A Question of Degree

Madeleine L'Engle, RIP

2007-09-07T14:57:00.000-04:00

Madeleine L'Engles's publisher announced that she died yesterday. I loved her books and look forward to reading them with our kids. It's strange how sad I feel, given that I didn't even know she was still alive.

The next in my series of free advice

2007-09-06T10:43:00.000-04:00

When you finally open up your new, lovely, sparkling computer and decide to make the switch to a new email program, I recommend taking extra time with new messages to ensure that you're sending messages to the intended recipient. I've spent years typing "DT" to get DT's email address, but apparently now, the first name that pops up is an old friend from college who is also named DT. I count myself lucky that we're still vaguely in touch, so he probably won't think its too weird that I'm asking him about what flights to book for a Thanksgiving trip and giving him an update on Rocco's potty-training.

What a difference a year makes

2007-09-05T11:08:00.000-04:00

Last night was Back to School night at WonderGirl's school, which I suddenly have a vague memory of chronicling last year... oh yes, here. Last year I remember being almost overwhelmed with the newness of it all; I was itching to be acclimated, or assimilated, or at least told which restroom adults were supposed to use. This year, WonderGirl is in the same classroom with the same teachers as last year and she's moved from being chronologically in the middle of her multi-age class to being the second-oldest by a margin of three days. (She is disappointed by these three days, and I want to remind her that if she'd had the decency to be born even in the same week she was due, she would be the oldest. I don't remind her, because I am Nice.) We're one of four families (out of the 18 in the class) who are returnees from last year. WonderGirl is apparently relishing her leadership position (if leadership equals telling other kids not to pretend to play with guns), and I suppose I thought we'd be able to fill a similar niche with the new families. I wanted to smooth their integration process a little, reassure them that it was okay to come visit the room whenever they wanted, give them a heads-up (or multiple headses-up? heads-ups?) about how field trips work, or classroom volunteering. All the things that I wish I'd had someone telling me last year.

Turns out I'm not like the new parents. It would be fair to say they project confidence. I'll leave it there -- again, because I'm Nice. I don't pretend to play with guns.

Two other things happened, one that depresses me and one that reminds me why we are so grateful to be involved with the school:

First, when I made my nametag, I wrote, "WonderGirl" instead of "Ruth." I didn't even notice until another parent asked if we were supposed to do that. I could understand this as a cheap-and-easy characterization in a bad short story, but as a moment in my life, it doesn't rank highly.

Second, one of the parents asked the teachers how they were going to adjust their styles and curriculum to reflect the fact that 13 of the 18 students are boys, since apparently all classrooms are naturally geared toward girls, girls don't like physical play, boys are typically left out and girls take over. My blood pressure shot up. It was yet another example of people wanting to throw labels at individuals and then act as if the labels are meaningful. (Because you're a parent, you must want XYZ from our church. Because you're a boy, you must need XYZ in a classroom environment.) The teachers responded beautifully, and I couldn't believe how quickly my vital signs returned to stability. They immediately pointed out that boys are on a spectrum and girls are on a spectrum, and they focus on what each individual child needs. To my mind, the most unenlightened classroom is one in which everyone is assumed to learn the same way. To change that classroom to an environment in which boys are assumed to learn one way and girls another might be progress, but only barely. I'm truly baffled as to why this is such a popular view in our otherwise progressive local environment. Why would any parent want anything other than an acceptance that all kids have different preferred learning styles, and you can't figure out what works simply by checking out the kid's genitalia? Why wouldn't we all start with that desire, instead of screaming, "Please stereotype my child!"

One final note: I believe I have used up my quota of times when I can hear other parents describe their children as "bright" or "active" without sticking my fingers in my ears and signing the Smurf theme song.

Willpower, noun

2007-08-29T13:07:00.000-04:00

Definition: I am sitting about 25 feet from my new MacBook, oven-fresh, still in the box, while I try to work on revisions of my latest paper on my cranky old Dell with the nonfunctional touchpad buttons and moody keyboard.

Not what I hoped for

2007-08-28T13:55:00.000-04:00

The NY Times headline reads, "Big Decline in US Poverty Rate." I have to admit, as I clicked over, I hoped it would be something more dramatic than a drop from 12.6% to 12.3% of Americans living in poverty. 36.5 million people in poverty. 47 million without health insurance. Egads.

From the article:

''The poor are politically mute,'' said Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. ''What rational politician would listen to the poor? They don't vote, they don't write checks, why care?''

This seems to fit with DT's observation that, in his almost-entirely Medicaid-funded patient population, he's seeing more kids now with two working parents in the family.

I'm back

2007-08-28T08:48:00.000-04:00

I was wrong. I miss this blog and the space it gave me. So, I'm back for now, at least.

I'm feeling overwhelmed by me-too-ism lately, and I don't know where to look for a solution. Last weekend, I was at a Religious Education teacher training for our congregation (which was inspirational and fun, a nice break for me) and our new minister was asking what brought us to teach RE. One woman, whose children are grown, said that when she was a parent, she felt a bit resentful that RE was left as the province of the parents only. No one else in the congregation volunteered. Now that she doesn't have kids in RE anymore, she came back out of guilt initially. She didn't want to be one of those uninvolved non-parents. Now she stays for several reasons, one of which is that she values the intergenerational dynamic and views it as worthwhile to help nurture the next generation of kids. Our assistant minister was present, and her response to the idea that older folks could give to the kids? A very quick hand up to be recognized and an emphatic, "The kids should be giving to the older folks, too." Very true, but also a definite "ME TOO!" moment.

PeaceBang wrote a post last week about the challenges single people face in a congregation and the assumptions and actions that make many congregations unwelcoming to people who aren't partnered or don't have children. My reaction upon reading it was twofold: first, I have no idea if the things she describes happen in my congregation, because I never get to do anything at church that's not RE-focused, and there aren't single people in our congregation who volunteer for RE. It would be fair to call me completely ignorant in that sphere. Second, her view of what it is like to be partnered or a parent in a UU congregation sounded romantic and completely unfamiliar to me. I didn't comment on her post because I couldn't speak to her original point. I made the mistake of commenting on Chutney's blog, though, when he posted a followup about PB's ideas, and was quickly chided for not getting it. It's put my day off to an awful start, because anyone who knows me in real life knows that one of my biggest goals is not to offend other people. I can stand behind what I wrote, but the fact is, it was a "ME TOO!" moment for me. She was talking about what singles need, and it made me think about what I need instead.

This phenomenon is so often present in DT's and my relationship, also, and it's never helpful. I'm (much much much) more likely than DT to speak up when I have a problem or when I need him to treat me differently than he currently is. Often, when I start a conversation like that, he'll have a "ME TOO!" moment and tell me that I also do whatever it is I'm asking him to stop. I'm left feeling conflicted. I don't want to hurt him, I don't want to be hurt, I want to be listened to, and I want to know that he will tell me these things when they happen instead of waiting for me to bring something up.

As with so many things, it all comes back to listening, I think. If we all have a space in which we feel listened to, we don't have to crowd others' space, looking for understanding. Our assistant minister obviously feels that children and youth have responsibilities that they're not acknowledging, and she had no place to make that point, so she honed in on someone else's space. I don't feel like anyone knows or cares that my congregation doesn't actually support parents of young kids, and I don't feel like anyone in my congregation wants to hear that, so I honed in on PeaceBang's space. DT doesn't like to tell me when I'm screwing up, so he goes along for the ride when I'm trying to express myself. End result in all three cases is that people on all sides of the conversation are/feel misunderstood and neglected.

If you have a solution, feel free.

If I'm posting again, you can look forward to exciting updates from the dissertation that refuses to age into adolescence! the committee that cannot exist together in the same room at the same time! the job search that is both too big and too small at the same time! the kid that is excited about potty training right up to the part where he might have to stop peeing in his underwear! the friend of a friend who appears to have a healthy pregnancy after a heartbreaking second trimester loss!

Actually, I think I just summed up a frightening amount of my last two months and used up my exclamation mark quota, to boot. Depressing. Off for coffee.

Assessing the future

2007-07-31T10:14:00.001-04:00

Well, I was aware that I haven't been blogging, but until now, didn't realize it had been a month since I posted. Time flies when it's summer and you're juggling vacations, day camps, sick kids, extra work and your own expectation that summer should be, well, lazy.

I've been taking some time to think about why I've written this blog and what I want to do with it in the future. When I began, I thought I'd write about the odd intersection of being a grad student and being a parent, with a dose of perspective that comes from fertility issues and appropriate dashes of my own brand of what I like to call humor but which is, sadly, probably just poor grammar. I wanted to be a voice for people JUST LIKE ME and I wanted to practice writing again without using any Greek letters. I wanted to do this without telling anyone who I really was, though. I don't know if I've ever made this overtly clear, but Ruth is not my real first name (although my children truly are named WonderGirl and Rocco). I have a fear of being Googleicious, especially since I will (knock on a redwood forest) be looking for a job in the next bit of time. However, the anonymity is starting to feel confining and, let's face it, there isn't exactly a niche out there in the blogosphere that will go sadly empty if I don't soldier on.

Apparently, what I want is a journal, not a blog. I want to be able to write clearly about my work and clearly about my kids. I want to post pictures. I want a space to keep the small daily memories that doesn't require finding a (functional) pen in this house, and that space should, ideally, not be something I can lose if I ever decide to clean said house.

So, I think I'm starting a new blog that will be entirely narcissistic. I'm going to password-protect it (you can do that, right?) and I'm going to be open about everything. I'll probably send our family the link. I may still write here when I need to be snarky or political, or I may just take that part of myself over to Begging to Differ permanently. I know there are a few people who read this blog, and if you'd like the new link when it exists, either leave a comment here or email me through the sidebar link. Although I will deny the existence of this blog if asked, I would like to keep up the relationships that I have been lucky enough to develop through my half-assed posting here.

