It's Real: The Week Before School Starts

Well, it's dawned on me that I have a ton to do this week to prepare for my classes. Moreover, I have to get as much Job Market Prep done as possible. (Sorry, Sisyphus. I put it off as long as I could, I swear!) I want to use the mornings before I go to work to get things done. Today, I spent the last almost three hours on emails to recommendation letter-writers alone. And that's all I've done. Sigh.

Can I just say that I don't know if I get an office, where the copy center is, which books were ordered for my second class that may well get axed today anyway, where to get a parking sticker, where the department office and mailboxes are or anything at this Community College? The website doesn't list such details, and the email I've sent to the no doubt incredibly-busy Department Chair has gone unanswered. These are mysteries I must figure out this week. I'm not panicking, but only because I've taught enough to wing it -- and maybe because I'm in pregnancy-induced denial. There's no doubt in my mind that this semester -- with teaching, working at the office, pregnancy/having the baby, and the job market -- is going to be one.wild.ride. Hang on, folks!

PS Our new lady cat is indeed a tortoiseshell, or so says Wikipedia. So Ms. Tortoise it is. Photos forthcoming.

Great News, with Inevitable Mindmeanderings on Money and the Academicness of this Blog

I don't have gestational diabetes! Apparently, the official number of diabetes for a glucose tolerance test is 140 -- and I'm at a meager 99. Ha! The midwife is genuinely surprised, considered the diet of lattes and ice cream I showed her. (Of course, the diet didn't show that I was eating reasonably healthily when I was still going to the farmer's market -- until my CD player died and I lost my inspiration, which was Barbara Kingsolver, et al's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My CD player died like 2 months ago, I think.) When I showed her my new diet sheets, she was also impressed and said it was a good diet, except that I need to eat more protein, which, I have to tell you, is not easy when you're poor and trying to eat organic or at least natural food. (One of the supplements she put me on cost me a whopping $150! I have bills for things like power and cable that total that much that I can't afford to pay. But trying to explain to people who'd drop $20 for themselves on lunch what $20 is to people like me is sort of the continuing saga of what's going on between my family and me. Case in point: my step-mother continues to prod me to go to Ikea to buy baby furniture. She tells me how the furniture is actually better built than it used to be and "so cheap!" -- just $150. Now, of course this is cheap for furniture. Of course, it would be great to have a chest of drawers for the baby. But we don't have $150 for anything, except, apparently, supplements, which I took out of the health fund from Grandma, which is now totally dry. But I don't want to make this post about money, because money so absolutely runs Absurdist Lover's and my life at this point -- and I have to remind myself that most of the really wonderful things in life do not depend on money. I say this on a day when he ran out of the house at the prospect of his dad being able to give him some money. Oy vey.)

So I am to drink some protein shakes with low-glycemic fruit! The midwife thinks I don't have to worry about having a big baby or anything (since what causes the huge baby syndrome is unrestrained sugar in the blood kickstarting the baby to become bigger -- to get unrestrained sugar in one's blood, one's insulin/pancreas has to not be working well, a typical problem during pregnancy, hence gestational diabetes) -- and I asked her about eating granola with yogurt to satisfy my sweet tooth cravings and she said yes! And I probably will go ahead and give myself one latte a week anyway. I'm okay! The baby will be okay! Life is good!

Another piece of great news is that when I was waiting at the birth center for my appointment with the midwife (I love that she's always running late -- she's like me that way), I started reading the article that I need to revise and get to my collaborator. I had some new ideas and got all fired up about revising it! So today I'm going to Nearby Research University to poke into their library and snag some quotes from some books that, sadly, I have locked away in a storage unit in Grad City. Now, I realize that it's already well into the afternoon. But Absurdist Lover has only recently left -- and I'm going to go to the library and work -- and it's all good! I'm excited! I wish I had a library card there so I could get the books and come home, but I don't and can't afford to buy the card for community members and it will be fun to be sitting in a nice cold library working again in any case, even with my belly so huge and this baby having the hiccups. I want to work! I feel clearheaded enough to work! I feel motivated to get over to the library whose parking costs too much in order to work! How often does this happen! I've got to harnass it and get this article revised! Wooohooooo!

