It’s alive!

So, that sickness was strep throat. I had never had strep throat before, and now that I’ve spent a week praying for the Lord Jesus to take me home, I never want to have it again.

Got my chapters sent off to my chairs, now it’s just the resultant flurry of emails that three busy working moms exchange when they are trying to find a block of time that works with everyone’s schedules. I am the least busy of the three, since I’m not chairing any departments or sitting on any committees. I’m just TRYING TO GET MY DAMN DISSERTATION FINISHED, is all. Come on, people, let’s get on the stick. We can even Skype if we need to.

Now, I’m working on a zero draft of Chapter 3 and am having some serious fun with it. It’s an autophagous text that’s rescued by the writing woman! Wooohoooo! Gotta get it into some sort of non-embarrassing shape by day’s end tomorrow or perhaps Thursday morning/lunchtime so that I can send it to my dissertation group.

Meantime I’ve got to shower and go pick up the baby from her sitter’s; we’re taking her in to the doc’s this afternoon to rule out an ear infection and also because she was running a fever on Sunday but now feels cold to the touch even after snuggling up and nursing. Don’t even Google “baby low temperature.”

I am psyching myself up to buy this. It would go beautifully with my sexy new wrap dress from Banana Republic, but I just can’t pull the trigger on a $25 fascinator, as cool as it is. *looks across the room at the $300 robot sculpture Matt bought last month* Hmmm….

Sick

So, of course, the week wherein I need to get some serious work done (in addition to planning and preparing for Laurel’s first birthday party), I fall ill. My symptoms are flu-like, but I don’t think it’s the flu. Because if it were, it would be H1N1, and I am IMPERVIOUS TO PANDEMICS! So, I’m popping ibuprofen and Emergen-C (the latter of which will probably result in some digestive … distress … in the coming days) in hopes of keeping that roadkill feeling at bay until I can crawl out from under the weather.

Goals for today: Finish my introduction revision and send off to Chair 1. After that, I need to write up a small, short (500 words) freelance piece that’s due tomorrow. Sadly, that means I have to do some interview transcribing, which I hate more than life itself.

Goals for the rest of the week: get back to revising my Chapter 4, then next week I need to retrofit Chapter 1 to speak to my revised, more explicit framework, and then on the 30th, I send the introduction and Chapters 1 and 4 to both my chairs and my out of department committee member (she’s my big foodways person, so her role is bigger than that of just a reader).

Phew. Meanwhile, I’m home and trying to make peace with all of the spooky noises that the house makes during the day. *trembles*

On Courage

I will do some diss-related updating soon (extreme micro version: workshopped my introduction with my diss group today and the overarching theme was, “good bones, bulk things up, yay you!” Chair 1 wants to see a revised version of my intro before I send it and two chapter drafts to her and Chair 2 in advance of a meeting the three of us will have to discuss the State of My Career and Like Such As.)

But I want to share here something I’ve been thinking about for the past few days as my daughter’s first birthday approaches. It dawned on me last night that having children in and of itself takes courage. It’s a risk to bring children into the world and all of its beauty, joy, sadness, and danger. It’s a cliche by now, but parenting is not for the faint of heart, from the minute-to-minute work of keeping the newborn alive to pushing through irrational anger when your baby won’t let you sleep to choosing not to get into a power struggle with the preschooler over what he’s going to wear of a day.

But I also realized that it takes courage to decide to stop having children. It’s an acknowledgment that a certain part of your life is over and an acceptance that it’s time to move forward into an ever-uncertain future.

In recent months I have considered the possibility of having a third child, simply because I’ve enjoyed my daughter so much this past year and it breaks my heart every day to know that once these days are over, they’re gone. But I’m 37 and detest being pregnant and never, ever want to have another C-section, and the newborn days are so very, very difficult. I look forward to having a full night’s sleep and to not having to get up at 7 or earlier of a weekend morning. I look forward to not having to jump through logistical hoops to meet my girlfriends for drinks because so much of the children’s bedtime routine depends on me (especially the nursling’s). And so on. I anticipate and welcome the freedom of having older children, and also watching my two darlings become who they’re meant to be.

And yet. There’s a part of me that resists the imminent end of the baby days. Those sweet, snuggly times when every new discovery is a wonder, when you marvel at how brilliant and different your children are from you and each other. The thrill of new teeth and curls and the beginnings of words. I don’t want these days to end, but the only way to keep them going is to have more children, and that’s simply not an option for our family for so many reasons.

