Defenestrative impulses

I've had a perfectly acceptable 3 hours of teaching and an Ancient Greek class, and am home until I need to go screen a movie in 4 hours. In the middle of it all, my lunch meeting was acceptable (though I was annoyed that they started on the dot, because "on the dot" was "the minute my class let out," which meant that even though I rushed over there I was five minutes late, and then I still had to get my lunch. But whatever [yet how is it that the other people with the same teaching schedule were halfway through their lunches by the time I arrived? Hm--self-righteousness is kicking in]). And then I just got a perfectly polite email from a colleague responding to a question I had, but adding--in a perfectly respectful way--that he thinks that my proposed curricular revision might be overly complicated, but that he gets what I'm trying to do and is willing to support it once we've addressed the thing I asked him about.

So why, given all of the perfect acceptability of everything, do I want to throw my computer out the window?

You know what I mean, right? There are just those moments when anything feels like too much to deal with and everything is blown entirely out of perspective?

Maybe a little break would help. Email, I shall deal with you later.

Well, that's...terrifying

Lo these many months ago (August?), I submitted a solicited abstract for a proposed edited collection. I then sort of 65% forgot about it. I mean, it would cross my mind occasionally, but it was pretty far off the radar most of the time.

Well, I just found out that the collection has been accepted for publication. Good news! It has a final deadline about 6-7 months out. Um...okay! (This is the final deadline, you know, so it's not the date by which I need to submit a draft. That will be much sooner.)

So what did I say that I would write about again?

You know that kind of mid-way freak-out/happy feeling? Because this is good news, and will spur me to actually do something scholarship-wise (I've been tragically since summer, except for the colloquium talk and the MLA paper and some book reviews), but it's also a little alarming to have, you know, a deadline again, especially on a project that I only 35% remembered and haven't started writing yet. Oh, and I have a book review to write by late April. And right, the annual bibliographic essay. And nine thesis committees that'll be wrapping up in--hey, April! And those three classes that I'm teaching, two of which are writing intensive.

Oh! And right! Having a baby in June!

So there's that. A little more pile-on of the stress. It's okay; I'll manage. I'll whine, but I'll manage. (And I'll be on maternity leave all fall, so there's a light at the end of the work-tunnel, even if those 4 months will only be spent breastfeeding and doing laundry.)

And then I clicked on the "show details" of the "to" list from the email announcing the acceptance of the book proposal. I'll level with you here: I thought that, given that the editors were soliciting an abstract from me, this would likely be a middling collection. (Yes, Impostor Syndrome lingers, despite the publication of a monograph and recent promotion to associate [which comes a year before tenure at Field, so I'm not through every hoop just yet].)

But--well--there are some pretty damn impressive names in that list. Some that I don't know, of course, but some that everybody knows.

So.

There's that.

Terrifying.

AP Credit

I just read Dr. Crazy's thought-provoking post about women "forgetting" to have children (go read it, if you haven't yet; it's good). I haven't articulated much of a response, but a good bit of it resonated with me--I've often thought that, yes, I'd like to have a baby, but I like the way my life is without a baby, and there are other things that I want to do, so.... In fact, it seems a little startling that we did decide to have a baby. It was sort of like, Well, we want one, so why not now? And once we started thinking in terms of "trying," it became a priority. So it wasn't actually a priority before we committed to the attempt (if that makes sense), but the attempt itself made it one. Or something.

But that's not at all what I was going to write about (as evinced by my inchoate thoughts). Instead, I'm thinking about the phrase "Advanced Maternal Age," which Crazy uses and which is all over my paperwork (as I'll complain to anyone who listens).

Dude, I'm 35. I'm no spring chicken, but I'm not geriatric, for Pete's sake. Seeing that "Advanced Maternal Age" label was one of the first things that's actually made me feel old. And also a little...I dunno, behind? In need of remediation? I started feeling like, How did I make it this long, to this outrageously old age, without having a baby?? Obviously that's freakish and strange; I should have at least been pregnant before now. What, therefore, is the matter with me? People must be staring at this ancient, wizened crone who doesn't even know how to change a diaper. Good Lord. Freak!