Stinking red blood cells

2007-06-28T15:22:00.001-04:00

Starting to write is always the hardest part. I'm well-versed in writer's block at that lovely moment of, "Okay, I've got the outline, I know where's I'm going, I just have to get there." Right now, I'm enjoying the feeling of having sent my nearly-scooped paper off to the co-authors for (hopeful) approval by Monday (hah!), which means I'm supposed to be working on my dissertation proposal. (Which, if you're keeping track, I meant to write last fall. Again, hah!)

So, I've got my outline, kind of, and I've even got little phrases scattered throughout my text file for what I want to say in my introduction. All I have to do now is outline (in sentences. whole sentences.) a basic understanding of genetics. For math people.

So, my first bit is just to introduce the concept of humans as diploid organisms. I can't do it. I can't start my first sentence, because those damn red blood cells with no nuclei and no DNA keep messing up my sentence structure. I feel like I shouldn't start my proposal with the phrase, "Except for red blood cells..." and I really don't want a parenthetical in my first couple of sentences (although regular readers will know I adore them generally) and as a result, I'm stuck. I have no less than five alternate sentences written right now, they all suck, and therefore, I'm never going to write this proposal and I'll never graduate and I'll probably quit this program and start some other marginally-related grad program when I'm 43 in yet another pursuit of a PhD and everyone will say, "Wow! You've really done well to get this far with two preteens and a broken hip!" and I'll say, "Fucking red blood cells."

Apparently the wrong one is running

2007-06-24T20:03:00.000-04:00

I'm too busy to write -- my paper, my visiting in-laws, DT and my kids, and the wine in my fridge are all in line for my attention ahead of the blog right now.

That said, I had to stop in to say, again, that I think Elizabeth Edwards rocks. Why isn't she running, instead of her vaguely-slimy Tarheel fan of a husband? Say what you think, Elizabeth.

When they were good, they were very, very good

2007-06-18T11:30:00.001-04:00

It's been a hit-all-the-green-lights few days, and I'm trying to appreciate it instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop. In that spirit, a recounting:

I waited too late to make Father's Day brunch reservations and we couldn't go to DT's first choice, a close-by restaurant. Instead, I got a table at a place we like quite a bit for dates, but didn't think would be kid-friendly. The drive there was shorter than we thought it would be, the staff was beyond-friendly to Rocco and WonderGirl, and we had a wonderful meal outside, but in the shade. Even though it was late, Rocco didn't fall asleep in the car on the way back, but waited until he was home in his crib, where he slept soundly for two hours. (That does not happen.)

We watched Pan's Labyrinth and it was even better than we'd hoped, instead of falling prey to the curse of high expectations.

While I was peeing, I saw a mosquito in the bathroom, too far away to reach. It patiently flew around in a small area until I could get to it and kill it easily. (I feel awful writing this one, but mosquitoes are truly the only animal I kill on purpose.)

There was a train spill which shut down a road that we drive on frequently; today, my route took me other directions and I wasn't even affected by the huge amounts of detouring traffic.

WonderGirl started a new camp today and was feeling apprehensive. When we got there, she not only had a school friend in her group who eagerly greeted her, but her (saintly) teacher from school is working at the camp and is her group leader. WonderGirl has a kid crush on her teacher's two daughters, who are 9 and 12. They're also at the camp and both gave her huge welcoming hugs. WonderGirl barely waved goodbye to me before she was off to play.

I heart wkcd.com

2007-06-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

Because somebody changed the timing of the light going into Rocco's daycare this week, and my commute officially grew by 10 minutes:

Moms against mercury, or moms against autism?

2007-06-08T10:11:00.001-04:00

[cross-posted at Begging To Differ]

Apparently, June is the season for gooseberries, the first wave of West African monsoons, and Moms Against Mercury protests at the CDC. Last year, I wrote about their "Scene of the Crime" protest; this year, the theme was "Simpsonwood Remembered." Simpsonwood being, of course, hmmm... well, the Moms Against Mercury website doesn't really explain that on the page about the rally. Apparently, there were "infamous secret ... meetings" there. Wikipedia helps a little with this page, which is basically a summary of Robert F. Kennedy's controversial article claiming to summarize the events. (As I write this post, there are essentially no references given in the Wikipedia article, and there's even a warning that the neutrality might be compromised by "weasel words." I don't know what they are, but I think I like them!)

I'm so torn by events like this. On the one hand, my heart really does hurt for the families who believe that the best way they can help their autistic children is to stand on sidewalks and scream at public health employees as they drive to work. Clearly, this is a group that is passionate about their ideas and feels like they have very few avenues for being heard. I'm a liberal in Georgia. I can relate.

At the same time, though, I'm a public-health scientist myself and I am completely offended by the idea that people think that anyone in public health would intentionally supress good data that showed a link between autism and certain vaccines. People just don't go into public health or biology for the glamour and cash -- they're, as a rule, motivated by an intense desire to, you know, help people. I'm also a little stymied by what they're trying to accomplish by harrassing CDC employees (or those of us just lucky enough to need to drive through their protest site). Are they expecting that some poor statistician will get yelled at, then go to his office and say, "Hmmm, maybe those people have a point. If I used a score test instead of a likelihood ratio test... by Jove! There is a clear link between the flu vaccine and autism after all!"

My main reaction, though, is the same this year as it was last year. It might not be easy, and it might take more than a sheet of posterboard and a willingness to plaster your child's picture all over the street, but the best way for these families to make changes is for them to become part of a constructive solution. Read all of the research, not just the stuff that supports your hypothesis. Educate yourselves on the science and the methods so you can discuss them intelligently and neutrally. Acknowledge that everyone wants the right answer and that no one is just looking for sneaky ways to increase the number of children on the autism spectrum. Expand your boundaries to include the idea that there might be other factors at play, and wrestle with the difficulty of assigning limited resources to different avenues. Understand that science is a human endeavor and is imperfect, but the current system of working with testable hypotheses is the best we have. Suggest alternatives that make sense.

And please, don't yell at me. I'm trying to help.

Is it a full moon?

2007-06-07T10:36:00.000-04:00

Like many of you, I'm sure, I opened up my trusty browser this morning curious to read whether Dubya has managed to surpass the cheery good times he instigated at last year's G-8 summit with his impromptu backrub of ANOTHER WORLD LEADER. Alas, apparently he's decided to leave poor Merkel alone, but instead I found a trio of stories that amused me greatly:

A local family came home to find someone robbing their house; the intruder pointed a gun at them and demanded money. The family disarmed the robber and beat him with a broomstick until the police had to rescue him and help him to the patrol car. Not that I'm pro-violence, but that seems fair.

A woman in Vermont was arrested for making faces at a police dog; the charges have been dropped because the dog can't testify as to how it felt to be harassed. (Not kidding here.)

A man in Michigan had his wheelchair accidentally lodged into the grille of a truck and was taken for a ride at 50 mph for 4 miles before the truck stopped. Money quote from the police:

"The man spilled his soda pop, but he wasn't upset," said Sgt. Kathy Morton.

I'm afraid to click any more online news links. Guess it's time to get some work done instead.

A way in which I prefer not to start the morning:

2007-06-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

With an email from my advisor, who just gave a seminar about my current project at another university, saying roughly this: "Turns out someone else is doing almost the exact same thing we're doing. I don't know how far along their work is, but we need to get the paper out NOW."

I've been down this road before, and it was -- what's that word? -- un-fun.

Some days I hate academia.

What I've learned during summer vacation (so far)

2007-06-04T09:39:00.000-04:00

I spent most of last week at home with Rocco, as his daycare center closes every year for the week of Memorial Day. After last week, I have new musings on parenthood, on priorities, on compromises, and on IKEA. Our week was made busier by the end of WonderGirl's school year, her ballet recital, the books I accidentally volunteered to make for her teachers, and the graduation ceremony (during Rocco's would-be naptime) to which I accidentally volunteered to chauffeur one of WonderGirl's grumpier classmates. Somehow, I even managed to get substantial parts of my next paper drafted. I'm trying on new habits (not like this, though), some of which appear to be making me happier, and my kids are both in the middle of relatively big periods of adjustment in their lives. DT and I are dealing with a constant undercurrent of "What are we going to be doing next year? Where is all of this going?" Right now, I feel like we have a lot going on, to the point of almost not being sustainable.

However.

All of that feels dwarfed right now by the discovery of something that may very well change our lives: spray on, no rub sunscreen. Yes, I know I sound pathetic, but I truly don't care. Everything in life seems a little easier when you don't have to rub sunscreen into a moving, slippery child. It's all relative.

A metaphor, if you will.

2007-05-25T10:47:00.000-04:00

(As an old friend would say, "And I know you will.")

The final instructions in almost any knitting pattern are: "Weave in all ends. Block." After finishing the knitting, you go back and essentially erase any evidence that you were there. The strings from color changes, the ends from new balls of yarn, all gone. Blocking involves wetting or washing the item, coaxing it into the shape, size, even the texture it's supposed to be, then letting it dry. Only then is the item "finished."

My confessions: I have never blocked anything. Ever. Additionally, until last night, I had three mostly-finished items that couldn't be used because I couldn't be bothered to weave in the ends.

The list of things in my life that needs ends woven and/or a good blocking include, but are not limited to: the book WonderGirl's class is making for an end-of-the-year present for their teachers, my diet (not the losing-weight kind, the "Hmm, might be a good idea to eat like an adult" kind), an analysis project I'm doing for my advisor, our summer travel plans, my paper, and my proposal. (To be fair, there's a lot of knitting that needs to happen with those last two, but it's my metaphor. I can do what I want with it.)

