Research

I left this morning for my long planned research trip to the North East. This week I will be in the archives of Harvard and Yale. I'm looking forward to the research (I mean, I'll be looking at the original manuscript of The House of Mirth and letters that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps exchanged with George Eliot), but leaving this morning was not easy at all. C's mom and sister are in town to help C out with Wild Man (I am, by the way, loving the fact that they both had to come to do all the stuff that I do!) and to keep him distracted from my absence. Wild Man knew something was up when he saw me wheel a suitcase down the hall, but he was happily playing with Aunt Pita when C and I left for the airport. I talked to C a little while ago, and Wild Man has only asked for me once. I'm happy to know that he's happy.

My friend D, who was my roommate when we were both completing our MAs, lives within driving distance to Boston, so she's decided to hang out with me for the week. While I'm at Harvard's various libraries, she's going to be finishing up the last chapter of her dissertation. Then she has graciously offered to drive me to New Haven and hang out with me there. I'm glad to have her to distract me. . . right now six days feels like an eternity.

"Sexism and the City"

My good friend Supadiscomama, who blogs at The Rhetorical Situation, and I are having a SATC extravaganza this Friday night. Along with some other lovely ladies who love the show almost as much as we do, we're going to see the movie and then have cocktails while we dish about the movie. Mr. Supadicomama and C are both fans of the show (granted neither is as ardent a fan as either of us), and both want to see the film. Given this, I was interested in the article entitled "Sexism and the City" published in this week's Newsweek. I have read no reviews of the movie and surprisingly little press (I am a fan; I didn't want to be disappointed or angered by "bad" reviews), so a lot of the article was surprising to me. Are most men so anti-SATC as this article describes? Are men so threatened by a film that has 4 women in the lead roles that they have gone on-line to give a film bad reviews, a film that most haven't seen? I don't know what to do with this. I'd like to believe that American men are more mature than this, but I have a feeling I may be wrong.

Baby-sitter success

Despite our worries, last night was a rousing success. Wild Man's baby-sitter, Miss A, who is a teacher at his school, arrived promptly at 6:00, and she listened to all of my neurotic instructions. I kept apologizing for telling her so much; I mean she took care of him for 6 1/2 hours a day for 6 months before he moved to another room. He loves her, she loves him, and they know each other. Still, C and I were both concerned that Wild Man would give her trouble, especially when it came to bed time. But he went to bed fairly easily. And as far as we can tell, she followed our instructions perfectly. She did let him stay up a little later than usual, but I had told her that was ok. Miss A played with him while C and I finished getting ready, and then she started giving him his bath just as we were leaving. Wild Man apparently conned her into reading way more than the allotted 4 books before bedtime, but he was in his crib by 7:40, which is only a little later than usual. He didn't fall asleep right away, which isn't out of the ordinary. He didn't, however, ask for me or ask to nurse, which is huge. He was asleep by 8:00, and Miss A said she spent the next hour watching TV. As C and I drove away, we looked at each other and said, "This is really weird" at the same time. I kept my cell phone on the table throughout dinner, which was super tasty, but she never called. After dinner, we walked around a local fountain for a bit and just talked. It was so nice to put on perfume and a heels, to have a nice meal and to drink a fancy cocktail, and to talk to my husband without worrying if Wild Man was going to try to eat the table cloth, dump ketchup on himself, or have a meltdown. I'm not sure why we haven't done that before, but if Miss A is willing, we're definitely going to do it again.

All in all, it was a wonderful birthday!

A night out

Today is my birthday, and C and I have decided to be extravagant. We've actually hired a baby-sitter, something we've never done before. Wild Man and I just spent the last 45 minutes going through my closet determining which shoes go best with the dress I'm going to wear. Yes, that's right--I'm wearing a dress and heels, we're going out to a fancy restaurant for my birthday, and we hired a baby-sitter all in the same night!

Notes from CU Land

Overall our trip to CU Land was a rousing success. It was stressful, as we tried to cram as much as we could into the 4 days we were there. We looked at about 20 town houses/houses with a real estate agent and 2 rental properties; we visited 3 schools for Wild Man (I wanted to visit another one that was highly recommended by one of the faculty members in C's department, but we ran out of time); and we drove over the entire city at least 3 times in the process of accomplishing these things. Wild Man had a few meltdowns, but overall, he was a dream. I mean, by the end of every day, I was a bit cranky by how much time we'd spent in the car, so I totally understood why he was cranky too. Here are a few highlights from our trip.

• The chair of C's department, whom I am naming Dr. Nice Guy, and his wife, Mrs. Nice Lady, were wonderful. They went out of their way to make us feel welcome and to answer any and all questions we had. Dr. Nice Guy even drove C around town one evening and helped him determine the best areas for us to look at homes.
  
• First, Dr. Nice Guy convinced one of the grad students in the department, who is out of the country for the summer, to let us stay in her house so we didn't have to stay in a hotel room. This was extremely generous of this woman, especially considering all her furniture is vintage (on a side note, the house was cute, but the interior looked like a page out of Architectural Digest circa 1950; everything was retro-modern, including the 1950s toaster that I'm certain she stole from my grandmother!), and one of the house guests was a 19-month-old. Having a kitchen and a yard made our lives much, much easier. In fact, we only ate out twice during our entire stay, and Wild Man burnt off lots of energy pulling Dr. Nice Guy's son's wagon around the back yard.
• Second, Dr. Nice Guy pestered the dean into pestering the head of the Women's Studies department into meeting with me. I went into this meeting with no guarantees of a job and came out 45 minutes later with the promise of a part-time gig. It seems that CU doesn't have anyone who can tackle both race and gender in literature, and apparently their Women's Studies students are very interested in such issues. I quickly explained that I had in fact taught all the courses on my CV. The head of Women's Studies was confused because technically my title is Teacher's Assistant; she thought I had graded for all the courses (about 8 different courses). Once I explained I had taught every one of them myself, she said, "Well, so tell me what you can teach at CU." After brainstorming for about 10 minutes, she asked me to teach a course on Women's Slave Narratives, so I'm very, very excited. She's supposed to get back to me by mid-June to let me know if I'll start in the Fall or the Spring, but either way, I know I will be teaching sooner rather than later.
• Third, Mrs. Nice Lady, who is a teacher at a secondary school in CU Land, explained the Canadian school system to me. By Wednesday, I was getting very, very frustrated with our real estate agent, whom I felt was being dismissive about my questions regarding school districts. She kept saying, "Well, it all depends on where you want to send him. . ." and then would change the subject. It seems that CU Land only has 1 school district, which is very, very good (Mrs. Nice Lady has sent me the stats via email, and I'm really impressed). But we can choose to send Wild Man to public school, Catholic school, or French-immersion school. Catholic schools are fully subsidized by the provincial government, and many of these are very good. I didn't know this, so every time the real estate agent said, "It depends on if you choose public or Catholic school" I wanted to throttle her. Once Mrs. Nice Lady explained this, I suddenly understood: I was asking the wrong questions. C and I have since learned enough to decide that if we're in CU Land long enough we will send Wild Man to the French immersion school, which is essentially a magnate school. It is part of the public school system, but we have to sign him up for the school about a year in advance.
  

Overall, I returned to Southwest College Town relieved. CU Land is a place we will be happy. Now I just have to prep for my upcoming research trip to the Northeast, pack up our house, and finish the Phelps chapter and make good headway on the Kemble/Wilson chapter before we move in August.

We've returned

We got in late last night (well, 9:00, but that is late when you have a toddler with you!) from our trip to CU Land. I'll be writing a lot about it in the next week. After several frustrating days of looking at horrific townhomes and houses that need major renovations, we finally found a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath townhome on Thursday morning (our last day in CU Land) that we loved. In fact, it was so much nicer than anything else we'd seen that we put in an offer. We heard from our real estate agent late yesterday afternoon, and our offer has been accepted. Barring any complications with the mortgage, we have a home! And to make the trip even better, I found out that I will be teaching a course in the Women's Studies Department. I am equally excited and relieved about our upcoming move.

The Moving Saga continues

We leave on Sunday to visit CU Land; we will be there until Friday. The list of things we have to do while we're there keeps getting longer and longer. In an attempt to stop thinking of all of this so I can actually get some work done today I've decided to compile of list of moving issues that are currently stressing me out. I'm hoping that getting all of this down will ease some of my stress so I can get a few pages written today.