(Who'd a thunk last year when I was revising my dissertation for my readers that I'd ever be so excited to work on anything. It does happen, folks! I would not have put money on it, but it does happen!)

P.S. Absurdist Lover brought home his cat from up north. Apparently, she was living in a garage with four kittens (not hers), all of whom she hated. So now she's in our apartment. Mr. Tabby is surprisingly not so worried about her. The first day we kept them separate. But now the door is open between them -- yet she still pretty much stays in the bedroom/baby room, where we don't sleep. (We sleep on a fold-out in the living room, ironically imitating our camper life where bedroom, living room, and kitchen were all connected.) I haven't yet come up with a good blog name for her. I keep thinking of calling her Ms. Thang, since every time she sees Mr. Tabby, who has much more reason to be affronted by her presence that she does, and hisses at him. She's sort of black and orange, not striped, but just mixed in a way that looks just sort of messy. I don't know -- maybe she's a tortoiseshell? Then I could call her Ms. Tortoise, which fits her personality as long as the tortoise is grumpy to her own kind and likes people. Help me out people!

P.P.S. I swear when I started this blog, I thought that "absurdist paradise" referred mainly to academic life. Now I realize it refers to my life. Two totally impoverished adults, one of whom is ridiculously overeducated and underpaid, barely scraping by in one of the most flashy cities in the world that lots of people would like to visit but which the two adults really dislike, living in an overpriced (but cute!) fly-ridden one-bedroom apartment with not one, but two old curmudgeonly cats and a baby on the way. No one could make this stuff up. My life is absurd! Sorry to those who came here looking for good academic kvetching, when this blog has definitely taken a turn toward a mom blog (when I first saw my blog listed on another blog's "mom blog links," I was surprised, even alarmed -- maybe just to think of myself as a mom, though maybe that this blog has become a mom blog). I think I always just felt I was focusing on important things in my life -- and whereas those things used to be the academy because I was very much in the academy, now they are not. But I still think that this is an academic blog to the point that I hold a more academic point of view than your average person, so when I encounter websites that infantilize pregnant women or everyday marginalization and bias against those who don't have enough money to buy the latest baby gadget or academic book, I think I look at it as an academic (a certain version of an academic) does -- an academic loose in a crazy consumerist culture trying to get back into the academy. (There's no doubt that this digression was inspired by Dr. Crazy's discussion of blogging and the comments to that post. Ooh, I see she's put up another post about the comments to that post. Gotta go read that! Then, I really must go to the library already! Bye!)

The Good News and the Bad News, or How My Morning Regimen Means I Get to Be a Lazy Head

I have been up for an hour and a half doing the various morning things I have to do -- and now when I could almost be ready to go and do something or get something wonderfully productive done, I don't want to. The morning regimen is already enough -- like since it's the weekend I should get to relax already. Absurdist Lover is away for the weekend, and I had planned to do many many things that are more difficult to do when he's here and we want to spend time together on the weekends. There are many things I should do, such as work on the article that could contribute positively to me on the job market this year, call my grandfather, and go out and buy a number of little things that would make life around the house easier (including flypaper, which I have been having a hard time finding and which we desperately need because for some reason our apartment is a daily fly convention), not to mention work on another thing that I realize now I should tell y'all about.

So let me explain my good news and my bad news first.

