Stoning in the Public Square

EmilyPie recently blogged (albeit very esoterically) about a tragedy that happened in our little, suddenly crime-ridden town of Reno...the disappearance and death of a beautiful girl named Brianna Denison, the victim of an evil serial rapist who, as far as I'm concerned, should be caught and tortured. Like most of us around here, I haven't been able to forget about Brianna for a minute since this has happened. Campus just doesn't feel like as safe a place (I weigh far too much to fit the bad guy's victim profile but I see so many young, slight, long-haired girls walking around campus, and I'm sad for them and for all of us who have to watch our every step) and I think so much about her family and especially her mother...now that I have a daughter myself, I can't imagine losing my child in such a horrible way. I am pretty agnostic but when something like this happens I hope there is a heaven, and if there is, I hope that Brianna is there. And I also hope that karma exists, and that what goes around comes around, and that someone who could do something so depraved will get punished, somehow, somewhere.

Anyway, Reno is really a small town in so many ways. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Not for the first time, today I heard some "insider info" about a potential suspect, and it has dominated my day. It is kind of crazy how information gets around, and considering how this kind of thing brings out a penchant for vigilante justice, one feels kind of sorry for anyone who fits the profile of the killer but ISN'T him--probably a fair number of men in the area. Because I'm sure lots of people in this town, whether they knew and loved her or just felt some kind of connection to Brianna after she disappeared, are envisioning very bad things for this criminal.

I am just hoping, for the sake of EVERYONE, that the bad guy is caught soon.

The Bummer of Being a "Yes Man"

When we lived in China and taught at XiKeDa (Southwest University of Science and Technology), I was always unbelievably busy, and I was always complaining about it. We were supposed to be living the glamourous expat life but it was far from that; I could barely squeeze in time for a grocery trip, and while we managed to get some great traveling in on the long semester breaks, the weekend trips to local places that we envisioned never materialized. In fact, in a year and a half of living in Mianyang, we took one long weekend trip to Xi'an and...well...that was pretty much it. Countless times I stayed up into the wee hours reading papers, feeling that hopeless stress of knowing that there is NO WAT everything is going to get done in time. Not for the first time in my life, I felt beleaguered, bereft of personal time; my schedule, between teaching classes and prep work and grading homework and reading papers and showing up at additional events that were often requested of me. The job, and the duties associated with it, claimed my life.





As I said, I loved to complain about the state of affairs. And then one day, the husband of my friend EmilyPie pointed something out to me: I had a fairly awful habit of saying a certain word. And our department knew it. They gave me extra classes, requested me to pick up side jobs tutoring sons of friends of friends, and invited me to be the token foreign face at various events I really didn't have time for for one reason: because I said "YES." All. The. Time. I had the choice, B pointed out, to exorcise my right to negation. But I never did.





He also pointed out that this is really an inevitable part of my personality, and that as much as I may complain about being busy, the truth is that a) I do it to myself and b) on some level, I secretly like it being inconceivably busy.





Which officially makes me a masochist, by the way.





And guess what, I'm doing it again. When will I ever learn? Not a year ago I was taking three graduate seminars (the maximum number of credits, and considered a VERY full load in my department), teaching two sections of freshman English, trying to prepare my comps portfolio and defense in order to graduate my master's, working at the campus Writing Center, and secretly (because outside work is a big no-no, despite the fact that our stipends are not enough to support a houseplant) working a full-time job in mortgage. Oh, and don't forget trying to conceive with the help of fertility drugs. And SWEARING that I would NEVER do it to myself again.





So what am I doing? Taking three seminars AGAIN, as well as an internship, working at the Writing Center, applying for multiple conferences, participating on a publication project for one of my professors, and acting as a co-president for the graduate association. This, by the way, would be enough to sink anyone WITHOUT having a five-week old infant. Who, as far as I'm concerned, could easily be three people's full-time jobs. Strike that--three people's full time LIVES. Luckily due to the scholarship I received this year I have the year free of teaching, because I'd either have to die or dropout.





What is wrong with me? I endlessly regret the choices I make when I overload myself. I put so much pressure on myself to live up to what I perceive are the expectations on me that I do things like, for example, return to school full time when my baby is SIX DAYS old.