• On Sunday evening, as we pass through customs in CU Land we have to apply for C's restricted work permit (he is only legally allowed to work at CU), my unlimited work permit (mine will be attached to his, and I am allowed to work any place that will hire me), and Wild Man's visa (I'm not clear on what sort of visa this is, but apparently he has to have one to be a part of the Canadian health care system). We land around 6:30, which is dinner time for Wild Man. We have no idea how long this will take, and apparently the entire process is contingent upon our customs agent. If we get a nice customs agent, it will go smoothly; if we get a mean one, we could be there for hours.
• C spoke with the movers yesterday, and he learned that we may not be able to take our car into Canada. Apparently, Canadian Customs can refuse to allow a car that was purchased in another country and has a loan through said country into their country. I totally get the purpose of this; Canada is trying to prevent its citizens from crossing into the U.S. to buy a car without paying Canadian taxes, which are substantially higher. But come on! We're already decided to get rid of one car. There is no way we can afford to buy a car once we get to Canada, so this also has me freaked out. C has to fill out a million customs forms on our car, but apparently we could be told that we can take our car into Canada only to be told no at the border. I'm learning that border agents and customs agents have a lot of power.
• We've decided to buy a town house. We've done lots and lots of research on this and feel fairly confident this is a good idea and will be a good investment. We've rule out a house because to get into the school district we want we can't afford a house, but we can afford a nice town house. I'm getting stressed out about trying to find a house we like, put a bid, and do the paperwork in 4 days.
• We also have to look at schools for Wild Man. This was a difficult process when we did it in Southwest College Town, and he wasn't even born then. We visited day cares and selected the one we liked the best when I was 8 months pregnant. I've spent so much time on-line researching schools in the past two weeks that I'm beginning to think I could write a dissertation on daycares in CU Land. This is a big source of stress because he is so happy where he is. I really hate that we have to move him.
• C was finally given access to CU's library database, and I spent about an hour on-line yesterday trying to determine how extensive their literature section is. Let me say that C will be ILLing a lot of books for me. I'm also asking my parents to give me cash for my birthday so that I can start buying the books I use regularly. Apparently CU isn't so big on nineteenth-century American literature. Go figure.

Well that helped more than I would have thought. I am now going to try to figure out what I have to say about Phelps, nature, and transcendentalism.

Wild Man's Entourage

A few months ago, on a trip to Old Navy, Wild Man picked out a stuffed dog that he quickly became very attached to (brown moppy animal pictured in the foreground of the picture). Within days of purchasing said dog, which Wild Man rescued out of the clearance bin, he was carrying it around everywhere and sleeping with it. He became so attached to it that I had my mom, who lives in a different time zone, scour her local Old Navy for extras. Luckily she was able to find two, so Wild Man also keeps a "Puppy" at school and we have a back-up.

About 3 weeks ago, Wild Man decided he needed to sleep with extra friends, and slowly, he began adding animals, positioning them in key places around his crib. First he added Patches the Bear and Ox the Ugly Doll; then came Bob the Brachiosaurus, Chompers the purple T-Rex, Pop, Duckie, Pooh, and Paddington. He then added Penny the baby doll and Spot the kitten. He still holds Puppy while he sleeps, but he also needs all of these friends. If one is missing or not in the correct place, he won't go to sleep. Yesterday he was home with a stomach bug, and he insisted on carrying each animal, individually, to the living room so they would be near him while he colored and we read books. My son has an entourage.

Moving

So here is the reality of my life right now: moving sucks. I know that most of us feel this way, so let me add another element to it: moving to another country sucks.

Don't want to work

Despite the fact that I submitted part of my Phelps chapter to my advisor yesterday and that she has already read and commented on the first 10 pages, I really just don't want to work today. My advisor pointed out an organizational problem that not only helps this chapter but will also help the rest of my dissertation. One would think I'd be excited and ready to get to work. I'm not. I'd rather be doing any number of things. Instead I'm reading and taking notes on Catharine Beecher's A Treatise on Domestic Economy. My life is so exciting.

I wish I had been there!

Sex and the City: The Movie had its world premiere last night in London, and I so wish I had been there!

From 37 pages to 46 pages in the blink of an eye

At my friend Lilian's advice, I decided to figure out what Southwest College's rules on formatting the dissertation are sooner rather than later. I figured if I set my margins now that is one less thing I have to do later. Suddenly my Wharton chapter, which has been stalled at 37 pages for months (as you recall I left Wharton behind to work on Phelps), is now 46 pages, and my Phelps chapter, which was only 19 pages, is now 25. All of a sudden, I feel like I've made some serious progress today. Thanks for the tip, Lilian!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers I know and love!

Oh, Canada!

As most of the regular readers already suspect (and many of you know), we are moving to Canada. C was offered and accepted a tenure-track position at a medium-sized research university in Canada. CU (Canadian University) is in a medium sized city, which is relatively close to the U.S. border. We will be returning to the Eastern time zone, although we will not be returning to the East Coast, which is ultimately where we'd like to end up. C received word yesterday that CU has mailed the contract to him; he should get it on Monday. With that knowledge, I feel a bit more comfortable revealing the approximate location of our new home. Frankly, I was a bit worried about jinxing everything!

We are alternately excited and stressed out about the move. Our lives are going to change dramatically. C will be making significantly more money than both of us are making now (but, given that I'm a grad student and he is a full-time adjunct, that isn't really hard to do), but we're still a bit worried about finances because the cost of living in CU Land is somewhat higher. I have good leads on adjunct work, and there is a serious possibility that the English Department at CU will offer me a part-time position for the Spring. The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts is a from Southwest College State, and she has a nephew who attends Southwest College. She seems very eager to help me given this connection between our families. She has, in fact, shopped my CV around at the affiliate schools (CU seems to operate a bit like Oxford or Cambridge; it has affiliate schools for specific areas, including a teaching college and a women's college. Each of the schools has an English department, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one of these schools will show interest in my CV and want me to teach at least one class there in the fall.). But for the time being, unless something else comes up, we've decided that I will stay home and focus on my dissertation. Daycare is significantly more expensive in CU Land, so Wild Man will either be staying home with me or he will go part-time. C and I have talked endlessly about a schedule, and I'm fairly certain we can make such a plan work (after all if our friends Solon and Megsg-h at The Rhetorical Situation can make it work while both of them are dissertating, we definitely can!). The Dean has also assured C that the English Department will consider me for partner placement when I'm finished, so that is even more motivation for me to keep on task and get work done.

For now, we're trying to figure out our living situation (we're debating whether to buy in the first year or wait a year) and determining what it means to be Americans living in Canada (we've still got to figure out how to get absentee ballots as CU wants C to apply for permanent residency as soon as we get there). C asked me last night if this makes us expatriates, and I told him I have no idea (Lilian, any thoughts on this?). We are, apparently, emigrating, which is not something I'd ever thought we'd do. I do know that we're in for one interesting adventure.

Summertime

Summer has arrived in Southwest College Town. This past weekend we took Wild Man to the splash pad, and he had lots of fun. In fact, we had to forcibly take him away from the fountains as he was visibly shivering but didn't want to stop playing. Looking at these pictures made me smile so much that I wanted to share them.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love my child?

*Poof! These photos have disappeared.

Sinking in

The reality that we're moving in just over 2 months is beginning to sink in. With that realization, I'm experiencing a lot of mixed emotions. I'm genuinely happy about this move for more reasons that I can count. The biggest reason is that this is a smart move for C, for his career, and for our family. Regardless of whether or not I'm ever offered a position at University X, this is a great job for C's career. If I'm not offered a position and we do end up moving again in the next few years for my career, this job makes C incredibly marketable and will make him much more attractive to any school that would hire me. I'm also excited about this location, about getting to know a new place, and about living in a new environment. The list could go on and on.

Despite my excitement and my belief that we are making the right decision, I'm not excited about leaving the Southwest College Town we've come to think of as home. When we moved here almost 5 years ago, we never would have thought we'd be so happy here. It is a relatively conservative community, in a very conservative state. It doesn't feel like a college town at all; in fact, it feels more like Strip Mall Town. It has all of the negatives of small town life, without many of the positives of living in a city. But it has many things that we've grown to love. We have a community of friends, many of whom we've come to think of as family. I can name about 12 people that I will be heartbroken not to see on a regular basis. In some ways, I think of these friends as people I've grown up with. We've all weathered the many dramas of graduate school together, had children around the same time, and become an integral part of each others' lives. I also have a lot of affection for this place because it is where C and I decided to become parents and where Wild Man was born. It is impossible to drive around this town without thinking "That's where Wild Man did X for the first time." Leaving SCT will be one of the hardest things I've ever done. One of the things that bothers me most about the profession we've chosen is that it requires us to move to places that we may not want to move to, to put down roots in said place, and then to leave that place. C and I love what we do, but I truly hope we don't have to move too many more times in our careers.

I really hate it when . . .

I can't remember why I thought I needed to consult specific books. I've spent the entire morning skimming 5 different books (2 of which I recalled) that I checked out of the library, and I'll be damned if I can remember why I thought I needed to look at them. Each is interesting and has shed some light on the time period I study, but none have yet proven to be specifically helpful to me. I have no idea what I was thinking.

Are you Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte or Samantha?

Since I'm focused on all things Sex and the City lately, Supadiscomama from The Rhetorical Situation directed directed me to a quiz that helped me determine which SATC lady I am most like. I am 50% Miranda, 40% Carrie, and 10% Charlotte. I'm sort of disappointed that I am not at all like Samantha, but I think I knew that already. Given my tendency toward cynicism, I'm not really surprised by the results. Miranda has always been my favorite character. And given the results of the quiz I took yesterday, it makes perfect sense?

Oxymoron, I'm dying to know which SATC lady you most resemble!

One more question

Here is another question that I'd love to hear from all my family and friends about our upcoming move:

When can we visit?

Only 28 days . . .

until Sex and The City: The Movie opens, and I am so excited. In fact, this morning I went to the website and read everything I could about it. I even took a very, very fun quiz to determine which SATC man I would be most compatible with. No surprise (especially for those of you who personally know C): I am most compatible with Steve. If you're a SATC fan, take the quiz and let me know who your most compatible with.