It was a weird feeling.

So I decided that I ought to reclaim the term, to make it a badge of honor somehow. And as soon as I entertained the wish to do so, it was so easy! The label invites reclamation. For lo--I am Advanced! Yes! Without ever having even tried to be Maternal before, I've skipped the Beginner and the Intermediate stages. Advanced Pregnancy Credit, man. That's what I've got. It makes sense, really. I've always been a quick study.

The fact that my blood type is A+ just makes it all the more compelling.

A New Year's convention that I'm adopting for the first time

Eh, what the heck. I'll do this rather than work on my MLA paper. But be prepared for lots of N/As.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

• Hosted three different sets of parent-visitors (my dad and stepmom, TM's parents, my mom and her friend) in a house that I actually own (or am at least paying a mortgage on)
• Paid a mortgage
• Had an article come out in a fancy journal
• Went to Ireland
• Paid for my mom to come with me on a trip (to Ireland, in this case. It was a very grown-up feeling kind of thing to pay for her! In fairness, she covered meals on the trip--but I bought the plane tickets and hotel rooms and all. This actually worked out really well for me psychologically, because I'd paid for everything up front and didn't have to fret about my bank account during the vacation proper)
• Rented a car all by myself
• Drove on the left
  
• Met a currently very prominent and (to my mind) rather loathsome political personage
  
• Got pregnant

The theme here seems to be: Grown-up stuff. Maybe I'm finally a proper adult?

Oh, and there were lots of knitting and gardening adventures, and probably a bunch of other stuff, too. I can't actually remember spring break at all, for example, so who knows what happened in the first half of the year.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't remember if I had any. I think that I wanted to be kinder and/or more generous? I'm not sure that I kept them, if so. Those don't seem like quite the sorts of things that you can self-evaluate very easily.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

A couple of co-workers--actually, quite a few co-workers. Probably some other people, too, but I can't think of them right now. (I'm not putting that much effort into this exercise, evidently.)

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A cousin on my dad's side--a few generations older than me. Well, she was 91 or thereabouts, so quite a bit older. I hadn't seen her in a long time, but she was someone we always visited over the holidays until my family left the state I grew up in (when I was in my mid-twenties), so she was one of the relatives I actually knew best. (We're a pretty scattered--and smallish--family.)

I think that that's it.

5. What countries did you visit?

Ireland! (And Belgium and Finland in 2010--just need to toss those in here, even though they're past their expiration dates.)

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A healthy baby? Maternity leave?

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Sept. 4--the date at which my pregnancy officially starts. (This is a bit of a theme, no?) Not sure about any others.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Good question. Um...making it through the Fall semester, which was inexplicably difficult? Getting a short story published (in a weird little on-line venue)? Making a journal out of paper I made myself? Those aren't very momentous. It's not that I haven't been doing things, but nothing feels like a Big Climactic Achievement. And that's fine. I don't think that life is normally measured in that way, and--as we all know better and better as we age--the thrill of The Achievement invariably wears off.

Oh! Just remembered! Paid off my student loans! That counts.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Again, not sure. I think that I was less available to some of my students this past semester than I normally am, or would like to be--but I also think that, ultimately, that was a good thing. Setting some stronger boundaries in my professional life is something that I'd like to work on this year. So no--this wasn't a failure.