Previously, I've never thought of myself as someone who has a hard time finishing things, so maybe this is a new habit for me, but I doubt it. It's hard to shorten up your to-do list when you can never fully check anything off, and my to-do list has felt unwieldy and long for, well, years.

Last night, though, I checked off three things: my Saturday market bag, a stepping stones dishcloth (very different colors than the one linked), and a pair of clogs for Rocco (although they still need to be felted). Onward.

Thank you and screw you

2007-05-21T09:23:00.000-04:00

My morning blog roundup left me with two wonderful, and completely different, gems this morning that I'm going to pass on to you:

First, the thank you. PeaceBang has a post up about saying thank you, and what I think of as the theology of gratitude. I do think saying thank you, and meaning thank you, is an important spiritual practice.

Then, the screw you, courtesy of the Stirrup Queens. Uterinus's Law, which I've experienced but never knew had a made-up name, includes these provisions, among others:

Sperm lives in a woman's body for 3--5 days ONLY if you are a terrified teenager who has no clue (1) when she ovulates and (2) if she took her birth control pill. Sperm lives in an infertile woman's body for 3--5 hours, therefore making lining up timing with ovulation nearly impossible. ... Doctors do not believe this fact and therefore often repeat the idea that sperm lives in all women's bodies for 3--5 days.

The more hand-holding and the more awkward the relationship is with your inlaws, the more likely they will schedule their visit to fall during retrieval or transfer. If they are the type who need a gourmet meal cooked nightly and a spotless house, they will arrive one day before your beta.

The second is especially funny to me. The cycle that became Rocco included overlapping visits from DT's parents and my dad, and DT actually gave me a trigger shot with my dad standing 10 feet away. Thank goodness it went well.

Find a stillness

2007-05-18T11:16:00.000-04:00

This morning, it struck me full-force that WonderGirl will be out of school in two more weeks. All year, I've meant to make more of an effort to attend her weekly all-school silent meeting, and now it's crunch time. (Can you cram silence? Just my style to try.)

Silent meeting is a hard thing to describe. Since WonderGirl is in the youngest classroom, they go into meeting last, I imagine in order to minimize the inevitable fidgeting time. Their 8th grade "buddies" come to pick them up and walk them into the meeting room, and typically the younger kids sit in their buddies' laps. It blows my mind a little that WonderGirl and her friends are so comfortable with the routine of walking in silently and sitting silently for 30 minutes, a time only occasionally punctuated by expressed thoughts from kids or teachers. But of course, these younger kids don't even realize that this isn't the norm, and that there are schools where the entire community doesn't have the time to sit, in silence, together.

Today, WonderGirl sat in my lap and we sat beside her buddy, an 8th grader who will be graduating in just two weeks and moving on to high school. One of WG's good friends sat on the other side, and the two of them held hands in silence for nearly the entire meeting. An 8th grader in the school, who has cerebral palsy and takes great effort to communicate, spoke about how frightened she had been of the concept of silent meeting when she started at the school, and how, now, it was a place of refuge for her and one of her favorite parts of the school. I say she spoke, but truly she made guttural noises and shook -- until her helper started translating for the group, I had no idea she had been moved to speak, and had no idea how eloquently she was expressing her reflections. WonderGirl and her friends didn't think the scene was unusual at all. Later, one of the teachers, a 40-something man, was moved to talk about some of his reflections on the end of the year, and he was weeping as he spoke. None of the kids even seemed to notice. Somehow, these kids, who look just like any other batch of urban kids, think it's normal to sit in a room with the whole school, listening to raw thoughts and not really having any expectations about what might happen next. Is it because they've already seen it so many times? Is it because they're not paying attention? Is it because this is, in fact, a way that humans are meant to interact?

I felt like a tourist. I had to remind myself not to gape, not to react too strongly, to act like I also thought this was normal.

At the end, many of the children began to share, and for the most part it followed the patterns I would have expected: "I'm happy because it's almost summer," or "I'm sad because my brother is going camping and I can't," or "I'm happy because I just got this new game with two lightsabers and one is green and one is gold or maybe it's yellow and..." Then one little girl, who's 6 or 7, said this, "I'm sad because my grandfather is in the hospital. His temperatures are high and I don't know why. I don't know if he's going to be okay. I think maybe he has these high temperatures because he's getting older. Or... maybe it's because he's getting younger. [very long pause] I think he's going to die."

I lost my ability to be cool. At that point, I was crying along with the teachers. It's going to be a long summer. Next year, I will go to silent meeting more.

Weight

2007-05-17T09:11:00.000-04:00

It feels like I've been obsessed with mortality lately. April does that to me, since it's the month in which all females in my family seem to die. My own health weirdness has been prolonging that general funk this year, and the book I'm currently reading (Eat, Pray, Love) is playing into it somewhat as well. I would say that overall, I'm acutely aware that we're not guaranteed anything past this moment. Sometimes that inspires me to be the best person I can be. Sometimes it inspires me to curl up in a corner and hide, along with everyone I love.

I think there's a part of me that thinks that if I just don't take the future for granted, I'll somehow, cosmically, be allowed to live through more of it. I bargain that because I lost my own mother on the early side, and because I've lost two desperately-wanted babies, my living children should somehow be granted health and life, and I should be allowed to watch them grow up. I know this doesn't make any sense, and that in this country, we have a bizarre relationship with death. We pretend that we're in charge of it, and that it's not part of life. I know that as a rule, we experience fewer tragic deaths than non-industrialized countries, so while I may have had a higher toll than most people I know here, I'm still barely acquainted with death.

This morning, DT found out that a medical student he knows well, who was about to graduate and start residency here, died yesterday in an accident. She was married, she had a small child. Her family was about to come celebrate her graduation and now they're coming for a different reason. Some asshole cut her off and killed her, then kept going. She didn't get to bargain. It's over, just like that.

Processing this is impossible.

Commencement

2007-05-15T09:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was graduation day at my university. I've become disturbingly familiar with the day's routine: there are horror stories passed around of traffic and parking on graduation day, so many faculty and staff take the day off to avoid the mess. As a result, traffic is always surprisingly light, unless you're arriving at the ungodly-early hour required for graduates. I arrive, I park easily (shh! don't tell!), I walk in past the school employees who are eager to direct graduates and families to the places they need to go in order to experience the maximum pomp and circumstance. I'm holding a vinyl lunchbox and computer bag; clearly, I'm not in need of direction. Often, an acquaintance will ask when I'm going to graduate. Often, I want to start throwing punches. This year, one of the administrative types that I know told me that she hopes I don't graduate anytime soon, because she'd miss my smile. It was a nice change to give someone a hug instead of a grimace.

Typically, I go inside the building, sit at my desk, and pretend that it's just like any other day. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be invited to a graduation luncheon for a friend who finished her degree last summer and has spent the last year on the faculty at another school. I'm not sure how to describe the celebration except to say that it was, in fact, celebratory. My friend was surrounded by family, by the close friends who helped her through school, by the faculty in our department, and by those of us who couldn't do much to help her along, but instead got to be helped by her. It reminded me of why ceremonies do matter. When DT and I got married, we'd been together for over six years, we'd lived together for a substantial part of that, and we thought that actually being married wouldn't change anything. Honestly, we were wrong -- our practical lives didn't change, but there was something about being surrounded by our people, about creating our own ceremony, about throwing a big party for the express purpose of announcing that we were for real, that really did matter. It was a wonderful surprise when it happened, and yesterday reminded me of that. In practical terms, my friend finished almost a year ago, but yesterday was still her graduation day and I'm grateful to have been there to be part of her celebration.

Being a selfish human-type animal, it made my mind wander to my own graduation someday. I hope that next year, I won't be carrying a vinyl lunchbox or computer case. I've always had a fantasy of walking with WonderGirl in my cap and gown, and now that fantasy has extended to Rocco, too. I hope I have the same sense of closure and commencement that my friend had this year.

Enter the Block

2007-05-10T12:22:00.000-04:00

Writer's block, that is.

I'm at the lovely point of being ready to write another paper. Unlike my first paper topic, which grew and multiplied, hydra-like, for years, this project has been relatively easy. There have been bumps and setbacks, but I've always been able to make progress over a course of weeks instead of drifting for months at a time. I hope this is how research is supposed to be, and that my first project was the exception instead of this one.

Unfortunately, now that this project is winding up, I have to write about it. I can't just pat myself on the back, have a margarita, and move on to something as-yet-unexplored. Now begins the part that I dread. I don't have a good process in place for writing; I don't have the mental discipline to just keep plugging away and trust that I'll edit myself into coherence later. I don't have a practice that works for me, and I have a dangerous tendency to spend a lot of time reading blogs or looking for knitting patterns or checking the weather or going to Google School of Medicine when I'm supposed to be writing. This might be the biggest downside of the advent of the personal-computer-as-word-processing-device: the very tool which makes dissertation and paper writing so much easier in this generation can also suck all of your time away. I'd head to a wireless-free zone (since those still exist), but that would preclude any ability to look up references on the fly while I write. Or so I tell myself.

Meanwhile, I'm going to knit this top in this yarn (orchid) using these needles soon. I've got my fingers crossed for Julia's current cycle, and we still don't have any rain in the forecast. More later.

It's May, it's May, the lusty month of May!

2007-05-08T09:18:00.000-04:00

Sorry, this post has nothing to do with lust, I just always think of that song from Camelot in May. For some reason my mother always sang it, yet I was probably 14 before I realized what it was about.

