Research Monday

Thank goodness it's Monday. The weekend sucked. AL has been super-stressed about some work things going on early this week and has been really ill as well. I've been stressed because AL is stressed and because the work things may affect some immediate plans we have -- so we've been in limbo and still are for the next couple days and that's just never a good feeling. Even though I told myself a zillion times that there was nothing I could do and so should let go of the stress and try to be there for AL, I failed utterly. Tot is making an on again off again transition to his toddler bed, which means that going to sleep is a new kind of ordeal. (It always was, of course, but now it's a new ordeal.) I think Tot also felt the stress or is just exploring and experimenting because he crayoned over some toys and then the walls. They're washable crayons and everything, but you can't just act as if it's nothing, can you? Because then they won't know what's right in the future. Parenting is hard. Sometimes it sucks. Like when Tot steals the bed so that I'm smooshed in the middle of the bed between two restless sleepers. Needless to say, I woke up and got up early for a change.

And it's no wonder to me that some part of me that would usually rather sleep wanted to get an early jump on today because I am simply Deeeeeelighted that both of my boys, whom I love dearly, are taken care of for hours upon hours and I can be alone and focus on me. (No making dinner or taking Tot out on walks or going to the children's museum or whatever because I should. No shoulds!) Mondays I'm scheduled to do yoga and go to therapy. I doubt I'll do either today because I need to take care of me. I don't want to go to therapy because I don't want to rehash the weekend of suckage. And yoga is in less than an hour and my back hurts and I just don't think I'm going to get there. I actually have tons of things to do today, but what I really want to do is research. The entire weekend, actually starting with Friday, I wanted to work on my research, perhaps because it belongs only to me and I have control over it unlike the various reasons that made the weekend of suckage what it was. Partly also because Thursday, which is supposed to be a lesser but still significant research day, was almost completely taken up by this service document I had to crank out. And I really missed not getting to work on my work! (This feels like a really significant difference from the version of me who had to basically cajole myself into writing my dissertation and thought I might be perfect for a job that required little research. Now I know that's not.true.at.all. I love research.)

So work-wise, I want to

• Write up an abstract for a conference paper and send it to the panel organizer.
• Work on article. Accomplished.
  
• Possibly finish the email I'm carefully crafting to a contact asking for help on a project.
• Stage a creative work submission so all I have to do is print and mail when I'm at work before the window closes at the end of the month.
  

Other things I have to do:

• Do laundry. Done.
  
• Do the bills. Done.
  
• Pick up Tot's favorite seed butter across town at the only place that carries it which happens to be on a street that is now under construction and is just a major pain to get to. Done.
  
• Call and reschedule therapy appointment. Done.
  
• Figure out dental insurance, find a dentist, and make an appointment so I can stop living with tooth pain.

I also have daydreams of things like watching a movie and napping, though I doubt that will happen. I also wish I could go and help out at my friend's farm, though that's not even on the radar for today.

Can I just say that I love being invited to do things by other scholars in my field? It just makes me feel like I have something to say and have some expertise for someone somewhere even though I work daily in an institution that merely pays lipservice to the necessity of the skills I teach and I teach things that not only are not my specialty, but are things I don't value to students who on the whole wish they didn't have to take such classes at all. And when I do get to have wonderful scholarly conversations with my colleagues, it's usually not on anything I really know anything about -- though I tend to love having them anyway. It occurs to me now that going to conferences can be a lifeline for some of us, probably most of us, because most institutions hire people to cover certain areas, which often means that when you get right into the fine detail of your field, there's no one right across the hall to talk to (unlike grad school). I didn't go to the Big Conference this year because I don't like to be gone from home a lot and I already went to a specialist conference and am going to a workshop, then two conferences in the fall (one is local). That's a lot. But I think from now on I'm going to make it more of a priority, even though in the past I really haven't liked Big Conference all that much. It's too big, for one thing. And I find going to conferences and sitting in session after session really difficult, so I tend to go to too few sessions. But maybe I have to look at it more as a chance to slurp up new ideas that I can then digest for the rest of the year.

Knowing that a senior scholar that I respect is asking me to do something (or if I'd like to do something) also makes me more careful in my work, wanting something to be good rather than merely done. I'm going to enjoy writing my annual report this year since I've had some rather good luck. In fact, I admit I often go to sleep thinking about the good luck I've had research-wise.

(By the way, the reason why I'm not inundated with grading and counting down the weeks until summer like most of you is because I'm on the quarter system and so am getting my first boatload of papers tomorrow. Worse than that, I'm teaching right though the summer -- with maybe three weeks off at most. So while I'm not in grading jail right now, I am off the normal academic calendar, which means that while you're all writing about your summer plans and then lightblogging because you're out having fun, well, I'll be doing the regular thing, same bat time, same bat channel. Being so far off the academic calendar is another thing that makes me feel really. . .well, alienated from my academic colleagues. The final cure for all this is obvious, but wouldn't do anything immediately for my headspace. So instead the real cure for all this is research. Who knew?)

Back Home: Conference Reflections, Scholarship Concerns, Illness

So I'm back from my conference. I survived. But here's the thing: I'd like to do a little better than surviving. I presented and people talked about my work (which was lovely, considering how isolated I am by the fact that no one does anything like my work at Specialized U -- that is, I focus on Root Vegetable Studies and related things, while my colleagues work on all sorts of other things in the Vegetative kingdom), but I felt underprepared and it showed. That is, I think my paper was underdone. The next conference I go to, which may be Interesting Conference or Fabulous Interdisciplinary Conference, both in the fall, I want to go with a much stronger paper. In order to do this, I think I must circulate it to my colleagues first. (I did this for my paper for last year's Big Conference, but ran out of time for this conference.)

But as I think about it, I realize that the problems I had were not general, but pretty specific to the focus of the conference -- as in not being able to speak to one thread of scholarship involved in the conference. Mostly I couldn't speak to it because I think the theorist and thus much of this one particular trajectory is bogus -- everyone in the world has critiqued the main theorist, but then they go on using some of the language and assumptions of the main theorist, when some of the main assumptions of the main theorist, in my opinion, are so flawed as to make any of the theory unusable. It's as if everyone feels they've got to argue with . . .Freud, let's say, but if we all keep agreeing that Freud was totally whacked, then what's the point? The issue, of course, is whether I'm in one of those fields that depend on Freud. (Like, if you're in psychoanalytic theory, I guess you'd still have to tangle with Freud.) I don't think of my field as having to tangle with this particular Freud. I didn't position my paper in any relation to Freud, but that didn't stop one of the featured presenters asking me to speak to my argument's relationship to Freud. Gah. I couldn't and ended up saying so. Though of course I spent the next 24 hours first thinking maybe I shouldn't position my work in the particular trajectory of my field that I do (which I still don't think depends on Freud, but maybe others do), then thinking through my ideas about what I remembered of Featured Presenter's question, then coming up with what I should've said to FP. Useful, in its way, but for a while there I was thinking I should just position my work in a totally different trajectory and get rid of all this crap. The truth is that my doctoral program wasn't strong in the trajectory of the field I eventually chose (which still doesn't depend on this Freud and that mini-trajectory), though very strong in another trajectory. This question and my lack of an answer really did mess with my confidence about myself as a scholar -- and I guess is still making me feel pretty iffy, though at least now I'm not thinking I should position my work in a totally different way.