The bad news (let's get it over with) is I had my nutritional consult with my nutritionally-oriented midwife and she was basically appalled at my diet of lattes and ice cream. She said that the amount of sugar in my diet had probably already led me to gestational diabetes and could lead to hypertension, a big baby (which means a more problematic delivery), and all sorts of bad high-risk things. So now I'm on this no-sugar, no-caffeine, low-fat, low natural sugar, low-fun diet. Today is Day 3, and I don't feel as terrible as I did yesterday when I moaned to my co-workers and Maude that I was going to die. (Something to remember about radical diet changes: Day 1 is not so bad because you're still full of juice about how you're going to change your life and "it's going to be great"; Day 2 is frigging awful because your body is in total withdrawal and you think you're going to die and you wish you could spend the day sprawled on your bed with the clicker exactly like those hangover days, which, sadly, you now remember fondly; Day 3, so far, is not so bad.) In fact, the rest of yesterday wasn't so bad; I went to El Pollo Loco after work and ate a huge-but-didn't-break-any-rules meal to make up for the fact that I had not eaten lunch (a big no-no) and managed to feel pretty decent the rest of the night. Basically, the midwife has already put me on the gestational diabetes diet, so if the tests come back next week with gestational diabetes, well, I won't be surprised and there won't be anything to change. But please cross your fingers that I don't have gestational diabetes, because that means that for who knows how long there has been rampant un-insulin-controlled sugars kick-starting the baby's growth hormone, leading to a huge baby, making a vaginal delivery increase in potential ickiness. Since we're at 32 weeks (if you can believe that), this is the time of rapid growth, so maybe, just maybe, I can nip that one in the bud by reducing my sugar to practically zero. We'll see. The one thing about being pregnant that really sucks is how I feel already like I've already ruined this little person I love. It's ridiculous, I know, because my mother ate whatever she wanted (though she doesn't have a sugar-sensitive body either and I do), smoked, drank, etc. I figure the smoking probably kept the birth weight down, evening out the all-fast food diet. Ugh. If this baby has anything wrong with him/her, I know that I'm going to blame myself for all my bad pregnancy behaviors. I have to remember that while some of this is productive and will keep me on my diet, some of this is totally nonproductive too -- and hubristic, as if I have all the answers and am totally in charge of how this baby turns out.

So, along with the new diet, there are tons and tons of supplements. In the morning, there are not one, but two different things I have to mix up and drink, plus so many pills I inevitably have a bad time getting them down. At night, I now also have a bunch of pills and one thing to drink -- and she encouraged me to order this other supplement -- so as of next week, I'll have yet another thing to mix up and drink three times a day. So when I say I'm done with the morning regimen, what I mean is that I've taken all my morning supplements, given the cat his medicine, brushed my teeth, and cleaned out the cat box (with a mask and gloves, of course). I haven't, for example, eaten breakfast. But I don't feel hungry because my stomach is full of Vitamin C drink, Cal Mag, and pills, pills, pills. (Part of the point of eating the low-fat, no-sugar diet is to get all the bad stuff out of the way so that my body can actually process the good stuff, including protein and supplements, that will make the baby and me strong for birth.) On a positive note, I don't feel bad or caffeine-deprived, no matter how much I really want a latte. We all know the caffeine-withdrawal headache. I don't have that. I think the reason why I felt crappy yesterday at work really had to do with my blood sugar being way too low -- and not having any quick way of fixing it. Though it was probably also withdrawal.

So on to the good news! On Thursday, Chair of English Department at New Community College offered me two classes: one that he's pretty sure will run, one that is sketchy right now. So I emailed the coordinator of Pretty-Assured Class and got a bunch of materials. There is even a meeting for the instructors so I may get to lobby there for someone to take over when I give birth and definitely need to be out. As much as starting something new when I'm about to have a baby, a new lifechanging event, is a lot, there are a few reasons why this is totally fabulous news. One, definite pay for 3-4 months at a higher hourly rate than SAT company gives me (though of course they don't pay for prep and we know how it happens that we end up spending way way way more time than they ever pay us for). Two, a college that I can put on my CV for going on the market. No matter how I talk about SAT Company and how I've learned a great deal that will help me be a better college teacher in the future, I figure there is nothing better than having some actual college teaching on my sheet. (I have more than five years already, but still.) I also feel like the community college experience will help me be a better, more well-rounded teacher. I realize that universities often don't care about this, but I do think that teaching the SAT and the writing courses I've done recently, plus community college teaching will make me a better teacher -- and a better, more thoughtful scholar. This way I can see a bigger picture rather than just what we do in our classes or our programs. I can see how students are prepared to get into those classes. I have to remember to talk about this is some sort of smart way in my letter. GAH! I have to rewrite my letter! Oy gevalt! Breathe, breathe deeply. Three, I like college teaching better than SAT teaching. No matter how stifling the set curriculum (and so far, it doesn't seem awful), at least I will feel like I'm doing what I'm best at or at least what I've sunk my higher education into. I just plain feel better about myself when I'm doing something that feels like what I'm meant to do. (One of these days I have to explore why it is that teaching writing to others feels so much more important than writing myself. When I visited my grandmother a couple weeks ago, she told me how well-written she thought my writing was. Why don't I write more? Why, why, why?)

