I wasn't working, then I left the room and came back in and I was suddenly "working." I got nothing done, except some class A grousing about the editors' comments. Of course, the comments themselves are probably fine -- I would grouse about them in any case, I'm sure.

But there is this problem I'm having. They want me to put more conversation with the field in my article. Now of course this is a good idea -- and actually I took out much of that conversation when I hacked at a dissertation chapter to get this article. But a problem I'm having is that I find the existing conversation in my field to be really fascinating, but too focused on one particular location or site for analysis and theorizing. (Oooh, this is kind of helping.) I'm totally excited by some of the things my field is doing (or I wouldn't be in my field), but I think we can be greatly informed by 1) looking at what others in the wide world outside of our field are doing to inform our theorizing and studying; and 2) looking at other sites as valid places for us to study and contribute to. (Ooh, helping!) I always have to make the argument that these other sites I'm looking at are even worthwhile -- and show how these ideas contribute to our main site -- rather than affirming that we can and should study these other sites.

At Grad City U, other dissertators also found this to be true -- that if we didn't tie our work back to the main site that people wouldn't recognize our work as within our fields. I know it's not just me. So I think I got really defensive about these claims and had, early on in my dissertation process, really argued the hell out of this, always foregrounding the limitations of the work in my field. But because I work with alternative argumentation (think: the Native American critique that scholars talk about scholarship as "staking a claim" in "uncharted territory" or the way that we can discount all previous scholarship as "primitive" compared to the complexity of our own ideas; also radical feminists talk about the thrust and parry of scholarship as very male) for reasons that absolutely connect to the main thrust (oh dear) of my argument, I don't want to discount all the previous scholarship or go deeply into arguing against it, though I do think it has profound limitations. Now my dissertation committee was made of up of pretty cool scholars, so when I argued for alternative argumentation in light of my main discussion, they seemed convinced. In fact, they advocated my taking out some of my discussions with the field, maybe because they were too defensive. These editors, on the other hand, want more discussion, which seems to mean more argument against what's already been done in the field.

Writing all this out is really helpful actually, because I realize that I can probably talk about what the scholarship in the field does and does not do without calling them deficient. I guess I'm just worried about trying to represent the integrity of what this other work is trying to do in the tiny space allotted. It's easier to say that something sucks. But it doesn't suck -- and even when it does (from my perspective, some of it does in fact have elements of suckage) -- I don't want to portray it that way. So I just won't. I guess. If possible.

The other big problem is that I have to reorganize the thing. They didn't exactly say that -- in fact, I think that their comments do not call for a drastic reorganization of the thing. But they say that the point isn't clear -- and I can see instantly how that's an organizational problem. I think this has something to do with the fact that there isn't a clear methodology to working with data in my field. Perhaps terribly, since I've been working on this material for a long time, I'm still learning from it. It's ethnographic field research. Qualitative. So I continue to re-see the data based on my own brain. Oy! And without a clear method in the field, we are also without a clear way of writing up results. Though I would probably hate a more rigid structure -- and pretty much flout scholarly organizational standards as often as possible, partly because I work in alternative argumentation. Though here I can see that my alternative argumentation/organization makes it very hard to see my point. Hence having to gut the thing and reorganize, one of my least favorite things. Ironic, of course, because when I teach I always tell students to write whatever, then go back and reorganize. And I say it as if it didn't feel pretty awful to tear your own writing up. Maybe I'll actually physically cut and paste it. Sometimes the act of cutting it up feels so kindergarten and fun, it takes some of the seriousness out of it all.

I wish I could just come up with these insights and then someone else could write it. (This from the writer.) Really, I'm just lazy. Or I resist launching in. Or something! It's more fun to blog about writing than to write it. This is probably an audience issue. Writing for these editors, whom I greatly respect and wish to not offend, and for the academic audience in general has a lot to do with whether I'll get a job in the near future, on which much of my life seems to rest. Oy, I wish I had more time. But I chose to work on it at the last minute. Will I ever learn? OY!

Once this is done, I need to write another article, and then likely another, taking out pieces of my dissertation and sending it out before the fall job market hoopla starts, so at least I can say that I've got work out there. I think three articles for someone who's been out of grad school for a year is pretty reasonable. I need to work on academic work regularly, instead of this writing binge I'm engaging in now. It's stupid to do this. I've also got to remember that much academic writing is not so well written. It doesn't have to be brilliant. It has to be clear. It has to make sense. It has to make a clear contribution to the field. Period.