In any case, this conference showed me a number of things, totally apart from whether Freud belongs in my work (and whether FP maybe had hir own ax to grind as well). One, that one of the major conversations of my General Field doesn't apply to me anymore because of the needs of the institution I work in. So when everyone talks about that, I feel really outside of things. This is sad to me. And one of the reasons why I think I really can't make a career out of teaching at this institution. Two, that I'm too isolated where I am, and that I need somehow to work on that. I really need the conversation of other people who are doing things sort of like what I do. As I think of people from grad school, for example, I knew several people doing work in my field, but only maybe one or two doing anything related to my specific focus. Now, those two that I'm thinking of were not people I was really close to. And there are problems with me trying to invent a group with them. But one way or the other I really need to find people who do work like mine, because somehow my work is so different that if I had to figure out outside reviewers right now, I'm not sure I could name them. Maybe I'm just not up on things anymore. Which wouldn't be terribly surprising. Seriously -- I was up on things, finished my dissertation, went to Adventure City, came back, got pregnant when I was underemployed, adjuncted, and got this job, which doesn't promote my being up on my field. So I guess I should cut myself some slack.

I say all this, but it's mainly my dissertation focus that is the trouble. It's so sweeping, really creating a new theory. Who else creates new theories that are like mine? Well, there's this one guy who is not in my field, but I've read his theory-creating before. But since he's not in my field, he's probably not a great choice for an outside reviewer. In some of my other work, I know who the movers and shakers are, who I'd call on to affirm the value of my work. Still. It's daunting.

Anyway, I would just once like to feel like I rock at a conference. I realize that's not the purpose of sharing one's work at conferences, but here I felt the stakes involved in presenting and wanting to come off as a serious young scholar, whereas at the biggies, I haven't. Of course, here one of my favorite scholars in the field, someone whose work was instrumental to my move from Backburner Field to my current field, was at my panel (not to see me, but to see someone else). Here's what I really want to say: I don't want to be mistaken for a grad student at my next conference. Period. End of story.

So, I need to make use of what resources I have. Circulate my paper to my local colleagues. See about making better relationships with people who can sustain my work, either because they're good friends or because they do similar kinds of work.

Oh. And also, going to a conference where you don't know anyone is not fun. You can't just sit there at dinner eating alone, which means you have to talk with people. But deciding where to sit is not easy. I realized how much social anxiety I have. It's just not easy for me to go up to people I don't know.

I realize that my attitude toward all this is also not the best because I managed to get sick on Day 3 of the conference, the day that I was returning home. So I have been sick ever since I got back, have saddled with AL with even more housework and toddlercare since I got home, got very little grading done, and am SO behind and am staring down the end of the quarter, which is great, but I've got to get so much shit done, it's scary. And I'm sick. I can't really even think of what to do about it all, except that I'm going to try to get some work done tomorrow (later today really) when I'm taking care of Tot. Gah.

I hate being sick.

Teething, Grading, Conference Paper Writing. . .Long Layers???

I'm having one of those classic moments. I'm so anxious about the conference paper I've got to write and ALL the grading that is piled up (just give it up, English -- it ain't gettin' done), and I've got students emailing about their revisions and everything so that, of course, I'm browsing the internet for hairstyles. Oy gevalt. (Is this me trying to have me time or is this just avoidance? I am thinking about getting my hair cut for increased confidence at the conference, since my clothes are threadbare and my work not so hot.)

We finally figured out that Tot's cough that keeps waking him up is probably not a hold-over from his last cold, but from a new round of teething. Yay second molars. Oh goodie. Tot slept for a whole half hour of his nap yesterday and then woke up after about an hour last night. Tot ends up nursing all night, so I'm not getting much sleep. So I'm grumpy anyway today. I don't anticipate that tonight will be any different -- and I've got to wake up at 5am tomorrow. And as if I weren't already freaked out about going out of town (not being prepared plus just hating being gone, often convinced I'm going to die on the plane), now I'm worried that AL and Tot are going to have a terrible time because Tot won't have the comfort of nursing.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out what to say in those three pages. I mean, who cares about Animal Mating anyway. And what does it have to say to Root Vegetables anyway? Am I just a pretender to Root Vegetable Studies anyway, since I'm really more of a theorist? Eeegads. So, in the interest of naming things properly: anxiety plus. Waaaa.

I Feel Better: Back to Overwhelmed

I feel much better than I did when I last posted. I went to my therapy appointment, and Therapist is great. She nailed something about me immediately: I'm very anxious, but it comes out as anger. So true. I mean, for frigg's sake, I'm nearly forty years old, and I still bite my nails. Down to the quick. Except for a couple periods when I became devoted to getting acrylics, I've never had long nails in my adult life. I tend to bite off the acrylics, even.

So I feel better about the things that I was really worried about, mostly because when I came out of the therapy session, I decided to address them. And, as impossible as resolution seemed, they got resolved.

So now I'm just back to overwhelmedness -- or as I like to say -- overwhelm because of the normal things: I have a conference in mere days that I only have four pages for my seven page conference paper. In the paper, I'm presenting this research that comes from a Totally Different Field, so different we could call it Animal Mating, that I often draw on that illuminates some important issues and proclivities to Root Vegetable Studies. (You can see that people would often say: why use research from Animal Mating in Root Vegetable Studies? Well, I may be the only person who sees that these are related.) So I have four pages of Animal Mating -- and now I've got to draw out the implications for Root Vegetables and Root Vegetable Studies. Gah. Important work, of course, but could someone else do it please?

Last night, between the time that Tot went down to bed the first time and when he woke up coughing three hours later, I organized all my teaching materials for Freshman Class -- so now I know exactly how much grading I need to do, and it's all organized. Wow, I have a fair amount of grading to do, and it really would be good if the majority of it were ready for class on Tuesday. Could I carve out some time today and tomorrow to do it? Of course, but if I do that. . .what about that conference paper? Do I just leave it for the plane? Dear lord.

I must be in denial -- or I'd be anxiety-ridden and therefore, likely, angry. Instead, I'm just tired tired tired even with the thought of all this. While I was never good at the networking part of conferencing and the thought always stressed me out about conferences (note to self: anxiety), I really don't like conferences so much now that I've had Tot. I always get depressed at the thought of leaving town. And then I get there and can't sleep and feel all weird (note to self: anxiety about being gone) when I should feel elated that I can go to sleep and wake up when I want.

All that said, I've been doing some wonderful research gathering for my new elective. There's a field that I've long argued is vital to Turnip Studies that I'm really boning up on. And there's some local interest in there too, so I can immediately turn this stuff over to students too.

I'm teaching the exact same courses in Spring, which starts maybe a week or ten days after Winter ends. Blech. But at least I'm saving all my materials and handouts. I'm determined to be able to get more research done and stay caught up more on grading in the Spring, because I'm not making anything new. Prep done. These are my two core courses. No wonder I get burned out easily. Thank goodness I have an elective coming up soon after.

PS There's a terrible situation at my uni that I really feel I should do something about. Very depressing.

Daycare Problems: What Do You Think?

Oh, I feel so beaten down, trampled really. I know part of it is that I'm sick. My dad is still in the hospital and we're wondering if his being in so long for extra tests signals the Big C; I talked to my brother yesterday and among other things, we discussed Dad's values -- his fancy cars and charging high rent to his kids on an apartment he probably couldn't get rented anyway. So it was already an emotional day. I also didn't manage to eat after breakfast until I got home. But the trampling has to do with Tot's daycare. I desperately need an outside perspective.

Last night, when I picked up Tot, I noticed he was trying to sit down without sitting on his butt -- and his thermals were all bunched up inside his pants. When we changed him, we found had the worst case of diaper rash I've ever seen on the little guy. Painful to look at. A couple layers of skin off. Really bad. And he was clearly in pain, though before he had been basically his happy self, though he's sick (and we clearly shouldn't have taken him into daycare yesterday in the first place).

