Yesterday:
Mommy goes to the eye doctor--Baby is smiley and angelic in the waiting room while Daddy watches her--score Mommy.
Baby is quiet and happy on every drive around town--score Mommy.
Baby is charming and content through bank stop and grocery shopping trip and EVEN naps while Mommy unloads and EVEN wakes up smiling and amuses herself for awhile...
And the clear winner of the day is MOMMY!
Today:
Baby resists taking her morning nap for HOURS, sucking the day away--score Baby.
She squalls ear-splittingly every time she gets strapped in the carseat--score Baby.
At pizza lunch with Daddy, she deliberately reaches for and topples a full soda all over herself, the table, the pizza, and everything. When Mommy changes her outfit, Baby barfs all over it. When Mommy goes to rinse it, Baby (clad only in diaper) topples ANOTHER soda--Score Baby, twice over.
I guess it's clear who won today.
There's always tomorrow, I guess.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Didn't I See Your Boobs at RSA 2008?
Aaahhhhhhhhh.
That, if you need a translation, was a long sigh of relief. We are back in Reno, both Squidge and I having survived my hair-brained plot to bear her along with me to my conference in Seattle. All told, it went considerably better than I could have expected. The flights both up and back went smoothly, with a bit of squiggly fussy boredom the worst reaction from Squidge. My aunt and uncle, who live in Auburn and who we stayed with, were kind enough to purchase a stroller and a car seat (there is another baby on the way in the family, so they were thinking they could pass it on after we used it) and that greatly reduced the amount of crap we had to lug along. My uncle had the carseat installed when we arrived, which was great, although we did end up spending an extra hour in the airport parking lot trying to adjust the stupid straps! Oh the miracles of modern engineering!
The conference was a big one, densely populated with, well, rhetoric rock stars. I always joke with one of my colleagues in the department that you know you're a rhet/comp geek when you get weak knees over the big names in our field, and at this conference, those were the people peeing next to you in the breaks between sessions. Those were also the people strolling by as I hurriedly breastfed my kid in the breaks between sessions. I am convinced when I go on the job market a few years from now, someone is going to remember me as the girl who had her boobs on display in the Seattle Westin!
The only reason the whole thing was doable was the generosity of my mom and her sister, my Aunt Mickey, who spent Friday and Saturday hanging out in downtown Seattle and popping back and forth to the Westin every couple of hours so I could fuel the little jet. Friday I watched some really great presentations, and Saturday I presented my paper, which (or so I think) went pretty well. Sunday I took the day off from the conference so we could see my cousin graduate from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma and spend some time with my mom's brother and his family--a lovely coincidence with regards to time and location. Monday it was back at the conference without the little bug, who went with my mom to visit one of her old high school friends. The weekend passed ridiculously fast, and now I am back in Reno with a Squidge who is just slightly more mommy-clingy...she missed her daddy but got a leetle TOO used to have me to herself. I need to get her converted back or I will never get a break.
Now onto the next big thing...I really need to start planning for the summer school class I'm teaching which begins June 9th, but thankfully Squidge gave me a good excuse to be a sack of potatoes today. She had a doctor's appointment this morning and another round of evil vaccinations, so we spent the day at home napping, snuggling, and nursing, doped up on Tylenol, having a Star Wars marathon (dorky I know. But somehow even though we own them I never had watched the new #2 and #3, so I remedied that.) As to the list of errands I need to accomplish, I quote from the original Scarlett..."I'll think about that tomorrow."
That, if you need a translation, was a long sigh of relief. We are back in Reno, both Squidge and I having survived my hair-brained plot to bear her along with me to my conference in Seattle. All told, it went considerably better than I could have expected. The flights both up and back went smoothly, with a bit of squiggly fussy boredom the worst reaction from Squidge. My aunt and uncle, who live in Auburn and who we stayed with, were kind enough to purchase a stroller and a car seat (there is another baby on the way in the family, so they were thinking they could pass it on after we used it) and that greatly reduced the amount of crap we had to lug along. My uncle had the carseat installed when we arrived, which was great, although we did end up spending an extra hour in the airport parking lot trying to adjust the stupid straps! Oh the miracles of modern engineering!