I have a distinct memory of writing a post last year about May, about the amazing number of things that happen in May once you have kids in school, and how difficult it is to keep everything together and how my dad, who I love dearly but who has wisely blocked many of the details of his own early parenting experiences, even remembers how draining May could be with children. Now, that post isn't showing up in my archives. Did I just think I wrote it? Was it one more thing that I meant to do in May and never got around to?

It's starting again - we've entered our busy time. Yesterday was a teacher workday at WonderGirl's school, so I was home with her all day (and we even started a craft project, so help me God). Tomorrow she has an all-day field trip, and I wasn't planning to drive, but now am having the typical flexible-parent internal conversation: on the one hand, I could definitely use the day to work, but on the other hand, I know she'd love for me to go, and I'll remember that experience more than whatever meager amount of work I'd get done. So, of course, I've left a note for her teachers that I can drive and chaperone if needed. She has her ballet recital coming up, her choir is singing at church this weekend, and in the next few days we have our anniversary, WonderGirl's half-birthday and Mother's Day. WonderGirl's school has a potluck picnic later this month; Rocco's class has one the day before. Then, there's the 8th-grade graduation at WG's school, which is apparently a wonderful ceremony that I won't want to miss, as the 4- and 5-year-olds get to present flowers to their 8th-grade buddies. WonderGirl's buddy has been such a positive part of her first year in school, and I'd really like to be there. Of course, it's at 11am on her last day of school, but it's not like I'd be working anyway, since Rocco's daycare is closed the whole week. Plus, her end-of-the-year party is that afternoon, so I'd need to be there to help with that, which is not to be confused with the class party one of the other families is throwing at their lake house (lake house?) later this month. ACK. Breathe.

I'm in such denial about the end of the school year, too. One of the members of our quartet is moving back to China in June, and we've realized that we can literally only find one day between now and then when we might get together for one last round of music. At first, I wasn't sure I could even make it that one day, because I needed to make sure that DT could pick up WonderGirl from school, but now it's struck me that she'll be out of school and in camp. Out of school.

This is our new life; school years and summers and ballet recitals. A daughter who reads her own books, a son who can string words into sentences and enthusiastically parrots each "I love you!" we throw his way. I'm not used to any of this yet.

(Because I didn't mean to leave anyone hanging: my professor was in the country, and I am, thankfully, off the hook with that incomplete and have hopefully learned my lesson. My echocardiogram was mostly normal, a little thickening at one valve that doesn't seem to be affecting heart function at all. I have my follow-up appointment today and am planning on hearing that everything is fine and needing to accept that I have some psychosomatic symptoms. I went to a yoga class this weekend for the first time in two years and hope that I can start focusing on wellness instead of sickness, which sounds corny but I think might help.)

What, it's not National A Question of Degree Month?

2007-05-04T09:35:00.000-04:00

Break out your party hats -- apparently, May is National Asparagus Month! After hearing a rumor this today, I went looking for a link and confirmed that yes, it is the month for our stalky, pee-smell-altering friends, but it's also:

National Salad Month
National Strawberry Month
National Beef Month
National Egg Month
National Barbecue Month
National Salsa Month

So, I'm thinking that perhaps this isn't as big a deal as I'd hoped. In fact, herbs only get a week (May 13-19), as does women's health (May 14-20, coinciding with Mother's Day because, you know, only mothers need to think about their health???). Sadly, garlic only gets a single day, which we apparently missed in April, even though egg salad gets an entire week, separate from the month it celebrates in its eggy wholeness.

Continuing on the food trend, I just found a knitting pattern for the digestive system, and I am sooo tempted... Any pattern that starts:

Anus

With size 6 dpns and Angry Pink, cast on 10 sts using a temporary cast-on, join. (If you don't know how to do a temporary cast-on, just cast on normally using waste yarn then knit 1 row with Angry Pink).
Knit 8 rows.

just has to be worth it.

Housekeeping

2007-05-03T12:45:00.000-04:00

A few notes:

- Clicking on a family member's shared online photo album, only to find 164 pictures in the album, is a daunting experience. Cute pictures, all, but...

- I've tried to lower my already moderate caffeine intake the last couple of days. I was rewarded, of course, with a monster headache that woke me up this morning. I just caved and decided to pop open my last hoarded can of Coke Zero, only to find that my department's kitchen is being mopped and I can't access the ice cubes. Gnashing of teeth has commenced.

- I have 42 minutes left with the Hellter, I mean Holter, monitor. Not that I'm counting.

- After bragging about WonderGirl's powerful sensitivity, I feel duty-bound to report the other side of the coin. Last night, after DT and I spent a long time (too long, it's true) explaining to her why it might be a good idea for her to start using her own brain to make decisions instead of following her friends as they jump off bridges, I said, "Okay, enough talking about that." To which our angel replied, "Yeah, if you talk about it any more I might throw up." She's five, folks. Five.

The (n+1)th installment in my occasional series of free advice

2007-05-02T11:32:00.000-04:00

If you are wearing a Holter monitor and going to the airport, it would probably help you get through security if you look relatively young and innocent and are assisting a grandmotherly-type woman who limps a little.

I'm just guessing.

I took DT's mom to her flight today and the airline rep agreed that I could take her back to the gate because he said I "looked nice." We got almost all the way to the front of the security line before I realized I had five electrodes taped to my torso, each connected to a small rectangular box. The TSA rep directed us to the "special considerations" line, where the woman who was screening me was clearly fighting internal voices: one side of her head obviously thought this was a security test, the other side was saying, "LOOK at her. She's harmless, she's wearing the dorkiest jumper ever made (thanks, Anne, for the recommendation!) and she's with an old Chinese lady." In the end, they patted me down extensively (and were duly alarmed at every electrode), swabbed the monitor for explosives, and let me through.

On the way back from the gate, I called DT from the terminal escalator to tell him I'd been able to take his mom all the way to the gate, so we could rest easy that she didn't get lost, then I started to tell him about the security episode. I got as far as, "So I'm standing there with all of these electrodes..." and suddenly, I was the most interesting person on the escalator. I wonder if anyone was tempted to call the police or if, once again, my dorky jumper worked its magical power.

This post brought to you by my cyborg alter ego:

2007-05-01T15:46:00.000-04:00

Get Your Cyborg Name

I mentioned that I haven't been feeling well for the last few weeks. Like most households with small kids (not to mention pediatrician parents), ours is inhabited by a stream of bugs, of both the insect and germ varieties. I finally called for a doctor's appointment, after being encouraged by DT to please ask someone other than him for medical advice sometime. (Sample conversation:
Me: Oh, my heart is doing that weird thing again.
Him: Racing? Pounding? Palpitations?
Me: I don't know how to describe it. Do you think I'm going to die?)

Yesterday, I saw the doctor, a nice internist, probably five years younger than me. I'd seen her once before, when she suggested that my elbow might be hurting and my hand tingling because it was just about damn time that I made Rocco walk somewhere instead of carrying him, for the love of God, woman! She also offended me by telling me to come back if it wasn't better in a couple of weeks, and she "could tell" I would call if it didn't improve. I literally haven't seen a non-OB physician in over five years, yet she made me feel like a doctor-abusing hypochondriac. I probably am a hypochondriac, I just usually rely on DT to keep me in check. Anyway, she's in the clinic directly across the street from my office, so she's convenient, which is of course the number one priority for physicians of working parents.

I arrived for the appointment armed with advice from DT on how not to seem like a flake ("Say 'fluttering' and she'll have to take you seriously") and promptly felt like a flake anyway, because young-ish women like me are not supposed to complain about heart issues. The nurse did an EKG before the doctor even came in the room. (Note to self: don't pre-read the EKG sheet without knowing what you're looking at, because the words "cannot rule out anterior infarct" will not seem like good news.) The doctor was thorough, said my EKG looked fine but she ordered further cardiac testing. (Another note to self: don't take the EKG printout home for DT to look at and say, "Hmmm...." over.) She also ordered a bunch of blood tests, thyroid, is-this-vegetarian-eating-healthily, etc. (Another note to self: just because you had 16 tubes of blood drawn that one time at the RE and lived to brag about it does not mean you won't feel funky when you have five tubes drawn.) The good news: the nice doctor called me herself last night to tell me my blood work all looked fine, although my red cells were a little high and she thought I should be conscious of drinking enough water. (Last note to self, I promise: do not tell DT this and listen to him say, "Hmmm....")

Today, I went to the cardiologist's office for follow-up testing. I had an echocardiogram, with no immediate feedback from the tech on whether everything looked okay. She didn't call a cardiologist in to actually look at anything, so I'm assuming there wasn't anything obviously worrisome. (Coping mechanism alert!) Also, I get to wear a Holter monitor for 48 hours, which is like a continuous EKG. Here's a picture:

Only, it's more obtrusive than that. I have wires all over, this machine stuck in an attractive black velcro waist case that has been used by I don't even want to think of who, and itchy tape all over. For 2 days. I can't shower, which would have been nice to know. I'm not even sure I'll be able to dress myself because really, what can you wear in 85-degree weather that's going to cover that? And if all of this is stress and sleep-deprivation related, which I'm starting to think is likely, then it's only going to get better by being hooked up like this until Thursday.

So, I'm trying to embrace it. I'm a cyborg. Life is weird.

Things that suck / things that don't suck

2007-04-27T11:36:00.000-04:00

The sucky part: Miscarriages. Unexpected miscarriages. Unexpected late miscarriages. Knowing that there is nothing you can say that will make it any better and that there is a whole lot you can say that might make it a bit worse. The un-sucky part: Having a miscarriage does not mean you'll never have a baby. It will get better at some point, and you will wake up one morning, and your first thought will be something other than, "Shit. I'm not pregnant anymore."
The sucky part: Sinus infections, and not knowing if your general malaise is simply a function of little sleep, lots of germs, and anxiety, or if there's something else also. The un-sucky part: a prescription for antibiotics that seems to help. A promise of a doctor's appointment to reassure next week.
The sucky part: Taking an incomplete in a previous course and realizing, belatedly, that if the work isn't completed very soon, the incomplete will turn into an F and you. will. be. in. trouble. The un-sucky part: finishing the work and knowing that it is late but well-done and can be built upon easily by someone else if necessary later. The second sucky part: hoping that the professor who needs to sign off on the work is in the country, and not knowing for sure. The second un-sucky part: still hoping on this one.