Getting an article rejected, I guess, but "failure" seems like a pretty strong word for one of the inevitable set-backs of an academic career.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

A couple of colds and headaches, but that's all.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

No major purchases this year. I did pay for a year's subscription to a streaming yoga video service, which I liked a lot and will continue to use. And I bought some pretty sock yarn. Also a few really wonderful meals out with TM.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

TM, who is fantastic at all times.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Oh, feh, I don't know. Pass.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgage. Trip to Ireland.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Being pregnant (although it took a while to sink in. It's still sinking in, in fact, and the excitement is still mixed with anxiety, so "really, really, really" is pretty much relative). And TM had a couple of articles accepted, which was great.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

N/A (I've listened to amazingly little music this year, in fact.)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

I was pretty happy this time last year, I believe, so I'm probably about the same on that score. Weight-wise, well, I'm up a few pounds, but to say that I'm "fatter" would be unfair, given the circumstances. Financially, close to the same, but we're in slightly less debt, so that counts as "richer," right?

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Yoga. Meditate. I gave up both in the fall due to first-trimester fatigue, which I believe was a legitimate excuse, but I intend to get back into them now that I'm feeling better. I have started doing yoga again, in fact.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worry, probably. That's always the case.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent it back East with my family. The littlest nephew was incredibly cute.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Already was.

22. How many one-night stands?

0

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Doc Martin.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No.

25. What was the best book you read?

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

N/A

27. What did you want and get?

A positive pregnancy test.

28. What did you want and not get?

Can't think of anything at the moment.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I saw exactly one movie in a theater--The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It was pretty good. This brings the total number of movies that I've seen in theaters since I started dating TM (in April 2008) up to 2: Our first was Metropolis. (I'm probably a poser, but I sort of love having absolutely no idea what's going on in the entertainment industry.)

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 35. We bought a new oven because ours broke the night before. My dad and stepmom took me and TM out for a nice dinner.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Immeasurably more satisfying? I have no idea.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Eh?

33. What kept you sane?

I wasn't aware that insanity was such a proximate risk.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

N/A, for reals.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

Oh, whatever particularly outrageous thing TM read me out of the Times on any given morning.

36. Who did you miss?

A couple of friends. Family, sometimes. But I got to see a lot of them in the last few months!

37. Who was the best new person you met?

I don't know. I'm sure that there were some good ones, though.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

No, thank you!

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

I repeat: No, thank you!

I Want a Syllabus:

--a common want,
When each semester seems to need two new ones,
And after slogs through books and sites I flaunt
My stacks of photo-copied true ones.
But this one differs: The course I must invaunt
Is opaque, obscure, like a few tons
Worn round my neck all winter. So I moan
And hope a draft arrives by fax or phone.

(OK, that's a pretty dreadful bit of doggerel, I admit, and I even had to make up a word. But I've had that first line running through my head for days and I had to do something with it.)

Actually, I want two syllabi: The first is for a writing course that is still a blank page, but I'm not going to talk about that one. The other is for my own benefit--to make sense of this:


I've been given or otherwise collected this entire stack in the last few weeks, and am more than a little overwhelmed. On the surface, it seems like there are pretty obvious ways of organizing all of this material: The pregnancy/nutrition/exercise stuff, the childbirth stuff, the breastfeeding stuff, the child-care stuff. But the breastfeeding books tell you what to do before birth in order to get ready to breastfeed, and there are childcare things to take care of before the baby is actually here, and at some point I need to look at birthing centers and talk to doulas and all that, right? So it's actually all quite interrelated and intermixed and I need someone to give me a syllabus so that I read the right bits at the right times and turn in all of my assignments by their proper due dates.

*******************************

Admittedly, I'm making this out to be worse than it is, and worse than I actually feel. It'll be all right. Right? People manage these things.

The more pressing problem is what I can wear to MLA. My nicest pants are now out of the question, and I'm pretty well lacking in the spiffy-professional range of my wardrobe at the best of times. How can I pull together something to wear for my paper--something that fits over my now-somewhat-visible baby belly--without actually going shopping? That's the question....

(And so intellectual concerns give way to the sartorial. It is break, after all.)

(And hey--MLA meet-up? When/where? If there was a conversation, I missed it!)

It's true what they say about the second trimester

I've decided to come clean. Here it is, folks: I'm pregnant, and due in June.