The conference was a big one, densely populated with, well, rhetoric rock stars. I always joke with one of my colleagues in the department that you know you're a rhet/comp geek when you get weak knees over the big names in our field, and at this conference, those were the people peeing next to you in the breaks between sessions. Those were also the people strolling by as I hurriedly breastfed my kid in the breaks between sessions. I am convinced when I go on the job market a few years from now, someone is going to remember me as the girl who had her boobs on display in the Seattle Westin!
The only reason the whole thing was doable was the generosity of my mom and her sister, my Aunt Mickey, who spent Friday and Saturday hanging out in downtown Seattle and popping back and forth to the Westin every couple of hours so I could fuel the little jet. Friday I watched some really great presentations, and Saturday I presented my paper, which (or so I think) went pretty well. Sunday I took the day off from the conference so we could see my cousin graduate from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma and spend some time with my mom's brother and his family--a lovely coincidence with regards to time and location. Monday it was back at the conference without the little bug, who went with my mom to visit one of her old high school friends. The weekend passed ridiculously fast, and now I am back in Reno with a Squidge who is just slightly more mommy-clingy...she missed her daddy but got a leetle TOO used to have me to herself. I need to get her converted back or I will never get a break.
Now onto the next big thing...I really need to start planning for the summer school class I'm teaching which begins June 9th, but thankfully Squidge gave me a good excuse to be a sack of potatoes today. She had a doctor's appointment this morning and another round of evil vaccinations, so we spent the day at home napping, snuggling, and nursing, doped up on Tylenol, having a Star Wars marathon (dorky I know. But somehow even though we own them I never had watched the new #2 and #3, so I remedied that.) As to the list of errands I need to accomplish, I quote from the original Scarlett..."I'll think about that tomorrow."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Once you go Misses…send Juniors Good-Bye Kisses
Note to future mothers: everything they tell you about breastfeeding is pretty much a big fat fib. It’s NOT easier than bottle feeding, it’s NOT easy to always be busting out your boobs in public places, the pain does NOT disappear within a day or so, and one most certainly does NOT shed mad pounds as if the kid were some kind of live mini liposuction machine, slurping the cellulite right out of your mammary glands. Or maybe these things do happen, but only to those god-awful perfect people who have no cavities or traffic tickets and whose infants sleep through the night at, like, six days old. We all know I'm not one of them because four months into the infant game, I’m as baby-weighty as ever. I dropped about 20 pounds my first week home from the hospital but not much since. I still have about 15 more to get to my pre-baby weight (and about 30 to get to my ideal weight, which, let’s face it, is not going to happen in this lifetime or the next.)
I had big ideas that my fat was just going to peel away after Scarlett was born, week by week revealing my dream body in plenty of time for our Hawaii trip…but um, now that it’s only seven weeks from now, I’d better give up on that idea. I also was determined not to buy new clothes until I was a sight more svelte—I got gift certificates for Christmas, and have been hoarding them in anticipation of a skinny shopping spree. However, after a recent I-have-nothing-to-WEAR-I-mean-NOTHING-no-Honey-I-cannot-wear-THAT-and-YES-I-DO-look-fat-oh-GOD-can-you-PLEASE-GET-OUT-OF-HERE-and-STOP-LOOKING-AT-ME!!! breakdown (see previous post), I had to revise my hard line on the no-shopping thing. I decided that indulging in some fat clothes would be less destructive to my overall mental state than trying to prepare to attend RSA in my tatty, misshapen maternity clothes.
Luckily Kohl’s was having a sale today. Call it tacky and suburban-y, but I have recently found Kohl’s a mighty good place to shop. It’s got great nice-casual stuff and I find the sizing doesn’t make me want to write complaint letters to the designers (“How can you possibly call THIS a size 11? When you say that, do you mean it’s for an 11-year old who eats, what, 11 calories a day??”) Or at least it didn’t pre-baby. But there will be no more odd sizes for me, folks, now or (I fear) ever. I stubbornly made a half-hearted pass at the junior’s section today, but the dressing room revealed what my mind refused to acknowledge; I’m a Misses now, undoubtedly. I belong now to the world of what my friend EmilyPie refers to as Mature Woman shorts which come, uncomfortably, to my waist, not my belly button.
