Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

There are so many things I'm grateful for, including that I don't feel as wretched as I did when I wrote my last post. Thanks those of you who responded to my previous post. I'll respond later, but for now I've got a turkey to get in the oven, a wonderful feast to prepare (without getting frustrated or annoyed, I hope), and a lovely little family to enjoy! (We're not going anywhere nor are having people over.)

Have a lovely Thanksgiving, complete, hopefully, with loving warmth and harvest feasts!

Belated Blogoversary

I began this blog two years ago December 15, writing about the job market. My first posts chronicled the countdown to my MLA interviews. Here I am, two years-ish later, on the market again. But that's where the similarities end. My life is very different, the city I live in is very different, what I'm looking for in a job is different. But it wouldn't have been the same two years without the conversations and support of the blogoverse. Thank you all.

Baby Shower/Online Meet-Up

So my baby shower in Urban Home City is this Saturday, to which only a scant few friends will be able to attend because they/you are strewn all over the country. So I was thinking on Sunday about having some kind of online meet-up, not just to celebrate the soon-to-be-arriving baby or my last days of pregnancy (37 weeks!), but just to connect. It will be good for my brain and mood, especially since my pregnancy has gotten complicated (definite mild preeclampsia, people -- my right foot especially seems to have its own elephantitis -- why my left foot seems to drain a bit when I put it up and my right foot doesn't? a mystery. plus, I have a cold!!!). So here's the question for all you smart bloggerandonline folk: would it be better to go ahead and meet up on this here blog, crazymedusa style, or to get a private chat room? If we did it here, I could mix my blogger and real life friends, which might be fun. But of course, comments are maybe not a good replacement for running chat. Hmmm. See why I need your wisdom? It's this pregnancy brain. What say you, oh wise internetsmartfolk?

No Amnio for Me!

First of all, I want to thank y'all for the support. Absurdist Lover and I went in to the doctor's on Monday and expressed our concerns about the amnio. The doctor affirmed that the only reason he was advocating it, since we have no intention of aborting, was because "it's good to know what you're getting" -- that is, if the baby is going to need an operation or neonatal intensive care, then one can make better choices about where to have it. This is the only reasoning that made sense to me, which left me in a conundrum. But that morning I had made an appointment to have a tour through one of the only birth centers I could find in this town (so strange to me since this state has such a granola-y reputation, yet birth centers have gone by the wayside big time here). So I called them and asked about whether because I am thirty-five they'd have reservations about my giving birth in a birthing center. They said that if I were really worried about the baby that I could have a 3-D ultrasound, something my doctor hadn't even mentioned! The people at the birthing center told me that if the state had found my AFP test to be abnormal, even they wouldn't send me directly to have an amnio, which costs between $2,000-3,000 -- the state would get me a 3-D ultrasound next and only if that showed bad findings would I get an amnio. But my AFP was completely normal, and the state isn't advocating or paying for any further studies. "It sounds like your doctor is just advocating a very invasive procedure," the birthing center people said. Yes, yes, and yes. I know he's doing his best, but going through an amnio because I'm thirty-five and this passes some artificial line in the sand is ridiculous. I cancelled my amnio.

Absurdist Lover and I went to our tour appointment today -- and this birth center is pretty wonderful. The birthing rooms basically look like bed and breakfast rooms. It's pretty amazing how totally different the center is from the doctor's office. We spoke with the midwives and others -- it looks pretty wonderful. Of course, we have to figure out the money. Absurdist Lover is being pretty amazing about the whole thing. Though his other two children were born in hospitals, he is totally supportive of me having the experience that I want to have. He doesn't demean my intensity about finding an "alternative birth" at all, which I find amazing because a woman I know well has told me that the birth experience really doesn't matter at all -- at the end of the day you have your baby. A friend of mine said that she wanted to have her baby at home, but her insurance wouldn't pay for it -- and it wasn't worth it for them to pay the extra $4,000. I must be a class A bangladeshgranolahead, because I think it does matter. I think the baby will have an easier time of it if I'm as mellow and relaxed as possible. It's my body that this baby has to get through and if I'm tense and worried and scared because I've made this kind of huge compromise and feel I'm out of control and in the hands of over-zealous doctors who look at me as just another pile of flesh, well, I just think that the baby will have a harder time. Whatever. No one else really has to understand, except that we're going have to borrow the money to pay the birth center upfront and then get reimbursed (somewhat) by the insurance. But I'm not going to deal with that today. Too tired now.