So, of course it would be a great idea for me to look more carefully through all the things that Course Coordinator sent me, figure things out, come up with questions, etc. And yet. I'm not excited enough about the class to actually go and do that. In some ways, I realize it will be very much like the teaching at Adventure U, which totally didn't fit me. But really it's not that I'm in some working mood, and I just don't feel good about this situation. It's that I'm totally NOT in a working mood. Since my last class with Summer Program for SAT Company ended on Thursday, I just want to enjoy not working two jobs -- and today I want to enjoy not working, period. I want to get lost in a book or something. Or watch TV and movies and do cross-stitch. I want to be a big old Lazy Head.

I thought blogging might help me get in the mood, but I see this post is one big rationalization for not working at all -- on the article or the new class. The new class I figure I can work on during the week, when I would've been working that second job. The article? Well, I have no excuse. Maybe later in the day when I've wasted too much time I'll feel more like a wastrel and get into it. (I should at least make myself work long enough for a ten-minute freewrite.) But for now I'm going to think about the things that have to be done today, such as renewing my library books. Tomorrow, I figure I'll wake up, go to the farmer's market (good healthy food for me, plus I also have to bring snacks to Tuesday's birth class), and then go over to my folks, where I can pick up the bathing suit my step-mom bought me, maybe go swimming if the suit fits (which seems highly unlikely since I'm a beached whale), and call my grandfather on their far-superior phones. Which means today, I can lounge about, post-renewal of books.

I hope y'all out in bloggerland are having a more productive time of it out there! I never did understand how people work all week, then get up early on Saturday to run errands. I just want to sleep and do nothing. August as the month of getting down to business, my foot!

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!

Reverse Psychology

So blogging the sick is not like blogging the lost: my sore throat has blossomed into full-blown ickiness. On the other hand, practically right after I wrote about how sweet Absurdist Lover was, we began to have problems. It's as if writing it down and pressing publish puts an expiration date on whatever's going on. So maybe by saying that we're having problems and I'm sick and feel like crap, everything will get better.

In other news, today I'm not teaching my class but instead am going to a training in another part of town. It's actually kind of funny and kind of sad (yes, a Tears for Fears reference) because I'm going to a training so I can get certified to teach for SAT Company what I've already taught at the college level. That is, I'm going to a three-hour training to specialize in what I have a PhD in. Oy. What a strange world. Of course, techniques for a test are different. And I'm glad to get certified in something else. This way I can teach some specialized courses. Maybe I can also tutor in this field. But oy, I wish I didn't feel like crap nine ways to Sunday today.

The air conditioner people are here, and it sounds like they are ripping things out of the wall. Absurdist Lover is out there taking care of it, and I'm hiding in the back room, surrounded by used tissues. This is not good. I'm living for the weekend -- when I have to work on my article revisions, which, surprise surprise, I have not worked on since Monday. I want to sleep for a week. Or at least get summers off.

The doctor's office called me, I think because I cancelled my genetic counseling appointment. I thought it was the amnio -- in fact I'm still not sure! They also did not even tell me that they'd made an appointment for me specifically for genetic counseling nor did they say anything about why I would want genetic counseling. I hate the medical profession, where they just send you in for stuff without telling you a damn thing about it. Also, this particular office is really disorganized, hence the lovely birth center that I have not been able to fix the money for because I am tired and sick and working basically all the time. Yes, I'm grumbly. I want to just curl up like Mr. Tabby (on my suitcase, if you can believe it -- as if he's saying: you're not going anywhere without me!) and sleep through everything.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Maybe a Decent Ending to March Madness

Things are looking up. There's the possibility that I'll be working at not one, but two jobs in a few weeks. The SAT place has a class that isn't filled yet, but they offered and assigned it to me, so if it runs, it's mine. Yay! Also, my dad's business partner had the idea of offering me some part-time work at the office -- and since their accounting is all in some sort of mess and I've done that work before (granted a zillion years ago when I was fresh out of college), it sounds really good because it may well include insurance -- and insurance that would allow me to go to a nurse-midwife and birth center rather than have to go to the county hospital and deal with whatever OB-GYN I can get. I'm a midwife sort of person. I want to be seen as a person, not a piece of physiology with a medical condition. Of course, beggars can't be choosers, but if this works out it would be awesome. So please resume crossing fingers, toes, and eyes, dear friends.

