We've Moved!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Aborted Post with Amendations

Post from Sunday included here by the sheer luck of the blogger save feature:

Get this. I know that Sunday is my only day to get the copious SAT homework done -- I might have to do any one of over fifty, maybe even a hundred, dreadful math problems on the board at the drop of a hat. After all, the students will only choose the ones that are hard or complicated or tricky to review on the board. I know as days pass that Sunday is the fateful day. It is 8:38pm. Have I done the homework? No. Have I even cracked the book? No. The book is in the car. I have not retrieved it. This is bad. This is very bad. This is exactly the same as me having a stack of papers. Luckily, I don't actually teach tomorrow, so I have a little bit more time, but really I should've done it today because I won't have that much time tomorrow, even with staying at my folks' place so I don't have to spend the evening driving back home.

Why didn't I do my homework? Partly because I am a procrastinating fool. Partly because I am catastrophically depressed. I don't know what to tell you, how much to say, especially if AL reads my blog (which I doubt), but basically he and I are not together. Things are bad. Very bad. I'm crying all the time, which is basically what I was doing when I was too busy to be doing my homework. (This has been the first free day since the shit hit the fan when he returned from seeing his kids -- yesterday I had to go to both a bar mitzvah and a play, so I couldn't just mope and cry hysterically as the main event of the day -- though I cried in the shower, which is a very good and inevitable place to cry, by the way.)

I am now staring down being a single mom. Of course, there is nothing wrong with single momhood -- in fact there is a good organization called Single Mothers by Choice that I once looked into -- but the point is that this is not by choice. Had I planned to get pregnant on my own, I would've chosen a time when I was more settled, when I lived in an apartment or, heaven help us, a house, rather than a camper and had a good full-time job, rather than two part-time ones that in blasted Urban Home City are STILL not enough for me to get an apartment closer in (I can almost afford an apartment near here, but the commute would still be the same, if not longer). Have I mentioned that I'm pregnant and bloody tired? The financial aspect of not being able to get out of the camper is driving me nuts ("look, here's all of our stuff, our bed, our outside chairs -- all the stuff that reminds me of ours, ours, ours") and the emotional part -- well, I'm not well. Who's going to rub my back when it hurts? Who am I going to show my growing belly to? Who is going to comfort me and tell me that everything will be all right when I'm scared? No one. Maybe I'm wallowing in self-pity here, but. . .my life has turned into a bloody talk show, and though I feel like I should have some spine, I'm really no longer sure why.

So the SAT class is not going well. I'm considering explaining to the office that the first week of the SAT class happened to coincide with the complete shattering of my present and future life (poor Absurdist Fetus) -- and that's why things are not going so well in class. Like I told the students that the answers to the homework were in the back of the book. They weren't. The students couldn't check their own homework. Of course, there was no outcry or anything, which led me to the inevitable conclusion that few students actually did their homework. We're also totally behind the syllabus. And I suck at teaching the math because I don't know the problems very well. (I'm pretty well prepped on the book I was trained on, but this is a different book. I was supposed to prep the book out before the class started, but there was too much going on and I felt like shit so I didn't, figuring that I'd be able to prep it before each class. Well, my life ended on Monday night, which happened to coincide with the night before the SAT class started. So, I've been a wee bit distracted. I also started the accounting job last Monday. Basically last week was nothing like the week before it -- and I was totally ill prepared for any of its revelations.)

The accounting job is fine. Everything was in a serious mess, but I've got most of the accounts payable under control.


It was at that point that my laptop decided to go black. I burst into tears. Everything's broken, I cried. The laptop hasn't turned on since. (Absurdist Lover -- or perhaps I should call him Absurdist Ex -- agreed to look at it. We're sharing the camper -- he stays there when I'm at my folks' place.) Tonight I did my taxes. Of course, I owe $1,000. Inevitable. Last night I couldn't get the folks' TV to work. It's just been one thing after another. I wonder if I should change my blog name, because the absurdity is getting too high for me to keep a sense of humor about it. (Could the blog title be a lightning rod for all absurdity -- from long lost lovers to electrical shorts? You can tell I'm in trouble when I get this superstitious.)

In more recent news, I found out today that some SAT students had done some of their homework; none had done all of it. If their scores fail to rise, it will not be my fault. I indicated to the SAT office people that I was having a really hard time, that last week didn't go well.

I got back the comments from the chapter I completed in January. They didn't say anything too awful, but I don't think I should think too much about their constructive criticism right now. I just can't take it. Dear readers, if I wrote overly harsh comments on your blog in the last ten days, please know that I've been very depressed -- like I'd-like-Zoloft-but-I'm-pregnant-and-don't-trust-it-despite-FDA-approvals depressed. Like I'd-like-to-curl-up-into-a-ball-and-not-come-out-until-it's-time-for-my-cremation depressed. But I'm okayish now, trying to get through, keep calm, and cultivate useful delusions of competence and love. I'll keep you posted, if I can.

Sleepy Sunday

So I didn't make a total ass of myself administering the exam -- only about half an ass, which isn't bad. I did hold them for fifteen extra minutes, which I felt bad about on a Saturday. But beyond that, there weren't many hiccups. I then went over to the Fam's and hung out until way later than I expected to. The drama with brother in his twenties is continuing, and we decided that we're all ADHD.