This condition is by no means rare among academics. One of my professors, who is basically an up and coming rock star in my field AND has twin babies, put it best when he said that when we spread ourselves so thin, we don't feel good at anything: we feel like bad parents, bad spouses, bad students, bad teachers (add bad bloggers to that list).





I feel like a bad everything. I half-ass my homework, and my time with Squidge is half-assed because I'm usually worrying about how I half-assed my homework.





And I'm SO unbelievably TIRED.





Okay, enough of this depressing stuff. Five weeks down, eleven more to go in the semester. I can do it, right? I'm going to keep thinking so until life proves otherwise.

Ode to the Best Idea We Ever Had...

And no, I'm not talking about having kids...the jury's still out on that one. Ha ha, just kidding!

I'm talking about a decision my sister Amber and I made a couple of years ago. We were living in an apartment--well, Mario and I were living in an apartment, and because a short term can-I-stay-with-you-for-just-a-little-while-to-save-money thing had somehow turned into a permanent situation, Amber was inhabiting what we had once fleetingly hoped would be a guest bedroom. As crazy as my sister and I have always made each other, it is incomprehensible that we managed it in that apartment for a year. I'm not quite sure how it came to be that when we each decided it was time to buy a house, those houses would be next door to each other. I guess somehow making that GIANT PURCHASE together made it less scary, and somehow the circumstances just worked out...we found new construction we both liked, in a convenient neighborhood, for (what seemed at the time) a good price, and because we were the first to buy on our street, we were able to pick our (identical, but flipped) floor plans on the adjoining lots of our choice.

Cheesey, I know. But wow, is it great. This week I was reminded of how great it was. The other morning Mario went out, as he normally does, to walk the puppies on the large expanse of BLM land that we live next to. Squidge was being fussy, fussy, fussy, and it seemed like it was taking Mario forever to get back. The longer he was gone, the more pissy I got, really wanting him to come home and take the fussbudget off of my hands for a few minutes before he went to work. After awhile though, as the time he normally would have returned came and went, my annoyance turned into worry. As I sat rocking Squidge and worrying, all of a sudden at the front door I heard a little peeping noise. When I threw the door open, there was Xiao Gou...alone...without a leash...just sitting there looking pathetic.

Now, I knew he had probably somehow gotten away from Mario (he usually lets them off their leashes for awhile because there is never anyone around up there), but I couldn't hold back the fear that something had happened to my husband or our other dog Nika. Semi-panicking, I ran next door and plopped the baby into my sister's arms (she was thankfully willing to help even though she was about to be late for the class she teaches two days a week at UNR) and took off running up the hill calling for Mario. Thankfully, within a few minutes I could hear him across the canyon, frantically calling for Xiao Gou. It turned out that the pups had run off because they encountered a HUGE herd of deer on the hill...Mario counted at least 20!!!! A coyote was lurking around after the deer too. What normal dog could resist that kind of distraction? Xiao Gou had somehow gotten lost and instead had turned around and came home.

As Mario and Nika and I tramped home through the snow together (my burning lungs pointing out precisely how out of shape I am!), and as we retrieved Scarlett from my sister, I thought again about how convenient it is to have a close family member CLOSE, in so many situations. If she hadn't been there to help me, Mario would have been out searching forever, and I would have been completely panicked. There are a lot of things I have regretted about this house purhase. Buying at the height of the market...not standing up more to our jerk builder...certain upgrades...choosing a lot with the Great Rock Wall of Reno towering threateningly over us (we have a 30+ foot rock wall in our backyard)...but I have never regretted having my sister for a neighbor. Eventually, when I finish my PhD and go on the national job market, Mario and Squidge and I will have to move away and we will doubtlessly never have such an opportunity again. So in the meantime, I'm going to keep being grateful!

Back to Sleep? No Way.

Whew, it is hard to find internet time! I have The Baby Who Will Not Be Put Down. I really do. Every time my family is around, all they can talk about is what a wonderful, calm, contented baby she is...and how much she sleeps! Which pisses me off because she does tend to save her really angsty fits for when no one else is around. But I finally realized that this is because when everyone is around, there is always someone to hold her, whereas when I am alone or just Mario and I are at home, there are times that we want to...I don't know...PEE. Or EAT. Or maybe, just maybe, internet for a minute. But no, Squidget will have none of that. We put her down at the risk of our eardrums.