In other news, I'm back in Camperland, and it feels good to be home. Mr. Tabby is sitting on my lap, drooling on my hand. Everything is not totally resolved between Absurdist Lover and me, but we have plans that I think will help AL figure out what he wants to do. This is good. With the baby coming and everything, I just can't be in limbo too terribly long. And I know that I've not taken care of myself and gotten depressed -- and now that I'm freshly back from feeling stronger, I hope I can get into some habits that will help me avoid getting depressed and overwhelmed and then taking it out on AL. (This is not the sum-total of our troubles, of course, because there are situational factors and things he's doing and not doing that help me get depressed and overwhelmed too, but my getting depressed is not all his fault either. And we certainly can't work out our copious differences when I'm depressed and angry, and he's freaking out.) So things are better. It's strange, but we were only apart for a week, but it felt as if I hadn't seen him for a month. He says it's because we've spent every day together for months.

One thing that I need to do for my own mental health is to get back into work. I feel so distant from the academy now! Thank goodness for all my academic blogger friends who remind me of things terrible and funny, like diss committees and writing articles and all that. But I need to get back into my work, especially since I'm planning on going on the market again in the fall. As luck it would have it, I have a conference paper due -- though I sent an email to the panel organizer a month ago that I wouldn't be there and that I wanted to send my paper to her early, I have not done a damn thing, of course (computer problems have been my latest and greatest excuse), and now have to turn it around this weekend. OY! So that's what I'm supposed to be doing now, though of course instead I've read other people's blogs and done this. Oy. No wonder I never get anything done that's not on a strict deadline. I have no discipline. Bad. Very bad.

So I'm sure I'll have boring accountablogging posts for you. Ooh boy!

12 weeks pregnant, friends and neighbors. Bloated and having very unhappy stomach problems. Ain't pregnancy grand?

Note to Explain Blog Silence

So what's happening now is that I'm totally caught in the thick of this SAT prep training course. We have our final teaching assessments on Sunday -- basically, how I do on Sunday's teaching will determine if I get hired or not. We (that is, Absurdist Lover, Mr. Tabby, Absurdist Fetus, and yours truly) need for me to get this job, so I'm spending a bunch of time stressing studying math in general and especially the methods this company advocates and sections I have to prepare, which, thank goodness, include other things besides math. Basically they want to feel comfortable with me in one of their classrooms. May I add that applying for a TAship wasn't this thorough?

GULP!

So basically, I'll get back to y'all on Monday, when we will likely go back to our usual fare of kvetching about writing because I have a conference paper to write. But before I can even think about that: SAT. Please cross your fingers, toes, and eyes for me.

Waaaaaa! Math!

I know I totally suck. I have updates galore since my last post, including that it turns out the GCU did give two diss awards this year -- one was in the sciences. So I stand corrected. I've thought about the difference between research and scholarship a zillion times since that post -- about how dissertation scholarship demonstrates mastery of a certain body of scholarship and then builds on that in a way that I don't think creative writing necessarily does and that GCU doesn't require in a scholarly intro or anything, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure I'm just getting in myself deeper with all of you who are offended by this discussion. (For the record, I do think of creative writing as research, just not the painful kind of demonstrating mastery and building on of scholarship that a traditional dissertation necessarily is.) But anyway, I don't care about any of that, because I have math homework! That's right! Math. I'm in this SAT prep training course so I can hopefully get a job -- and I totally have to study my geometry formulas and assorted crapola! Bah!

Did I have all week to do this math homework? Of course I did. Did I do it then? Why no, of course not. This week, I rested (totally necessary after 16 hours of training and 5 hours of taking the damned SAT over the course of three days), went to the store (something I hadn't felt up to for weeks), bought more Agatha Christie's since they are the only reading I can concentrate on, fulfilled my new fruit smoothie fixation (is it too early for cravings?), spent the day with my mom and grandmother (Grandma is doing great after her lumpectomy), obsessed over a totally unbloggable situation that has me reflecting on what friends are and should be, then yesterday I did some depressing internet research (did you know that even though there is a law that says that insurance companies can't consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition, there are so many loopholes that they undeniably do, especially for those who are trying to get individual rather than group insurance?) and just crashed completely, spending most of the day sleeping. So that leaves today for doing homework and reminding myself about stupid things I thought I'd never need again like square roots and factoring. And preparing for my teaching demo, which this time is on reading. Thank goodness.