Questions to ask

At Academama's suggestion, I've composed a list of questions to ask the spouse of someone who has just accepted a tenure track position.

• How fantastic! Are they willing to consider partner placement? (Ok, so this question assumes that the questioner has some knowledge of academia.)
• What are the schools like?
• What sort of exciting things are there for us to do when we come to visit you in your new home?
• Will you be able to afford to take some time off and focus solely on your dissertation?
• When can we come visit?
• Do you need any help moving?
• That sounds like a really great opportunity for your family. Are you excited?
• I bet you're really excited, but I imagine you're also feeling a little overwhelmed. It is going to be hard for you all to leave College Town, isn't it? (I'd only welcome this question from someone I know really well, as it would likely make me burst into tears, but more on that later.)
• Wow! Won't you all have fun teaching Wild Man to build a snow man?
• So, when are you going to let Wild Man start participating in extreme winter sports?
• M, you have to wear a sweater in an air conditioned room! Should we go shopping for some warmer clothes?
• Do you think Wild Man will adopt the local accent?

Ok, so admittedly, some of these questions are pretty lame, and I have to say probably not the humor that Academama was looking for while she recovers from her recurring neck problems (sorry, Academama!). But these questions are supportive and understanding and suggest that the questioner is actually excited for us and understanding that this has not been an easy process or decision for us.

Manipulating Yetta

In the 7 years that C and I have been married, I've learned how to manipulate my mother-in-law to my advantage. She is, when all is said and done, an immensely practical woman. When she was despairing about our new location, I decided to tackle the problem head on and get her on our side. I went to google maps and determined the mileage from our current residence to Home State, to the school C said no to, and to University X (sorry, I'm still working on a better pseudonym). The results:

College Town to Home State: 1,144 miles

No School to Home State: 1,116

University X to Home State: 1,001

When C shared this news with her, Yetta got excited. C also took it one step further. Knowing his mother hates to fly, he figured out that she can take 3 different routes to University X, which means she gets to see three different areas (each route is essentially the same distance) that she's never seen before. When he told her that, she got really excited. Now she is busy planning her first visit and has ceased saying things like "Why can't you just find a job at Home State U?" Hooray for manipulations!

Questions NOT to ask someone whose spouse just accepted a job

Before I begin, I want to say thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of the entire job search experience. For an academic couple, there is no such thing as only one half of that couple being on the market at a time. The process, for us, has been all consuming, emotional, stressful, and exhausting. We're really happy that it ended so well. Thank you for reading and commenting, especially when I was having an "I'm feeling sorry for myself" moment.

Since C has received and accepted the job offer, we've been on the phone a lot. We've had to call people we don't normally talk to and explain the new circumstances of our life. Most people have been supportive (in fact, I'm going to write a post on how we manipulated Yetta into being supportive!), but some people have asked really stupid and annoying questions and comments. Some of the questions have come from people who are unfamiliar with academia, but not all of them. So that I don't bite the heads off of any well meaning family members or friends, I thought I'd write them down to get them out of my head.

• Why are you moving there?
• Why didn't C apply to a school closer to me?
• When will we ever see you again?
• What will Wild Man do? (this is one of my personal favorites; as if Wild Man himself must now find work in our new location! Won't he just continue being a child?)
• Are you going to start working? (this query came from my grandmother, who doesn't understand what we do at all; she also doesn't conceive of being a mother as work--having children is just what women do.)
• What exactly does C do again?
• Yuck! I would never live there!!
• So he couldn't get a better offer than that?
• You know, they get a lot of snow there. (My father, who was otherwise incredibly supportive, said this, and to be fair, he has a habit of stating the incredibly obvious.)
• Will you be able to finish your paper there? (This one came from my mom, who is wholly unable to grasp the concept of a dissertation, even though we sent her and my dad a bound copy of C's. In her mind it is nothing more than the papers I used to write for college, and for that reason, she can't understand why it is taking me so darn long to finish.)
  

A decision has been reached

C has made a decision. He has accepted one offer and turned down the other (a very surreal experience, he informed me). We finally know where we will be in the fall, which is a big relief to me. He still hasn't signed the official contract (although he has received a letter of intent from the dean of the college), so I'm still not prepared to talk about anything specifically yet lest I jinx us. I will say that the atmosphere in our home has been infinitely more relaxed in the past few days. I can't begin to say how lovely it was to have my entire family in the same place for an entire week!

In other news, C asked about partner placement. Although this isn't something University X (sorry, but it is the best pseudonym I can come up with at the moment) will consider until I've finished my dissertation, they will consider it then--in fact, they are writing it into his contract, something I've been told is unheard of. The dean is speaking to the English Department about me (I spent the weekend revising my CV and writing a short description of my dissertation and teaching experience), and she is trying to work out a part-time lectureship for me. These people have been really wonderful with the entire negotiation process, so wonderful that C really hasn't had to negotiate all that much. Frankly, after past several months (not to mention his entire graduate student experience), I feel like C deserves to be treated so well!

Lots of News

There is lots of news to report, most of it good. There is so much, in fact, that I'm going to resort to bullets.

• Despite my own paranoia, I am making good progress on my second chapter. I emailed my advisor last week to tell her I'd get her a draft by the end of the month, and she said that since she couldn't get to it until after she gives her final exam to work on it until the first week of May and send it then. That gives me just enough time to have a complete draft, including some sort of conclusion (I'm not always great at conclusions!).
• C received 2 job offers late last week. I'm not going to go into specifics right now because he is in the very early stages of negotiating. We do have a preference, but with so much to work out, I'm going to wait to blog about things more specifically. This comes as a big relief to C as he was beginning to wonder if he'd ever get an offer. I can't express how proud I am of him--he has worked so hard for this moment. He truly was like a different person this weekend, or rather, he was back to normal, not scrambling to get things done or feeling guilty about having to leave again. All of the stress and frustration of the past several months was worth it to see the look on his face when he realized that he had not one, but two offers.
  
• Now that he has these 2 offers, he has decided not to go to his last on-campus interview, which was scheduled for this week. It isn't a school he is very interested in, and even if he did get an offer there, he wouldn't accept it over the offers he does have. For the first time since the beginning of March, both of us will be home all week long! That is almost as exciting as the two offers!
• For the past 2 nights, Wild Man has decided that he did not want to nurse before going to sleep. In fact, last night he asked to be put in his crib. He got somewhat upset when C left his room, but after a few minutes, he calmed down and put himself to sleep. It seems my boy may have decided to wean himself. I have mixed feelings about this; I'm not altogether ready for him to stop nursing. I still like having that as our special time. That said, I was planning to wean him before my research trip this summer, so if he decides to do it himself, that will certainly be much easier than forcibly weaning.
• Going against what I thought made the most sense, C has decided to discuss these offers with his family. He isn't soliciting their opinions, and he has made it clear that the do not get an opinion. They have, however, had opinions, none of them good. They don't like either offer as neither moves us considerably closer to them. It seems they all, particularly Yetta and Pita, forgot how to say "Congratulations! We're so happy for you! I can't imagine how good this must feel." Instead, Yetta rattled off a list of questions about how often we'd be able to visit and why didn't he get any interviews at schools closer to them. For her part, Pita immediately burst into tears and said "Now I'll never have a relationship with Wild Man." I must say this statement really, really irritates me. They have no concept of how lucky they are to live in the same state as their entire family for so long, and they also have no concept how lucky they are to live in the same city as C's older brother, his wife, and their two boys. But it really irritates me because of my own familial situation. I never lived in the same state as any of my extended family, but I am very, very close to my maternal grandparents, my mom's youngest sister, and several of my cousins. Yes, it takes a bit more work to have a "relationship," but it isn't impossible. So I'd like to thank my in-laws for, as usual, making life all about them.

Nap time changes

Apparently last week, while I was out of town, C and Wild Man devised a new weekend nap time routine. Previously, naps on the weekends have been hit or miss, not because Wild Man doesn't need one, rather because he has refused to take one. Nap times got to be so difficult that recently I had resorted to nursing him to sleep rather than fighting him for an hour. Even with the nursing, he would likely only sleep 45 minutes to an hour, which meant he was exhausted by 6:00 in the evening and would go to be much earlier than usual.

Well last week, C decided that nap time was going to change. Instead of forcing Wild Man into his crib, he set up a bed for him on the couch. He then surrounded him by all of his favorite stuffed animals and got his favorite blanket. C explained to Wild Man that he was tired and he needed to rest. He then told Wild Man to lay down, he read him one story, and he rubbed his back. After some initial fussing, Wild Man relaxed and was asleep within 10 minutes and slept for almost 2 hours! This worked on both Saturday and Sunday. This afternoon when we announced it was nap time, Wild Man started calling for me and even pushed his way past C to get to me. C, however, picked him up and performed the same ritual while I went to a different part of the house. It seems he fussed a bit longer today than he did last week, probably hoping I would give in and "save him," but within 15 minutes he was sound asleep and has already been asleep for almost an hour, which means I can actually get some work done on a Saturday! Hooray!