This goes for nights too. Every day, my guilt grows about the sleeping thing. I KNOW I need to be trying to get her to sleep in the bassinet, and I KNOW she needs to be sleeping on her back. But how am I supposed to make that happen, when it seems like the only place she will ever rest for more than ten minutes is curled up on my chest? Literally, every night at bed time I have this total mental crisis of what to do tonight. If I try to sleep with her in the bedroom, she does not end up in the bassinet. She fusses and cries, and I am already so exhausted, that I have no fortitude to try to make her cry it out. Besides, she is so young I am not sure making her cry it out is even a good idea, as several of the books I've read say that for the first four months, babies have to be taught that they can trust you. Besides, when we stay in the bedroom with her, BOTH of us get no sleep.

The alternative, and usually what we end up doing, is for one of us to stay out in the living room, sleeping with her in the Lazy-Boy, where of course she sleeps on her stomach on my stomach. It just feels wrong to spend every night in a lazy-boy. I MISS my BED. Plus, she's sleeping on her stomach! Augh! When we try to lull her into sleep on her stomach...then ever-so-carefully transfer her to her back in the bassinet...yep that fails too. She has a sensor that tells her when she is not being doted on. And the sensor alarm sounds like this: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!

The other bummer is that I've recently realized that when Mario stays out with her at night, she actually goes four hours or even a little more sometimes between feedings, whereas when I do, it's every two hours still. Probably because she smells me and gets reminded of MILK. Now that I know this, it's like temptation, evil temptation to make Mario take ALL of the midnight duties...and he is such a great father and husband that he probably would! But I know that is wrong. Especially since he is the one who has to work all day, whereas I have some part-day obligations but get to spend a lot more time at home...rarely do I get to take a nap, but at least I don't have to be on my game, performing, productive.

R.I.P. Sleep. You've been reincarnated as Scarlett. I love Scarlett more. But Sleep, you will always hold a dear spot in my heart.

Oh, Xiao Gou Gou

I met Xiao Gou on a cold, misty December morning in Sichuan, China. Mario and I were laboriously ascending the 300 steep stairs that spanned "The Hill" between our apartment on the XiNanKeJi (Southwest University of Science and Technology) Old Campus and the New Campus, on our way to conduct my final oral exams with our respective classes. All of a sudden, rapid movement caught my eye...a tiny ball of fur was catapulting down the stairs towards me. It was a puppy, probably no more than five or six weeks old. I caught him up, thinking surely someone would appear to claim him, but no one did. No one was around. No one came chasing down the stairs after him, and no calls echoed in the misty morning. The rest of the world was still and silent. It was as if he had sprung into being from a spiderweb, or fallen from the sky.

Now, I had never been a dog-lover. A lover of animals in general, yes, but cats had always been my forte. For some reason, no dog had ever been able to get its little pointy teeth into my heart. But then there was Xiao Gou (Little Dog, in Mandarin). He was so incredibly tiny. He would be roadkill or else dinner, I told Mario frantically, if we didn't rescue him. Making a quick decision, and ignoring my then-boyfriend's protests, I tucked him under my warm coat and continued up the hill to class, keeping an eye out for any sign that someone loved and wanted him back. There was none.

As he slept in the arm of my coat throughout my exams, I wondered what the heck I would do next. Aha, I thought--my friend EmilyPie, who was living and teaching in China at the same university with us, had been talking about wanting a dog! As soon as I was done with my students I hightailed it to her apartment to try to hawk my furry, snuggly wares. But, as cute as Emily thought he was, her husband had the final say. Now, you can always count on B to maintain perspective when the women around him are swaying like willows in fitful breezes of hormonal impulse. Wise to the enormity of adopting a dog in a foreign county, he put the kibosh on any idea of adoption.

Tragically, Mario and I had not such fortitude. We put up posters in Chinese looking for the missing owner, but with the passing days our hope that someone would call transmuted to relief that no one had. My family was amazed...I was falling for a dog. By the end of a week, Xiao Gou was Xiao Gou, and he was irrevocably ours.