Things I say 6983 times a day

2007-04-25T11:06:00.000-04:00

Inspired by CityMama's post today, the things I find myself repeating over and over each day:

Please use your fork.
Because if you do that, Rocco will want to do it, too.
Use your words!
Help please oatmeal.
Please use your spoon.
Put your shoes on.
Have you gone potty?
Please use your fork.
Do you want to be strong and healthy?
Please use your spoon.
Did you poop? Need a new diaper?
Please use your fork.
I love you.

WonderGirl gets it

2007-04-24T10:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, like many others at my school, I wore maroon and orange ribbons pinned to my shirt to honor the Virginia Tech community. I'd meant to take them off when I picked up WonderGirl because I didn't know how to explain the situation to her, and we hadn't mentioned it so far. Although our family is very open about death, I was apprehensive about making school seem like a potentially frightening place.

Of course, I forgot to take the ribbons off, and she glommed onto them immediately. (Rocco also glommed onto them, but in a physical way instead, which was easier to deal with.) I explained that something sad had happened, people had been hurt, and while I couldn't do anything physically to help those people, I was wearing the ribbons as a way of keeping them in my thoughts. Our conversation from that point:

WonderGirl: Did people die?
Ruth: Yes.
WG: Who did it?
R: Another student.
WG: Why?
R: No one knows, that's part of what makes it so hard. There wasn't a reason.
WG: (Silent for a moment.) At my school, when someone's not feeling good, we hold them in the light. Do you want to do that for the people who died?
R: (A little stunned.) That sounds perfect. What do you do?
WG: You think about the light you have inside, and you bring it out for them, and you imagine them in the light. You can be quiet for a while.

I'm proud, and grateful, and humbled.

Disconnect

2007-04-17T10:52:00.000-04:00

I don't think I'm unique right now in being somewhat overcome by the news of the Virginia Tech shootings. (I may be unique in that I haven't seen even a moment of TV coverage, but that's another story.) There's nothing I can add to the hubbub except that, like so many others, my thoughts are with the Virginia Tech community. The rest of us will be focused on these events for a while, then will gradually go back to regularly-scheduled programming, but that's not true for the students, families, faculty and staff. I don't know how you process anything like this.

I'd planned to write a little yesterday about our family's experience of going back last weekend to Duke for DT's reunion. It was the first time we'd gone back for anything official like that, and it was especially interesting given that we've decided we'd like to try to move back into that area after I finish my degree. Maybe I'll sort out some of that later, but for now, it seems pretty self-indulgent to navel-gaze about my relatively peaceful college experience.

Claudia

2007-04-11T09:23:00.000-04:00

[cross-posted at Begging to Differ]

Dear Mom,

Ten years ago this morning, I was with you while you took your last breaths. You held out until everyone was around you, then you let go when Dad told you it was all right to do so. We stayed with your body for a while, each focusing as much as possible on how glad we were to have been your family, on how you had made our lives better. If I focused hard enough, I would be able to lift your soul up on those positive thoughts, and help you get to the next place, whatever it was. I could imagine you looking at me, you finally free of the chemo and the tubes and the turbans, knowing that I was doing all I knew how to do.

Ten years ago, I'd just quit grad school, was shacking up with my boyfriend in violation of your religious ethics, and insisted on "comfortable" clothes that you thought were better suited for maternity wear. I know you were proud of me. Now, that boyfriend is the best husband I could have asked for, my children are strong and happy, and I'm well on my way to getting the doctorate that you always worked for and never finished. I know you'd be proud of me. You weren't easy to live with, and I often questioned your parenting style, but I never for a moment questioned whether you were doing what you thought was best. You tried at every juncture to prevent me from making mistakes.

I wish I could remember your voice more clearly. It comes to me at strange moments, but only when I'm not trying to hear it. Usually, it's your Alabama voice, the one that came out when you called your parents back home, not your North Carolina voice, which you used when teaching your students songs about the quadratic formula.

I wish I'd watched more carefully when you made pie crust.

I'm glad I listened carefully when you told me that you loved me.

Now, just like I have my grandmother's name, Ruth, as my middle name, your granddaughter has your name, Claudia, as hers. Sometimes she wears your colorful socks-with-toes when she plays dress-up, and she tells me that she's sad she'll never get to hug you. Yeah, I think, me too.

Love,
Your little girl

Counterpoint

2007-04-09T10:28:00.000-04:00

Twice already this morning, I've seen references to a weekend article from the Washington Post, Pearls Before Breakfast. It's about Joshua Bell, always one of my favorite violinists, and an experiment in which he played his violin at a subway station in DC, the idea being to see if people would recognize they were in the presence of true talent. (Side note: I won't be sending this story to our friend who has me playing the violin again, because he already has a fantasy of us playing on the town square near where we live, cases open in front. He needs no such encouragement.)

Julia has a nice post up about the article, reflecting on her own relationship with the arts, and whether her son might be more appreciative than she thought. Sweet, thoughtful, humble. Then, a leader for the babies/toddlers group at our church sent the article to the group's mailing list because she thought it was "beautiful and poignant." All great, and I'm glad to have two exposures because I would have hated to miss the article.

If only it had stopped there.

The woman from our church almost immediately sent another email that concluded with this lovely sentence about how she answers people who ask her why she is a stay-at-home mom:

Now, I will unabashedly say that I don't work outside our home right now so that I can notice my children's beauty, and give them time to notice the beauty that surrounds them.

Warmly,
Name withheld to protect the insensitive

This kind of thing always gets my hackles up. How anyone can read such a beautiful article and come away with what I consider to be a somewhat-ugly reaction is beyond me. I like this woman in person, although I don't know her that well. I don't know why she considers that only SAHMs have the inclination or desire to unleash beauty in their kids' lives. I don't know why she would consider it appropriate to involve the stay-at-home vs. work-outside-the-home debate in an article about something entirely different. I'm not sure why she'd send that to the entire list, without first reading it from one of the many perspectives of women who might find that hurtful and unsupportive, for good reasons. I don't know why she thought adding "Warmly" would mitigate the punch.

I don't know why she felt the need to ruin the article for others, but I'm not going to let her. I'm going to re-read it and take a moment to remember an experience I had this weekend, when we were away with our friends. My violist friend and I were doodling around with our instruments and started playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for Rocco and my friend's son, who is almost two. The boys were delighted and clapped and spun. We probably played it ten times, and had we not been usurped by the boys' interest in a meal, we would have played it for hours, over and over. Even though I'm not a stay-at-home mom, it was beautiful.

In search of calm

2007-04-05T14:10:00.000-04:00

Last Friday morning, WonderGirl woke up and stumbled into our closet, where I was getting dressed. She proclaimed, "I don't feel good, I'm dizzy," and collapsed into a pitiful heap on the floor. She was burning up, her throat hurt, her head hurt, her tummy hurt, her fingernails hurt. She hurt.

A classmate had been diagnosed with strep earlier in the week, so I bundled her off to the doctor for a strep test. One hour, one copay and one negative result later, we were home, ready to fight off whatever virus had taken up residence. Four days later, her fever finally broke. I broke about two days earlier.

I'm a worrier, especially about the kids' health. I wasn't this way when WonderGirl was a baby, when I was "supposed" to start worrying. I took everything in stride then, had faith that she was resilient and knew she would eventually throw off whatever germy goodness she picked up. Then I had the miscarriages, and they changed everything. Twice, the little signs of problems were actually true signs of true problems, problems that were only going to get bigger. Now I don't take anything for granted. I've had to try to re-learn coping methods that I thought I outgrew several years ago.

One night when she was sick, WonderGirl said her neck hurt, and there was a bump there. DT looked vaguely concerned, then satisfied himself that it was an enlarged lymph node in a spot that made sense, given her illness. I saw his look of vague concern and my stomach went down an ugly path, where I imagined WonderGirl gravely ill with cancer, wondered how I'd react, wondered things that I don't even have the nerve to type here. I literally made myself sick with worry that night, which did no one any good. Now that she's feeling better, I haven't had the nerve to check the bump and see if it's gone down. I don't want to know.

My huge relief at WonderGirl's recovery has been marred by the simultaneous (perceived) decline in Rocco's health. I've assumed he might come down with this after her, but also wasn't sure if he might have had a variant first, and have been our own little Patient Zero. Of course, he's not ill in the same way now, so my worrying continues. He's cranky and his feet started peeling last night. Could be the massive amount of sand in his sneakers or, if you're me, it could be Kawasaki's disease, which was on the differential diagnosis back in the scary time when he had a long-term fever and temporarily stopped walking. I'm going crazy watching him, looking to see if he's walking all right, wondering why he won't let me put his shirt or his shoes on, apparently needing more of an explanation than the fact that he's 20 months old.

Luckily, we're leaving town for a long weekend tomorrow. We'll be staying with two other families at a house on a lake in the middle of nowhere. This time tomorrow, I'm hoping that my biggest concern is how to keep my sheet music from blowing off the stand while I play the violin on the deck with our friend. WonderGirl and I have packed everyone's clothes, everyone's toothbrushes, everyone's bath toys. I bought a case of wine. I hope it works.

Wishing for a crystal ball

2007-03-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

I just had lunch with a woman who came to give a talk in our department. It was pleasant.