Both AL and I were freaked out about the diaper rash: he didn't have it in the morning. I changed him, and though I don't remember particularly looking at his butt, I know I would've noticed that. Of course, this puts the question mark on what's going on at daycare. But really, he just has a terrible bout of diarrhea (which we've figured out since) and it's irritating his skin -- and I'll bet dollars to donuts the poor guy is scratching. (Poor thing has my super-sensitive skin.) I had initially thought that he had a skin reaction to the eucalyptus oil I was experimenting with because it's supposed to be good for colds. But now I don't think that was it. Anyway. This isn't the problem.

The problem is that when we took off his pants and thermals, we saw there was poop on them. That's not cool. He has extra clothes, so it wasn't that they didn't have extras and he had to wear them. The daycare people must've not noticed. On the one hand, I can see how it happened -- how they would just not notice, especially in the case of a big bad terrible poop, which is likely what was going on. On the other hand, do I really want my treasure in a place where they didn't notice that there was poop on his clothes? Even on the outside of his clothes? (I guess it's possible that they saw and made the judgment that it wasn't worth changing his clothes because we'd pick him up soon, but that's not a great judgment either.) This comes on top of some issues that have made me a little worried about this daycare in the past, especially about their respect for following parents' instructions. I could go on and on about their totally insane food choices -- okay, so they don't care about GMO or organic or whatever, but everyone knows about what sugar does to children and how children need nutritious food and someone please tell me what possible effing nutritional value Nilla Wafers have? Anyway.

AL put it very simply: we pay them to provide the care that we would. He took me into the bathroom to look at Tot's clothes soaking in the sink: is this what we want for Tot? Is this what we pay for? He's decided that Tot is not going back there. He's taking days off work to make sure Tot is okay. (And there's no way that Tot is starting new daycare all sick and rashy.)

In order to present this correctly, I have to say that Tot has learned all his letters and now sings the alphabet song (though with letters omitted) primarily because this place has done such a good job with him. Not that I care whether Tot is a verbal genius, necessarily. I want him to eat well and be well cared for. I want him to be able to run around. When he's there, he seems to be quiet and into himself. That's not strange for his age or temperment -- AL and I were and are both very animated and goofy at home (when I have the energy, which I frequently do not), but are sometimes withdrawn and reserved out there in the world, especially when we're uncomfortable. Is Tot uncomfortable there? I don't know. He's not as excited about going there (and I can say that the tenor of the place has changed a bit lately), but doesn't cry when I leave either. (He does sort of follow me around and doesn't want me to leave, but I don't know if that signifies anything but that I am his mom and he prefers me.)

Here's the thing: on the one hand, I think AL is leaping to a decision here. He's not being fair to the place. Tot was not endangered in any way -- and a little poop on his clothes is not the worst thing in the world. On the other hand, is that what I want for Tot? What duty do I have to be fair to the place, when the most important thing is Tot? When it comes to my kid, I don't have to be fair. In fact, my duties are to do the best for him. Can I really say now that this place -- poop on his clothes, food issues, respect for parents issues -- is the best we can do? Furthermore, do I want to argue to keep him there? Do I feel so great about it that it's worth arguing about? No, not really.

I'm really freaked out. And I'm not sure whether it's the daycare, my concern for Tot and his diaper rash (which is really terrible to look at), that I'm sick, AL's strong reaction, or just the accumulation of all this on top of my father in the hospital and my poor unhappy brother.

Oh, I hate searching for new daycare. Despite that there are tons of daycares in the area, it never feels empowering. Our stance on vaccinations and food makes us fringe -- and I always feel at a disadvantage. I know I'm paying them -- and in a consumer economy (yeah right) that's supposed to give me the advantage -- but they've got something up on me -- we're talking about my son. My precious, my only, my baby son. (Yes, I'm being melodramatic, but I feel melodramatic. And he's no longer a baby. He's two.)

I'd really like to hide under a rock.

Theming the Year and Trying to Get to the Truth about Workload

I don't usually do the whole theme-the-year thing that a lot of you do, but this year I think I'll try it. I'm torn between "Health" and "Peace," which roughly amount to the same thing. I want to approach various parts of my life in a healthier or more peaceful way: academic work, parenting, partnering, connecting with others. I want to be less angst-y and recognize that in some cases it really is a choice. Writing my recent short article was a great lesson for me -- instead of metaphorically grinding my teeth and generally working with a great deal of friction, I just got on with it and did it. I didn't panic, didn't worry anxiously that the editors wouldn't like it or that I sucked or anything. I just worked and got it done. I think that this is how I got the dissertation done on my best days, but it's hard to remember that when those days were interspersed with angsty, procrastination-filled days when I couldn't sit still and settle down into the work. That anxiety often gets in my way. And so often it's about the future, which I can't control anyway.

Then there's my actual physical health, by which I mean that I need to get some exercise, especially since I eat pretty well -- probably too much, but I eat tons of veggies due to my winter CSA. I'd also like to get a handle on my finances, which I've got a plan for.

But what I've been thinking about for the last few days is really marking how many hours a day I'm working. I have this general sense that because I only go to campus three days a week (typical for my university with all the commuting professors) I'm not really working enough. And then I have this inferiority complex and try to take on too much. I really do too much service, probably, but most of it is stuff I really believe in so much it would hurt for me to leave it alone. (Some things are using skills and interests that only I have, you see.) But though I was having a really hard time getting my syllabi done when I was sitting in my office last week, I did notice that I had very little problem working on them in the in-between times this weekend. At no point this weekend did I freak out and yell: "Take care of Tot because classes start Monday and I've got to finish my syllabi GAH!!!" Not only did I just get on with it, but I didn't have to sequester myself from AL and Tot to get it done. Now, mostly I got things done when Tot was asleep. I certainly couldn't grade that way. But I also noticed that I was working a LOT of the time. I didn't take a lot of time to relax either. If I were in my office daily, there'd surely be some time when I sat there staring out of the metaphorical (not actual, though perhaps I should put a lovely picture up that I could space out to meditate on) window pondering. But instead my pondering time -- or much of it -- is when I'm doing something else -- like trying to keep Tot from killing himself by jumping off his new toddler bed. (No, he's not sleeping in it. But he likes to climb into it and say he's going "nigh nigh." I still haven't gotten him off sleeping via nursing. I've tried. He's two years old. I'm tired. I have no great excuses here. But at least I'm only torturing myself. And Lover.) So at some important point (I think actually when I started at Specialized U) I started writing down everything I did and accomplished each day (sometimes week), which has proven really helpful come annual report time. But now I think I also want to spend some time focusing on how long I spend as well to see whether my fears of underworking are really founded or not. (Not that academics necessarily have to work 40 hours a week to justify themselves, but that I feel like I do radically under that, except when grading, when the figure jumps up.) It's not that I will necessarily change anything if I do find that I underwork, but I'd like to really know rather than act out of fear. Knowing the truth seems to be the first step to approaching work in a healthier way.

So I may actually keep track of my hours here on the blog. I've already done a lot of work this morning -- proofread 2 syllabi and associated material, emailed them into printing (twice because I was too tired the first time), checked work email several times, written some email back, and done some hmmphing and thinking because this colleague that I'd like to work with on a specific project thinks I want to do something different but because he's having family crises right now it's not a good time to sort it out. How long did I spend on all that? At least two hours. So that's a good start to this.