Over the next 9 months we adjusted our lives to having a living, breathing creature with needs in our lives...stumbled down from our third-floor apartment for multiple midnight potty breaks, rushed home from dinners out to snuggle and take care of him, having him vaccinated and neutered (ugh, a god-awful experience in China!), arranged for doggysitters when we went traveling for extended periods. When it came time to leave our China life and return to the United States, there was no question of leaving him behind. With a ton of help from one of our students, Xiao cleared the extensive customs process and became certified to leave his mother country and become a US dog-izen. Enduring the sixteen-hour flight back, knowing our baby was kenneled somewhere beneath the plane in a dark hold, was probably one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, so I can only guess at how it was for him. But when we arrived at LAX, there he was by the oversized baggage claim, safe and sound in his kennel, yipping woefully for his mama and papa.

I don't know when the change occurred in his temperament. As a pup, Xiao Gou had always been a friendly if over-exhuberant dog who got super excited when people came over. But for some reason, back in America, he began to exhibit signs of aggression towards strangers in his territory, specifically lunging for and biting their ankles. It took Mario and I quite some time, and several bad situations, to adjust to the fact that this new side of the puppy we loved so much was real and dangerous, not just a fluke. While he has never, ever exhibited any signs of agression towards us or anyone he's familiar with, having people over has become something we have to be very careful about, either shutting Xiao away or keeping him on a leash until he's used to people. We never let him run free in a public place without a leash, and we never let strangers pet him. Unfortunately, several people suffered ankle bites, including Mario's sister and my friend Megan, before we realized exactly how much vigilance was required.

It's the weirdest thing, that he does this. At home with us, or with friends or family that he knows, he is the perfect dog, mellow and generally very obedient. When strangers appear on the scene, though, something snaps in his mind. I can see that he knows he's not supposed to bite, but where it's protectiveness or territorialness or both, something fierce comes into his eyes with the appearance of an unapproved party. We have always been well aware that this is cause for concern but have dealt with it mainly by trying to avoid the situations that provoke this behavior.

The other day, when my mom was over here babysitting Scarlett, Xiao bit her dog Whiskey. For some reason, Xiao has always had some issues with Whiskey, even though most of the time they play together fine. Xiao is usually either great with other dogs or disinterested in and fussily irritated with them, usually depending on their size, so the only reason I can think of for this is that Whiskey is the only dog he ever encounters who is not neutered. Whatever the reason, he has snapped at Whiskey multiple times both in his territory and Whiskey's, usually over cookies or food. 99% of the time, they are best buds. 1% of the time, Xiao has issues. Add this pre-existing problem to the disruption and displacement my dogs are already feeling because of the baby...not a good cocktail.

It was kind of a bad bite, and my mom dallied on taking Whiskey to the vet to have it cleaned, despite the fact that I begged her to go as soon as I knew about it. It got infected, as I predicted it would, resulting in him having to be rushed in the next day, and Whiskey almost lost his eye.

My family loves their dogs. Whiskey is my parents' baby, has been since my sister and I grew up and flew the nest. His injury has caused them to conclude that Xiao Gou is basically a threat to national security. They are leaving me intervention-style messages prodding us to get rid of him. I have been crying and stressin and not returning their calls.

I do not know what to do. On one hand, I am not trying to deny that Xiao's problem is real and dangerous and a possible liability. I really hate having to worry about having an aggressive dog. I adore having people over and would love, love, love it if Xiao could be the kind of welcoming sweet dog that my sister and my friends and my parents are fortunate enough to have. He has already caused problems with Mario's family--as I said, he bit Mario's sister, and she now (rightfully, I know) takes a "him or me" attitude which has spread to Mario's parents, even though Xiao is great around them, and they are constantly hinting about it, which in turn makes me defensive, and then I put out my lower lip and brattily tell my husband "I'd rather have him." (I will be the first to admit it--I am aggressive-aggressive, always have been, and passive-agressive approaches to things send me over the edge.)