Actually, let me rephrase that.

I just had lunch with a clearly-brilliant woman, with hiring power, who manages a group doing what I'd like to do in the place I'd like to do it, and who gave a talk in our department. It was simultaneously nerve-wracking and pleasant. I'm flushed.

Never thought I would write this, but...

2007-03-28T09:57:00.000-04:00

... good for Burger King. They're committing to buying a higher-percentage of humanely-raised eggs and pork. We'll only see changes in these industries when there is economic pressure, and in the US, economic pressure can only come from fast-food giants. I may just declare a temporary lifting of our family's fast-food ban to buy some humanely-raised onion rings from the BK Lounge.

Room for the spirit

2007-03-28T09:06:00.000-04:00

I've had several religiously-oriented posts coalescing in my head lately, but I can't seem to translate them into words. Then, today, I read this post from PeaceBang and knew that if she could present such a lovely snapshot into her Unitarian congregation and the holy connection that is common to the religious experience, I could at least try to put some thoughts out there.

The truth is, although I am more comfortable in my religious life than I've ever been, I do feel a strange pull between two poles. One the one hand is my brother, who identifies as a Christian, although I don't really know much about his personal faith. From several comments he's made, it's apparent that he thinks that Unitarians don't believe in anything and aren't truly religious. (We haven't discussed the definition of religion, although there was a recent article in UU World which referenced the twin components of awe and discipline -- I like that and have been letting it settle in my thoughts.) My dad is on the same end of the spectrum. Different religion, more carefully respectful of my choice, but (I think) still not quite getting it as being a true choice, as opposed to an absence of choice. (This completely leaves out DT's Southern Baptist mom, who gamely accompanies us to services when she's in town, closes her eyes at the parts that make her cringe, and secretly teaches WonderGirl to sing "Jesus Loves Me" when she puts her to bed.)

At the same time, DT and I are getting progressively more involved in our congregation. I feel embarrassingly religious. I teach religious education to the K/1 class on Sunday mornings; we rarely miss services; if we were included in a political poll, we would be in the "highly religious, attend church twice a week" category. This is pretty hard for me to accept. I find myself wondering what other people think -- I had lunch yesterday with the mother of one of WonderGirl's classmates, and we talked a little about watching our own kids explore the idea of religion. The mother and her husband identify as atheists and we are very attached to a congregation (see, I can't even write the word "church"!), but I wonder if our ideas are really all that different.

Too religious for some; not religious enough for others. Strangely, peacefully, just right for me. As one of the commenters on PeaceBang's post says, you have to leave room for the spirit, and I think I finally have.

The bean trees

2007-03-27T09:55:00.000-04:00

WonderGirl's school held a silent auction this weekend. I'm not clear on whether this is a widespread practice, or if it's just incredibly popular in our town, but all of the private schools/daycares/after school clubs/people who just met yesterday but are BFF! have these gigantic spring fundraisers. The parents run around town, jockeying for donations from local businesses; the auction committee spends an impressive amount of time hanging curtains in the school's multipurpose room to hide the fact that ductwork and/or electrical boxes exist; the students Do Artwork to sell.

WonderGirl's class made a suprisingly beautiful series of seasonal trees out of beans. The Great Northern, the adzuki, the pinto, they were all represented. The spring tree had what I think were supposed to be dogwood blooms, but with five petals instead of four (guess someone at the Quaker school isn't up on their Christ symbolism). The winter tree had a thin layer of snow on the branches, which means the kids were feeling especially creative given the local weather, and the sky was a striking orange - nuclear winter? In any case, the trees were large, nicely framed, and definitely on a different level than the combination of handprints and Pollock-inspired dripping that I'd seen at the auction at WonderGirl's previous preschool. Just thinking about all the tiny fingers, meticulously gluing each of the thousands of beans, was a bit overwhelming for me. I warned WonderGirl ahead of time that it was unlikely we'd be able to buy the trees at the auction, because I'd assumed they'd be sold as a set and I'd heard another mom say that she was prepared to spend up to $300 for them. Our budget doesn't include $300 for beans.

I had no idea what was coming.

It turned out the trees were to be auctioned separately. I let myself hope a bit; there are fifteen families in the class, four trees, how many people really want to hang beans in their houses? The first tree went for $400. It didn't improve from there. Those trees brought in $1700 for the school.

I know that there are families at WonderGirl's school with extra money; I know the school needs big fundraisers to maintain its focus on providing an exceptional amount of financial aid and economic diversity in the student body. I know these things, but it was still startling to be there. We wrote our smallish check for the items we won, and came home to ponder the only beans in our house. The wet ones, in cans.

Demarcation

2007-03-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

Nothing official has been announced as I write this, but I feel profoundly sad to read that Elizabeth and John Edwards have a new conference scheduled today, a day after she had a "presumably routine" follow-up appointment for her breast cancer. Obviously, you don't throw a press-party every time you get a clean scan after chemo, although you might want to.

I'm too familiar with the post-cancer roller coaster after watching my mom ride it for almost five years. Every bit of good news feels important but also temporary; there is always another scheduled scan that will cause a new bout of anxiety. In our family's case, there was a persistent, and correct, unspoken feeling that one day the follow-up tests wouldn't be reassuring. I've been thinking a lot about that period of my life recently, as the tenth anniversary of Mom's death is coming up in April. I'll likely post more about that as the day comes closer.

Meanwhile, though, I'm hoping for the best for the Edwards family, and for all families who deal with frightening news, or people who come face to face with mortality and their own need to be brave. I hope it helps us all keep perspective. Disagree with Edwards' politics (or his bizarre allegiance to UNC when there is a better option just eight miles down the road), but always remember that he is also a person. He's likely incredibly scared and sad right now, and wishes he could just make the world a different place for his wife and kids, let alone for the rest of humanity.

I'd provide a substantive link, but that would take time

2007-03-21T09:13:00.000-04:00

On the way to school this morning, I caught an NPR story about yet another recent study of the effect of moms in the workplace. (Perhaps I should clarify - I was on the way to drop my younger child at daycare, after having left my older, possibly-sick child at home with her dad, before trotting up to my desk to, you know, write in my blog.) As I usually do when I hear a working-moms story start, I had my finger ready to turn it off because really, how many times do I need to hear that I, personally, am responsible for the decline of American civilization, global warming, childhood biting, the appalling lack of manners displayed by youth, and dachshunds?

This report was a little different. The author of the book being discussed was a demographer who found that moms today actually spend about the same amount of time doing actual childcare and child engagement as moms did in the 70's. If I remember correctly, the amount was in the 10-15 hours a week range. My first, uncharitable thought was this: My mother's longtime friend, who sent me an inexplicably detailed email a few months ago regarding her decision to stay at home with her kids until they were in school, as well as her own daughters' decisions to be at home with their kids, needed to hear this. My second thought was that I was somehow way above the time average, and therefore, I must be a Good Mom! Yay me! Cookie, please?

As I think about it, though, I'm not that surprised. The author's findings were that the moms' jobs were taking time away from housework and cooking, but not from kids. I believe that -- the amount of housework personally completed by DT or me in our house is minuscule compared to what my parents did. We pay a housekeeper every two weeks (much cheaper than a marriage counselor), I don't really know where my iron is, and we're masters of the quick meal. The other places that the time came from? TV-watching, leisure time and time with spouses. Those are more problematic trade-offs, especially if the TV-watching is of the basketball variety, of course.

The other implication is that stay-at-home moms today spend much more time with their kids than stay-at-home moms did when I was growing up. This also rings true to me. There's an archetypal over-indulged and over-scheduled child now, which would have been an oddity in my generation, but now is remarkably common. It's not just parents trying to make sure their kids are using their time wisely by being trained in classical art, music, soccer and gymnastics at age 2, though. Even in our kids' "free" time, the parents in my circle certainly have difficulty letting their kids roam independently (usually for valid reasons, but the result is the same).

[Side note: I think this is where the martini playdate is a very good thing. Some of my favorite parenting moments lately have been when we've gotten together with another family, had drinks for the adults, and let the kids just play. Freedom for all.]

Jumbled final thoughts: As always, the bottom line is one of moderation. If you love what you do, you'll be a better parent by doing it. Anyone who expects moms to shoulder the entire burden these days is better suited to living in a museum than in my neighborhood. I'm a sucker for letting other peoples' studies affect my opinion of our families' decision. If my bright-eyed, intensely dramatic, curious, vaguely whiny, unique kids are wrong, I don't want to be right.

do i=1,n print(6,*) 'RIP' end do

2007-03-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes is reporting that John Backus has died. Backus led the team at IBM that developed Fortran and revolutionized computer programming. He sounds like quite a guy. From the article:

In 1953, frustrated by his experience of “hand-to-hand combat with the machine,” Mr. Backus was eager to somehow simplify programming. He wrote a brief note to his superior, asking to be allowed to head a research project with that goal. “I figured there had to be a better way,” he said.
Mr. Backus got approval and began hiring, one by one, until the team reached 10. It was an eclectic bunch that included a crystallographer, a cryptographer, a chess wizard, an employee on loan from United Aircraft, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a young woman who joined the project straight out of Vassar College.
“They took anyone who seemed to have an aptitude for problem-solving skills — bridge players, chess players, even women,” Lois Haibt, the Vassar graduate, recalled in an interview in 2000.
Mr. Backus, colleagues said, managed the research team with a light hand. The hours were long but informal. Snowball fights relieved lengthy days of work in winter. I.B.M. had a system of rigid yearly performance reviews, which Mr. Backus deemed ill-suited for his programmers, so he ignored it.

My own work would be dramatically different without Backus' influence. In his honor, I'm going to try to get something done today.