Okay, work management, aka accountability blogging. I need to

1) add the stuff I think needs to be added immediately and make space for things I think probably need to be done that I'm not ready to do immediately

2) see if I can come up with a new outline for what I think would be pretty readable, seeing what's lost and gained

3) go back into the scholarship and draw connections and counter-arguments

4) fill in the gaps and do dumb formatting things

Today, I pretty much need to do 1 and 2. First I'll add the stuff I'm going to add. Then I'll reorganize, cutting and pasting and getting a sense of what is lost and gained. Then I think I have to let it rest. I have a plan! A plan!

***Update 6:30pm***

Wow, did I really start blogging around 12:30 and I'm only done with work now? I do remember how to work!

So I found myself really going over the piece sentence by sentence, mostly taking things out and reordering. I stopped at the point where I got to the pages where all this other scholarship needs to be put in. It's clear to me that I'm not going to be able to add scholarship in each place they've noted it, because the whole piece would become way too long. But I think that I've put a strong new organization in place -- and the scholarship problems are those I think I can research individually, making them bite-sized pieces I might be able to work on piecemeal -- if I can ever really get myself to get up early. Oh! I give a test tomorrow in my SAT class, so I'll have plenty of time to work on this. Wow, I'm good! Solved that problem. I just have to remember to put the books in my bag. Better do that now. I've also got to remember to do the stuff I need to do for the SAT class. Like send my students some emails. Then I'm going to enjoy the rest of my Sunday!

Blogging the Sick

which I hope is like blogging the lost.

Last night, my throat got sore on the left side. It actually started when I was in class, teaching the first real day of an intensive SAT class. And it got worse until this morning when it has exploded all over my throat. I think I'm getting sick.

It's not at all surprising. Right now, I wake up, rush over to the office, do whatever is needed there (lately I've been compiling the expenses on one account with a grumbly customer -- a bit stressful since everyone is stressed there), and then rushing off to teach my intensive SAT class -- an everyday sort of affair. It just started, but already I can't wait for the class to end. In addition to teaching, of course, I have to prep (daily) and do homework (daily). I also have my article revisions due next Wednesday. Oh no, only a week. I want to go to back to sleep. I'm exhausted. Last night, I had these pains that must've been Braxton-Hicks contractions because while I've certainly had gripping pain before, this didn't feel digestive in nature. The baby was kicking like he was going to come through my belly alien-style. When he (85% says the doctor, so I call it a "he" -- besides, if I end up having a girl, I won't be disappointed or anything) really gets going and kicks hard, it doesn't exactly hurt, but doesn't exactly feel great either. Maybe I'm just touchy right now. But it was scary to be gripped by pain and have to breathe through it because I thought maybe something was wrong -- no contractions at 23 weeks, thank you very much, no matter how much Absurdist Baby wants out. No Baby, we don't have a car seat yet. Forget it.

But he's going to be a handful, if his uterine antics are any indication. He'll be one of those toddlers who scoot across the room before you can say Jack Robinson. Oy. I hope I feel better then than I do now.

On the plus side, even though going from the office to teaching the SAT causes me mental whiplash, it's good that I have something going on besides that office. I was getting way too into its madness, coming home and telling Absurdist Lover all about the bs, from the boss who gives me his personal business to sort out to the idiot assistant. . .who is just an idiot. (By the way, I hereby make this proclamation: no more sports. I don't want to hear about whether "our team" will pull it out and "show up," and I don't want to be forced to listen to golf all day. Luckily, Absurdist Lover has no interest, even less interest than I do considering that at least once a decade, I get into watching NFL, but only West Coast offense, because to me a well-executed play looks like choreographed dance, which is also how I appreciate Jackie Chan films.)

Suffice it to say, I'm grumpy. That about covers it. And Absurdist Lover is asking me whether I want him to go out and get me food. Who is this man? He also made dinner last night as I was taking a break from homework to do battle with Word to format his resume nicely. When I complain about working so much and just being tired, he says he's trying to find a job. Of course, I want him to find a job and any job he gets (even some minimum-wage job) would make a big difference in our money situation, which would reduce our stress overall. But when I complain, I swear, I'm just complaining. Really I want to stay in bed all day. I'm exhausted. But it must weigh on him something awful.