On the other, Xiao is Mario and I's first baby. We have literally been across the world with him. He loves and trusts us. He is the absolutely perfect dog in our home environment--I have never felt threatened, for a second, by him. He has shown very little interest in the baby so far, much less than our other dog Nika or than Whiskey, and has not exhibited any sign of aggressiveness at all--and trust me, I've been watching. I do not believe that animals are disposable...I believe they are commitments for life. I would never, ever, for my entire life feel good about myself ever again if I just dumped him in a shelter or, god forbid, had him put down. And, not that I would ever encourage his behavior, but I do have to admit I feel safe at home alone, and especially now with the baby, knowing that if an intruder ever broke in, they would probably lose a limb.

Add this to the normal round of sore nipples and increasingly fussy baby and school starting and postpartum crap, and I am seriously in the dumps. I left a message at a local trainer to start arranging private sessions with us as soon as possible. Please everyone hope for me that training will help, and that the beautiful golden furball I have adored since puppyhood is fixable, because I will just die if having a baby means I have to break one of the innate tennets of my being, which is absolute love and commitment to my animals.

My Blown-Eyed Girl

Isn't she the bomb? And I'm not talking about her penchant for exploding in her diapers, usually right in the midst of a change!

(Blown, by the way, is blue+brown...daddy's brown eyes are slowing evicting her mom's blue, but the change is happening, so right now they are an interesting mix.)

Life with Squidge...

...is hectic, to say the least. Right now I am going to let what is very probably, by the sounds of it anyway, a diarrhea-stuffed diaper go for just a few minutes in order to get a little post up. That is, unless Squidget (my nickname for her, Scarlett + widget, after all she's not even six pounds!) has other plans. Am I a bad mom?

So, my daughter has now been on the planet for seven days. They have been seven days filled wtih joy and love and laughter, and let's be honest, more than a few tears (both on her part and on mine! Although Mario, rock that he is, has managed not to cry. I think he might, however, when he has to start working full time again next week! He is VERY in love with her and will use any excuse he can get to spend more time with her.) I feel great, now that my cold has mostly subsided, and feel pretty much 100% recovered. School started this week and I left my little Squidge for the first time yesterday for two hours for a meeting. I had to do it again this morning, and then my first class is this afternoon. My classes are four-hour seminars and I am not going to attempt more than half of each class this week. Maybe by next week, I will be ready to leave my baby for four hours....maybe now. I can managed two hours by feeding right before I leave and right when I come home, but four hours will necessitate a bottle feeding (I've already started pumping and building up my stock), so I'm a little nervous. Leaving's not as bad as I thought it would be, though, mostly because I get the thrill of showing off her pictures around my department.

(Booo-yah! My mom just came over and I've assigned her dirty diaper duty. Now I can post guilt-free!)

There's so much to say that I can't even think about how to focus, and what to write, so I'm just going to write about the status of two of my biggest post-baby fears, two fears that are not actually about the baby, but about my life. One is going pretty much as I expected: fear of loving my dogs less. I knew, because I'd been conditioned to know, that things would change for my poor little doglets after the baby arrived. They have been our children for so long, everyone told me, but suddenly they will be demoted to dog status. I made a vow that that would not happen, that I would not love them any less. And, I don't think I do. But it is definitely a challenge to make sure they get enough from me right now, and it's complicated by my fears of what their intense curiousity about/desperate fear of her could result in...right now Xiao mostly ignores her, but Nika tries to sniff her pretty aggressively, and even though I want to give them their space to get used to her, I can't help being protective, shoving them away. Yet as hard as it is to balance them and the baby, the other night I had a moment of profound gratitude for them. Squidge was screaming her little eyes out (evening and night are her favorite time for fits, surprise surprise!) and Mario was taking his turn trying to calm her. Xiao and Nika were laying on their beds, bewildered by the screams but behaving well, and I just laid down and snuggled them and thought, "Thank goodness for dogs...their love and their needs are so straightforward. Thank you for letting me love on you, silently!"

The other fear was my body. I have never had a "great" figure, so this fear was probably less than for many women who start from better positions! But, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would still look pregnant for a long time and might never be cute again. I don't know if I built it up so much that nothing could be as bad, but guess what...it's not as bad as I thought. It's not great by any means...I'm sure I'd be embarrassed if I had to wear a bikini...but, surprisingly, I already like my body again! This morning I was strutting around in front of the mirror and thinking, "I can deal with this!" So that's good news.

Okay, time to feed and get to class. More focused posts and more pictures, hopefully, soon...