Call Out the Men in White Coats

Well, a lot has happened since that foolish post. I realized how ridiculous I am -- how up in arms I get. It's as if chronic and sometimes even acute sleeplessness not to mention overwork is not enough, I need to make more drama. So of course my comments were responded to in a polite way -- and implemented really very little so far. I also totally freaked out in front of a colleague and realized post-freak out how crazy I was -- and felt calm. I then had a lovely day punctuated by a baby-addled night, leaving me exhausted and unable to get anything done today beyond talking with colleagues (which is important, but then so are the twenty things on my to-do list that turned into twenty five after I spoke with so many colleagues), so instead of being able to finally relax this evening and reap the benefits of having had this epiphany about going up for tenure, my brain is absolutely swimming in all of this undone work.

I really am truly insane and having the hardest time getting uninsane. I get better just to go wonky again. I don't know what it is.

It was actually a nice week. I had a good discussion with a smart student. The discussion reminded me that no matter what the learning objectives say, my one real job with students is to encourage them to think for themselves. Yes. That's it.

And surprisingly and ironically, a person told me she thought I was very down-to-earth for someone so educated. When I repeat it back, it doesn't sound like the offering it was, as if she were handing myself back to me and saying "you are okay." And maybe, "you're different and in a great way."

I'm glad I can enjoy it now, after Absurdist Tot had such a terrible night last night and I had such an unproductive day today that leaves me feeling pretty hopeless about the huge list of tasks. You know what though? I make mountains out of mole hills.

Lately, I've been trying to choose being happy and positive. Those who know me in RL are cackling hysterically at this point -- yes, I can hear you from here. And while being catty and self-deprecating has always been entertaining, it hasn't made me happy. So I'm trying to choose being a happy, more positive person. Trying being the operative word. I read this wonderful description of a person -- actually it's from a review describing Ashley in Junebug, and while I don't want to be Ashley, I do find this description inspiring: "a nonjudgmental optimist savvy enough to recognize the shortcomings of others, but sweet enough to offer encouragement, not condemnation." Now, doesn't that sound like a worthy goal?

I think I'm going to retire now to some Anne Lamott and chocolate.

Spring Break Monday Freak Out

Absurdist Tot is at his new daycare. Gulp. I wish I could have a camera on him all the time so I could see what's going on there -- just so I could see how he is there and whether he's outgoing or reserved or having a good time or whatever. Not because I'm worried about the daycare. The people there seem great. Sigh. I'm totally a helicopter parent. But then, he's not even a year and a half old. I might get over it by the time he's in college. Especially if he's got all those weird boy smells.

I feel like these totally normal daycare people are going to figure out that the Absurdists are totally fringey -- that we don't help our child figure out how to sit still. They're going to figure me out -- that I'm a terrible person, a terrible human being. Like when my ex-therapist asked me what time I usually awakened, and I said that try as I might I don't really have a set schedule. He replied: "well, that's not very adult, is it?" Only he's saying it over and over and over in my head. Obsessive, are we?

So I have so much to do -- for the new quarter, doctor's appointments to schedule, sister's wedding and dress stuff, student loan stuff. I'm whelmed and overwhelmed. I'm embarrassed how behind I am in all things -- so much so that I dare not put my to-do list on the old blog. I'm all nervous and freaked out. Sigh. I've got a bunch of different tabs open -- and I keep flipping back and forth from this blogpost to a bunch of incoming emails. It's terrible. I need to control my input in order to be able to figure out what needs to be done first, then focus on just one thing and get it done. Furg, I need to mellow out just to be able to write a damn to-do list so I don't go mad mad mad. I'm not well. I need to calm down. (Did I mention that Absurdist Tot is going to daycare again on Thursday and then not on Friday because it's Good Friday? So I really have to be productive here.) I'm quite flippery. Soon, this is going to be a full-fledged coping-with-ADD blog.

Happy Monday. Blech.

On Self-Confidence: Trying to Become Comfortable with Being My Messy Self

I went to a panel that basically has gotten me thinking about my unease as an academic/professor. I'm not at all going to (or even try to) do the paper I heard justice, but basically what I want to think about here is what I get out of not being myself as a professor at my job and whether I can do anything about it.

So first off, I like my job. But for the last couple years, I've felt messy, like I have no idea what I'm doing. I've talked with some people (including Peppy Advisor, God bless her) and feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing seems pretty much par for the course during the craziness of having a baby under 2. Really, and I know this sounds strange to anyone who doesn't have kids, but I haven't caught up with the fact that I'm a mom. I don't feel like a mom. . .no -- maybe that's not quite right. I don't feel like my image of what a mom feels like. Like so many things, being a mom just isn't what I expected. (What is, right? But even though I know nothing is like its hype in theory, in practice it's all still surprising.) On the other hand, I'm totally a mom. I worry about my darling boy. I think he's the cutest thing in the world. I tell Absurdist Lover to look at the cute thing AT's doing at least five times a day, though he's seen it. I worry for AT. I worry he'll have all my bad habits, my negative self-talk, that because he's a boy he'll get totally bored with school and do all the things that led most of my male friends to take drugs, get in trouble, and drop out. I swear the reason I got through it all was because I wanted to go to college so badly and because I was used to being a reasonably good-ish girl and was scared of straying too much into danger and harm's way. (My mother really helped instill a big fear of men and the world in me. Which may have saved me in some ways but of course I worry about now that I have a son.) Anyway, not to go off on that tangent, but the daily work of being a parent, being a mom means I've never really caught up to the fact that I am a mom and done the reflective work around it that might make me feel like I know what I'm doing as a parent or a person. I just am not sure I've really integrated my identity as a mom into who I am, which is strange and interesting as I discover that, as the Bill Pullman character says in The Accidental Tourist, "I'm just not the person I thought I was" or maybe as the William Hurt character says in the same movie, Absurdist Lover (though Hurt was talking about the Geena Davis character) "has given me another chance to decide who I am." These quotes really resonate with me, obviously. To make a long story short (too late), my identity has been in flux these past couple years.

And I think fundamentally I feel really embarrassed about that. Like I don't want people to see how messy I am. Now, I've always been kind of messy. But before I was more messy cynical. Now I am a more. . .sentimental. I'm a bit embarrassed about loving crochet (though I always loved cross stitch before too), enjoying making dinner and baking bread. As if I'm some weird throw-back, undoing the progress of the women's movement or something. I'm embarrassed, a bit, and defensive about how granola I am, how I've started praying pretty regularly (though I still love astrology, even as I truly know how ridiculous it is), how I've come to believe that affirmations may seriously help someone with such toxic self-talk. I say that "I'm such a nerd" way too often. I'm a much better friend to my friends, who I find myself telling that they are fabulous because I really believe it and I think they are just hard on themselves, than I am to myself. I need to be a better friend to myself. I know this. Dammit!

Of course, starting a job in the middle of all this doesn't help. It's another identity transformation -- from grad student to professor. (Yes, there was that first job at Adventure U, but then I was an adjunct after that -- and we all know how that contingent status just does a wonderful job of making a person feel like contingent person.) I'm also the only person in my department who has young kids and looks like an exhausted mom. I feel totally like I do everything half-assed. Which, from what everyone who's done this before tells me, is normal. But I'm also isolated and have few people to laugh about it with. I've got to work on that.

So being in an identity flux and feeling like I do parenting and academic work completely half-assed (also my scholarship is changing a bit, but that doesn't feel quite as foundational) makes me feel insecure in who I am, feel insecure in my job, and feel not even remotely self-confident. But I don't want to feel that way anymore. One of the most wonderful people I know in the world is just so upfront about her messiness that it doesn't even come off as lack of confidence or anxiety or anything. Instead of trying to hide anything, she's confident enough to admit her frailties, her messiness. I think I might have once been like that -- or at least come off that way. But that's the way I want to be. I don't want to hide. I don't want to pretend I'm not an exhausted momademic. I am. And it's exhausting. And I'm not trying to get out of any work or anything. Not at all. This is just the period of my life where I don't sleep much and am pretty sure I'm not doing my absolutely best work. But I am doing the best work I can right now.