We're also in the middle of a heat wave, and our air conditioner decided to give up. The maintenance people are supposed to come today and install a new one. For some reason, after a sweltering day, it decided to work again last night. I think it gets overheated and swoons, personally, which is what we all do once it decides not to work. Watching Tick stick his belly on the floor and pant is so sad!

All this said, the world has been very good to us lately. On Saturday, we were garage-saling and running some errands. We were hot and sweaty and weren't even in the mood to spend any more money. That morning, I had had a bout of terrible pregnancy insomnia, where I woke up at 4 and couldn't go back to sleep, an unfortunately all-too-common occurrence. (I swear it's having to get up to pee all the time!) I had looked online at baby furniture, including changing tables. So we were hitting this last garage sale only because it was a block or two from our place. When there was a traffic on a side street and I was struggling with some bad parallel parking (mine), Absurdist Lover said he hoped all this was worth it. As we approached, we saw a changing table. I jokingly said: is that for us? In fact it was. The woman there told us it was $100, out of our price range. (We had spent $6 on rugs earlier. Not that the changing table wasn't worth $100, but I wasn't really thinking we'd buy one right then. I figured that we'd pick one out and my folks would help us buy it.) Then she saw that I was pregnant and pulled me aside, saying she'd give me the changing table without the super-duper pad for $30 as a gift. I saw instantly that this was one of those times when the world was giving us a gift and we'd be stupid and ungrateful to not take it. She also threw in one of those baby rocker things that supposedly put babies to sleep (as featured with a vibrator in a Sex and the City episode, my friends) and a baby bath stand. When Absurdist Lover went back to pick up the changing table, she gave him the super-duper pad for $10 and threw in a shirt for me and a couple bibs. All I can say is that I realize how blessed we are. If you saw the room that we don't use right now, you'd think there was a baby explosion, complete with handmedown toys and a bassinet; in total, I think we've spent $43 on the whole thing -- $40 on the garage sale bounty and $3 on a little green sleeper that I had to have from Target. The generous woman's name was Valerie. THANK YOU VALERIE! THANK YOU GOD AND GENEROUS WORLD! THANK YOU ABSURDIST LOVER FOR GOING OUT AND GETTING ME FANCY COFFEE AND A BAGEL.

I have nothing to complain about. But of course that's never stopped me before. I totally recognize that I'm often one of those people who start to obsess about something because I need a focus. (Totally ADD.) What will become of Absurdist Lover and me is my latest obsession.

Oy gevalt. I just received a message saying that I had an amnio and genetic counseling appointment, the first one my doctor's inept office made for me before I insisted that they go somewhere else because it was going to be too late (this is before I thought better of the whole thing and felt more assured that an amnio wasn't really necessary). It took three people to cancel the damn appointment! You'd think I was trying to get out of paying a traffic ticket! If one more stranger says something like "you have to understand" about this pregnancy, I may scream. Well, that sense of peace and gratitude didn't last long, did it?

Cross your fingers I don't get full-blown sick. I need this weekend to work on the article and send Absurdist Lover to see his kids without having a nervous breakdown. (Let's just say that the last time he went and came back, things.did.not.go.well.)

Here's Absurdist Lover with my food. What a sweetie. No wonder I'm so afraid of losing him. Sigh.

Coming soon: an exploration of why my family's craziness makes me so ridiculously bonkers. Also, I'm sure, more blogging about the evils of article-writing.

Mantra for Days Like These

when both of the office workers are gone and I'm printing crap out because the bosses are too busy and important to do it:

I'm a college professor. I'm a college professor. I'm a college professor.

(Did I mention that I'm supposed to do bookkeeping, not secretarial junk?)

I'm a college professor. I'm a college professor. I'm a college professor.

(Yes, I am at work, blogging on their computer. Yes, I do need to stop now because I have to resize an Excel spreadsheet so it doesn't print out on four pages.)

I'm a college professor. I'm a college. . .AGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Easing Back into My Academic Self, One Blogpost at a Time

I need to blog more. I'm getting to the point where I think I have to have something to say in order to blog. This has never stopped me before!

I'm stressed today. I went to work and had two stress-filled conversations and either because I'm hormone-addled or radically de-centered or both, I totally internalized them. I need to become more able to shrug things off, less susceptible to whatever crap people say. The fact is everyone's doing the best we can and that's the end of it.

