Sorting Nonsense

I like to organize stuff. And I have grand plans for maternity leave (although I'm less than a week into the semester and already realizing what a joke my "grand plans" are. Mostly I nurse the baby, change the baby, change the baby's clothes when he gets bodily fluids on them, change the baby again, nurse the baby, play with the baby, try to get the baby to sleep, and THEN spend half an hour doing all the things that I haven't been able to do earlier, like get dressed or brush my teeth. Don't get me wrong--maternity leave is an awesome thing, and I do love taking care of Bonaventure, who is endlessly delightful. But it's not like I'm lounging around all day. Well, except for when I'm lounging around nursing the baby, but even then I'm occupied).

Let me start again.

I like to organize stuff. But for years, I've had this very disorganized folder-box-thing full of letters, cards, notes, and other mementos. I recently found a big accordion folder in my office and thought that, at last, I could organize those things--possibly along the lines of Flavia's letter-sorting system (I'm not going to look for the link, sorry). After all, I am sort of the family archivist; I bound all of our wedding cards together in a Coptic-bound book, I put together photo albums, and I even scanned a bunch of my grandfather's adolescent poetry.

This afternoon, when Bonaventure finally went down for a long and much-needed nap, I settled myself on the bed with my accordion file and my collection, eager to go through it and get it all straightened out.

But along what scheme? It's such a hodgepodge miscellany: a torn-off bit of paper with a nice note from my dad, birthday cards from twenty years ago, a collection of letters from a friend living in Spain, wedding invitations, cute pictures of my friends' kids. I found myself making (I kid you not) the following piles: (1) cards with pictures of cats on them (wow I have a lot of these); (2) items from 2004; (3) letters from Andrew; (4) things on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper.

And then I noticed what fun I was having finding all of these things in no particular order.

So I've changed my approach. Instead of cleaning it up, I'll embrace the disorder as part of the collection's point. I have put it into the accordion file (which will keep it much more tidily and with less damage to the pages), and I couldn't resist a little bit of organizing (group 4, for some reason, remained intact), but I'm keeping it messy--a strangely liberating sensation.

How would you respond?

So I'm afraid that Dr. Koshary's fear has been realized: I had a baby and stopped blogging. I won't say that this was Dr. K's greatest fear, but it was, at least, a minor, trifling concern that he expressed in the comments to one of my posts.

Anyway, I've compounded my unreadiness to post (because of having a baby) by convincing myself--as I always do--that I need to have some earth-shatteringly clever post to mark my re-entry into blogging. And then I would compose mildly amusing posts in my head, decide that they would be said earth-shatteringly clever post, forget how they went, and try to reconstruct them (still in my head) with little success. And then I'd, like, go to sleep or something. And so it went.

Whatever. I'll just jump right in here with this little incident from the afternoon:

I was walking down my quiet, residential, small-town street to a meeting. Two girls (around 12ish? I couldn't see them very well) were sitting in the open cargo space of a van at a house on the other side of the street, with the door open. One of them yelled, "Hey, girl, you want some milk?"

I figured that she was talking to someone in the house and ignored her. But when I drew abreast (ha ha) of the house, I saw that they were looking at me. I smiled, as one does in a small neighborhood in a small town. One of them repeated, "You want some milk?"

"No, thanks," I replied uncertainly, since milk seemed like a weird thing to be selling out of a van.

Then, when I was a little bit past them, one yelled at my back, "Those are some big boobs you've got there!"

!!!

In my inner monologue, I used the fact that I was running late for my meeting as reason not to turn around and demand to know why these young women were heckling women about their breast size, but in fact, I still haven't come up with a witty retort, and this is the reaction I almost always have when other people (= men, up until today) shout comments about my body. I'm curious: What would you have said to these girls, if anything?

All I can figure, honestly, is that they've seen me (discretely, let's note) nursing my son on the front porch of my house, because "want some milk?" is a pretty weird body-heckling comment, isn't it? The truth is, though--well, they're not wrong. But still, I'm not endowed to the point that it would like call to you from across the freaking street to comment.

Anyway, isn't that just strange? I have never been yelled at by girls. I'm rather appalled, to tell the truth. But I do expect that they'll grow out of such behavior, and maybe even be embarrassed about it one day. (Perhaps on the day when men start yelling at them. Unfortunately.)

Baby = here

Bonaventure (not his real name) (now that he's earthside, he doesn't have to be Lumpy Homunculus anymore) arrived at 4:30 in the morning on Thursday, June 14. He is a perfect and gorgeous little creature. I've always thought that newborns were rather funny looking; oddly enough, I seem to have birthed the one and only ideally beautiful child!

This is him, just minutes after birth. What a love. Every tiny part of his tiny body fills me with delight, and there's nothing sweeter than to watch his papa cuddle him.

A word about new-parenthood: I'd heard that it's hard, of course, and accepted that in a vague sort of way. But I really had no idea. You know how new parents often say that they consider it a good day if they get to take a shower? That's setting the bar pretty high, methinks. I put on deodorant this afternoon (yes, afternoon). I'm feeling pretty good about that.