I want to find a way to stop feeling defensive and silencing myself. Remember the clothes obsession I was having a while ago? I used to wear jeans to teach when I was in grad school -- not in the first weeks of the semester, but eventually. Occasionally I would get comments about it, but generally it was fine. I never wear jeans in the classroom at VPU. Just never. I do occasionally wear them to work, but I'm always super-aware of the fact that I'm wearing jeans and then I feel underdressed next to the professors (always older and tenured) wearing suits. (In fairness, there is a colleague who wears jeans and a sweater every day -- and I've been told he's done that since the start of his career here. But he's male. Is it different? Is it different because I say it is and am overcompensating for my insecurity? I don't want to see something that is not there.) I want to be taken seriously. But I also want to be myself. I don't know if this means I should start wearing jeans. Maybe not wearing jeans here is not out of fear but from a more savvy sense of what's appropriate in this very different context. I do have students call me Dr. English, not because I'm not a casual person, but because I'm not a grad student anymore. I deserve it.

I'm a hard worker. Not that I feel like a hard worker when my elective is so radically underprepared at this point, but I think I also have impossible perfectionist standards and then I procrastinate and fail in my own eyes. This is not good. I need to be better to myself. Not that I'm really having a problem with my teaching, but I think my teaching will be more enjoyable if I just try to be a good role model of a person who is authentic, realistic, and honest about who she is, and, most important, not ruled by fear. I want to work on this. I don't want to project all this insecurity out onto my colleagues as if they are making me feel this way. I honestly can't really tell. But I think I need to make more of an effort to talk to my colleagues. It's true that the first year is just grueling -- and having a baby at home means that I can't just get together with people for drinks or anything. But I need to meet and talk with my colleagues more. Perhaps I'll make a goal of meeting with a colleague once every couple months. (We're all so busy, this is probably a very reasonable goal though it sounds ridiculous -- surely I should be able to manage one a month, but. . .I know we're all sort of running scared most of the time.)

I'm going to have a better spring, I've decided. I'm great, absolutely stellar at tying myself into knots. Now I'm going to figure out how to be Houdini and get myself out of them. If anyone has any advice on how to become more self-accepting, less anxiety-ridden, and more mellow, I'm all ears.

He Can't Have a Tooth, He's Only Four Months Old!

But apparently Absurdist Baby doesn't realize that most babies get their teeth around six months. His first tooth came up and is now clear as day (okay, white) -- it came up last Wednesday. And today he is officially four months old.

I'm just trying to make it through -- really I'm just edgy and worried and wishing that I would hear something from Interesting U, though really it will be definitely another week or two and maybe even more before I hear something. And that is if it's good news. Meanwhile I'm trying to do the very reasonable thing of applying to more schools. When I printed out an application for an upcoming community college deadline, I said over the printer: may I not need this application. Sigh.

I'm teaching a pre-transfer course that I taught last semester. Last semester, only a handful passed the class, but with being pregnant and everything, I didn't have time to feel bad about it. Really, most didn't pass the class because they didn't keep up with the work, not because their writing was good or bad. This semester, I began to feel bad about it -- that I can't figure out a way to reach the students, to make the work of academic writing seem worth the investment. But I totally understand not feeling invested in academic conversations. After all, who reads their academic writing to respond other than for evaluation? They are taught so often that academic writing is a matter of structure, rather than conversation. Who cares about mastering a set of discourse conventions if you can't see why you'd want to participate in the conversation? I worried and gnawed at this bone for a while the weekend before last. Then last week we had our first journal assignment due. I went around the room -- and about a dozen people hadn't done it. Sigh. And I had this epiphany: the reason why some of these students are in this pre-transfer class is because they don't do their schoolwork, not because no one has ever tried to reach them. My job is not to feel bad about the ones who don't do their work (but still show up -- don't they realize they're not in high school anymore???), but to spend my time on the ones who really want to figure out what they're not getting and move on. Still, I wish I could make them feel more invested in the work of the class and of the university in general -- but to be honest, I'm not very convinced either that drilling a certain kind of academic essay (which is what this writing sequence seems to do) is really that useful for all students (okay, the ones who are going to transfer, maybe, but what about the ones who are not? shouldn't we be teaching students how to enter a number of discourses and helping students develop strategies for figuring out how to enter discourses?). I'm sure my own lack of excitement for what I'm teaching comes across too. Isn't it interesting that the community college doesn't seem to care what we are committed to?

So here's a question. I'm teaching an intro to literature class organized by genre. I figure we'll do a writing assignment for each genre. But I want to mix it up: I just don't want students to write four different literary essays. It just seems so boring to me -- and aren't there other genres that discuss literature in interesting ways? I've been trying to think of different situations where readers would be asked to make an argument about a text beyond the "this is school, so write me an essay" kind of thing. I could break up the three essays into the traditional explication, analysis/argument, and evaluation essays, but I want to have different situations or even genres so there are real audiences to write to. Does anyone have any ideas? What are your favorite writing projects about literature? I'm out of my element (which is weird, because I used to do literature; on the other hand, I always wrote into conversations that I felt a part of, which I don't think would be the case for these students -- I guess I just want there to be some connection between a Facebook meme that asks people to name and explain a book that changed their lives and a close reading of a text that they have to do for class: help please!).

Money is tight. Jobs are scarce. Absurdist Baby is the cutest happiest thing I've ever seen, even teething (which has made his sleeping habits odd, but he doesn't actually scream a lot or anything). I feel more and more like Urban Home City is dying, and we need to get out because people here are just mean the way too many rats in a cage just start biting themselves and others for no reason. In short, same old same old.

Cross your fingers Interesting U wants to hire me. I'm in the bargaining stage so maybe I've already lost the job: I promise to blog more when I get an offer. Right now, even Absurdist Lover says I'm scaring him (mostly with bad puns). Happy equinox to all and to all a good night!

It's Always Something. . .If Not Grading Jail, Then It Is

that I went on my campus interview, did not actually fall on my face or anything -- in fact, had really stimulating conversations and now wish desperately that these cool people will be my new colleagues -- and now get to wait, wait, wait for them to fly in their other candidates. My new mantra: May I be a tough act to follow, may I be a tough act to follow, may I be a tough act to follow. I really hope to not go insane, because it will definitely be another two weeks, probably more, before I hear word one -- and already I'm Miss Antsy-Pants. I can't stand myself. I don't know how anyone else can.

The two other places that I haven't heard from after my MLA interview? Well, I still haven't heard anything -- and don't know what to think, except that they've probably already started flying people out who don't post to the Wiki. But I would appreciate some news. Soon. Like in my mailbox right now.

Our new semester started, and I have two new crops of students. I'm sure I'll have something to say about them soon. So far, I've just been struggling to keep up, get the semester started, get them their handouts. The usual.

Absurdist Baby is teething. I know he's not even four months, but I can see the outlines of those two bottom teeth pushing against his gumline. My mother said that each of her kids got their first teeth around four months (less than a week for AB). He's growing out of clothes daily. He stares at me when I eat. I can totally see how I'm going to turn around one day and he'll have scooted himself across the floor. Then I'll blink, and he'll be sixteen and wanting to borrow the car for his questionable adventures. I wonder if I'll ever feel grounded in what day it is and what's going on and feel on top of things ever again. But he's so happy and interesting, it's a pleasure to spend my slightly-rattled days with him. What a weird adventure this all is. He's starting to squawk. Gotta run!