It’s the end of an era, long in coming, but the end none the same. The Junior in me is really gone. She has ascended to some Purgatory of Past Crystals to join my earlier permutations, the Crystals who waitresses and partied and roadtripped, who had roommates and heartbreaks and hangovers, who met guys in bars, who loved her a good hip-hop dance club and grinding on a solid rum-and-diet buzz in the haze of a smoke machine, who could move cities on a whim, change her entire life in a moment because there was never anything real to hold her down.
Correspondingly, I find my tastes evolving; suddenly, the Mature Woman clothes—shirts that don’t need to be tugged down, pants that aren’t a squidge too tight—rather appeal. I’m embarrassingly thrilled with the monstrous stack of Mature Woman clothes I came home with (sale + $100 gift certificate + opening Kohl’s card means I only spend $108 on FOURTEEN items!)
What is happening here? Will this sea change continue until all that makes me young has slipped away, and I am really this—a responsibility-laden mother, a wife, a boring graduate student, almost 30 (well, 29 in 11 more days), with ever-increasing grey hairs, the beginnings of lines around her eyes, and thyroid disease?
I am thinking of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which I have always loved:
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
But, perhaps a slightly different version:
I grow old...I grow old...
My belly fat is grossly rolled.
Shall I pluck my grey hairs? Must I count calories?
I shall wear Mature Woman clothes which cover my boobies.
I have heard the hot guys catcall "Baby, do me, please..."
I know they do not catcall at me.
I have seen them eyeing girls who stay eighteen
While I go unnoticed, no longer passionate and lean
Now matronly, no more a sexy thing.
We have lingered too long in the memory
Of twenty-one-hood, days partying on the town...
Till maturity catches us, and we settle down.
I had big ideas that my fat was just going to peel away after Scarlett was born, week by week revealing my dream body in plenty of time for our Hawaii trip…but um, now that it’s only seven weeks from now, I’d better give up on that idea. I also was determined not to buy new clothes until I was a sight more svelte—I got gift certificates for Christmas, and have been hoarding them in anticipation of a skinny shopping spree. However, after a recent I-have-nothing-to-WEAR-I-mean-NOTHING-no-Honey-I-cannot-wear-THAT-and-YES-I-DO-look-fat-oh-GOD-can-you-PLEASE-GET-OUT-OF-HERE-and-STOP-LOOKING-AT-ME!!! breakdown (see previous post), I had to revise my hard line on the no-shopping thing. I decided that indulging in some fat clothes would be less destructive to my overall mental state than trying to prepare to attend RSA in my tatty, misshapen maternity clothes.
Luckily Kohl’s was having a sale today. Call it tacky and suburban-y, but I have recently found Kohl’s a mighty good place to shop. It’s got great nice-casual stuff and I find the sizing doesn’t make me want to write complaint letters to the designers (“How can you possibly call THIS a size 11? When you say that, do you mean it’s for an 11-year old who eats, what, 11 calories a day??”) Or at least it didn’t pre-baby. But there will be no more odd sizes for me, folks, now or (I fear) ever. I stubbornly made a half-hearted pass at the junior’s section today, but the dressing room revealed what my mind refused to acknowledge; I’m a Misses now, undoubtedly. I belong now to the world of what my friend EmilyPie refers to as Mature Woman shorts which come, uncomfortably, to my waist, not my belly button.
It’s the end of an era, long in coming, but the end none the same. The Junior in me is really gone. She has ascended to some Purgatory of Past Crystals to join my earlier permutations, the Crystals who waitresses and partied and roadtripped, who had roommates and heartbreaks and hangovers, who met guys in bars, who loved her a good hip-hop dance club and grinding on a solid rum-and-diet buzz in the haze of a smoke machine, who could move cities on a whim, change her entire life in a moment because there was never anything real to hold her down.