But here's an interesting scary disgusting fact: the midwife said that as of June 2008 Urban Home City has a 70% Caesarean rate. (Can I just say that both of the women I mentioned earlier had Caesareans? One had an emergency C-section and then a second scheduled one, by her own choice because she could have tried for VBAC. The other had a C-section for her second baby with a vaginal delivery for the first.) Even if that figure is totally high, 30% would be too much. I've read some articles on the internet about the vast popularity of C-sections, as a choice! Oy! Not what I'm looking for. Not if it can be avoided.

(I guess I find a lot of this just shocking. I grew up in the 70s, and I guess I expected that once we'd started figuring out that there wasn't better living through chemistry that we'd continue on a natural, organic, green path. Organic is so trendy now, but natural childbirth is somehow out of fashion. It's more fashionable to schedule your C-section around your travel schedule. You can go to Whole Foods on a regular basis, concerned about your health and the environment, but birth centers are closing. Gas prices are through the roof, every other car is a Prius, but people are going crazy and declaring it an "epidemic" that tomatoes farmed in industrial pesticide-laden big business farms have been swimming around in vats of salmonella'd water. Don't we all know that we should be eating local organic produce anyway??? That the tomatoes making the news are not from your local farmer's market. I'm so confused.)

In other getting-our-shit-together news, Mr. Tabby has an appointment with a new doctor, recommended by my sister. Strangely, he does not seem to be excited about this news. Can't say as I blame him.

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!

Happier Update

I may just be the worst blogger ever, especially since so many of you left such sweet comments on my last mournful post. And this is going to be a shortie post (yeah right) because I'm already late getting myself going today. But I wanted to let you all know that things are looking up. I was starting to feel better and stronger (okay, partly with fantasies that Absurdist Lover would regret not being with me big time) and enlisted even more help from my family and started looking at apartments. This was not the week that just passed, but the week before. Of course right as I began to be able to imagine going on and getting an apartment and going on the market again in the fall, Absurdist Lover called and said he wanted me back. The following weekend we got back together, somewhat provisionally, because he's got to work on some things that will make it possible for us to move forward. We'll see how it goes.

The SAT class that started so poorly is now over; most of my students are likely even done with the official SAT, today being their test date. I hope they do okay, though many of them, in typical student fashion, did not do their homework.

Here's a teaser for my next post, which I promise will come in the next few days: so I get insurance where they have one birth center in my area. Did I think to call first to make sure they were still a birth center? No. I called on Wednesday: they are not a birth center anymore -- they only do prenatal care and then birth at the hospital. Dear lord in heaven! Why do I not want to have my baby in a hospital if I can possibly help it? Why am I starting to go crazy when people look at me as if I'm nuts when most people are born and give birth in hospitals? What's wrong with a place for treating sick people when giving birth, the most natural thing in the world? Well, for me (and only for me -- I'm not trying to foist these ideas on anyone else -- hell, I've done drugs for fun --I totally get why someone would want to have an epidural for childbirth!), the whole midwife versus doctor and at home or birth center versus hospital thing is really important -- and it's totally getting under my skin since I have to justify myself every five seconds when people ask incredulously: don't you want a doctor? So expect a "medical model rant" soon.

In other news, I'm listening to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (my first payday I got paid by both the office and the SAT place, I finally retired Steve Martin's CD of Born Standing Up, which I still recommend, by the way) and if you've ever cared one whit about food and what's in it and where it comes from, consider going and reading/listening to it. It's frigging amazing.