In good news, I think the training course is good for my mental health. It reminds me that I'm a person with a brain, rather than a gestating lump with tummy upset. I'm a wee bit isolated here from academic intellectual discussions -- and found myself looking longingly at those with community college parking stickers. But now more than ever, I want this job. Cross your fingers.

***Update 1:35pm***

This is terrible. I may want this job, but my attitude toward homework -- especially geometry -- is please no. I have six different items (some of which are fifteen pages long) on my homework sheet in my SAT book. (I think there might be some reading comprehension stuff too on there -- and sentence completion stuff, but I'm afraid of the math only -- and there's a lot of it.) I have done a good chunk of one, yes one, of these six items/assignments. And then there's the teaching prep I need to do, though I don't feel as icky about that. I looked at it already, and I know what to do. All I really need to do is to practice a couple times. Absurdist Lover is gone -- working for his dad and generally running into town -- so I can practice without feeling stupid. (Though I did teach him last week's teaching demo, but I'd rather do it when no one is here.) I really want a fruit smoothie from Whole Foods in the worst way. But it's time (at least a half hour to get there and a half hour back), gas, money. I want to go. I probably shouldn't. And it hardly matters because instead of using my desire for a smoothie as motivation to get my work done, I'm browsing blogs, checking my email, seeing if anyone has commented on my blog, Maude's blog, other people's blogs. Catching up on my blogreading. Very bad. So I think we're back to accountablogging. Here are the things I want to get done today:

• Take shower and wash hair. (I realize that anyone else in the world up at 1:45pm has already done this, but my shower is tiny and I'm increasingly klutzy, so I don't generally do this until I'm awake. Plus it feels like a hassle, and today I may run out of propane/hot water even earlier than usual. So I have to be pretty energized to do this.)
• Do at least most of my six assignments.
• Practice teaching prep a couple times.
• Take a nap. I woke up really early and couldn't go back to sleep and have been up and dragging myself around ever since.
• Read.

Looking at all this, perhaps I'll try half-hour installments. Maybe I'll even just allow myself a half-hour for each assignment -- let's face it, I'm not likely to finish all of it. So I'll start with homework, then I get to do something else for a half-hour. If I had more energy right this second, I'd do the teaching prep first because it's the most important (it's these teaching moments that they base their decisions on who gets certified/hired or not). But I'm tired and think I need a slower transition in. I gotta stop blogging -- my back is killing me.

Excitement Dissipates, Bringing Back Confusion

The impossible has occurred. It will now snow in Los Angeles and be fifty below in North Dakota. Oh yeah, both of those already happened. Which makes my news of finishing and turning in my article early fairly tepid news. Oh well.

So now I don't have an external deadline for writing except for those recommendation letters. These rec letters are a great irony to me -- who cares about my opinion about anything, much less the potential and perseverence of these particular students? Do you see where I am? I am living in a camper in a campground with no job. What do I do for letterhead? I guess just make up my own. Poor students.

The fact that I've actually been working on the article pretty regularly shouldn't impress anyone -- actually the article is one of the things that I feel pretty sure about. When worried about other things, it is wonderful to have a counterirritant. Other things are absurd and bumpy-lumpy in my world just now. After five years in graduate school fairly certain that I wanted to ride the tenure track, here I am, PhD'd and at a loss. I don't know where my life is going to go now. I can't tell you where I'll be living in six months, three months. . .Everything is up in the air.

Having life be eventful and uncertain means that there certainly is more to write about, but less self with which to write. Nora Ephron's parents used to remind her that everything was copy. I suppose that eventually I'll be seated at a desk somewhere writing about this. But where will that desk be and how will my life be constituted? Stephen King says that one of the secrets of his success is a happy and settled home life. Can I order that from Amazon? Special delivery?

Stephen King says three or four hours of writing and reading per day. Certainly I've only spent a couple hours fine-tuning the article. Reading would be good. Surely I should get to work on Project 2. Or find a job, an apartment, a life. Whichever comes first. I should send out some work. That might make me feel like I exist again in the literary world, at least.