Dear Ms. M: I can't find any sources

Dear Ms. M:

I've been frantically trying to find sources for my research paper, but so far I can't find any except ones that offer a synopsis of the novel. It seems that no one has anything to say about Charles Chesnutt except Chesnutt himself. The paper is due in a week; what do I do?

Signed, Searching Unsuccessfully

Dear Unsuccessful:

I just wasted 10 minutes of my precious time (time that I'd rather have spent researching my own project) searching for sources on Chesnutt, and lo and behold, after 5 minutes on the MLA database (which, as you'll recall, I introduced you all to in class), I found over 70 sources on Chesnutt written in the last 8 years. I surveyed these quickly and emailed you several citations that I think you'll find helpful. I'm not sure why these were so hard for you to locate--perhaps it was the search term I used. After all one does not normally think to search on the title of the novel one is working on. In the future, I suggest you consult the reference librarians (which I've repeatedly told you to do) as they will be able to help you find a plethora of sources, most of which will be available in our own lovely library.

Signed, an annoyed Ms. M

Positive Signs

Things may be looking up, and a lot of the stress may be about to come to an end. I'm not ready to say anything more than that right now, but today at least, I'm in a much better state of mind.

Give me a flipping break

Ok, so I occasionally break from my previous pledge to stop reading celebrity gossip. When I saw the headline entitled "Paltrow Suffered Postpartum Depression" I wanted to read it, thinking great, another celebrity is going to openly talk about PPD making it less taboo for "ordinary" women to talk about it. Then I read the column. I don't mean to sound uncharitable or unsupportive, but if the source of Gwyneth Paltrow's PPD after her the birth of her second was that she was unable to indulge herself in the same therapeutic techniques she followed during her first pregnancy, I am so not sympathetic. If everyone got PPD as a result of not having regular acupuncture and massages (yes, you read that correctly), we'd all be in a hell of a lot more trouble.

The Sources of Stress

Because I like reminding myself that I am stressed out, here are the sources of my stress:

• C left for yet another on-campus interview today. So far he has been on 5 (including this one), and as of yet, he still does not have a job offer. We were both really hoping that he'd get an offer from one of the 3 schools he is really interested in late last week or early this week so he didn't have to go on any more interviews.
• I've been officially been working on my dissertation for just over a year, and thus far, I only have a draft of one chapter. I'm disappointed in my progress.
• C's car, which used to be my car, is leaking oil everywhere. We either need to buy a new car (which is only an option if he gets a job) or put a new engine in it (which will cost us at least $1,200).
• My annoying fellow graduate students keep recalling books that I'm using for the chapter I'm currently working on.
• I only have 10 pages written for the chapter I'm currently working on.
• My house desperately needs to be cleaned--as in I can write my name in the dust on our bookshelves and the kitchen floor is gray instead of white.
• I don't know how C is going to cope if he doesn't get an offer. He is already second guessing everything he said or did at every single interview, and he is feeling more than a bit discouraged. I can only offer so much encouragement too; he knows how much I know about the academic job market, so lots of times my encouragement comes off as patronizing, even though I don't intend to be patronizing.
• I miss my husband.
  

Tomorrow I will be more positive, and perhaps, I will even post about the wonderful things in my life. In the meantime, I'm going to write for the next several hours.

*Amended to say: Usually writing these things out makes me feel better, and so today I wrote hoping that I would experience a catharsis and would feel better. It didn't work.

Conference Update

The conference went really, really well. I got a lot of great feedback about my paper and, thus, the concept that my entire dissertation is organized around. I feel really great about this as this was the first time I've discussed my work with people in my field who are not at my home institution. C and Wild Man did fine with out me, as I knew they would. In fact, I found it really insulting that so many people at the conference said to me "You left your son home alone with your husband; how is that going to work out?" I found this particularly insulting because we are supposedly enlightened academics. Granted this is a conference that is very welcoming of families, and I saw lots of men and women with their children. But I still don't like the assumption that fathers are incapable of caring for their own children for three days on their own. It was also really great to see my good friend, whom I haven't seen in over 7 months. We actually avoided lots of panels in favor of just chatting with each other, although we did go to a really interesting panel on Mommy Lit that I will likely blog about in detail in a few days.

I have lots of other things to say about what is going on in my life right now, but I'm not at the point where I can write about these things without getting more stressed out or emotional. So that's my update on my life: stressed out and emotional. How fun. . .

Memoir, Abbreviated

Flossie at Stepping on Acorns tagged me for the Six-Word Memoir meme. I've decided my life is too multi-faceted only to write one--ok, really, I couldn't decide which I liked better.

Here are the instructions: 1. Write your own six-word memoir 2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like 3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere 4. Tag five more blogs with links 5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

#1: I haven't finished my dissertation; so?

#2: Academic motherhood: yes, it is possible.

I now tag Academama, Megsg-h and Supadiscomama at The Rhetorical Situation, Jennie at My Handful, and Anastasia.

I don't want to go

On Friday I leave to go to a conference, and on one level, I'm really excited about this conference. I am presenting a chapter from my dissertation, and I'm looking forward to possible feedback. This is a panel that I proposed and organized, so I'm really looking forward to talking to these people. I also get to see a very dear friend of mine, whom I haven't seen since last July.

That said, I don't want to go. I really just want to stay home with my family. C has 2 interviews left, but this is his week off, so to speak. He will actually be home for 12 days. If I weren't going away this coming weekend, we could have a "normal" week for the first time in 5 weeks. It would be so nice just to stay home with my boys and be together as a family. Of course, getting to sleep in and order room service sounds like fun too . . .

Mean Mommy

I occasionally become a different sort of mother, the mother whom C has named "Mean Mommy." (And in our house this is a direct reference to a Sex and the City episode in which Miranda says "All of a sudden I become "Mean Mommy," and nobody likes "Mean Mommy.") "Mean Mommy" makes rare appearances in our household primarily because I don't like to be mean. Last night, however, I was more than willing to be mean. As has become his habit lately, Wild Man woke up at 12:15; his cries woke me up out of a dead sleep. I was in the exact same position I had been when I went to bed about 3 hours earlier (yes, I went to bed a 9:15, and no, this is not altogether unusual for me). Given that Wild Man had gone to bed about 45 minutes later than usual and that he had kept me up the night before, I was not in the mood to be soothing and comforting. I was in the mood to sleep. After it became apparent that he was not going to go back to sleep on his own, I went into his room, helped him find his puppy, and rearranged his blanket for him. He settled right down and in about 3 minutes was asleep. The second I turned to walk out of his room he stirred and sat up; rubbing his eyes, he said "Go play?" All of a sudden I realized that my wily toddler was trying to stay awake. On a different night I may have felt some sense of guilt over the chaos that has ruled our lives as of late and that has clearly had an effect on Wild Man. I may have interpreted this as an attempt to spend more time with me, given we hadn't seen each other much that day because of C's absence and my schedule. I may have been patient and comforting. This realization, however, irritated me to my very core, and I became "Mean Mommy." In my sternest voice I said, "It is not play time; it is sleep time. You go night night now." I then walked out of his room. He, of course, began crying. And you know what, this time I did not care. I was so tired that I just lied down in my own bed and dozed for the next 15 minutes. Yes, that's right I actually let my kid cry for 15 minutes straight, and again I did not care. After 15 minutes I went back into his room, and you know what? He wasn't standing up in his crib like he usually is; he was actually lying down, holding his puppy and his blanket. As soon as he saw me he indicated that he wanted me to hold him so he could rub my hair, something that always comforts him. I again said, in my "Mean Mommy" voice, "It is sleep time; you go night night right now." And for a change, he did just that. Within 5 minutes he was sound asleep in snoring. Within 10 minutes I was asleep myself. I'm beginning to think that "Mean Mommy" may be making more appearances if Wild Man continue to wake up in the middle of the night.

Do we want our kids to be independent?

This morning, while Wild Man and I were eating breakfast, I watched Ann Curry of The Today Show interview a mom who let her 9-year-old son ride the New York subway home alone. The mother, who is a columnist for the New York Sun, wrote about her son's desire to ride the subway home alone and her eventual acquiescence to his constant nagging. They talked about the best way for him to get home from mid-town Manhattan, she gave him a subway fare card, a subway and a bus map, and $20 just in case something happened as well as a bunch of quarters in case he needed to call her b/c the kid doesn't have a cell phone. The mother, Lenore Skenazy, has received lots of emails from people nostalgic about the first time they rode the subway alone in New York, and she's received even more emails from people accusing her of child abuse.

In the interview, Skenazy made the very valid (I think) argument that we live in a culture of fear. New York, as recent studies show, is not the city is was 20 years ago. It is one of the safest cities in America, and her son, Izzy, made it home without incident. He didn't get lost, he didn't get harassed, he didn't get abducted. What he did get was a sense of accomplishment and a greater sense of independence, things that Skenazy sees as positive--and I have to say that I agree. I don't really see why so many people are outraged by Skenazy's decision to let her son ride the subway home alone. In fact the thing that surprised me the most is that Izzy does not have a cell phone--which shows me that Skenazy is not the typical parent living in 2008. She is clearly more concerned with raising her son to be self-sufficient and independent minded than she is with making sure he has the latest and greatest technology, even if that technology can be seen as a tool to keep him safe. It seems to me that she is being criticized for raising her kid to be independent, and I'd like to know when did that become a bad thing? When did it stop being a goal for parents to raise their children to know how to take care of themselves?