The good news is I'm 21 weeks pregnant, blood tests have come back negative (I'm so brain-befogged that it took me a couple wide-eyed blinks to register that this was a good thing), and I can feel the baby kick. It's amazing how much being kicked at from the inside really does feel like there's a separate being in there. I had wondered if it would hurt or if I would seize up and make it an unpleasant experience or if it would be easy to confuse with the g-i tract pain I've wrestled with for most of my life. The answer is: no. It feels like my belly is the inside of a drum. Absurdist Fetus kicks at all sorts of times -- and when this happens at work I can't believe I'm supposed to pretend that it isn't happening and focus on all this crap going on outside of my body. All the cool stuff is going on inside my belly.

In the spirit of counting my blessings (before getting on with the inevitable kvetching, you understand), we also live in a lovely apartment, Mr. Tabby seems to be very content, and we're getting a bunch of interest in the trailer that we emphatically did NOT get last week, when we were praying that we'd sell it in time to not have to ask my folks for the rent. Well, I did ask them for the rent and they gave it, another blessing -- and this week, it looks like the trailer may well sell to any one of five or so different prospective buyers. Let's not count our chickens yet, but please cross your fingers. The trailer not selling has been a thorn in our sides, making it really hard for Absurdist Lover to focus on getting a job (which provokes family members to comment on their "expectations" of him, stressing me out, like today -- though of course I want him to get a job too, but really trying to explain that he really is no slouch but it's impossible to do everything at once -- GAH!!!! it just plain drives me crazy). You see how easily I've gone from the counting of blessings to the kvetching. Oy.

Fundamentally, I'm just not centered. When any little thing happens, I'm thrown. I get overwhelmed easily. Last week, I ended up crying in the bathroom at the office. Absurdist Lover and I had awoken that day thinking this was the day we were going to sell the trailer. There was this buyer who had offered $1,000 less than what we asked. Then the next day, he had offered $1,000 less than that. We didn't have a lot of buyers, and we needed the rent money like mad, so we agreed. Then the schmuck showed up at Lake Campground offering $1,500 less. Absurdist Lover sent him on his way. When AL called, I was already having a shitty stressful day. Hence, crying.

I've decided that I need wireless. I feel different when I can sit at my laptop and write or work, as I'm doing now (pirating off some wonderful generous neighbor's wireless). Since AL loves to play online games, we are sharing the one desktop. I think I'll just feel better if I can connect with academic conversations via unrestricted internet access (restricted by my asking to use his computer -- he doesn't say no or anything, but somehow it's easier not to ask, especially when I just want to putz around in cyberspace). So with Friday's paycheck, a wireless router.

I have two weeks before a SAT course I've been signed up for may begin. (It may not run at all, though usually people sign up at the last minute, so we're not sure they'll run until then.) I have to be prepared that my free time will radically diminish at that point -- especially, the time in which I have to revise this article I've been putting off. The official turn-in date for the revised article is a mere 10 days after that anyway. Have I started? Why no. Of course not. Is it likely that getting back into my own work will help me center myself? Why, of course. But do I want to look at their feedback? Why no. So because of the various reasons I need to get myself back in the academic mindset (this article, the fact that I really should have three articles on my CV by the dreaded Fall Job Market, the dreaded Fall Job Market that I need to prepare materials for), I have decided to make more of a commitment to blogging. Blogging makes me feel more connected. And I don't feel at all connected to the academy right now. No one in my daily life sees me as this professorial academic person. I'm a bookkeeper, a pregnant girlfriend, a family member. But not an academic and writer. (Okay, Absurdist Lover sees me as a writer and is always pleased when he sees that I'm writing. But it's hard to write when there's someone else at home. Moreover, it's hard to write when you don't have a self you can write from, a voice that feels like your own because everything, even your body, is in a state of dynamic transition. This is probably stupid and untrue, but it really feels this way, that my life is too changeable for me to. . .I don't know. . .know my own mind, to do much else but try to get through it.) I'm amazed at how much I depend on other people to remind me of important parts of myself, like being a writer and academic. I wish I were a stronger person, more grounded, less shaky. Instead, I'm very flexible. This makes it easier to cope with different situations, but makes it much less likely that I'll get academic or writerly work done when not in the kind of environment that values such work. (When I was working on the diss -- a mere year ago -- I didn't have so many other demands on my time, so I could focus on it even when I wasn't teaching. Not that I didn't have terrible days, but I also had amazing days, and I was surrounded by people who were also academics, also hating life for the same reasons I did.) In countless personality profiles (some astrological and numerological, some more grounded in real things, like Myers-Briggs), it says that I'm the kind of person who really needs to remember that she's more than the faces she wears. Why is this so hard to remember? In any case, it is. I have to make time for academic work and writing, for feeding myself in those ways through reading, participating in those conversations that have consumed me for the last five years and then somehow flown out the window. (Have I mentioned that I have only a fraction of my books, still very little of my stuff, that despite that I own gorgeous furniture and a bed and all sorts of things, we sleep on a fold-out loaned to us by my parents? I'm grateful, but. . .) All of my memberships have lapsed. People are doing wonderful things in my field. People a year behind me have gotten tenure-track jobs. I'm happy for them, but I feel like an academic loser. I think this makes me want to focus even more on being pregnant and gardening and being with Absurdist Lover. And then it's a bad cycle that feeds on itself as I focus less and less on the academy and feel worse and worse about it. I feel the same way about writing, which has not been the focus of my life for quite a while now. Somehow I feel like wireless is a step in the right direction for all this. Maybe I'm nuts, but we'll see.