And also: My entirely drug-free birth has given me oceans of empathy for women who opt for epidurals.

I'd thought, I guess, that if it's just pain, and nothing bad is happening to you, of course you can bear it, right? I'm good at managing pain and breathing through it, etc. Again: I had no idea. Childbirth has been utterly deromanticized for me. It is extremely hard work--no candles and soft music, here. I spent transition lying inert on my side (if I moved at all, I'd tense up and panic), howling, eyes closed, while TM, my mom, and my doula stroked my hands and shoulders. I wouldn't have been able to do it without their comfort and reassurance.

And as for pushing.... Suffice to say that I was naked, indifferent to decency, emitting unearthly sounds at a very high volume. I bit pillows and growled. I screamed and snarled and thrashed. My whole body shook. Later I was told that I frightened some nurses out in the hall--they aren't used to natural births and didn't know what could possibly happening in the room. Yes, I am Hard Core.

Now I just need to find a way to get to sleep before 3 am....

Two things that may or may not be real

1. A class I totally want to take: a combined history and cooking class on some particular geographic region. For every session, we'd do some readings on cultural influences and major historical events; listen to a little lecture; and then have a cooking class in which we'd make a historically accurate(ish) meal from the period being discussed that week. The course would start as far back as possible and move forward in whatever increments make it most (culinarily) interesting. Wouldn't that be a fun way to learn about cultural history?

The problem is that, as far as I know, I totally invented this concept and certainly couldn't teach such a class myself (not that I'm wanting to do more teaching, anyway). It came to me when TM and I were discussing medieval cooking over lunch--I'd reprised a quite tasty 14th-c./thereabouts dish that I made for my Chaucer class last year. I thoroughly enjoyed making medieval food for my class; I learned such interesting things! Like how to make a sauce gelatinous when one doesn't have access to corn starch.

-and-

2. I may not believe in the nesting instinct, but I just cleaned the toaster. (I'm due in a week. Anytime now, deary...or Lumpy Homunculus, as TM and I have taken to calling him/her, in honor of how lumpy my belly is much of the time.)

(I'm not sure that I don't believe in the nesting instinct; I just think that I'm generally so nesty and compulsive that such a thing would be largely unrecognizable in me. But I haven't cleaned the toaster...well, ever, at least not this toaster, which I bought when I moved to Field Town [for $6--I didn't actually expect to keep it] five years ago. You decide.)

It's never too late to feel like a huge dork!

Graduation rehearsal today. I'm the first faculty member to come up on the stage to announce graduates. We're in the gym this year, because there's an impossibly remote chance of rain tomorrow, so there's a stage set up with, of course, stairs to get to it. The dean who's MC'ing the rehearsal calls me forward. So off I go, all bouncy and cute and "Hey! I'm 8 months pregnant and still so perky! Look at me!", springing up the stairs and bouncy bouncy bouncy.

And my sandal catches on the top step and I trip. Of course I do. Into a full-out, all-fours plant on the stage. In front of the entire graduating class and sundry others. Eight months pregnant. (My due date is a month from today, in fact.)

The gasp that goes up is terrible. The dean is rushing towards me in alarm.

Oh, I am mortified, and somehow that mortification carries me springing back to my feet (at this point it's not usually easy to get up out of that position--I have no idea what I did), all "I'm fine! Ha ha! That's exactly what I was afraid I'd do!", big smiles and carrying on as planned, etc. etc.

My knee was skinned up, too, and I kept my skirt very carefully over it until I went home. Just to make me look a little bit less like a ten-year-old.

And I can't help but wonder whether there was anyone in that graduating class who might have been secretly glad to see me go down?

Oh, my goodness, I'm such a dork. I really ought to learn not to strut around being cute--it never ends well. Sigh.

Four more mathrafrakkking papers

(And a cheating issue, and a couple of theses to collect.)

And then I'm DONE.

Can I do it? I'm not sure. Garraregaheassdfaggghhhhhhh!

Life is better now

• I spent all of last night breathing. And sleeping. But I'm happiest about the breathing. The cold is on the mend!
• Because I feel better, I'm able to do laundry and various other minor tasks today. This brings me great peace. Eliminating the germy feeling generated by the cold helps me to believe that the cold is really going away.
• Classes end on Wednesday! Only two more teaching days until January! Hooray, maternity leave!
• I can't really believe that I'm not teaching in the fall. My hope is that I'll be bored to death and ready to return to campus after 9 months of domestic duty. (And working on the bibliographic essay that I haven't started.)
• I have a slightly better idea, now, of what I'm supposed to talk about on that PBS panel that I'm going to be on. That's Wednesday. So I'm extra glad that the cold is fading; maybe my nose won't be all red and peeling by then.
• I have very little actual schoolwork to do this weekend. What I ought to do is work on my "article," but I kind of feel like puttering around the house, instead. I suppose I could do both.
• Only downside: The weather is cool and rainy, and my most comfortable maternity clothes are all summery dresses. Well, TM and the garden are happy about the raininess, so I'll manage.