Also, I'm seventeen weeks. I've been pregnant for just about ever and will go on being pregnant forever. It's hot. I need air conditioning. My carbon footprint is Big Foot sized, especially since i still live in the forest and am shlepping into the city. Also, in the morning, I can wear my pre-pregnancy jeans (though not pre-pregnancy tops since my boobs have inflated like hot-air balloons), but after I eat and by the end of the day, they are chronically unbuttoned, becoming the most uncomfortable clothes ever that basically have to be peeled off, seventies style when tight was all right. (Am I the only person who remembers that it was totally normal to lie on your bed to zip your Calvins or Jordache's up?) It's very odd. Because my nice clothes are bigger, since I've ballooned up and down between fat and almost slender (which is my version of hottie) in grad school, I can pretty much still wear those pants. When am I going to look pregnant?

Pensive Thursday Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

Certified and Certifiable, with a Rant on the Pregnancy Industry

Thank you for all your good wishes. Despite that my teaching demo today was not so hot, I got fully certified, which may be nothing short of a miracle brought on by all y'all's good wishes and crossed fingers, toes, and eyes. So thank you all very very much.

I was so exhausted today. I slept over at the folks' house -- and was so stressed about whether or not I was going to get certified (and probably just hormonal as well) that I was totally unable to deal with them. There was actually a moment when I was getting pregnancy advice when I put my hands over my ears and said I couldn't take anymore pregnancy advice. Not my best moment. Then I came home and Absurdist Lover and I got in a total fight about money -- I'm tempted to say because now that I have a job we can fight about money, but I don't know if that's really true. We're both stressed beyond our limits and in our tiny camper . . . well, who else can we fight with? Have I mentioned that my hormones are raging? Not a great combination, because I end up crying about everything. Oy vey.

So I have a job! Yay! I didn't relearn geometry and other scary things like functions and factoring for nothing! So now I can finally turn my attention to other things -- like the fact that I really need to investigate why the pregnancy industry and their incessant advice (no sushi, second-hand smoke passes through the placenta barrier, pregnancy diets, make sure to work out and eat well or you'll be prone to a list off bad things as long as my arm topped with post-partum depression) pisses me off so much. A friend of mine told me that when she was pregnant, she sought out advice. I find it thrust upon me -- in every book, on every website. Now, of course, if I really didn't want some information, what am I doing looking at the websites and books? Well, of course I want the information, but I'm not a great fan of its presentation. Here I guess I'm talking about rhetoric. Most of the time it's implicit (though I found a shocking website that said this outright) that if you don't follow all the guidelines, eat properly and not too much, stay away from certain foods, stop drinking completely, and work out all the time no matter how shitty you feel in the first trimester, you are a bad mother.

Of course being careful is a good thing. Eating well and working out are good -- if you can manage them. (Hello!!! Some women are throwing up everything in the first trimester -- or even throughout the entire pregnancy! Luckily, I am not one of these poor women, blessed merely with constipation, queasiness, exhaustion, and tummy upset and the occasional bout of insomnia.) But what pisses me off about most of these books/websites is that they make already scared, hormone-addled, exhausted women who can no longer judge what their bodies are capable of feel even more deficient. And that is just plain wrong. Women have been having babies forever -- or else we would've died out long ago. Do we really need the part of the pregnancy industry that thrives on making women feel even more alienated from their bodies, making women feel less confident in themselves, making women feel more like shit? To modify Bridget's statement to Mark Darcy: they really needn't bother. I already feel like shit most of the time anyway. With or without the fireman's pole. (Okay, I just threw that last line in there because it makes me smile.)

Can I just say how many people don't know that you're "advised" not to eat sushi during pregnancy? My dad didn't know! (My stepmother telling me this as if I hadn't heard it a thousand times and have been in mourning since the first time I heard it was the thing that made me put my hands over my ears.) Of course, Dad doesn't have to know. He never has to give up his favorite food in the world for something that feels most of the time like a bad knot in one's middle. (Bastard.) Absurdist Lover quite reasonably says that giving up sushi for nine months is a small price for a baby -- that having my life turned upside down for about a year isn't so bad. Of course, he is being totally reasonable. Blech. It wasn't until he admitted that the world does indeed harangue pregnant women -- everyone thinking they know best and totally disempowering the mother -- that I felt I could even deal with someone so insistent on being obnoxiously reasonable.