I am the mother to a very independent minded toddler. Wild Man will throw a temper tantrum if either C or I try to help him do something that he is determined to do by himself. My kid has already figured out how to climb up on our kitchen chairs to get to the fruit bowl at the middle of the table when he wants a banana; he'd rather do this than ask one of us to get it for him. Because he is only 17-months-old, his independence has raised some safety issues. I'd rather he not try to climb onto the kitchen table via a chair because I don't want him to crack his head open on our tile floor, but I am happy he is so independent. In the age of helicopter parenting, it seems that we want our children to be wholly dependent on us because it makes us feel like good parents. Will it make such parents feel like good parents when their 22-year-old children move back home after graduating from college because they still aren't ready to leave the nest? I thought it was our jobs as parents to prepare our children for adulthood, which means we have to help them learn to be independent. It seems to me that is all Skenazy did. If it is abusive to want your child to be independent, then C and I are in a whole lot of trouble.

I'm tired, plain and simple

I've been neglecting lots of things lately, my blog included, and the reason is in the title of this post: I'm tired, plain and simple. I'm not just the "I'm a dissertating-mom-of-a-toddler-tired" either. I'm tired physically, emotionally, and intellectually. It seems that the reason for my tiredness can be traced to one reason, the same reason incidentally that is currently the cause of every single source of stress in my life right now: C's job search.

In all honesty, I may as well have gone on the market myself as much time and energy as I've invested in this damn search. I remember thinking this past fall when C was sending out applications how much easier that whole process was when he did it in 2006. He had all the materials drafted this time; he just needed to revise them to address specific job ads. Thus, our fall was relatively stress free. We had lots of family time, and I even managed to find time to work on my dissertation on most Sunday afternoons. The spring, however, has been a different issue. C has been absorbed with conference interviews and on-campus interviews, which, aside from taking him to all end of the country, take an inordinate amount of time to prep for. He has been consumed by all of this stuff to the extent that it is impossible for us to have a conversation that somehow doesn't include a discussion of an upcoming interview. On top of that, we also enjoy stressing ourselves out further and having the conversation that starts "What happens if after all of this C doesn't get an offer?" When he is home, C is trying to keep up with his classes because he is, in fact, still teaching 4 classes this semester and prepping for future interviews. Every school has asked him to do something different, so his prep for every interview is different. Needless to say it has been hard to get a lot of work done, but I am trying my best to get through another chapter.

The thing that is stressing us both out the most is Wild Man's reaction to everything. C and I have been much snippier with each other than usual--we're both tired, we're both frustrated, we're both missing each other. We've had several pointless conversations which go something like "I'm tired, M." "Well, C, I'm tired too." "No, I'm tired." "No, I'm tired." In other words we have pissing contests on a semi-regular basis. Wild Man has picked up on the tension in the house, and he has also started having trouble sleeping again. This one isn't a surprise. My kid is not a good sleeper, but in the past few months we've had major break throughs. Despite the fact that he consistently wakes up between 6 & 6:30, he generally sleeps through the night. If he does wake up, he does so because he has misplaced his puppy, his favorite stuffed animal that he has taken to sleeping with. Once one of us gives him puppy, he goes right back to sleep. For the past 3 weeks, however, he has had what I can only describe as insomnia. At least twice a week, he wakes up around 11 and is awake for several hours, sometimes 1 but more often 2 or 3. Last night he was up from 11 until 1 and then from 3 until 4. He isn't fussy either; in fact, he only cries when he is alone. As long as one of us is in his room with him he is content to lie in his crib and hold our hands. Sleeping on the floor next to Wild Man's crib isn't the ideal place to get a restful night's sleep, however. We're both hoping that he will begin sleeping through the night again as soon as we able to get back to our regular schedule. Unfortunately there are three more weeks of travel ahead of us: 1 trip for me and 2 for C. It looks like I will continue to be tired for a while.

Random Updates

It occurred to me that most of my recent posts have been about C's job search. It also occurred to me that there have been other things going on in our lives that I want to write about. Here is a random assortment of happenings.

• Wild Man has become very interested in the potty. To encourage his interest we bought him a potty, and he sits on it every day before his evening bath. Several times he has actually peed in it. I don't think he is intentionally peeing in the potty, but he does seem to understand that is what the potty is for. Every time he does is C and I get very, very excited and give him lots of praise. And every time he looks at us as though we're completely crazy.
• Wild Man has taken to calling me "Daddy" lately, and I'm not sure why. If C tells him, "take this to Mommy" he comes right to me, but he hasn't called me "Mommy" or "Mama" in weeks. He still calls C "Daddy" though, so I guess we have the same name. I wonder if this has anything to do with all of C's recent trips.
• I am going to a conference in 2 weeks, and I'm equally excited and nervous. I'm excited to get feedback on this chapter which is an edited down version of my Wharton chapter, but I'm nervous to be away from Wild Man for so long. I will be gone for just over 48 hours, but I've never been away from him for longer than 8 hours. I also have to take my breast pump with me since Wild Man is still nursing in the evenings. I haven't pumped in months, so I'm so not excited about pumping, even only twice.
• I think I've finally figured out how to approach the current chapter I'm working on. In all honesty, I've been so preoccupied with C's job search that I haven't gotten a great deal of work done in the past few weeks. This week, however, I forced myself to write something. I also spatially mapped out the novel, something I did with The House of Mirth and found to be very helpful. Determining the spatial location of every scene in the novel helped me solidify my argument about the main character's relationship with space, both metaphorical and literal.
• I'm coming to terms with the reality that we may well be moving in a few months. I don't necessarily want to leave the small College Town we've come to think of as home, but I keep reminding myself that we knew this when we moved here--our time here was always going to be limited.
  

Waiting

C is home from Canada, and this is, he has openly declared, the job he wants. A great school, a great community, a great salary, a great everything. Now we just have to wait for the department to interview two other people and hope that they make C an offer. In the mean time he has two other on campus interviews with schools we're only lukewarm about. That makes a total of 5 on campus interviews so far. Really we're just hoping he gets one offer. Did I mention that by the time this process is over he will have been out of town 5 weeks out of 6? Oh, and the week he's home I'm out of town.

I'm would still be an American

So C is interviewing at a school in Canada. In fact, he is there right now, and in all honesty, this is the job we're the most interested in for a variety of reasons. But I've gotten a number of questions from various people about what it would mean for us to move to Canada. For us, it would mean a job, a cool community, and a place to live. I feel like people think a potential move to Canada correlates to some sort of political statement on our part. In fact, one good friend (who was half-joking) said "What are you just tired of being American?" Several people have point-blank asked if we would give up our citizenship, to which I have not so tactfully responded "What in the heck are you talking about?" I don't understand these sorts of questions. Yes, I am vocally unhappy with the current political climate of this country, but I have never made any statements suggesting I would renounce my citizenship--although I have repeatedly said I would move out of the U.S. if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned. I get that most of the questions are polite small-talk asked by people curious about our potential life-choices, but some people have blatantly said "Why would you want to leave America?" I mean it isn't as if we're contemplating a move to Pakistan. It is Canada, a country that isn't so different from our own (except it is generally more liberal). It isn't as though we're thinking of packing Wild Man up and moving to the Wilds of Borneo.

Congrats to Kate and Noodle!

My dear blog-o-sphere friend Kate, of a k8 a cat a mission, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl yesterday, who has been affectionately dubbed Noodle. Congratulations Kate, TD, and Noodle! C, Wild Man, and I are so, so happy for you all. I am especially glad you had the medication free birth you so desired--and worked hard for!

Home

Well C made it home around 2:00 am on Wednesday morning. He managed to make it safely into the nearest big airport, although not to our smallish College Town. He did manage to catch the last shuttle between Big City Airport and our College Town, which meant he got home sooner rather than later. Wild Man was happy to see him, but he has expressed some displeasure with C. Several times yesterday while they were playing Wild Man randomly took his toys away from C and told him "No, no!" He also would not allow C to hug me or kiss me; any time he saw C trying to do either, he ran over to us and smacked C or pushed us apart. Wild Man seems to be punishing C for his frequent absences. It will be interesting to see how his behavior changes in the next weeks, as C has three more interviews in the upcoming weeks.

For now, we're happy to have our family altogether for a while.

Stuck in Pacific Northwest

At some point in the past year, C must have supremely pissed off the Travel Gods. Every time he has traveled in the past year he has been delayed. The last trip to the Midwest was relatively uneventful, although his flight to our Home State was delayed by 2 hours, which meant that he didn't get home until well after Wild Man was asleep. So far today, his flight into Home State has been canceled, he has been rebooked on a different airline, and his new flight has been delayed. His flight into Home State is so backed up that he will miss the last flight into our small college town, which means he won't get home until sometime tomorrow morning (unless he decides to spend the money to rent a car, which would put him home around 2:00 this morning). That means that he has to cancel another day of classes (thus far, he has had to cancel about three weeks worth of classes because of on-campus interviews, something he hasn't felt much guilt about given the way his current institution has treated him as of late). Even though he wouldn't have gotten home until well after Wild Man was asleep this evening, he would have been home tonight. He could have seen Wild Man tomorrow morning, albeit briefly, as he would have had to go teach. C had already planned to pick Wild Man up early and spend some Daddy-son time together. C and I could have had some time together this evening to discuss his interview and the upcoming trip--or my work, which we haven't had much time to discuss recently.