Monday Morning Pre-Writing Existential Attack

(Okay, it is not, strictly speaking, morning, but I haven't yet taken a shower or had a conversation, therefore, it is morning to me.)

It is Monday morning and all of my favorite bloggers are doing something crazy -- like working. Many of you are in your offices, all aflurry because you have to teach soon, while others of you are likely doing the impossible and grading in your offices. I always shared an office. It was impossible to get anything done except when no one was around. And the outward and social aspects of teaching made it hard to shut the door and launch into reading student writing. Often on days I taught two classes before 11am, I didn't even want to go back to my office. I was spent after two and a half hours of straight teaching, saying the same things again to my second class, realizing all I had forgotten to say to my 8am. I would go to a coffeehouse or restaurant and sit and be silent. I loved that. Being in public, but being quiet. I've gotten a lot of work done like that over the years. During the dissertation phase, it was great to get myself out of the house. I couldn't just wander over to the fridge or the TV if I were in public. Nor could I scream or cry. These were good things. I had to maintain somewhat in public.

Now I wake up and try to write in my house/camper. Before I even sit down, I do something (sweep, clean the cat box, feed the cat, arrange the bed as neatly as possible since making it is impossible); just in case I get into writing I want to have something to show Absurdist Lover (he says he likes that one now, go figure) that I haven't just been lying on the bed twitching. Also if I end up on the bed twitching then at least the bed is nice and neat, ready to be twitched on. Of course, it's much harder to become totally inspired by recent blog posts if they are not there. Manufacturing inspiration is exhausting.

Last night I was thinking about how today is the day I should get serious. I've been looking at these community college jobs. I need to actually apply for them. Sure, it might be run-of-the-mill procrastination, but I fear my reluctance to apply for them is that I don't really want that kind of job. This is terrible, because applying for those jobs is the easiest thing I can do. Familiar. Even if most of the processes are completely mystified, it is a mystery hell that I know. Then there are all these other possibilities, some of which I've explored and don't like. What I'd really like is something flexible (which maybe community college jobs are, but I doubt it. Where's the flexibility if you're teaching five classes? Am I insane?). I used to not mind that my life was all about work (okay, I did, but mainly I was complaining about needing more time and headspace to write). Now I mind. Of course I have no real idea what's going to happen with Absurdist Lover and me, but I'm hoping that we'll have a family, so I want to line up something that is more flexible. Also, I just don't want to have to be nice anymore. I'm not good at being nice on a longterm basis, as people in offices need to do. I'm just way too moody. (Did this come up a lot at Adventure U, I wonder?) Really, if I'm totally honest, the thing is I want to write. I've written encyclopedia articles and edited dissertations -- I like that work. I especially like that I don't have to show up. I don't feel very presentable lately. (I know I'm totally neurotic about this presentable thing, but if you knew my family and how I grew up, you'd understand that being presentable in the professional world is not something that comes easily to many of us. Except for universities, I've only ever worked in small businesses. I'm not a corporate type, even though I can definitely get into a business-y mode for a while, usually with the help of Working Girl.) Right now, I'd like my work to speak for itself. I'd like to be able to hunker down, preferably in my own space, and do my work, which probably has to be writing because it's the only thing I know how to do -- and only come out when it's done. Anyone have any ideas for a job like this? Teaching ain't it. I think about how much I love the administrative work I've gotten to do, but I think that most of those jobs are 9-5 jobs. If anyone has a great idea about how to, I don't know, become a freelance writer, let me know.

All of this big self-reflective stuff is swirling in my head when really I just need to settle down into the article I'm writing. I only need to go through the last nine pages and rework them. That's not bad. And I want to focus, if possible, on another of my (alas unpaid) projects. I'd really like to send some work out actually. I'd really like to get that done. But of course in order to get to sending work out, first I'd have to actually stop ruminating about where money's going to come from in the future and just be happy that I have what I need now, work through several pages of the article, move on to some work on Project 2, then print out work to send out. You know what? Even if Absurdist Lover won't be back in a couple hours and want to go to the store and pick up a dozen and five things (we would've done this yesterday, but it rained all day) and then hang out and watch movies/play games/eat, I still wouldn't get all that stuff done in one day. It just doesn't happen. Also I have to call the doctor and make sure she's not going to orde