Silence

2007-03-19T09:30:00.000-04:00

Blog silence, that is. I thought that the piece-of-peace-a-day gimmick would encourage me to update more regularly, provide an obvious jumping-off point for meaningful posts, and would push me to discuss areas that I might normally leave alone. The opposite has happened. It became one more item that I wasn't checking off of my mental to-do list and instead of being a haven, my blog became an unmet obligation.

So, no more daily peace practices. Rather, no more following someone else's ideas of how I should be peaceful. It's interesting to me to think about the daily practices that have stuck with me already, though. I've never been an aggressive driver (both DT and my dad would probably laugh at this, for opposite reasons), but I've kept the idea of driving with patience and tolerance, and it's made my daily commute more pleasant. I'm also trying to repeat the "talk less, listen more" mantra to myself and have been surprised at just how hard it is. I expected it to be hard, but yikes. Just yikes.

So, as I bid goodbye to organized peace, I'll just list some of the unorganized peace I've felt over the last few weeks as I've been absent on this blog:

Rocco has begun his verbal explosion, complete with his first two-word combinations. I know that this is another on the series of Good Signs that we are lucky enough to be parents of a healthy child.
Rocco and WonderGirl regularly crack each other up in any number of ways that I don't comprehend. They spin, they bounce balls, they make faces. I'm peripheral.
After WonderGirl threw a whining tantrum at an inopportune time, we had a talk about how one of the ways we can say "I love you" is to help someone else (DT) pursue his own dreams (running) instead of standing in his way (crying at the door as he leaves). For once, I didn't talk too much, and didn't make her feel judged, and as a result, I think she understood that it wasn't about her, it was about her dad.
At a conference last week, I caught up with a former grad student in my program who made me feel as if my hopes and goals for post-PhD life are not only feasible, but reasonable. Though we weren't especially close, he seems to want to help me.
In the middle of a series of recent bad days, I knew that DT would do whatever he thought would help me feel like myself, if he could just identify it. I saw him visibly relax when I told him that I knew he wished he could help me. It's powerful to give someone else permission not to fix your problems.
I started a big knitting project recently in an attempt to focus on the process instead of on a finished object. I've made the transition faster than I hoped -- I love watching it take shape slowly and feel myself falling into a soothing rhythm as I work, instead of trying to calculate how many hours it will take.
I've recently renewed contact with a group of three other women who went through miscarriages at the same time I did. We were intensely tight-knit for a long time, and though we're spread all over the world and have only "met" through email, they were my closest friends for a long and dark period. We'd drifted away some over the last year, and now we're communicating again, and one of them is nearly halfway through a pregnancy.

Topfree

2007-03-02T11:23:00.000-05:00

TomL linked to a beautiful photo essay on the Begging to Differ forum. A warning before you click in public: the photos are of topless women all over New York. They're beautiful, and there are interesting commentaries to go with some of the shots.

I've got peace like a river

2007-03-02T09:43:00.000-05:00

In my soul, in my soul...

So, I suppose it's obvious that this blog-for-peace effort hasn't worked out. I've missed days 13-31, although I've read the practices and incorporated them in a sporadic fashion. Here they are:
13 -- Today, I will live in the present moment and release the past.
14 -- Today, I will silently acknowledge all the leaders throughout the world.
15 -- Today, I will speak with kindness, respect, and patience to every person that I talk with on the telephone.
16 -- Today, I will affirm my value and worth with positive "self talk" and refuse to put myself down.
17 -- Today, I will tell the truth and speak honestly from the heart.
18 -- Today, I will cause a ripple effect of good by an act of kindness toward another.
19 -- Today, I will choose to use my talents to serve others by volunteering a portion of my time.
20 -- Today, I will say a blessing for greater understanding whenever I see evidence of crime, vandalism, or graffiti.
21 -- Today, I will say "No" to ideas or actions that violate me or others.
22 -- Today, I will turn off anything that portrays or supports violence whether on television, in the movies, or on the Internet.
23 -- Today, I will greet this day--everyone and everything--with openness and acceptance as if I were encountering them for the first time.
24 -- Today, I will drive with tolerance and patience.
25 -- Today, I will constructively channel my anger, frustration, or jealousy into healthy physical activities (i.e., doing sit-ups, picking up trash, taking a walk, etc).
26 -- Today, I will take time to appreciate the people who provide me with challenges in my life, especially those who make me angry or frustrated.
27 -- Today, I will talk less and listen more.
28 -- Today, I will notice the peacefulness in the world around me.
29 -- Today, I will recognize that my actions directly affect others.
30 -- Today, I will take time to tell a family member or friend how much they mean to me.
31 -- Today, I will acknowledge and thank someone for acting kindly.

And today: 32 -- Today, I will send a kind, anonymous message to someone.

I'm going to back up and pretend as if today is day 27 instead, because of all of these, I think that's one that I especially need to be reminded of, especially at home with DT and the kids. I speak quickly, and neither DT nor WonderGirl do the same, and this can make for some unbalanced and frustrating conversations for all of us. I need to slow down, not fill the empty space with words, and let them both have time to think, then talk.

Day 12

2007-02-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

12 -- Today, I will choose to be aware of what I talk about and I will refuse to gossip.

I love thinking of small intentions such as this one leading to an atmosphere of increased peace and nonviolence. Not sure I'll have much of a chance to gossip today anyway, but it's always worthwhile to be mindful. Honest, but mindful.

Day 11

2007-02-09T10:11:00.000-05:00

11 -- Today, I will look beyond stereotypes and prejudices.

Again, this one is timely for me. Our department's annual prospective student weekend starts today, so we have 8 or 9 people visiting, some of whom will receive offers to being graduate work next fall. I saw the list of visitors, with a bit of background on each, and was disappointed that over half are international students. What a perfect time for me to be more aware of my prejudices in this context. (Insert earnest "I'm not a racist!" protestations here.)

I think our department is fairly typical of US graduate programs that attract a high number of international applicants. Often, the domestic students are not as well prepared (certainly true for me), and the international students come in more advanced, more focused and more intent on their academic goals. From a research perspective, on average, the international students are more productive. From other perspectives, though, there are issues. Domestic students end up taking more than their fair share of teaching responsibilities (we don't get paid extra for teaching, it's simply required) because they're native English speakers. In our department, the international students are almost exclusively Chinese, and they eat together, study together and, when they are around the department, speak entirely in Chinese. I don't blame them, and I know that if the situation were reversed and I was studying in China, I would definitely grab any opportunity to relax and speak in a comfortable language. However, ironically, it is intensely isolating to be an English-speaking student here. I actually switched offices this year largely to be in an office with at least one other English speaker. Not only did I have a hard time working because of the constant conversations in my old office, I couldn't even eavesdrop because my Mandarin is limited to "Hello" and recognizing the sound of DT saying "I don't speak Chinese."

Given this, I think it's understandable that I would hope for more domestic students, to even out the experience. However, I shouldn't assume that these prospective students have no interest in interacting with non-Chinese students; that's the kind of assumption that, when made, is nearly always self-fulfilling. Today, when I meet the students, I will be mindful of approaching them all equally. I'll do my best to assume the domestic students are insular and unwilling to reach outside of their community. Since I probably won't get to know any of the new students very well, it's best to operate on the assumption that they're all jerks.

Day 10

2007-02-08T09:54:00.000-05:00

10 -- Today, I will oppose injustice, not people.

I don't think I can promise anything on this one. While it was easy enough last night to oppose the injustice of being made to look at Carolina blue uniforms, instead of opposing the somewhat-comical Tyler Hansblahblah, I don't think I'll be able to do anything other than oppose Ivory Latta, Erlana Larkins and Sylvia Hatchell tonight. They make me psycho.

The injustice will be if Duke loses again tonight.

Rip em up, tear em up!

Imagineering

2007-02-07T13:13:00.000-05:00

Georgia's state legislature is currently considering House Bill 147, which is yet another thinly-veiled anti-abortion law. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about the bill:

HB 147 requires women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound. The woman is then given the option of viewing the results. The bill also has language that says the ultrasound must be of high enough quality so the fetal heartbeat can be heard.

I'll be frank: I'm pro-choice when pressed, but am hardly comfortable with it. I've always felt that both sides purposefully push the rhetoric and debate to the extremes, out of their fear of giving an inch and having the other side take a mile. It seems so obvious to me that an embryo or fetus is not "just a clump of cells"; neither is it a child. To argue otherwise not only makes me dizzy, it minimizes the very real trauma that many women go through when making difficult decisions about an unwanted pregnancy, a pregnancy begun in violence, an unhealthy pregnancy, a dangerous pregnancy, infertility, and of course, miscarriage or pregnancy loss.

Okay, all that said, I have two main problems with this bill, and neither one (surprisingly) has to do with the fact that it's a transparent attempt to decrease the number of abortions by some method other than decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies.

It is often impossible to get an ultrasound for a wanted pregnancy in the first trimester. If you don't have a history of loss, some previous medical problem, or extra cash, you're probably not going to have an ultrasound until 18 weeks. This bill is not about giving women who are seeking abortions the standard of obstetrical care. It would actually give them better obstetrical care than most women in Georgia. Something's wrong here.
The assumption that these poor women have no idea what they're doing is so patronizing as to make me feel physically ill. Again, from the article:
Rep. James Mills (R-Gainesville), the sponsor of HB 147, told the committee the purpose of the bill is to give women all the information necessary to make an informed decision before getting an abortion. Mills said women need to know information about fetal development, heartbeat and other factors prior to getting an abortion.
This is coming from the same state that passed a bill which required doctors to give women seeking abortions incorrect information linking abortions and breast cancer. Thanks, Rep. Mills, but I think I'll inform myself instead of relying on you. Go ahead and spend your time on something useful, like repealing the Sunday alcohol sales law. Because, you know, I'm just a stupid woman who likes to get drunk and pregnant so I can have abortions for fun.