It’s responsible to stop at two. It’s the sane thing to do, for our family. It’s such a bittersweet time for me, the moment of turning my back on these rose-hued days for good, of closing the door. It takes courage to face this future, a future of no more children, a conscious decision to move into the next phase of our lives, even though that decision simultaneously brings my mortality into stark relief.

Maybe, just maybe, what I’m saying is that in some small way I identify with Michelle Duggar.

wednesday/thursday

Another late start yesterday, as Laurel slept in after a rough wakening at 5am. Continued polishing introduction, adding a quick and dirty historicization of recipes THROUGH THE AGES. But this means that I get to dip a little bit into food blogs, which is fun because I’ve kind of turned into a little Pioneer Woman fangirl of late. Realized in the shower yesterday morning that I owe work to diss group for Monday, so I’ll be doing a lot more quick and dirty work on the intro today in order to send it off to them tonight.

I have found that keeping a notebook and functioning pen with me at all times is extremely useful for those moments when inspiration strikes and I’m away from my laptop. So, if I get a bolt and I’m, say, walking from my office to the gym, I can just whip out my notebook and scribble away. Also, sitting at red lights. An opportunity for improvement in this arena, however, would be to scribble LEGIBLY so that when I come back to those notes, I know what the hell I’m reading.

Very little time to do work on the intro today. I’m in meetings from 2-5pm, have other crap to work on, including the paper I’m presenting in Salt Lake City tomorrow. Too. much. to. do. Have to get up at 4am tomorrow to make a 6:30am flight.

Back to work.

Progress report: Week One

So, this week is dedicated to shaping up the introduction. I had been kind of dragging my feet on it because it is BORING. I was slogging through the lit review when I realized that hey, I just need to gloss here. So, I glossed. Finished that yesterday.

Today was chapter descriptions. I had a hard time getting going because my husband has been sick and in the interest of helping him conserve energy for recovery, I took both kids in to daycare. When I started dozing off at red lights on the drive in to my office, I decided I wasn’t going to get much work done unless I went home for a brief nap. So, I went home and slept from 9:30-11, then ate some lunch, then fought the demons of extreme tired- and laziness and went to my favorite coffeeshop for an iced coffee and pumpkin muffin.

There, I started working on my first chapter description by writing in longhand, which always gets the writing ball rolling for me, although I’m not sure why. I looked up a short story by my chapter one author which helped grease the mental skids as well.

While I was working, I noticed that a patron at the counter looked like someone from one of my favorite TV shows, the second season of which I was just watching on DVD last night. And it was him! Such a cutie, sitting there drinking coffee and reading poetry, totally nonchalantly and non-attention-seeking, I’m sure.

Back to the diss, I am seeing more and more connections between women’s writing and recipes the deeper and deeper I go. At this point in the history of literary criticism, however, is there really anything new to be said about women’s writing? I fear it is a cliched line of inquiry in 2009.

So, in sum, today I only wrote about 300 words on the introduction, but they’re 300 good words. Fortunately, I already had other chapter descriptions from a fellowship application, so I’m looking at editing and polishing tomorrow.

Also, I think maybe I’m not depressed after all. I realized after a talk with a girlfriend over the weekend that I’ve just been in survival mode since Laurel’s birth. Add to that recovering from surgery, having another surgery, moving house, etc etc, it’s no wonder I’ve let things slide. I don’t really have anything to be depressed about, but I would be lying if I said that I haven’t been overwhelmed by life in the past year. Which makes it hard to focus on writing a dissertation.

And I thought that maybe I didn’t hate academia so much as I hate grad school, but then I overheard a conversation outside of the library that maybe reminded me that I wouldn’t be heartbroken to leave this environment: “I’m like, ‘I really want to graduate … puhleeeeeze give me a C!’” If I were this girl’s professor, my rejoinder would be something along the lines of, “I don’t give grades. You earn your grade.”

amazing discoveries

Was talking to LG this morning and realized that hey, I’m depressed! I didn’t want to admit it, but all signs point to it. Nothing to get too fussed about — I’ve dug myself out of this hole before. But it was kind of eye-opening to look around at my filthy car, my dirty house, my backlog of craft projects I’ve lost interest in, my unpaid bills and other things I’ve let slide and realize, duh, textbook depression. Time to get lots of exercise, eat good foods, and get my house (literal and figurative) in order.

Today will not see much diss work — maybe a bit more work on lit review, but I’m also attending to things like balancing my checkbook, paying bills, washing dishes, getting caught up on domestic tasks like that. I think it will do wonders for my mood.

The plan

I’ve got to get done with my dissertation. An incident — minor on the grand scale of things, and having to do with a small breach of etiquette on my part — has shifted my ambivalence about a career in academia into full-blown antipathy.