Correspondingly, I find my tastes evolving; suddenly, the Mature Woman clothes—shirts that don’t need to be tugged down, pants that aren’t a squidge too tight—rather appeal. I’m embarrassingly thrilled with the monstrous stack of Mature Woman clothes I came home with (sale + $100 gift certificate + opening Kohl’s card means I only spend $108 on FOURTEEN items!)
What is happening here? Will this sea change continue until all that makes me young has slipped away, and I am really this—a responsibility-laden mother, a wife, a boring graduate student, almost 30 (well, 29 in 11 more days), with ever-increasing grey hairs, the beginnings of lines around her eyes, and thyroid disease?
I am thinking of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which I have always loved:
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
But, perhaps a slightly different version:
I grow old...I grow old...
My belly fat is grossly rolled.
Shall I pluck my grey hairs? Must I count calories?
I shall wear Mature Woman clothes which cover my boobies.
I have heard the hot guys catcall "Baby, do me, please..."
I know they do not catcall at me.
I have seen them eyeing girls who stay eighteen
While I go unnoticed, no longer passionate and lean
Now matronly, no more a sexy thing.
We have lingered too long in the memory
Of twenty-one-hood, days partying on the town...
Till maturity catches us, and we settle down.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Finding My Neurotic Inner Parent, At Last
And...she's BACK IN THE GAME! With my last paper in, I can move on to dwelling on new things now...
Last night Mario and I went with my Mom and Dad and my sister and her boyfriend Scott (aka The Bike Couple)on the invitation of my grandparents to the 9th Annual Best of Tahoe Chefs. This is the second time we've attended this event, a hospital benefit dinner where the best chefs from Tahoe/Truckee prepare a host of delicious/presumably delicious** foods, which are paired with an array of intoxicating/very intoxicating wines.
Last year when we went, I was carefree. I was about to graduate from my master's, and was pregnant but didn't know it yet, so could enjoy myself fully. Doubtlessly Scarlett can attribute losing at least two IQ points to the quantities of wine I consumed that night (although, ESP-ishly, I didn't drink nearly as much as I could have...)
This year, I was not pregnant (or GOD HELP ME if I am!) but instead had a new concern...leaving my baby, for the first time longer than an hour, with a non-family babysitter. Who better for the job than my dear friend EmilyPie and her long-suffering hubby Brandon? They kindly volunteered for duty, so (after a total panic attack when I realized, WAY too late in the game, that NONE of my semi-nice clothes fit my grotesque post-baby mom body, which resulted in an emotional breakdown and then a VERY late departure) we dropped off the baby and headed for Tahoe.
Now, prior to last night, I have prided myself on being a PRET-ty laid back mom. I had to start leaving Scarlett at one week of age for school, and was never neurotic about it. I travel (comparatively) light, let anyone who wants to hold her, and NEVER think about whether or not their hands are clean. So I really didn't think this would be a big deal.
But suddenly, within minutes of dropping her off, I realized why some of my friends with kids never go out. It's so much easier to stay home and adjust to becoming socially backward than deal with all the what-ifs...What-if she wakes up and thinks we've abandoned her? What-if I forgot to convey something important about her body language or how to tell if she's hungry or tired? What-if she's a terror and Emily and Brandon NEVER speak to us again? What-if I didn't leave enough milk? What-if she barfs chunks down Emily's cleavage?
Needless to say, my worries were for naught. Well, OF COURSE Emily got her cleavage barfed on, but other than that (unless E&B were telling lies to make me feel better) she was a moderately good, only mildly fussy baby, in great hands with our bestest friends. But of course, Scarlett was never at risk for not making it through the night...it was really me that was at risk of having a coronary from new-found mommy paranoia.
But I didn't. With the help of a few glasses of wine, I lived with no lasting damage other than being mildly humbled by the realization that I am just as much of a neurotic mess as every other new mom out there. Sigh... I might as well embrace it and face it now, because we've got our first plane ride (my Seattle conference) in less than THREE days, and my fears are mounting as to how the whole fiasco is going to go.