Oh Wisdom of teh Internets, Don't Fail Me Now

So maybe an hour after I posted that last post on Monday, Absurdist Lover got laid off. Needless to say, this has caused my head to go a-swirl with money problems. I'm going to have to go ask my father if I can borrow money since I don't get paid from the Community College until the 10th -- my father, the same one who said I needed to find someone else to ask. Not good. I'm hoping that because it's a short-term loan, he won't balk. Ugh.

AL's dad has work for him, so he got up early and left the baby and me to sleeping in on this nice gray Saturday. (For a while, it's been obnoxiously hot and sunny, which I find depressing in January, but the last few days it's been raining, so that's better. I don't know why so much sun in the winter makes me depressed -- I think it's that sunny days are these extroverted go-out-and-meet-the-world days that make me want to stay in -- not having the nice gray rainy inward days really knocks me out of whack -- but of course that's this town all over -- a total imbalance of extroversion and do-do-do and by the way, can you get me an agent?) I need to grade. Thursday, I graded seven essays. Then yesterday, I graded three and was totally pooped. (I had spent many hours at the office, so it was hard to do both in one day.) So I have eighteen left -- I should get at least nine done today. I should also get ready for Monday. But instead of grading, I'm possessed with the fact that. . .

I have a campus interview in less than two weeks. I'm thrilled that I have a campus interview, even though it's at a place that seems less than ideal. I'm also waiting for two other schools to get back to me -- one had said they would be getting back to us by now (I realize trolling their website is not going to give me insight into what is going on with them, but when has that ever stopped me -- it's the exact kind of job I want, which means they will never call me), the other still has some time. I should also be sending out apps for the couple of second-season jobs that are out there, but it's hard to screw up the oomph for that. I have to put together a talk, but what I feel more prepared for is a good whine about how much I need a job. Whatever I say, the subliminal message will be: Please, please, please. Hire me! I'll work like a dog. I promise. I'm a go-to kind of person, I swear. I'm a workhorse. Hire me, hire me! I realize this kind of desperation is not the best with which to walk into an interview situation -- a search committee can probably smell fear -- but it's all I've got! This is my first campus interview (Adventure U's process was a bit different) so I'm thinking about all sorts of stupid things like if someone is picking me up at the airport, does that mean I shouldn't wear jeans on the plane? Should I be marginally professional at all times? Ugh. What do you think? What advice can you give me about campus visits?

You Know How People Say that Having Children Focuses You? Today, It's a Lie.

I'm having one of those days where I can't seem to get myself to do anything. Not that kind where I don't want to get out of bed -- I got up, fed the cats, medicated Mr. Tabby, fed the baby, changed the baby, took pictures of the baby propping himself up with his arms while on his belly, fed myself, etc. No, I'm not depressed. It's a nice gray day when it's nice to have the blinds open -- and I just want to enjoy the quiet. Just want to enjoy the baby and my own thoughts. I think I only have these days when I have tons to do and don't do any of it. When I have little that is pressing, I think I get bored. I don't know -- it hasn't happened in a while.

I should be grading student papers. I'm teaching this wild five-week intersession class. They turned these in the last time we met, then my groaner-loaner gave it up, so I had to cancel last week's last meeting day. Today we have off. There's no logical reason for students not to get their papers back tomorrow. But they won't. The question is really whether they will get them this week. At this point, I don't think so.

In addition to my procrastinating habits so bad as to be criminal, it's also just that this weekend was so awful. Absurdist Lover's back went out -- this time on the side. His job doesn't offer insurance, and we can barely afford to make rent -- so getting him some solo insurance isn't possible right now. He didn't work Friday. By Saturday he was in agony. It then moved down to his leg. Last night, his leg went numb, which, while scary, was a relief because the pain medication we had wasn't working. My internet research suggests that his sciatic nerve is pinched -- but what's doing the pinching? We don't know. He was in so much pain it was scary. I was waiting for the moment when I would have to take him to the emergency room. In addition to feeling helpless and trying to help him do a couple things, I had full-time care of the baby -- and we had to get food and stuff. We got my car back on Friday -- and now I'm getting much better at going to the store with the baby. I'd like to say I was loving and helpful the whole weekend, but I wasn't. I had a cold with a headache. And I was worrying about when these papers were going to get graded, since I was getting no relief from baby care. AL went to work this morning, his leg still numbish, so now it's quiet around here -- and even during the times, like now, when I could be grading, I'm not.

I also made the mistake of answering my phone. A medical bill has gone to collection. I got paid on Friday, but it's all gone already -- to food. I can't even pay my sister back the $60 I borrowed a few weeks ago and had for a while, but now it seems to have gone poof! The collection agent was prepared to work with me and reduce the amount, but I had to tell him that I had $25 until I get paid next (and really that has to go entirely to rent, so I actually have to make what I have last three weeks, which is impossible, and I don't know what we're going to do). So I have the whole money thing swirling in my head. I looked up WIC, and I think our little household makes too much money to qualify, which seems impossible because we don't have anything. One good answer to all this would be for me to apply for more jobs. That would even make sense. But though I know I must get a tenure-track job, any tenure-track job, I'm conflicted about it because then I'll be away from Absurdist Baby so much. I mean, I know I have to do it. But it's hard to feel gung ho about applying for second-season jobs. Especially as I've also been wiki-watching and biting my nails hoping for campus interviews.

Sigh. One interview that I thought I did well on has gone on a hiring freeze. Though I'm not sure that they would've called me anyway. So I'm crossing my fingers about two others but really should be applying applying applying to the handful of new jobs. Heck, I should be grading the essays for the job I have now. And what about the bills I should be entering for the law office? This is not good. I'm hoping writing this blogpost will help me get this flakey mindmeandering out of my system. Scarily, I think I'd prefer to do the office stuff over the grading right now. It's already 2pm, and I have gotten nothing done! Where's the panic? What is wrong with me? I just feel so overworked already! Absurdist Baby is wonderful, and I love him dearly, but taking care of him is work! I feel like I should get to enjoy some quiet. And I should get to putter and think about the holiday today and the inauguration tomorrow and the historical importance of all that. I also want to think about the whole immunization thing, since I took AB to the pediatrician on Friday and signed the immunization form instead of had him shot up with six different things(!), but now I feel like a bad parent -- and stupid too. I don't fear autism or anything -- I fear all the long-term effects that we don't really know about. But all this just worries me. I just want to enjoy some worry-free living for a few blessed minutes. After all, if AL were in trouble, he'd call. I hope he is okay. He endures a lot and then to have the searing pain that he's in. . .it's just too much. The poor man is going to explode.

Cross your fingers that I stop puttering the apartment and teh internets and get to work and feel productive and stop daydreaming and worrying about things I can't do anything about right now.

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.

Why I Am Leaning toward Cancelling My Amnio

I have a number of posts cooking in my brain, including one on locovore eating and my newish farmer's market obsession, fueled by listening to Barbara Kingsolver et al's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on CD over and over again (neuroticism anyone? see below). Which is feeding into my farming fascination, leading me to put a photo I took of a peahen and peachick on my wallpaper. Also, I think, a post admitting that I am a complete and total geek and have started playing World of Warcraft with geeky Absurdist Lover. It's fun. I admit it. I haven't played an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) since Everquest. And yes, I used to play D&D as a young person (advanced, not second edition, which should tell my fellow geeks how old I am). A wireless router, more memory for my ailing my laptop, and a WoW subscription were all the result of our having sold the trailer!!! YAY!!! So we're not quite so poor at the moment -- and I'm starting a new SAT intensive class in a week, so money will become more plentiful as free time grows scarce. (No, I haven't worked on the article. I have been fantastically tired and ill-feeling lately. Not good.)

