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.