**I say presumably regarding the food, because the vast portion of the entrees and appetizers are things I don't eat, aka raw meat and meat in general. Okay, I know you are DYING to hear my freakish rules about the consumption of meat, so here they are:
One, I don't eat anything too big, too cute, or too ugly. That rules out pigs, cows, lambs, rabbits, ducks, snakes, eels, rats...You get the point. This basically leaves...chicken and fish.
Two: Bones, skin or any other feature that resembles something living are out. This leaves me with chicken and breast meat and fish filets.
Three: Meat is meant to be cooked. I really don't understand how one can hear about all the yucky stuff carried in uncooked meat (okay, all I can think of at the moment is trichinosis, but whatever) and then go out and consume vast quantities of raw fish just because someone decided to call it "sushi." Carpaccio falls in this category too, and yes, I know it makes all the fancy pants chefs rend their hair and swoon, but I like my ahi DONE thank you. "Pan-seared" is just a fancy way to say "undercooked" as far as I am concerned!
All of this said I pride myself on being a pretty good cook. I think I need to put out my own fancy chef cookbook for those who don't subscribe to the "if it's not raw, it's not gourmet" camp. It would be called "Living by Crystal's Freaky Meat Rules and Eating Well Anyway." So there.
Last night Mario and I went with my Mom and Dad and my sister and her boyfriend Scott (aka The Bike Couple)on the invitation of my grandparents to the 9th Annual Best of Tahoe Chefs. This is the second time we've attended this event, a hospital benefit dinner where the best chefs from Tahoe/Truckee prepare a host of delicious/presumably delicious** foods, which are paired with an array of intoxicating/very intoxicating wines.
Last year when we went, I was carefree. I was about to graduate from my master's, and was pregnant but didn't know it yet, so could enjoy myself fully. Doubtlessly Scarlett can attribute losing at least two IQ points to the quantities of wine I consumed that night (although, ESP-ishly, I didn't drink nearly as much as I could have...)
This year, I was not pregnant (or GOD HELP ME if I am!) but instead had a new concern...leaving my baby, for the first time longer than an hour, with a non-family babysitter. Who better for the job than my dear friend EmilyPie and her long-suffering hubby Brandon? They kindly volunteered for duty, so (after a total panic attack when I realized, WAY too late in the game, that NONE of my semi-nice clothes fit my grotesque post-baby mom body, which resulted in an emotional breakdown and then a VERY late departure) we dropped off the baby and headed for Tahoe.
Now, prior to last night, I have prided myself on being a PRET-ty laid back mom. I had to start leaving Scarlett at one week of age for school, and was never neurotic about it. I travel (comparatively) light, let anyone who wants to hold her, and NEVER think about whether or not their hands are clean. So I really didn't think this would be a big deal.
But suddenly, within minutes of dropping her off, I realized why some of my friends with kids never go out. It's so much easier to stay home and adjust to becoming socially backward than deal with all the what-ifs...What-if she wakes up and thinks we've abandoned her? What-if I forgot to convey something important about her body language or how to tell if she's hungry or tired? What-if she's a terror and Emily and Brandon NEVER speak to us again? What-if I didn't leave enough milk? What-if she barfs chunks down Emily's cleavage?
Needless to say, my worries were for naught. Well, OF COURSE Emily got her cleavage barfed on, but other than that (unless E&B were telling lies to make me feel better) she was a moderately good, only mildly fussy baby, in great hands with our bestest friends. But of course, Scarlett was never at risk for not making it through the night...it was really me that was at risk of having a coronary from new-found mommy paranoia.
But I didn't. With the help of a few glasses of wine, I lived with no lasting damage other than being mildly humbled by the realization that I am just as much of a neurotic mess as every other new mom out there. Sigh... I might as well embrace it and face it now, because we've got our first plane ride (my Seattle conference) in less than THREE days, and my fears are mounting as to how the whole fiasco is going to go.
**I say presumably regarding the food, because the vast portion of the entrees and appetizers are things I don't eat, aka raw meat and meat in general. Okay, I know you are DYING to hear my freakish rules about the consumption of meat, so here they are:
One, I don't eat anything too big, too cute, or too ugly. That rules out pigs, cows, lambs, rabbits, ducks, snakes, eels, rats...You get the point. This basically leaves...chicken and fish.