What can I say? I'm totally hormonal and crazy most of the time. I know my responses are out of proportion with the stimuli. As you might guess, the knowledge that I'm being unreasonable is not usually enough to get me down from the walls.

Lest you think that I'm just a crazed freak, the hormone pendulum does swing the other way -- and then I marvel at my pooched belly (okay, probably just with the ice cream I now let myself eat) and thickening waist. Since the pregnancy is at ten weeks, Absurdist Fetus is like an inch long. According to those week-by-week websites that I can't stop myself from looking at, AF looks like a baby and has even developed his/her reproductive organs and things. It's pretty amazing. I saw myself in a full-length mirror this morning -- and I kind of thought I looked fecund and beautiful. Beautiful like a very full rose, not a bud. Sort of brimming with hormones. I can't describe it.

Anyway, later on when a young woman in my training class asked me if I were showing, I could've kissed her for just thinking that this pooching tummy could be just the way I was built. (I realize now that I shouldn't be so happy at this thought, but I'll be showing in minutes -- minutes, I tell you! so it was kind of neat to think that when I walk around people still can't tell. I feel so thick. Of course, when they see me going straight to the bathroom in Whole Foods, they can probably tell -- but at least strangers are not putting their hands on my belly like I'm a Buddha statue and they need some luck -- not yet.) Being pregnant makes me feel so different in my body it's not like I often forget about it. And with the glow that family members insist I have (not to mention the annoying whiteheads on my face that I was so happy to grow out of at nineteen), I kind of feel like everyone can just tell. Of course, other times I want to tattoo it on my forehead and on the bumper of my car: I'm pregnant so stop being an asshole and play nice. I'm fragile.

I think that's enough ranting. I swear I will come up with something else to write about soon. Like maybe annoying high school students (exciting!) or how writing a conference paper sucks (woohoo!).

Breakthroughs in Packing!

It actually happened -- I actually started packing. It's amazing. Two bookshelves equal something like 15 boxes. Totally ridiculous. But I also managed to both stay on my butt and contact movers at the same time. Really, I'm finally getting things done, partly because Self-Reflective and Fabulous Friend came over and let me make her margaritas and use her wunderbar puzzle-box skills to box up books and partly because I finally don't feel like a complete zombie. I also went over to the library today and got some books that have already helped me get my head back into teaching. So, even though I promised myself that I wouldn't really work on writing/publishing or teaching on the weekends, I actually feel pretty good about prepping for teaching.

Packing and moving is a bit of a different story: though I borrowed beaucoup bucks from the fam, it's clear that I'm going to have to beg for more from someone. I'm trying to do this move on the cheap, but I've got so much stuff that I can't possibly lift. A lot of antiquey-type stuff. The kind of stuff that makes me so nervous about moving it that I MUST pay someone to deal with my anxiety and backseat moving. This is the first move I'm really trying to do on the cheap, so if anyone has any ideas about free boxes or whatever, I'm all ears.

Attention Regular Readers

If, after all the whining, there are any devoted readers left! I really appreciate y'all's support lately. I know I have not lately been the charming and sardonic hostess I promised.

Because specifics around Adventure U will be very difficult and burdensome to mask, I'm going to be moving to a new password-controlled blog. This new blog will likely be academic, but also somewhat personal (as if this one isn't personal), including reflections on Adventure City and pictures and the like. If you want to continue to read my adventures in absurdity while at Adventure U, please email me at earnestenglish@gmail.com -- and I'll give you the blogaddress and password information when I get it altogether.

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.

An Excursion to Chicago, then Back to Work

This morning, I was in Chicago with Post-Doc, where her alone-ness was more fun than most people's parties. Thing was: I woke up in Grad City. I was in my PJs, sitting at my computer the whole time. Then, of course, it was back to work.

So because I signed up for a professional development class (that I'm contemplating not going back to because I know too much already), I was on Grad City U campus yesterday, where I got much mail and an appointment with PA!