Instead it will be just Wild Man and me for another evening.

Chili and Blueberries

Wild Man and I had chili for dinner, and he had frozen blueberries for dessert. He wants all of our friends to know that chili and blueberries make a very nice shampoo.

Without Daddy

C has already made one trip for an on-campus visit, and he is currently on his second trip. Next week makes trip number three, and he has a fourth one in mid-April (although we're not as excited about this school so if he gets an offer we like before that trip he may not go on that interview). Life without C is always a bit hard for me. Even after almost 8 years of marriage, I still get upset when he leaves even for short trips like these. I blame it on the fact that we had a long distance relationship for 2 1/2 years while we were dating. He lived in the Southwest while I lived in New England; we were both working on our MAs, and although we talked every day, we would only see each other every few months. There were many tearful good-byes at airports for us before we were married. I remember those moments when he has to go out of town even now.

I, of course, no longer have the luxury of indulging myself in a cry when I'm missing my out-of-town husband as I now have to keep Wild Man occupied and distracted. And he has certainly missed his father. Yesterday we dropped C off at the airport, and on the way there, Wild Man fell asleep in the car. He slept through me carrying him into the house, so when he woke up, he realized Daddy was not around. He gave the house a thorough search for him, but soon realized that Daddy was not around. We ended up going to a friend's house so I could keep him distracted from C's absence. It seems we're both having a hard time without C around. I anticipate that this afternoon, once I pick Wild Man up from school, Wild Man will search the house for Daddy again, and my explanation that "Daddy had to go to work" will not be any more comforting than it was yesterday.

I am Paula Blood

That's right, friends, my rock star name would be Paula Blood. My pop star name would be Monique Bell, and my rap name would be Ms. Delfin0. And here is the rundown for Wild Man and C.

C
Rock Star: Gene McFaddon
Pop Star: Evan London
Rap Star: Flava Man

Wild Man
Rock Star: Brett McFaddon
Pop Star: Brian London
Rap Star: Black Man

Apparently C and Wild Man are father and son even in the music world. What are your musical names?

An update on C's job search

In the two weeks since the big conference, C has been a busy guy, making us a busy family. He currently has three on-campus interviews, and several of the schools he initially interviewed with indicated that they wouldn't be making decisions about who to bring on-campus until late-March. We're excited about one of the schools he already has an interview with, and we could be excited about another. The third school isn't so exciting because, in a lot of ways, he would still be doing what he is doing know just in a tenure-track position, which is attractive in itself. We're still hoping he gets interviews with 3 other schools that he is really interested in--both because of location and because of their programs. Now we're just waiting, which sucks.

Wild Man goes to the caucus

After going with me to vote in the primary yesterday afternoon, last night Wild Man joined C and I as we caucused in our Home State. This was a risky adventure as the caucus took place right in the middle of his bedtime, but he cooperated, allowing his parents to take part in the democratic process. I wrote about this experience in more depth at The Rhetorical Situation. I do want to say that I did not find the caucus experience particularly family friendly. Although there were lots of families at our precinct (I counted at least 10 kids under the age of 8, and 5 of those were toddlers like Wild Man), the poll workers were not particularly friendly to our situation. Although I was finally able to ascertain that we did not have to stay for the entire 2 plus hours, no one seemed to care that we had a child who clearly would rather have been in bed than in a church courtyard at 7:45 pm. I don't think this particular tradition adds to the democratic process as it severely limits the number of people who are able to participate. This is a seriously flawed system, and someone needs to figure out how to fix it.

C did, however, remind me that this is the second time that Wild Man has been with us when we voted: he joined us in November 2006 when he was just a few weeks old.

Sex and the City

HOORAY!! Finally the theatrical trail for the upcoming Sex and the City movie is out! I am so excited about this movie that I have already made plans to see it on May 30th.

The Mount

The Mount, Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, MA, is facing foreclosure. This makes me sad and angry. Sad because this home represents something that most women of the 19th century (and a lot of the 20th century) didn't have: a home of their own. I don't mean to sound trite, but The Mount was the ideal space for Wharton that Virginia Woolf called for all women (ok, not all women; Woolf is fairly limited) to have in order to develop an independent identity. And Wharton had it some 20 years before Woolf wrote about it. This article in the NY Times discusses the foreclosure in detail. This makes me angry from the perspective of someone who worked for a non-profit for three years. Let me first say that I know nothing about the way The Mount has been managed, its donors, its board, or the details of its debt. From my own experience, I do know that this sort of debt for a non-profit generally comes from mismanagement--at not necessarily only by those who run the day to day operations, but from the board. I think Edith Wharton Restoration made a good decision when it began restructuring its board a few years ago to include people who had experience in the business world, although perhaps that decision was made to late. It seems to me that non-profits are too often run by good meaning people who don't actually have much business sense or experience, which can often cause these good meaning people to make poor and uninformed decisions about the financial future of the organization they support.

Regardless of my feelings on the mismanagement of non-profits, The Mount is a place worth saving.

Angry

Here's another one that can be filed under "What the hell are people thinking?" This article on rape--or rather how feminists cry rape too often--made me so angry that I still haven't been able to read the entire thing. As if feminists want women to get raped because is supports our argument that women don't receive equal treatment in this country--or most other countries. What disturbs me the most is that this article is written by a woman. She is entitled to her opinion and I will fight for her right to voice her opinion, however misguided it may be. But that she actually thinks her fellow women would cry rape like the little boy who cried wolf shows me that she herself has never been the victim of an inappropriate sexual overture and that she has never had a friend knock on her the door of her dorm room at 3 am, sobbing that her "date" didn't take her saying "no" over and over again seriously. I'm equally troubled that she can't imagine such a thing happening to another woman.

Too much space

When I read today's strip of "For Better or For Worse," I laughed out loud because the idea that a person can have too much personal space directly contradicts everything I'm trying to say in my dissertation.

Looking for Daddy

Wild Man is seriously missing his daddy. He's not missing him so much that he is sobbing or anything like that, but he is randomly shouting out "Dada" and saying to me "Dada?" as if to say, "Where is my father, and when will he be home?" This morning when he woke up (it was a rough night for my teething tyke, and he ended up sleeping with me just so we could get some sleep), he pulled the covers back on C's side of the bed and said "Dada?" I think he was actually expecting to find C under the covers. Thankfully C will be home tonight, although not until after Wild Man goes to bed. I know one little boy who will be very happy to see his daddy tomorrow morning.

Missing my boy

I always miss Wild Man on Thursdays as I am on campus from 9:00 until 6:00 (I teach, do research, and take a class in the late afternoon). On an average Thursday, however, C picks Wild Man up at the usual time, and they have a daddy-son afternoon. By the time I get home around 6:20 or so, C is scrubbing the remainder of their daddy-son afternoon off of Wild Man as Wild Man splashes around in the bathtub (in our house, daddy-son afternoons always equal dirt and lots of it!). This afternoon C is out of town, and since I didn't want to miss my class, I asked a good friend to pick Wild Man up at school when he picked up his daughter and take Wild Man home with them for the afternoon. This friend generously agreed to do this for us, and I am very thankful. I know that Wild Man is in great hands and that he is having a blast with his buddy. In fact, when I explained to him that he would be going home with this particular friend he immediately began chanting her name and searching for her in our house, as if she would magically appear just because he was calling her name. But this is the first time someone other than C or me has ever picked him up from school, and that makes me a little sad. I'm counting the minutes till my class is over, and I can go get him and give him lots of hugs and kisses.

Thanks Kate!

Kate, at a k8, a cat, a mission, has named my blog an excellent blog! Thanks, Kate!

In honor of Kate honoring me, I want to bestow a few "Es" of my own.

To Lilian at Mama(e) in Translation who offers inspiring stories about her life and thoughtful commentary on life in general.

To Professing Mama who offers great insight into motherhood and academia.

To AcadeMama who is balancing being a mother and a graduate student in a way I admire.

And to my fellow bloggers at The Rhetorical Situation, who always get me thinking.

On his way

C left this morning to attend his field's version of MLA. Between this afternoon and Friday afternoon, he will interview with various schools. I'm feeling a bit strange about this whole process. Last year, we assumed that C, although he did have a few interviews including an on-campus visit, would not get a job because he wasn't finished with the doctorate when he went on the market. Now it seems (emphasis on seems; I don't want to put the cart before the horse, as my mother would say) that he has a really good chance of getting a tenure track position. I feel excited for him--he definitely deserves such a job--and our family--it will improve our lives a lot, at least financially.