But what I want to think through and articulate is why I'm now leaning away from going through with my scheduled amnio. Let me back up and tell this wee story. I don't think of having a baby as an illness in need of medical intervention. I also have historic problems with the medical industry on a couple of fronts. One is that western medicine tends to cut people up into parts, not paying enough attention to the interactions between systems. I have been diagnosed with IBS since I was ten (I prefer the term spastic colon, because it really does seem that my G-I tract is a spaz), but I could never get a doctor to agree that my symptoms are worse during my period. It was not until a nurse practioner at Planned Parenthood seemed to take me seriously that it all came together: during one's period, one gets uterine contractions which, she said, could very well affect one's digestive functioning. Not thinking through the interactions between bodily systems when one is pregnant seems a serious oversight to me -- because pregnancy is a full-body experience. Nothing feels the same in my body right now. Also, I'm suspicious of the cut-now, ask questions later approach of many in the medical profession. I don't at all deny that medical science does absolutely amazing things, but my experience is that medical science is just much better at acute rather than chronic or preventative care. If at all possible, I don't want a c-section or episiotomy. In fact, I would really like a care provider who treated me like a person who has some knowledge about my own body while addressing my concerns in an individualized and warm way. So, I want a midwife at a birth center, which seems like the most sensible compromise between my hippie longing for a home birth and the dreaded hospital.

But then there is lack of money and insurance. I finally got insurance in May. I'm due in October. This is not optimal. I looked around for birth centers and the rare midwives who deliver in hospitals covered by my insurance. Though they were listed on the website, which I'm told is the most reliable list, some birth centers are no longer birth centers, and the midwife groups don't exist anymore. In fact, I spent some very aggravating (which is to say weepy) afternoons calling numbers where no one answered. Finally, I got so desperate that I made an appointment at a place that used to be a birth center with a doctor(!), who is male (!). I've never had a male OB-GYN. I just don't really want to talk to anyone about my femaleness with anyone who understands what I'm saying clinically and as the result of study and observation, but cannot personally relate. But I was that desperate to know whether the baby was okay -- and so I just sort of went in there and did it.

Really, I've never felt so vulnerable and clueless in my life. My body, whose habits I've long been investigating and playing with, has grown foreign to me. (I crave cheese. My normal body can't deal with cheese. My normal body can't deal with the amount of dairy I now consume. Pregnant body deals with everything but overload. Weird.) I've had to talk myself down from the walls in order to not totally tense up when I think of birthing this baby. Reading a lot of birth stories in a wonderful midwifery book that totally articulates the kind of birth experience I'd really like for the baby and me to have really helps. Though I'm only five plus months, I'm wobbly on my feet and feel like I can't navigate my own body terribly well. Not to mention, I look down and don't recognize this huge belly that strangers probably still think is the natural outcome of an addiction to Ben & Jerry's. (Actually the Ben & Jerry's is also the baby's fault. And Absurdist Lover's too. He loves his ice cream. He is one of the few men who has a really well-developed sweet tooth. It's very bad. Very tasty. Very bad. But there's no danger that I'm not getting enough dairy.) I never really realized how in my body I really live until now when I pretty much feel like I'm trapped or at least swaddled in a body that doesn't feel like mine. Add all this to some serious mental fog, a normal part of pregnancy some call "mommy brain," and I'm not at all feeling strong and alert. It's been very tempting to just ride along the medical train with this doctor who seems to have it all figured out and in whom I can just turn over crucial decisions. And up until now I've basically been doing that, figuring that once I was sure the baby was okay, I'd go ahead and find myself a birth center and midwife who will deal with my insurance. (Frankly, the work of finding a midwife and all that and then dealing with the insurance stuff has just seemed like one more item on an impossible to-do list.)

But here's the thing: this is not the kind of mother I want to be, just relying on a medical profession I've never trusted to make decisions for me and my baby because I'm too tired to deal with it. This industry also hands out prescriptions for medicines that have not been tested for long enough and then has to issue black-box warnings (Depo-Provera, which I was on for years before anyone knew or mentioned that, oh, by the way, it reduces bone density, and you really shouldn't be on it for more than 18 months for your whole life), recalls, and other crap. So this doctor said that because I'm thirty-five, I should have an amnio (it being way too late for CVS, another genetic test). Thirty-five is the magic number when you're pregnant. This is when they start scaring you with Down's Syndrome and other problems. For a few weeks I was eager to get an amnio to "find out if the baby is okay," but I see now that this may be stupid. The likelihood of Down's Syndrome for a woman of thirty-five is 1 in 400 or .25%. But according to the Dr. Sears' website, the chance of harming the baby from the amnio itself is 1 in 100. Separately from that, there is also a slight chance of miscarriage after the amnio -- slight, but still above .25%. Now, I realize that for many people their need to know about Down's and other chromosomal defects would seriously outweigh their concerns about these teeny-weeny chances of problems from an amnio. But I'm 22 weeks. I've felt this baby kick -- a lot. Even if I found out something awful from an amnio, I couldn't abort this baby now. It's a baby to me. Not a collection of cells that would do better not to be alive and born. If I have a special needs baby, so be it. So the real question is: do I want to know now? Or do I want to wait and count fingers and toes like every other mother since the dawn of time? Even if they found nothing from the amnio, there still could be problems. There's just no way to know, no way to be 100% reassured. So can I just trust that this is the baby I'm supposed to have and let go of knowing? Or will it freak me out more to not know? This is the question I've been playing with every moment that I'm not distracted by something else. Absurdist Lover will support either decision. I'm scared both ways. I'm scared of the amnio, but I also don't want to be irresponsible (aka "overly hippie-dippy") to the baby. I also feel like I can barely justify my own fears of the amnio and leaning toward the do-nothing-and-let-nature-take-its-course school of thinking to some of my most confrontational family members. (I have to save my strength for the nearly inevitable -- because the doctor thinks the baby is a boy as a result of the ultrasound -- "yes, I'm a Jew, but there is no way I'm allowing a knife to come within two feet of my baby's penis" discussion.) One thing that has made me feel like maybe I'm not being totally hippie-dippy, but just smart in weighing all the evidence is that the Drs. and RN Sears still say, after William and Martha Sears had a Down's Syndrome baby: "we believe that it is unwarranted to scare a thirty-five-year-old mother into prenatal diagnostic tests (either amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling)." So maybe I won't have that amnio, scheduled for Tuesday, after all. On Monday, that is, tomorrow, I see my doctor. And I have to get over that deer-in-the-headlights thing that happens every time I'm there if I'm going to tell him that I'm refusing an amnio because I have no intention of aborting this baby no matter what the outcome. I worry that if I do have an amnio, it's because I'm just too scared to hold onto my own convictions or too tired to fight. This is not the kind of mother I want to be, bowled over by other people's scare tactics and ideas of what I should do. I believe that now is the time to take a stand -- and to work to get the kind of care that I want so that this baby can be born into the best situation that I can imagine. Isn't being a good mother having the strength and guts to do what I think is right after I've weighed all the options and evidence, no matter how many people (family, doctors, etc.) urge me in other directions, no matter how tired I am, no matter how much I would just like to sort of sleep through the whole thing?

I realize in rereading this how much of this decision is really about me just feeling beaten down and impoverished and having to do things the way that others want me to. I just don't feel strong and centered enough to be able to confront doctors and family. Well, that has got to change. This baby needs a strong and centered mother. I may get overwhelmed and teary very easily and not be able to remember words, but am I really so mentally foggy that I can't rely on my own brain and heart? Maybe I just need to make more time for mental processing -- as in, maybe I'm should be writing and blogging more! Hmmmm.

Of course, feel free to weigh in. But don't be mean. I cry really easily now!