So today I will talk to PA about these comments. Here is a brief outline of Gnarley Problem. In an early draft, I included a discussion of Important Locating Keyterm in the Intro. PA tells me that it doesn't need to be there. So I move it to the opening of Chapter 1. (You know how hard it can be to open up chapters!) PA says: good job. Reader 1, whose comments were basically fix a different thing and be done with it, said: good job. Reader 2 said: I need a discussion of Important Locating Keyterm in the early pages of the Intro. So here's the thing: PA has already had me move it once. Here's what I'm not going to say to PA: I don't wanna move it again. I don't wanna! You tell Reader 2 that you've already made me move it once and you're not going to make me move it again, even if it does totally makes sense. Reader 1 thought it was fine. Waaaaaa. Waaaaaaa. Waaaaaaa! And PA will likely not say: How totally unreasonable! What is Reader 2 thinking? Let me email Reader 2!

So I have to figure out a way of approaching the whole thing so I can not have to move that thing around. Tricky. But I have a feeling I'll come home tonight hacking and chopping at my Intro to make Reader 2 happy. Oy! I know that doing what Reader 2 says would allow me to include a proactive argument as a rebuttal to many comments that Reader 2 and even Reader 1 said. But I don't care. I want it to be done. And I just don't care! I am not Dr. Adjunct Whore or Maude Lebowski, the former who has won a diss award, the latter who has been told by her advisor that her dissertation could become a great diss with a bit more work. I don't care about my diss anymore! It'll make a great book -- LATER! I just want to be done already! Let me pack people!! Please!!! Grrr.

What else? I finally got stuff from Cool Institute. There's a lot of reading. Ooof -- it makes my head hurt. I'll go to campus and print it out. Maybe they are each one page long (I hope).

***Update 4:16pm***

No such luck. This poor printer has been working overtime on all these pages! Sigh. Missed the professional development workshop anyway. Oh well.

Also, Peppy Advisor said it's a good professional habit to get into to try to address and incorporate all your readers' comments. So I'll be working on that Gnarley Problem after all. Luckily, PA and I also talked about it, so. . .(big sigh). . .I hope it won't be as bad as I think it might be. I thought of something to take out and put elsewhere, so. . .(another big sigh). . .well. . .whatever. A month and seven days baby to the defense!

Happy Half Blogoversary!!!

Happy half-birthday, happy half-birthday, happy half-birthday, half-birthday to you, Absurdist Paradise!

Yes, it was six months ago today that Absurdist Paradise with its rants, nerves, screams, and whatthefucks was born.

I'd like to take this moment to thank all my blogfriends/readers (lurkers too, but who are you?) who have commented lately, making me feel like I have my own cheering section as I huff and puff my way through the marathon called dissertating. Thank you to Hilaire, Medieval Woman, Nik, Sisyphus, Adjunct Whore (that's Dr. Adjunct Whore), Dr. Medusa, Tiruncula, K8, Diss Daisy, Abby, and Meagan. (I really hope I haven't forgotten anyone.) I know I've probably been pretty boring, writing about all things dissertating. (Of course, this blog started out with my reflections on all things job search-related, griping about things like Wiki-Watching. Suffice it to say, I'm quite obsessive.) Y'all have been really fabulously supportive, making me feel not so alone in this process. I really really appreciate it. When I've been working all day, it's lovely to go online and see that my blogfriends, who only know me through my whining and kvetching, are cheering. Thank you so much.

Because I'd hate to disappoint y'all and not update you on Diss News 2007: I started revising the chapters according to Peppy Advisor's comments (mostly line edits, thank god, goddess, and angels) and pumped out the Intro and Chapters 1 and 2, Draft 3. An hour or so ago, I sent them to my readers. PA still has the evil Chapter 4, Draft 2. So the only thing for me to do is (watch TV???) go and work on Chapter 3, Draft 3. But last night it occurred to me that as the workload lessens, there are a number of things it would be good to get done before I go off to Adventure U. So a new to-do list is in the works. Oy!