Quickie Update

Quickie, because I haven't been able to leave Tot alone -- or be left alone -- in days. We've moved from our apartment to a house. We're partly moved, that is. No dining table, no couch, no bed. We're sleeping on an air mattress and in our new two-person sleeping bag (bought for that camping we were going to do) that's surprisingly comfortable. This place is a tri-level, though, and maybe it's in the nature of the tri-level or just the layout of this house, but it's very difficult to keep tabs on Tot in here. So I'm constantly going up one flight or two flights to find out where he is. So I've been following him room to room (no gates yet, and it would be really difficult considering the design of the stairwells to put up traditional toddler gates) with my book the last few days. Ahh, here's Tot coming down a flight of stairs.

I just sent him back up to play with his cars. Is he too young to be playing without supervision, I wonder.

He just came down the stairs again. Oy.

He's had pinkeye for the last few days, which has meant really terrible antibiotics that are wreaking havoc on his g-i tract.

But what I wanted to say to you all is that the differences between our apartment and this house really makes me reflect on my relationships to nature and people. I'm even thinking of writing an essay about it, about how much I've loved communing with the ducks and geese and swans, especially this spring when they all had babies. Oh how I marveled at the swan tending her nest, then worried when I saw the nest was abandoned until I finally saw the four signets. The Canada geese parents (both) who spend their entire lives walking their babies around, sometimes in the creek, sometimes on its banks. The duck mama and her tiny babies all running down the bank to the creek at the same time. Now our backyard, which is big, gorgeous, and unfenced, looks out into other people's backyards. When I look out the front, it's worse: just houses up and down.

Here's what I'm trying to say: We have a lot more space -- inside and out -- but I feel more closed in.

I think part of this has to do with my dislike of subdivisions and how much this feels a bit too much like the place I grew up. Some of it is, perhaps, my discomfort about being "the mom" and therefore representative of the family, my discomfort about being observed at close range, being someone who has coffee with the neighbors and seems like she has it together. But some of it is my relationship with nature. I'm thinking since there will be no waterfowl in my backyard, I think I must go and seek out spaces where I'll get to hang out with the birds. Until then, I'm going to get very into vegetative life -- me with my nineteen potted plants now sunning themselves on the deck.

Must go now. Tot's been very patient.

Potholders for Tenure

So here are some of my crochet projects, which I wish counted for tenure:



You'll see that the two on the left are similar -- potholders done in Tunisian crochet, a special kind of crochet that is sort of a cross between crochet and knitting, so there's a special long hook with a stopper on the end like a knitting needle. The one on the right is actually not a potholder, but a coffee cozy that I designed myself in single crochet. What is a coffee cozy, and why would one ever need one? Well, we have a French press coffeemaker, but because Absurdist Lover and I often get up at different times, the coffee often gets cold. We know we need to buy one that has the heating guard thingie on it, but we don't have the money, especially to replace something that is perfectly good but annoying. (We need to buy a vaporizer and new immune-boosting supplements for Absurdist Tot -- let me know if anyone has any recommendations on that -- he's been sick once too often for me. Anyway, we have to buy the stuff we don't have way before we ever get to upgrading the stuff we already have.)

This is the Coffee Cozy at work:



And as crazy as it sounds, it actually does keep the coffee warm.

I'm also excited about this new and super-easy potholder pattern, so I made two of them. Ironically, I think these were both the easiest and the most professional looking:



I'm even thinking that those friends of mine who are newly married (ahem, Maude) might want to tell me what colors they prefer in their kitchen so I can make them a bunch of handmade-with-love potholders (from this last pattern that looks so good and is so easy, of course).

I love crochet because unlike teaching or writing, I can see the progress moment by moment. I realize this is probably not what an untenured academic mom should be doing when not teaching, but this gives me such happiness, as does the bread I just taught myself to bake (no bread machine, no Kitchenaid to do my mixing for me). I just love these homey things. And hope everyone I love in the world wants potholders and scarves!

Just like Susan Gubar describes quilting as the thing that helped her to do the difficult work of working on Poetry after Auschwitz, an amazing tome on Holocaust poetry, I bet everyone has their own coping project for the tenure battle. So far, the tenure track process does not seem like dissertating: there are so many different aspects of the process and no one is eagerly awaiting my work, ready to comment on it, stamp it as good enough or not. I'm on my own. My own illness-addled brain has put together this idea about where I need to focus my energies lately: I'm doing the teaching, though maybe I'm not doing as well as I'd like to, I'm doing service, but research is where I need to focus, because that is what I'm just not getting done enough. I'll get them all on track, then work on improving each one. What do other people do to help them cope with the rigors of the tenure track? What other coping projects/hobbies do people have?

I also have pictures of my bread, but maybe I'll forego that project right now. I also have thoughts I want to share about being on the other side, being on the search committee, but I'll save that for another time.