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.

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.

Feeling Angsty

Okay, here's the thing: I'm nervous and on edge about this move. And then there are all the other things going on (OPL). I just don't have any extra resources right now. I spend every day trying to get control of the chaos of packing and everything -- while trying not to go nuts, since my life has changed and is changing in a number of ways: my heart is big and huge and vulnerable, I've just completed a dissertation, I'm moving to my first post-graduate student job. I'm nervous and scared about everything. I don't know how much I can console other people about the scariness of the future right now. GAAHHHHHH!!!!

That said, I've spent the morning on the phone trying to arrange things. I think I've run out of people to call. Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do today since I ended up totally wasting last night with worry. I'm having a moving party on Saturday, so I know I need to clean up, since things have gotten very messy as every area is some kind of staging area for packing. I need to put out the books that I'm giving away so that people can see them -- and probably put away the things I don't want people seeing. I also need to clean up the kitchen and do some darn laundry!!! Maybe laundry will be the big task for the evening -- which means today should, I think, be devoted to clothes and the closets the world forgot. (Does everyone have to write in order to organize themselves, or is it just me?) And then I do need to do some prepping, which for now means reading and taking notes.

Tomorrow I will need to really prepare for having people in my house. Though I have lived here for five years and I love love love my apartment, I've never had a party here. And if you saw the place right now, that would make sense to you. Everything's everywhere. A total nightmare. I'm not going to be able to get it to the point that I won't be embarrassed about it, but I think I'm going to go for lack of complete humiliation. And floor space. OY! Not everyone is so forgiving as Maude Lebowski and OPL, the last two people who overnighted here. And Fabulous Friend is too sweet to ever say anything about my obvious and complete lack of organizational and cleaning abilities when she comes over. Dishes, reorganization, closets for laundry. Ooh, and I need to go to the store to get more bags.

I'm so nervous that even a Starbucks latte makes me sick. Or else I'd be over there getting one. Of course I might go anyway. OY!

***Update 1:30pm***

Hurrah! I'm going to get to share my madness with Angry Incredible Writer Friend! She's going to let me come over and do laundry, laundry, laundry, which means I have to go into the Closets that Time Forgot and get all that organized. Which means I have focus. I also did the dishes. And I really should go out and get bags and maybe even something to eat. This is totally ridiculous, my need to make public my doings. OY VEY!!!

Do you love taking tests to learn more about yourself?

Obviously! I love the intelligences test, which I've never taken before but which I've heard a lot about since my mother teaches K-12, where I guess they pay more attention to the varying abilities of students (perhaps though, now, with No Child Left Behind, pay it lip service) than in the academy.



Though getting into Myers-Briggs helps me understand why some freshman comp students (especially) seem to demand step-by-step instructions. Writing isn't a paint-by-numbers kit! If only! Ahh, I can tell I'll be in the classroom in six weeks. I'm totally not packed or ready or have made a syllabus (though Adventure U's program is quite structured, so the unfolding of my classes will be structurally the same as other people's teaching the same class -- this actually makes me more nervous, makes me think I need more prep rather than less). I'm not even done with the Works Cited of my dissertation, nor some typos that Peppy Advisor is going to tell me about today. ACK! Less than a month! I can't think about it. I was once so excited about it; now I don't want to go at all because OPL can't come with me. So we'll be the kind of long distance that means that weekend getaways are totally impossible. I'll be lucky to see him every couple months. And even that's expensive! Gah!

You can see that all of these things are so close together in my head that I can barely think about one without thinking about the other. So today's plan to not go insane includes the following:

• Therapeutic yoga. (Probably only fifteen minutes.)
• Therapeutic sushi-eating with Angry Young Colleague and Ex-Writing Partner (yes, one person, though he might bring his not-so-wee bairn).
• Working on Works Cited and typos.
• Doing dishes, eventually, so that OPL is fooled into thinking that I can actually keep my own nest clean.
• Begging Fabulous Friend to go and do something silly with me, which may include coloring in coloring books (go ahead and laugh: you're just jealous I have such fabulous coloring books), painting, roller skating, or some other thing FF's cooked up in her head that I haven't even thought of yet! I wonder if the Children's Museum would paint my face, since I've gone off makeup entirely.
  

I should look at some of the materials that Adventure U sent me about my classes. I should do a lot of things. I went and bought file boxes yesterday. Doesn't that count for something???

Anyway, to get back to the point of this blogpost before all this anxiety shoved and elbowed its way to the fore, is that it's very odd and interesting to me that Naturalist came up so high. I haven't gone camping in ages and didn't like it when I went last. (In all fairness, though, I went with the most depressed man who had just broken up with his long-time girlfriend. And I hadn't yet figured out my health concerns so that camping could be easy. I'm better now. That was over ten years ago. Camping is probably like yams: I hated them for years, then suddenly tried them, as I am wont to do just to make sure things haven't changed, and then I went crazy, unable to get enough of yams.) But here's a crazy thing: when I was in high school, I had to take those assessment things of your interests. I so wanted those things to say that I should go into writing. I was looking for any little encouragement, especially since I got kicked out of Honor's English (I know, I know -- do you know how hard it is to write a really effective essay on why Hamlet really did love Ophelia when you're in tenth grade?). Guess what my top was? Agriculture! What am I doing in English? (The next two, which were about equal, were clerical and the arts.) I do love plants and cottage gardens and have long dreamt about planting one of those wonderful front gardens that are really fruits and vegetables organized to look pretty? Can I just ask why it is that I'm going to Adventure U, where I'm not going to be able to plant the roots (French Kiss, I know, I know: I don't have an original thought in my head) I so long for? OY! Yogatime!

Work as Solace: Discuss

Okay, I realize that this is going to sound totally nuts, given how prone I am to complaining about academic work. (I'd probably complain about any kind of work. If I worked at an ice cream store, I'd probably complain that it makes my hands sticky.) But here's something I've been thinking about since all the OPL drama: work is also a solace. While it does happen that sometimes in writing nothing seems to go right, that one's argument crumbles in one's hands, at least it's in our hands. I've noticed while waiting to see what turn my life is going to take that when I get back to doing some edits on the dissertation (I have to take out all the commas that I usually put in, as in DorkusEnglish, 412 -- gahhh! how did I ever start that???), it's a pain (naturally) but also a kind of relief. Here's a world I understand. I can look up something in MLA and get an answer (usually) and format my citation correctly. I can think my way through an intellectual or pedagogical problem in a way that I can't think my way through in my life. Let's face it: one cannot think one's way through life, one must live it. Aye, there's the rub. But one can think one's way through some intellectual problems. And the engagement and excitement of tangling with an idea or concept that is totally involving belongs only to you (which makes us isolated sometimes, but also makes us independent from well, dependence on others for access to our mojo). Peppy Advisor and I sometimes talk about this -- how at least when we enter the English building we enter a world where we have some small amount of control (which we cling to in contrast to the total lack of control of the rest of our lives) and we know the rules and we have to leave some of the whirlwind heartache of our lives behind.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, relieved that sometimes I can cut through the OPL panic and worry haze and get some work done (yay! something I know how to do! since I don't know how to wait, be patient, trust). All this to say, my work life is a solace while I wait, wait, wait to find out whether the man I'm in love with will take a leap toward crazy magical happiness and choose me. In short, my life sucks. And that's all there is folks. Hence, only intermittent blogging. If you find yourself coming over to Absurdist Paradise and there is nothing new laid out for your consumption, it's probably because the lady of the house has wasted herself on tears and prayer -- and has no lively quips or sarcasm canapes to offer. It's all earnest hope over here folks. Not very entertaining. Wish me luck, blogfriends.