But personally, I am feeling a bit ambivalent. If we move in the fall, my life will change dramatically for a lot of reasons, and I am not exaggerating. The move, although for the benefit of our family, will be largely about C, and while I'm ok with that, I am also wary of my own reaction and feelings once we move. I've made a similar move before when we were first married. I moved with C to the mid-sized Northeast University that treated him terribly. For the first year there, I was miserable, so miserable that I started having panic attacks and ended up in therapy (I am oversimplifying for the purposes of the blog, as the move did not cause the panic attacks and therapy was a good thing). I know what it feels like to be in a place where you have no friends and few options for making them, and I am wary of that. Secretly (well, not so secret anymore) I hope he gets a position at one of the schools that would put us close to good friends. I know myself well enough to know that I will do better in a new situation if I have a support system close by. But then, I also know myself well enough to know that I will make the best of any situation. Here's hoping his interviews go well and that Wild Man doesn't miss him too much.

**Because I've been questioned about this issue before, I want to add this post-script. While I do acknowledge that I am giving up some things (i.e. opportunities for funding and teaching) if C gets a position, I do not feel like I am making any major sacrifices for him. I am not putting his career before mine. Rather the way circumstances have worked out, he is in a position to start his career first, and as we're a family, we have to make the decision that is the best for our family. I am fully aware that I will experience a slowdown if we do move, but C experienced the same thing when we left the Northeast for the Southwest when I began my ph.d. I'm not worried about my career, my dissertation, or my work. I'm worried about being lonely.

Vulnerable

I've been thinking a lot about the shootings at Northern Illinois University. C and I had a long talk over the weekend about how vulnerable we are as teachers. He is particularly frustrated by his university's refusal to install a phone in the large lecture hall where he routinely teaches. His desire for such a phone isn't only because of the recent shootings. Because of the way the building is constructed, cell phones often don't work in the lecture hall. He has had to break up at least one fight (between an dating couple) and has had one student pass out in class. Without a phone he has no way to contact his department's office, campus security, or emergency services. He was particularly frustrated by this the day his student passed out, as he knew she was battling cancer and likely needed to get to the hospital quickly. The point is that he has repeatedly asked for a phone to be installed in this particular room, and he has repeatedly been told that the department doesn't have the resources to do so. If someone (heaven forbid) decided to attack this classroom, he would have no way to contact anyone if his and his students' cell phones weren't working, which is quite likely. Given the size of this room and the fact that there is no rear entrance or exit, he is feeling a bit vulnerable.

I hadn't felt a similar vulnerability until I realized that the classroom I'm teaching in this semester leaves me and my students vulnerable to a similar attack. I'm teaching in a small room, made to seat about 30 students. There are no other classrooms near mine. The door, which I typically leave open, is at the back of the room, and I can see anyone enter or exit. My students' desks are bolted to the floor, so if anyone did come in blazing a gun, my students have nowhere to hide. This all occurred to me today as we discussed Frances Harper's poetry. I seriously contemplated shutting and locking the door from the inside, but I didn't. After class, as I left the building, I also realized that I don't know where the fire exits are (I've never taught in this building before). Thursday morning, I think I will do a little exploring and make myself more familiar with my surroundings so that I feel a little less vulnerable.

Ultimately though, while I do think it is a good idea that I do this, I'm sad that on the first day of every semester, I will now determine how to quickly exit a classroom and how my students can protect themselves should I ever be in similar situation.

Labiaplasty: What will they think of next?

Pardon the flip title of my post, but I'm so saddened by this that I had to be flip or else I might cry. I found this sight on labiaplasty via the NOW website, which offered a quiz called "Love Your Body" in honor of Valentine's Day. The question on labiaplasty reads "A new trend of plastic surgery called ________ is when external folds of skin surrounding the vulva are snipped to better resemble images of "ideal" women." Is there actually an image of an ideal vulva that women believe they should conform to? I don't even know what to do with that. I'm not really surprised as much as I am aghast. Are women actually scouring images of nude women to determine if their labia are small enough? Are men actually saying to their female partners, "Honey, I'd like if your labia were a little smaller. Would you consider having surgery to correct that?" I have heard of women having labiaplasty after giving birth because they felt their labia didn't look and/or feel the same after labor (which troubles me as well). But I was totally unaware that there was an ideal image of a vulva and that small labia are preferred. Isn't there a single part of the body that women (and even men) can be universally happy with? Or at least one that we don't feel we need to surgically alter?

I choose my choice part 2

I'm still thinking about this idea, so this won't be the longer post I eventually hope to write. I do want to clarify a few things though.

First, I didn't mean to suggest that feminists are supposed to feel unfulfilled by motherhood (sorry, Jennie, if I did misread you). Rather what I meant was that there is a stereotype of women, who may or may not be feminists, who have given up their high-powered, high-paying careers to have children. These women are either obsessed with their children or unfulfilled by motherhood. I'm thinking of another SATC episode: "The Baby Shower" which is from the first season. In this episode the ladies attend a shower of a former friend who has left behind her high-paying job as a talent agent for a record company to marry and have a family. Aside for the main characters, all the women at the baby shower have children, and several of them have also left behind similar careers to have families. One woman in particular talks about how she used to manage something like 50 people in a Fortune-500 company (it's been a while since I've seen this episode, so forgive me if I'm getting the details wrong. The gist is correct.). She says "Now I just yell at the gardener," implying that she no longer has an outlet for her passion for work. She is represented as unfulfilled. At the other end of the spectrum there are the women who are completely obsessed by their children. There is one woman who says "I think my son is a god, and I tell him so every day." I think we, and by we I mean women and society at large, buy into these stereotypes a lot. Women are supposed to be either somewhat unfulfilled by motherhood or obsessed with their children. There is no in-between when clearly there is as most mothers I know are incredibly happy to be moms but also struggle to find time to do the things they like and want to do that have little to do with mothering.

Second, Amy Reads writes:

I think feminism gave us the right to choose to have a career outside of "The Home," or to "stay at home" with our children, or both, or neither. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose to be a stay-at-home mom, but that doesn't mean I have any less respect for the women who do choose to stay at home, Ph.D. or no. Feminism is All About Choice, and who am I to judge another woman's choices? She certainly should not be able to judge mine.

I agree with everything Ms. Reads has expressed, but unfortunately, we, as women and mothers, are judged for our choices. It is all well and good to say that feminism has provided us with choices and that we shouldn't judge one another for our choices. In an ideal world, that would be the way it is, but we do judge each other for our choices. The "Mommy Wars" wouldn't be a term we're all familiar with if we didn't judge one another. I'm really interested in the guilt (and I'm not sure this is the word I want to use, but it is the best one I can come up with right now) women (and, obviously, I don't mean all women) feel for choosing motherhood rather than a career, or a career rather than motherhood, or "trying to have it all." Why do we wonder whether we are sell-out feminists? Why do stay-at-home moms attack working moms and vice versa? Why can't Charlotte (or Jennie, or Supadiscomama, or Megs, or Ms. Reads, or I for that matter) just make a choice for herself, which is really what I want to believe feminism is about, without having to justify it?

I choose my choice

I'm putting this title up so that I actually blog about this line, which is from an episode of "Sex and the City." I've been thinking about this line ever since Jennie and I had our conversation about motherhood and feminism. I think many women, particularly academic women, struggle with being feminists and being mothers. There is the perception, as Jennie points out, that as ambitious, learned women, we're supposed to feel somewhat unfulfilled by motherhood, particularly if we end up staying home with our children for any length of time. I have to admit that I hadn't given that a lot of thought until Jennie brought it up. Why does that perception exist? Why do we end up feeling guilty, on the basis of our feminist beliefs, if we aren't unfulfilled? Why isn't it ok to have a degree (or even three) and decide to stay home with the kids? Why do we pretend to not be interested in our children when we're in certain circles? I have an anecdote about this. I have a professor who is a staunch feminist and who has a young son. I don't see this professor as often as I would like, and when I do, I invariably ask her how she's doing. To be quite honest, I don't expect her to tell me about her son; we don't really have that sort of relationship, and given that she is who she is, I'm more interested in her work. But she does tell me about her son, and she often shows me a picture. I then comment on how cute he is (not out of sense of obligation either. This kid is genuinely beautiful.). She then makes some sort of self-deprecating comment about her mothering skills. This is a woman who is extremely accomplished and fairly confident. It always bothers me that she makes such self-deprecating comments about her mothering skills.

My gut reaction is this issue is that women are too hard on themselves--we have been taught to expect too much out of ourselves (yes, this is the generic sort of statement that my peeps over at The Rhetorical Situation would hate, but I do think it is a largely true statement). I do believe that we're all insecure about our abilities to mother and to be successful in life in general (as evidenced by my professor's comments), but I'm not quite sure why we continue to feel guilt and confusion over being mothers, wives, and feminists. I am going to think about this some more and revisit this quotation. In the meantimes, does anyone have any thoughts?

Random question

I'm taking this post down because this information is mysteriously making its way around my department. In fact, someone I never talk to just stopped me in the hall to congratulate me on the number of interviews C has. That makes me really uncomfortable for a few reasons. First and foremost, yes, C has a lot of interviews, but regardless of how many interviews he has, he is not guaranteed a job. I don't want him to be uncomfortable with the people in my department, especially faculty members, should he not get a job. Second, I don't want to make other people, especially graduate students, feel uncomfortable in comparison.

I think Wild Man needs one

Wild Man is way into coloring lately--ok, he is into scribbling in coloring books, but whatever. To encourage his creativity, I think he needs this coloring book.

Holy crap!