I think right now I'm going to look quickly at the comments that the editors sent me. I know that they are not going to say, it's wonderful, dahling, don't change a thing. So I'm just going to buck up and hope that they also don't say: you're a hack and just forget about ever getting a job in this field. I know I'm going to be sad after I read them. Just knowing this makes me feel better about looking at them. I better do this now, or I'll lose my nerve.

***Update***

I'm an idiot. Any worries about the fact that the article isn't fabulous are completely outweighed by how wonderful it is to get back into my work, work that still feels to me to be important and vital and alive. I want to wake up one morning and get to be an academic all day long, none of this going into the office and then hoping that I have a smidgeon of energy left over for it. I need to build that job into a three-day per week gig, which will also allow me more mental disconnection from the bullshit when I'm actually there. I'm a professor, damn it. I just happen to be currently at large, rather than connected to a specific university. So there. Yay! The answer, my friends, even when I was at Adventure U and felt pretty disconnected from the conversations that really jazz me, is the work itself. I love teaching, but I also really love the intellectual and exploratory work of scholarship. I need to remember this when I start applying for those 4/4 teaching loads out of desperation in the fall. (Of course, not all 4/4s or academics are alike: look at Dr. Crazy!) I guess it's good that I decided against going out for those 5/5 community college jobs.

We've Moved!

No, not blogs, but living situations. Instead of teetering on an up-turned milk crate, I'm on two cushions on the hardwood floor of Absurdist Lover's and my apartment. After an uncomfortable hour-and-a half journey during which Mr. Tabby and I figured out that this was his ninth move, Mr. Tabby seems happy. Absurdist Lover got up early and met with the cable guy (amazing, since we got him to come the day after we moved in) and so now we have internet access and everything. My laptop is still fried, but if I can maneuver myself down to and up off of the floor, then I can use Absurdist Lover's computer.

So now instead of living with a lakeview, we have a full shower, cable, and walking distance-access to way too much consumerism. As we were planning and hoping and crossing our fingers for this move (because my credit sucks and I had to get my father to guarantee the thing), I had the distinct feeling that we were moving in the wrong direction. Instead of being further away from Urban Home City, we're now deep in it. As in, can't park on our street because it's too busy at 10pm on a Friday night in it. Over ten years ago, fresh out of college, I left Urban Home City with a sense of triumph. Though I lived in a gorgeous condo in a good neighborhood, at the local coffee house people still talked about working hard for another five, ten, thirty years and then getting the hell out of Urban Home City. But everyone knew that very few people ever get out. And you can't wait until there's a good time or money or ideal conditions. You have to run with your two feet under you and that's it. When my then-husband 's job was relocated to another city 360 miles away when I was twenty-three, I was ecstatic. We were actually going to leave, the same city that since my father emigrated to this country when he was three, he hasn't lived outside of a forty-mile radius, despite his coming home from business trips when I was a kid declaring that we were moving to Louisville, Kentucky or Charlotte, North Carolina. (My mother said no way, sight unseen. I haven't been to Charlotte, but I have been in Louisville and felt a sense of loss when I saw the gorgeous houses that could've been ours for a song instead of the dingy tract houses that cost a bloody fortune -- buying a house in Urban Home City is making a bargain with the devil that you'll work at high-paying jobs that you hate, watch the hours of your life tick away while you're in traffic, and get rid of any pesky remaining longings for authenticity, supporting small local businesses and farms, and a generally non-prepackaged, value-driven life.) And in the twelve years since, I haven't lived in Urban Home City, haven't even thought about moving back here, not even after the divorce. Despite the inevitable questions from family of when I'm going to move back to Urban Home City. Never, I would silently reply.