I hate everything about academia. I hate the politics. I hate having to do research. The writing is boring. I hate the students. I hate grading. The near-decade I’ve spent in academia has sapped the joy out of reading, the one pleasure I’ve had since childhood.

So, I’ve got to get done. The plan is to have three chapters and my introduction drafted by the end of this semester (I’m on fellowship through mid-January). Have the dissertation drafted by May and defend by September, although I’d gladly defend over the summer so as not to spend another year in this hellhole.

And … then what? I don’t know. Take some time off. Be a stay at home mom. Figure out who I want to be in the long run. Figure out what makes me happy again. I’m not happy, at least not with my current chosen career. I derive no joy from it. None. At the end of this sojourn in the academy, I’ll have the same skills I started with, only you’ll be giving your order to a waitress with a PhD.

I intend to use this space as a journal to help me stay on track for the duration of the dissertation. At the end of every writing day I’ll catalog what I did and how I feel about it. I’ve signed off of Facebook and Twitter and will avoid my Google reader except as a palate cleanser during lunch. If I don’t get done with my dissertation, I fear I’ll be spinning my wheels and increasingly miserable forever.

On minding your own business

or, a lifeguard is not a babysitter.

This morning I went to Northwest Pool to do some laps. It was lovely. While there, I witnessed a couple with a newborn attempting to live a normal, newborn-free life by plopping their baby in his carseat at the side of the pool while they did laps right next to him.

Hm, curious, I thought. I would not have made that choice. Perhaps they could have taken turns doing laps while the other parent hung out with baby. Or maybe hired a babysitter to sit with Junior for 30-45 minutes while both parents did laps. But, you know, whatever. The baby was being watched … sort of.

Well, the pool manager WIGGED OUT. He yanked Mom out of the pool and proceeded to give her a very loud, very public dressing down for leaving her baby unattended. “What if he vomits?! He can’t turn over! You can’t just leave him unattended! I don’t care if you’re right here! You’re distracted!” Meanwhile, an otherwise unoccupied lifeguard had taken it upon himself to sit with the baby while his parents were otherwise occupied.

Yes, a spectacularly poor choice, even though the baby wasn’t in any imminent danger (apart from the possibility of being stung by bees — there are a lot of them at that pool). What I find really interesting is that despite the fact that both parents were present and equally culpable, the pool manager chose to tear Mom a new asshole. In public. When Dad could be arsed to finish his lap, he got out of the pool and had what appeared to be a long, civil discussion with the pool manager.

I know it’s tempting to want to take shortcuts, especially as new parents who want to regain some semblance of normalcy. It’s a hard lesson to learn when the Public comes crashing down with its censure, loudly and in such overtly gendered terms.

Is there an echo in here?

Hello, blog! How are you? Did you think I’d forgotten about you? Well, I didn’t. Every day I think, man, I really need to update my blog. But then I get sucked into Facebook or one of my million squillion trillion projects and the blog falls off my radar again.

So, what’s going on with you? Not much here. We’re under contract with our house (finally!), after having it back on the market for a hair under 4 weeks. We’re now sweating through the 10-day option period and hope that the inspection (which is today) will not reveal anything catastrophic or expensive. We’ve got an offer in on another larger and more beautiful house about a half-mile from here, and I suppose if our deal here falls through, our deal over there will fall through as well. I’m not sure how these things work.

I have been keeping myself busy thus far this summer with working on my current chapter in fits and starts, babysitting for a friend while she finishes her master’s degree, and working on a variety of sewing, knitting, and embroidery projects. I plan/hope to participate in Infinite Summer, starting this Sunday, but we’ll see how that goes.

Matt is stressed about the sale of the house, but is less stressed with work now that the Lege has adjourned. I plan to take him to dinner at Fogo de Chao sometime soon as a Father’s Day gift, as well as just a “hey, you like meat and you need to relax” type of outing.

Harrison is nearly 4, and has been a bit of a toot lately. But I think that’s in the preschooler’s charter.

Laurel is 7 months and is just a doll. She is beautiful and chubby and LOVES other babies. It’s really funny and cute to see her try to get other babies’ attention by grunting, smiling, and chortling in their direction.

The rest of the summer holds more sewing (I’d really like to open an Etsy shop one of these days), lots of time at the pool (including swim lessons for Laurel, which start this afternoon), and, we hope, moving into the new house and visiting Matt’s rellies in Rhode Island.

I’ll have an update on the fatblog soon.

SEW jealous

more later, but if I had madder sewing skillz, I would totally make this dress for myself: sundress. As it is, I will just have to settle for hoping to win it.