On Monday, I start the accounting job. On Tuesday, I start the SAT class. At the test yesterday, the students seemed interested in what we were going to learn and do. I have a whole bunch of prep to do before Tuesday, but I'm so so tired. My sister and I have plans to do something this afternoon, which I know I should cancel, but I'm hoping that if I go, then maybe I'll have that tense, focused energy that helps me do things quickly by the time I come back. Also, I do have some time tomorrow, but. . .. I never see my sister -- she has two adorable children, goes to work and school, and lives a very full life back in the same little 'burb where she and I grew up. (Okay, I grew up there. She went to elementary school there. We have a huge age difference and when my parents got divorced, she was still a kid, while I was already in college. Now, the age difference doesn't seem so large.) Strangely, she likes it there for all the right reasons -- the relative safety, the good schools for her children. Of course, I think of it as ticky-tacky houses, probably the very model of Weeds's Agrestic. My stepmother told me that motherhood would change all of my ideas about suburbs, Wal-Mart, getting a pedicure at the mall with all the other moms, pre-packaged experience a la Chuck E Cheese. We shall see.

I'm tired and procrastinating again. But I'm so glad to be teaching. Even though I was so tired it's insane, I didn't get tired at all in the classroom because there were all these not-so-fresh (at too early in the morning on a Saturday) faces who I was going to get to know. And help, hopefully. If they don't figure out that they know more about math than I do. Grrrr. Well, I know more about the SAT than they do. Maybe they can teach me some calculus. Like what it's for. (I watched one of those great science shows like Connections that I think said something about calculus having been developed to make cannonball firing more accurate. My quick look at Wikipedia doesn't seem to bear this out, sadly.)

Mr. Tabby is stretched out, sleeping next to me. Sleeping more sounds like such a good idea. (I can hear the bikers -- must be hogs -- on the main road. Sunday is biker day in the mountains, no doubt about it.) Obviously, I'm procrastinating getting up and getting myself together. It just feels so good to be a blob for a while. I'm not going to get to blob out much during the week from now on, since I have two jobs. Two! How am I going to balance two jobs with being tired and pregnant? (People keep telling me to hold on for another couple weeks, that I will get this Second Trimester Super-Energy soon. I can't wait. Can I sleep until it arrives?) I'll just keep whispering one word to myself: apartment, apartment, apartment.

But lookie! I have already been productive. I have finally migrated from winter to spring! I have a pseudo-plan! And if I've written it on my blog, well, surely it will happen, right?

Morning Is for the Birds

Especially early morning. I can hear the damn birds tweet-tweeting outside the camper. They sound very happy, no doubt because they did not wake up at 4:30 having to pee then finding themselves unable to go back to sleep for one last hour of rest before having to get up and somehow turn into a human so they could proctor an exam for a zillion hours today. (Birds are too smart to turn into humans or agree to administer exams at high schools 45 miles away from home by 9am.)

What's more, I'm alone in this exhausting endeavor. Absurdist Lover went to visit his kids for the weekend. While I have been totally for his going up north to see them, dealing with all this without being able to go and get rip-roaring drunk this weekend is very trying. Oy.

Cross your fingers that I find the room (no map online!) I'm supposed to get to without any trouble. In fact, cross your fingers I don't make an ass out of myself before 1:30. After 1:30, I can be my usual bumbling self again.

Sadly, I now have to shiver myself to the shower.

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!

Daybreak Post

So here I am, uncharacteristically awake and up by 6:43 am. But what makes this totally unsurprising is that I'm up now because of my ridiculous procrastinatory approach to writing a conference paper. Last night I put together my ten pages for Upcoming Conference that I Can't Afford to Attend, but then I really wanted to watch Batman Begins with Absurdist Lover who hadn't yet seen it. So I figured I would let it set overnight, and I'd revise and polish it this morning in time to send it to the panel chair who is going to read it for me. The fact that I woke up without any prompting shows that at the very least I internalize these deadlines. But this is exactly like finishing my research paper a few hours before class. Apparently, having been in school for the greater part of my adulthood, earning a PhD, and learning through the writing of a dissertation that the best work is not written at the last minute have not at all changed my ways. It's time like this I wonder if I'm cut out for the academy. Surely I should've figured out a more adult and organized approach to doing work, no? The best spin on this is that I'm ADD and just can't be organized. (I better go and have that tested at some point if I'm going to use it as the best excuse ever.) The fact that I've managed this far like this explains why I have never really learned any other way. Procrastinating until the last minute works! But it does mean that my conference papers are never really that great. I wish this conference paper weren't going to be sucky, since someone else is going to be reading it aloud, someone I care about and respect. But now I've cornered myself into only being able to think about getting it done in time to send it before Panel Chair gets on a plane. Surely creating a situation where I don't have to fret about the quality being good is exactly why I procrastinate, no? In any case, I can hear the ducks quacking and birds chirping. Happy morning everyone. I've got a conference paper to revise!

***Update 9:00am***

I'm done with the conference paper. I hope it doesn't totally suck. Maybe if it does, I can tell Panel Chair April Fools! Uh, no. Anyhoo, it's freezing cold in Camperland. Believe it or not, the weather bureau says it's going to snow above 6,000 feet. That's not us, but we may get some rain. I feel so free without this conference paper hanging over my head. No doubt I should get some articles in the works. No doubt I will lollygag instead.