Similarly, Absurdist Lover got fed up with Urban Home City a few years ago and felt he had to leave, moving his family way up north to a place that I've heard is basically in the middle of nowhere. And though we both talk about getting a farm in Idaho, here we are, back in the thick of Urban Home City and its seductive consumerism: you can have anything right now, if you have the greenbacks to get it.

We are here for the baby. Here is where we have the familial and financial resources to manage our lives right now. Basically, I feel like I'm back in college, getting supported by my father. I'm grateful, because I wasn't doing very well on my own resources in the camper. On the other hand (and obviously I can't say this to him), I feel like I've gone backwards in my life. I've regressed. I'm a PhD and have had a job as an assistant professor in the kind of city that makes people say wow, but now I'm just a pregnant woman trying to make ends meet being supported by her family. Again, I'm grateful. I'm very lucky. On the other hand, I really want to go back to being. . .I don't know. . .a person. A person who doesn't have to beg. A person who is respected as someone who knows what she's doing in a job that she's good at. Of course, I'd also like to be a person who knows what she's doing. Lately, my brain is so clouded that I can barely think through where to put the TV when Absurdist Lover asks. It's bad. People say that pregnant brain is very normal. Great. It doesn't help me make decisions at either of my jobs, get myself reading and writing and generally working my way back to my field, or keep me from getting overwhelmed at basically nothing. But somehow I've got to manage to keep my authentic self and my values in this consumerist bordello. Keep my eye on the ball that reads: get the hell out!

Have I mentioned lately that though Urban Home State is often looked at as a leftist bangladeshgranolahead mecca, both the birth center and the private midwife care at a local hospital have disbanded, a farm I went to didn't know whether pesticides had poisoned their produce, and basically I am having much trouble finding people at all like me around here. It's all too yuppified for words. Of course, no one from anywhere else ever believes me when I say I'm an Urban Home City native. From now on, I'm telling people I'm from the moon. Maybe I'm not really from here -- but from here in the seventies with dark bead macrame, cordoroy jeans, and everyone chanting gongyo trying to find themselves. Now people have just found their bluetooth, their Starbucks (I've been going to Peets in protest), and their inner brats screaming I want, I want, I want. I never thought I'd say this, but I want to go back to Grad City. I've lost my urbanity and want to live in the quiet boonies where I can get some direct sun on my brand new rosemary and sage plants!

All that said, it's very wonderful to be in an apartment instead of a 24-foot camper. Absurdist Lover approves of the shower, as do I. Absurdist Fetus will have a nice place to live when s/he decides to leave the relative safety of my body. (We're exhausted today from yesterday's moving adventures -- and by we, I mean Absurdist Fetus and myself, who is merely the cocoon around AF's transforming body, the fruit around AF's seed.) I'm sure I'm not making sense anymore. Hi everyone!

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.

And Now for Something Somewhat Different. . .

It's not that I have anything brilliant to say right now, but I have to push that totally depressed and depressing post down the line. It's just too much. And it feels a bit too "look at me! look at me! my life sucks, and I'm not saying why. feel sorry for me" for my taste.

So what's going on? There's a bit of trouble in Camper-land, and I'm staying at my folks for a few days. I've been trying to sort things out, alternating with wanting to hide under the covers. There's just a lot going on. I'm underemployed (I'm certified to teach the SAT but I haven't yet been scheduled for a class -- it's a slow part of the year, but will pick up during the summer) which means that I need to get another job, pregnant and in need of pre-natal care (12 weeks on Friday -- this is nuts), and homeless. Now, the homeless thing needs a bit of explaining. I have family and friends in Urban Home City, none of whom would ever knowingly let me take to the streets. I am not without a place to stay. There are couches and extra rooms aplenty -- and I could probably do a rotation of several days here and there for a long while. That's not what I mean by homeless. I have resources. What I mean is I don't have a home, a space that is mine and has my stuff in it. The camper is the closest thing to having my own space to be comfortable in and have some privacy, but it's not mine, I don't have my stuff, and it's prone to trouble. When I left Grad City, I put most of my stuff in storage to take off to Adventure U. When I left Adventure U, I took about half of what I had to Camper-land. So I've been living with a tiny fraction of my voluminous and much-loved stuff. (As in, I now have only two shirts that fit.) Both Adventure U and Camper-land represented these big adventures. Well, I'm adventured out. I need to nest. I don't have my stuff in which to nest nor an apartment (it's also getting super-hot in Camper-land) in which to put my stuff. What about getting my stuff? It all comes back to the same thing: money. And since I need an apartment and pre-natal care, getting my stuff from 2,000 miles away -- well, that's not a huge priority. So I'm not sure I'm going to have my stuff by the time this baby is born in October. I realize this is more emotional than practical, but hormonally and situationally, I think I'm prone to more whining than usual.