I'm sitting in my office, deep into a book on Wharton as a spatial theorist (this is, by the way, my last week on Wharton for a while; I submitted my unfinished chapter to my advisor yesterday and am planning to begin a new one. I'm just trying to get through a stack of ILL books I ordered.), when my cell phone rings. It is C from his office. The conversation went something like this:

M: Hey, what's up? Are you on your way home?

C: I have an on-campus interview.

M: What in the hell are you talking about? (Thinking to myself: how is this possible? Your field's version of MLA isn't for 2 more weeks.)

C: I have an on-campus interview.

M: That's great! Could you give me some more details?

C: I have an on-campus interview.

Ok, so I am exaggerating a bit, but C was in a bit of shock. It seems that he checked his voice mail when he finished teaching, as he does obsessively these days, and he had a call from Medium West Coast State University requesting an on-campus. It seems that MWC State is following C's fields recent trend of foregoing preliminary interviews at their version of MLA in favor of bringing candidates on campus. They actually want him to come the week of the conference, which he obviously can't do as he now has 8 preliminary interviews there (did I forget to mention that?). My normally unshakable husband is more than a little shaken.

As for me, I am so proud of him! I want to run fly up to the Big Norteast State School where he got his Ph.D. and tell all those hoity-toity, up-tight people who made his academic life hell for almost 7 years: "Look, this is the guy you said couldn't do it! Not only did he do it, but he did it 2 years faster than most of your students, while teaching a 4-4 course load, and having a wife and a child. Oh, and by the way, he's got 8 interviews (1 at an R1 university) at your big conference and 1 on-campus already! What do you think of him now?"

Pretty Mama

Wild Man has recently stopped calling me "Mimi" and started calling me "Mama." He has also learned the word "pretty." This morning as he was running around our bedroom while I got dressed he took a break from chasing the cat and shouting "Pellie" at her (her name is Pearl) to watch me put on a necklace. He then held up his arms and said "Up, pwease." So I picked him up, and he proceeded to touch my necklace. He looked at me, patted my hair, and said "Pretty Mama." Then he wriggled out of my arms and resumed chasing the cat.

In case something happens to the first one. . .

In a recent conversation with my mom, we got on the topic of me having a second child. As a rule, I do not discuss having children with my parents. They had no idea that C and I were trying when I announced I was pregnant with Wild Man, and if we do have a second child, I plan to use the same strategy. The conversation started with me saying how exhausted I was from the rough week we'd had. It went something like this.

Mom: It sounds like Wild Man is having fun.

Me: Oh, he is. After three days on antibiotics, he is back to his old self, playing, running, getting into everything. I'm the one who is struggling! I have a cold and am still trying to catch up on all the sleep I lost this week.

Mom: Just think how tired you'll be when you have two.

Me: Well, Mom, Wild Man may be it. We may not have a second one.

Mom: (in a very stern voice) You have to have a second child, M!

Me: Well, no, Mom, actually I don't.

Mom: Yes, you do. Parents should always have two children in case something happens to the first one.

Now, I've heard my mom say this my entire life, and she firmly believes it. I don't question her belief in this because I've heard her speak about how close my brother came to dying as an infant (he had spinal meningitis when he was 5 months old, and he was very sick for several weeks). She took comfort in knowing that if anything had happened to my brother she had another my sister to help her through her grief (I wasn't born yet). Every time I hear this story, I always think "Can one child really replace another child? In my mother's case, would my sister have been enough to get her through losing my brother?" Fortunately, we'll never know because (and I think this is something that influences my mother's opinion on this issue) my mother has never lost a child. When she said this during our recent conversation, I just changed the subject, but I had much stronger reaction that I didn't share with her. I really think this is a stupid statement, and I hope my mother never says it to me again. If anything ever happened to Wild Man, I would be completely and utterly devastated. No other child could replace him, just as he couldn't be the replacement for any other child. While I understand that the job of parenting and the love for one child may force a person through the grieving process faster, I don't think one person can ever replace another. And I also think saying this sort of thing in front of a child who has just lost her sibling puts a lot of undue pressure on that child. Not only has the child lost her sibling, but now she must also become a replacement for that lost sibling. I love my mom, but sometimes I really question her thinking.

Another phone call from school

In the middle of teaching this morning, my cell phone went off, and I looked at the number. It was Wild Man's school. I told my students that I had to take the call, and I walked out of the room, dreading the news I was about to receive. It was Wild Man's teacher telling me that one of Wild Man's classmates had bitten him on the cheek. Wild Man is fine, aside from a mouth shaped bruise on his cheek, but she wanted to let me know so I didn't get upset when I picked him up. My students got a good laugh out of that one.

A rough week

Shortly after I posted on Monday, as I was revising a section of my dissertation, I got a phone call from Wild Man's teacher. He had a fever of 103.6. I dropped everything to go get him, while C tried to get us into to see the pediatrician. He quickly learned that there was no chance of us getting an appointment on Monday, so he made an appointment for first thing Tuesday morning. We were scheduled to see a pediatrician in the practice we go to, but not our pediatrician. This is not normally a big deal, except that the pediatrician C made the appointment with is our least favorite of all the pediatricians. When I got home with Wild Man, we quickly assessed the situation, and given how lethargic Wild Man was, we decided to brave the urgent care clinic that afternoon. Once we got there, we figured that there wasn't much chance of us getting an appointment, but C stood in line to check us in while I sat with Wild Man. My normally active little boy didn't want to do anything more than sit on my lap and rub my hair. After 25 minutes in line, C was told that there was a 2.5 hour wait to see a doctor. He made the executive decision that we needed to get Wild Man home and wait to see a doctor until the morning.

Given how terrible Wild Man felt, Monday night wasn't as horrible as it could have been. Tuesday morning was pretty bad though, as C was still getting over a stomach bug he had developed Monday morning. Somehow I managed to get ready to teach, give Wild Man breakfast, give C ginger ale, and get us all to the doctor by 8:15 am. The doctor's assessment wasn't a surprise: a virus. He told us to continue to give Wild Man medicine if the fever was bothering him and to bring him back by the end of the week if he still had a fever. My mommy instinct told me the doctor was wrong; I knew something was wrong, and that Wild Man's symptoms were going to get worse before they got better. The rest of the week has been about keeping Wild Man feel comfortable and trying to find time to do a little work.

Wednesday C was at school all day, so I was home with Wild Man. Considering he had a fever that hovered around 102 all day, we had a relatively good day. At 10:00, as I tried to check email, Wild Man sat down by my desk and just started crying. I picked him up and 5 minutes later he was asleep in my lap. I held him while I answered students' emails for about 30 minutes, and I decided to try to put him down. Putting Wild Man down when he's fallen asleep on you is always dicey. I opted for our bed (yes, I am part of the bad-mommy brigade) rather than his crib b/c he tends to nap better on our bed. Luckily, he stayed asleep. And he slept for 2.5 hours, giving me enough time to get my lessons for Thursday. He woke up in a good mood, so after lunch, he and I headed to school so I could get some copies made and pick up some books from the library. We got home just as C got home, and Wild Man was happy to see his dad. They played for an hour or so, and then Wild Man crawled into my lap and fell asleep for an hour.

Wednesday night was rough. C took the night shift so I was rested to teach. He ended up sleeping on the floor of Wild Man's room so he could comfort him back to sleep every time he woke himself up coughing. I spent Thursday in my office on campus working, and C and Wild Man had the day to themselves. It was, apparently, 180 degrees different from Wednesday. Wild Man was whiny, tired, fussy, and just not himself. We had an appointment with our pediatrician for Wild Man to get his 15 month shots Thursday afternoon, but it was pretty clear that he wouldn't be getting any shots. As soon as C and Wild Man walked into the doctor's office, I knew my mommy instinct had been right. Wild Man was glassy-eyed, listless, and wanted to do nothing more than have me hold him. He made no attempt to get down or to play with the toys in the waiting room. He didn't say hello to the receptionist, the nurses, or any of the other children there. He didn't even notice the doctor as she poked and prodded him--and he loves his doctor.

After the doctor did her initial assessment, she decided that Wild Man needed a chest x-ray; although his lungs sounded clear, his prolonged fever had her worried. She said she'd seen several kids his age with pneumonia, so she wanted to make sure he didn't have that. We headed over to radiology for an x-ray, and 45 minutes later she showed C and I our son's x-rays. She explained that the wedge shaped shadow in his right lung was pneumonia. I immediately assumed we'd be spending the night (and maybe the next) in the hospital. Our doctor is so great though. She wanted to do what was best for Wild Man and given what we'd told her about his hospital stay after his seizure, she said she didn't want to put him in the hospital unless it was absolutely necessary. She had a nurse check his pulse-ox, and when she learned it was 97%, she decided he could go home with us. She gave him two shots of antibiotics, and we made an appointment to see her again today.

Last night was not great, but it was better than Wednesday night. And Wild Man woke up for the first time all week without a fever. He still wasn't himself, but he was more himself than he has been. He actually ate and tried to play. At his follow-up appointment, his doctor decided to give him a course of oral antibiotics rather than another shot, and we discussed what to do if he should get worse over the weekend. Right now he is sleeping soundly, and C and I are both keeping our fingers crossed that he sleeps through the night. Because he and I definitely need a good night's sleep after this rough, rough week.