To be precise, I'm just over 12 weeks pregnant--which means that I'm at the end of the first/beginning of the second trimester. Judging from how I feel, I'd say that it's the latter. For, on Sunday, lo and behold, I got a few things done.

If, for some reason, you've read my comments on the Another Damned Notorious Writing Group check-ins, you may have noticed that I was...hm, not...happily productive? Maybe a little pissed-off and bitter sounding? Struggling to do even 1 hour a week of work on my writing? Well, now you know why. No--I was not pissed off and bitter about the pregnancy; on the contrary. But I was exhausted. All the time. And in the last 2-3 days, by virtue of the sudden contrast in energy level, I'm starting to appreciate just how exhausted I was. (Perhaps this also accounts for the total near-lapse in blogging this semester, but given what a lame blogger I am at the best of times, I'm not convinced.)

So it was a rough semester: 4 classes/4 preps, plus taking Greek, chairing a major governance committee, and running the Honors program--which grew enormously this year and last (it now has twice as many students as it did two or three years ago), and struggling through the crushing fatigue of starting to grow a person. Basically, for the last seven weeks, I had almost enough energy to do the absolute minimum that I needed to do every day to get by--which means that this week, I'm trying to catch up on lots and lots of loose ends.

All this by way of explanation, not complaint. TM and I are delighted, apprehensive, and hopeful (it's still early yet; miscarriage is always a possibility). I've been lucky to have only a little nausea and a weird aversion to cooked greens and tomatoes, which is totally unlike me, and 10 days ago we had our first ultrasound. It was amazing--way cooler than I expected--to see the little thingum in there, all person-shaped, kicking its feet and waving its fin-hands around. The heart was beating, and it even has a head!

(Yes, I know how that sounds, but I don't think that I was really convinced that I was growing a baby until I actually saw it. I spent the first 8 weeks or so half-convinced that I had psychosomatically given myself pregnancy symptoms and somehow stopped menstruating through sheer force of will. Oh, and the positive pregnancy tests? Clearly I was manufacturing pregnancy hormones through, um, the power of suggestion? I don't know. I didn't say it was rational.)

Anyway, that's all. The semester is almost over. I'm a little nervous about telling everyone about this whole thing, since of course it's not a sure thing until the baby's born. But I figured you all ought to know.

Grand and glorious plans

So, in my strangely refreshed state, I have lots of Schemes for the Day. Things I want to Do. For I actually don't have too much homework (of the prep/grading variety), and so maybe I could get some of the other stuff accomplished?

Id est:

1. Read thoroughly enjoyable chapter for first-year seminar.
2. Read less interesting chapters for comp.
3. Figure out an activity for Monday's comp to replace the fun-but-useless activity that I usually do on that day. (I already have an idea, I just have to get a few things together for it.)
   
4. Finish writing my colloquium talk (so, so close).
5. Yoga.
6. Work on promotion binder (requires going to office, alas, but mostly just involves photocopying and printing).
7. Vacuum.
8. Greek homework.
9. Read article for upper-level seminar.
10. Grade first-year seminar journals.
11. Finish laundry.
    

Hm. Well, now I'm depressed. That's a lot of...stuff, and more on the prep end than I expected. Realistically, though, most of these items shouldn't take me very long, so the depression is fleeting.

You know what's really depressing? Picking up three different batches of papers on Monday. Why did I do that to myself? This isn't the first time this semester, either. Normally I'm pretty good at staggering grading, but this semester I clearly did nothing to synchronize my syllabi. We also have Big On-Campus Events Monday and Tuesday nights (the Monday night event having been organized by Me), so the week promises to be pretty hectic.

Well. Fine. Most of the stuff on that list isn't so bad, and some of it will even be fun. Time to think cheerful thoughts! It's a beautiful day (for sitting inside working)! I am still in my bathrobe! Consider the pleasure of checking things off! Yay! Go go go!