I've been thinking a lot about the future. Since this kid is going to want to pop out at some point October-ish, I feel pretty stupid trying to get adjunct teaching for the fall. Who wants someone to start the semester and then be out? If anyone has any advice about pregnancy and adjuncting, please please please let me know. I'll probably try for it anyway on the off-chance that maybe I can get a sub for two weeks and then be back. Would you believe that my undergraduate Alma Mater is accepting applications only now (for about a month) for the adjunct pool for next year? Nightmare.

I also think that I really must prepare myself for going on the market in the fall. I mean, it's fine to be underemployed and artsy and everything for a while, but I'm going to have a baby. I need a serious, somewhat dependable, somewhat well-paying job with insurance and benefits. Which means I need to get myself to work on publishable articles. I probably won't get any teaching between now and then, but I've taught at least a 2/2 for 5-1/2 years, so that should be enough, no? I'll have to work on my materials as well. At least I have them. If there's anything else I should do to prepare myself for the market, well, I can't think of it.

Finding a job and working on my conference paper and getting some stuff into publishable shape is all on hold at the moment. Why? My laptop won't boot. I've been having problems with it for the last two months. At first we just thought it needed a new battery. That helped, but didn't fix it. Now we're getting a new adapter. If that's not it, then there's something wrong with the intake board or something. My dad ordered the adapter, and it's due here in a couple days. The early draft of my conference paper -- that is, the relevant crap from my diss that I put in a new file to be worked on -- is on my laptop. I even left my flash drive in Camper-land. Not good. It's just so stupid.

So between the emotional stuff and the overwhelming amount of practical stuff necessary for me to get a life and provide one for this new life who has taken up residence in my body, I'm exhausted and overwhelmed and want to hide under the covers. I don't feel strong at all -- strangely, both Absurdist Lover and I look at when I was in Grad City dissertating as a time when I felt stronger (is that screwed up, or what?) and handled things better. And, of course, I need to feel strong to deal with all this crap. Vicious cycle. Plus, I want to have some fun. Enough of all this crap! I want to have some fun! Both the pursuit of fun and escapism and throwing off all the crap enough to get small pieces done and make things better would be much easier with more caffeine than I should consume, more alcohol that I should consume, or anti-depressants. I guess I'm growing. Growing more likely to hide under the covers and whine. (Oh, wine and the inevitable hangover where one's focus dwindles to two things: the pain and feeling stupid. Oh, the promises never to do it again. Sigh. Pregnancy is for the birds. Even the birds are smart enough to just sit on the egg and not try to grow the damn thing inside them. It does somewhat cramp one's style.*)

Anyhoo, that's what's going on with me. So hurry up and blog folks, 'cause I can't drink or go out and raise hell.

*Oh, I know that 40 weeks isn't that long in the scheme of things and giving up really drinking and the caffeine IV and (whimper, whimper) sushi isn't so bad in light of the miracle of a new life growing in my body and coming into the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. And I give up the stuff because I want my baby to have the best chance to develop. Yadda yadda yadda. I know I'm supposed to be all glowy and transcendent about this magical process. Yeah whatever. My mother drank coffee and alcohol, ate crap, smoked, and did drugs when I was in utero. (Of course, she was much younger, and the environment wasn't as polluted. Have you heard about the pharmaceuticals found in the water all over the country? I saw it on Democracy Now. It's pretty terrifying. Estron, a HRT found in the area of the country where breast cancer is at its most prevalent? Duh. I guess it's not just PG&E causing trouble for the S.F. Bay Area anymore. This is really not deserving of a parenthesis in an endnote.) Yes, I want to be a better mother. But I also want to complain. And if I suddenly got all saintly about what I'm giving up to give my baby a better start -- well, y'all'd know I was full of shit.