Two: Bones, skin or any other feature that resembles something living are out. This leaves me with chicken and breast meat and fish filets.
Three: Meat is meant to be cooked. I really don't understand how one can hear about all the yucky stuff carried in uncooked meat (okay, all I can think of at the moment is trichinosis, but whatever) and then go out and consume vast quantities of raw fish just because someone decided to call it "sushi." Carpaccio falls in this category too, and yes, I know it makes all the fancy pants chefs rend their hair and swoon, but I like my ahi DONE thank you. "Pan-seared" is just a fancy way to say "undercooked" as far as I am concerned!
All of this said I pride myself on being a pretty good cook. I think I need to put out my own fancy chef cookbook for those who don't subscribe to the "if it's not raw, it's not gourmet" camp. It would be called "Living by Crystal's Freaky Meat Rules and Eating Well Anyway." So there.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Nothing's Right With the World...
I feel this awful, gaping, sick hole in my stomach and my soul when I think about the earthquake in China, which has devastated the city where we lived for a year and a half. Not just lived, but loved, loved our life and loved so many of the wonderful, funny, unique, earnest students that enriched it while we were there. Mario sent out a bunch of emails last night to former students, and we got a response from one, Navy (their English names were all so fun), saying that she was safe in another province, but that her family was heavily affected. She wrote this (sic) about the city where we lived and the university campus where we taught:
"The situaton of Mianyang is very bad, especiall Beichuan county of Mianyang. More than 7,000 people died from the earthquake. It is hard to call the people in Mianyang. The headquarter of our company in Mianyang also suffers the damage cuased by the disaster. The server of our headquater is distroyed. And the internet, electricity, water supply were destroyed in Mianyang. So it is hard to contact the people in Mianyang. As the information we got from some friends in Mianyang this morning, SWUST is safer, but also damaged. I just got a photos of SWUST office building. You can have a look. A lot of citizen go to SWUST to avoid suffering, that can be cuased by tall buildings."
So it sounds like the campus isn't too bad off, but so many of our students and their families from the area around Mianyang were heavily affected, and I feel awful to think of how many people were killed, particularly so many of the students in collapsed schools...each the only child, the brightest future hope, of their families.
The worst part is, I want to do something so bad, hop on a plane and go there (although of course that is not possible as the Chinese government is not allowing it) or at least send money to the school, but there is no way to contact anyone right now.
ugh. It is very hard to focus on my last paper with this unbearable tragedy weighing so heavily on my mind and heart.
"The situaton of Mianyang is very bad, especiall Beichuan county of Mianyang. More than 7,000 people died from the earthquake. It is hard to call the people in Mianyang. The headquarter of our company in Mianyang also suffers the damage cuased by the disaster. The server of our headquater is distroyed. And the internet, electricity, water supply were destroyed in Mianyang. So it is hard to contact the people in Mianyang. As the information we got from some friends in Mianyang this morning, SWUST is safer, but also damaged. I just got a photos of SWUST office building. You can have a look. A lot of citizen go to SWUST to avoid suffering, that can be cuased by tall buildings."
So it sounds like the campus isn't too bad off, but so many of our students and their families from the area around Mianyang were heavily affected, and I feel awful to think of how many people were killed, particularly so many of the students in collapsed schools...each the only child, the brightest future hope, of their families.
The worst part is, I want to do something so bad, hop on a plane and go there (although of course that is not possible as the Chinese government is not allowing it) or at least send money to the school, but there is no way to contact anyone right now.
ugh. It is very hard to focus on my last paper with this unbearable tragedy weighing so heavily on my mind and heart.
Monday, May 12, 2008
A Caveat to My Last Post
I have to post a caveat to my last post, because I realize in my frustration with not knowing the right things to do with my little Squidge, I might have accidentally hurt some feelings. I need to make something clear I should have made clear before: I know that any advice given from my family is given from motivations of love, support, and desire to help, NOT from any motivation to make me feel bad. My sarcasm in my last post was really just a reflection of my own frustrated feelings, my own suspicion that there ARE things I could be doing to get Squidge to be okay with car rides, with being put down, with taking naps on her own, etc...all the things I am struggling with. Being as tired as I am, and as ready to be done with this very difficult semester as I am (TWO papers down, ONE to go!) I know full well that I am probably being far too sensitive. My wonderful family loves me AND my baby, and all the moms are capable and wonderful moms, they've likely got some things to say that I could stand to know. So, to all family members, please discount my new-mommy foibles. (And really, short of shock collars, I would LOVE any advice about how to get the kid to like car rides!)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
The Bone-Crushing Weight of a Semester's End
I HATE this point in the semester.
I am totally screwed on one of the 25-page papers I have to write, partly screwed on a second, and actually feeling moderately good about the third, which means my teacher will probably hate it of course. I just got my first-ever self-esteem ruining rejection to a conference that is not CCCC (the big conference in my field, very hard to get into--I get rejected regularly for that). And of course my abstract is due for next year's CCCC in, oh, six days, and I have vowed that if I don't get in this year I'm going to leave rhet comp to become a bus driver. But how am I supposed to research for it when I'm going to fail my systemic functional grammar class unless I can figure out what the rhetoric of natural disasters is YESTERDAY?
I am miserable. I have stuff, stuff, stuff do to up the wazoo. But the fact that I am feeling ANY stress of course means I'm luring around on the internet while I should be writing, reading, frantically trying to catch up on the research I should have been doing for weeks but was too busy trying to get. through. my. daily. baby-screaming. book-reading. earth-quaking. overloaded busy-as-hell insane pit of a life.
DAMMIT.
I just want to be done. Our yard looks like crap, our house is messy, I'm stressy, and pissy...it's just all bad. And of course only one of us can do something at any given point since we have had the good fortune to give birth to She Who Hates Naps and Will Holler if You Divert Even 1% of Your Attention for one Single Second, aka Scarlett, so Mario can't exactly work on any above crappy, messy, stressy or pissy problems without risking his eardrums (baby screams, and then my screams when the baby screams). In short, I'm sitting in a very dirty stewpot and I am not a happy chicken.
Okay, enough with the bad metaphors. Back to work. This is meant to be an apology for not being here and being boring and complainy when I am here. This will last...hmmm...eleven more days. Eleven days and nights of sheer and unrelenting torture until my last paper is due.
Unless I implode sooner.
I am totally screwed on one of the 25-page papers I have to write, partly screwed on a second, and actually feeling moderately good about the third, which means my teacher will probably hate it of course. I just got my first-ever self-esteem ruining rejection to a conference that is not CCCC (the big conference in my field, very hard to get into--I get rejected regularly for that). And of course my abstract is due for next year's CCCC in, oh, six days, and I have vowed that if I don't get in this year I'm going to leave rhet comp to become a bus driver. But how am I supposed to research for it when I'm going to fail my systemic functional grammar class unless I can figure out what the rhetoric of natural disasters is YESTERDAY?
I am miserable. I have stuff, stuff, stuff do to up the wazoo. But the fact that I am feeling ANY stress of course means I'm luring around on the internet while I should be writing, reading, frantically trying to catch up on the research I should have been doing for weeks but was too busy trying to get. through. my. daily. baby-screaming. book-reading. earth-quaking. overloaded busy-as-hell insane pit of a life.
DAMMIT.
I just want to be done. Our yard looks like crap, our house is messy, I'm stressy, and pissy...it's just all bad. And of course only one of us can do something at any given point since we have had the good fortune to give birth to She Who Hates Naps and Will Holler if You Divert Even 1% of Your Attention for one Single Second, aka Scarlett, so Mario can't exactly work on any above crappy, messy, stressy or pissy problems without risking his eardrums (baby screams, and then my screams when the baby screams). In short, I'm sitting in a very dirty stewpot and I am not a happy chicken.
Okay, enough with the bad metaphors. Back to work. This is meant to be an apology for not being here and being boring and complainy when I am here. This will last...hmmm...eleven more days. Eleven days and nights of sheer and unrelenting torture until my last paper is due.
Unless I implode sooner.
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