Day 9

2007-02-07T09:34:00.000-05:00

9 -- Today, I will work to understand and respect another culture.

I see two choices here:

Continue with my efforts to understand and respect my mother-in-law's culture, both the culture she derived from growing up somewhere other than the US, and the culture of being a mother-in-law, or
Attempt to understand and respect the culture of UNC, since the Duke-Carolina game is tonight.

Truly, I don't know which to choose. I'm only one person, and I can only do so much.

A season for nonviolence - days 5-8

2007-02-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Better late than never. Here are the daily pieces of peace since the weekend:

5 -- Today, I will plant seeds--plants or constructive ideas.
6 -- Today, I will hold a vision of plenty for all the world's hungry and be open to guidance as to how I can help alleviate some of that hunger.
7 -- Today, I will acknowledge every human being's fundamental right to justice, equity, and equality.
8 -- Today, I will appreciate the earth's bounty and all of those who work to make my food available (i.e., grower, trucker, grocery clerk, cook, waitress, etc.)

I have found myself thinking about some of the earlier days' intentions more than these, but here they are for anyone playing along at home. It's a bit paralyzing to try to be "open to guidance" as to how to mitigate world hunger. I'm an overly-scheduled wife-mother-student-daughter-in-law with more disposable income than time (although not much of either), so my first thought is, "Ack, help! I'll give some money." Supremely unsatisfying, but in the name of making peace with myself, I'm not going to beat myself up for the fact that I cannot be everything to all people. I'm doing the best I can, and I'm trying to be mindful about how to do better.

Along those lines, I'm giving a little bit to the Global Fund for Children. This organization was started by a friend of mine and it does good things. If you're looking for a place to share at some point, please consider it.

Back to my peaceful coffee and solo working time while I wait for a doctor's appointment. Right now I appreciate the woman who made my coffee and who chose a beautiful CD to play while I enjoy some alone time.

Texas giants

2007-02-02T09:29:00.000-05:00

If it wasn't enough to lose Ann Richards recently, now Molly Ivins has died as well. There's not much I can say that would do her justice. She was passionate, she was funny, and her dog's name was an expletive. We should all do such a good job living.

Day 4

2007-02-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

Day 4 -- Today, I will take time to admire and appreciate nature.

Well, that one's done. How can you not take time to admire and appreciate nature on a morning when the fog is playing with the trees, the redbuds are already blooming (yikes!) and the bushes outside my building have really strange berry configurations shooting out of the stems?

Evaluamations

2007-02-01T10:27:00.000-05:00

WonderGirl brought her first report-card-like-beast home yesterday. We've had parent conferences in the past, or updates from preschool teachers, but never an honest-to-goodness written, check the boxes, line up the horses, kind of evaluation. We discovered the folder in her backpack as we were heading out the door, but DT and I both knew we couldn't wait until we got home to read it. With DT's mom cozily stuffed between the kids and carseats in the back, he quietly read the highlights to me as I drove and we both hoped that WonderGirl was sufficiently distracted enough by trying to keep Rocco from taking her Corduroy book that she wouldn't pipe up, "What? What are you reading?"

Here's the thing: I know WonderGirl is interested in learning. She's curious, loves school, is attracted to new ideas and stories, draws appropriately for her age, has suddenly become an independent reader, and seems well-adjusted socially. She's independent, to put it mildly, and has a level of confidence in herself that I think is appropriate for her age. I know she's doing fine in life. Add to this the fact that I have a great amount of respect for her teachers and her school, and they've never given us an indication that she is doing anything other than thriving.

And yet, I'd by lying if I didn't say I was quietly nervous, waiting for DT to give me the word as we drove.

The report was glowing, I think it's fair to say. It was thorough and detailed, with little pieces of commentary that made me laugh. One of the (many, many) skills which were evaluated was something about following multi-step directions. Not only does WonderGirl apparently remember directions exactly, she "helps the rest of her work group remember the directions." In other words, she's bossy. We read that she is meticulous to the point of not always finishing work, since she holds her work to very high standards, but there wasn't anything about frustration with not being able to do something the way she imagined. I would guess this is something we'll have to work with her on, in time, but for now, it just means that she has excellent handwriting for a 5-year-old and art projects that are slow but well-done. We read that she had a problem at the beginning of the year with pushing when there was a conflict over who was rightfully first in line; now she "remembers to use words," as she "asserts her position." That's our child -- she doesn't let others walk on her, but if she can do it nicely, then more power to her.

I'm not surprised that she's doing well on the academic side of things, precisely because she is curious, trusts adults and likes to be told new things. I'm quite happy, and relieved, that she is doing well socially, and that she is turning out to be sensitive to her classmates and tries to help when they have problems. I'm grateful beyond description that she has teachers who see her clearly and honestly; there was nothing in the report that felt off or biased. Here's hoping that her school career is always so positive.

Day 3

2007-02-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

Day 3 -- Today, I will practice nonviolence and respect for Mother Earth by making good use of her resources.

I don't know that there is a lot new I can do for today's practice. I did make sure to take the stairs this morning, instead of the elevator; my (vegetarian) lunch is in reusable containers instead of a ziploc bag; I drove as smoothly as I could, sans tailgating, for fuel efficiency; I turned off all the lights at home in unused rooms. Except for occasionally taking the elevator and using a ziploc bag (which I throw away instead of washing, bad Ruth!) every few weeks, these are my daily rituals, though. We're fortunate to have excellent curbside recycling service in our county (plastics #1-7, baby!) and DT saves most of our food scraps for composting at WonderGirl's school. We don't generate as much trash as the majority of neighbors. Definitely, we could go pioneer-style if we decided to change our lives completely, but given where we live and where I go to school, we can't stop driving completely or start growing our own food, etc. Plus, there's that whole I-can-kill-a-cactus horticultural thing I have going on.

I think this might have to be enough. I'll be mindful of the small things and intentional about and grateful for what I do use.

Day 2 - A season for nonviolence

2007-01-31T10:52:00.000-05:00

2 -- Today, I will look at opportunities to be a peacemaker.

Okay, on first blush, this one doesn't look so hard. I just have to look at the opportunities, right? Not actually do anything? Maybe I'll work up to action by day 34 or so...

In truth, this one is difficult for me. I don't think I'm unusual that, as a female, I feel at times like it's my sworn duty to make peace between people around me; often, this is unhelpful for everyone. It's not a long path from trying to be a peacemaker to trying to please everyone, and I have come to realize that I've made a lot of relationships more difficult than necessary by doing just that. Being a peacemaker may be more of a tightrope act than I've realized in the past. Too much action or effort often decreases the peace, yo. (It had to be said.)

As a grad student, I don't get to interact with a lot of other people on a daily basis -- I'm holed up in a cave, just me and my laptop and my well-worn copy of Unix for Dummies. It's not hard to make peace with or between people who aren't there. I'll probably get my opportunities to practice this after I go home, since my mother-in-law is currently visiting us. I'm going to do my best to listen to her, and be with her, with a clear mind. I'm going to try not to listen for negativity or criticism, and try to hear what she really means, as opposed to fixating on the words she says. She and I have different native languages and different ingrained cultural assumptions, so I'm going to work on giving her that space to be who she is and not judging her according to my own history and assumptions. I'm going to try.

A season of nonviolence begins today

2007-01-30T09:58:00.000-05:00

The 64-day period from Jan. 30 (the anniversary of the death of Gandhi) until April 4 (the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.) has been designated a Season for Nonviolence by some group called the Association for Global New Thought. This past Sunday, our church included an insert in the order of service with a list of 64 ways to practice or promote peace and nonviolence, one for each day of the season.

I like the idea of taking these practices into my life for the next couple of months, so I'm going to try to incorporate them into this blog. Some days I may just list the daily practice; some days I'll reflect on it or share how I incorporated it. The basic daily list is linked off the AGNT website, but I can't seem to link it directly here.

Day 1: Today, I will reflect on what peace means to me.

I'm actually a bit proud of myself, because I woke up this morning at 4:30 with a backache and the knowledge that I was going to have to get out of bed to go to the bathroom before I'd be able to fall sleep again, which would normally be a guarantee of future resentment and crankiness. Once I get out of bed, I'm generally awake for at least an hour. As I lay there, trying to convince my feet to leave the quilt behind, I started thinking about peace instead, and what it does mean in my life. The older I get, the more I lose touch with my desire for "world peace" -- it's become something of an irrelevant construct, and an idea that is fanciful, at best. It surprised me this morning to realize that I don't find that depressing, though. I do believe in peace, but I believe in it in a very personal way, and on an individual level. It's a cliche, but there you go. Peace in the world begins with peace in your own heart.

Peace in my own heart -- now that's something I can work on.

Now, later in the morning, after not getting much more sleep, a particularly discombobulated breakfast time, a cranky Rocco, a self-centered WonderGirl, a bizarre interaction between my car's belly and a metal something-or-other which my car won, but only after sustaining $600 worth of bruises, and a DT who had to spend far too much energy helping everyone else, when he really needed to be helped himself, I can say that I do feel peaceful. I'm sure it won't last all day, even, but for now, waking up with the thought of peace first in my mind, and meditating a bit on the idea that peace at home is intensely relevant, has left me better off than I would have been had I slept later and not had that quiet time, waiting to be able to convince myself to get out of bed.

Old habits die hard

2007-01-26T14:38:00.000-05:00

Here are a few things that I know to be true:

I am not pregnant.
Given #1, I cannot currently be miscarrying.
If I were miscarrying the baby with which I'm not pregnant, it wouldn't be happening through my nose.

And yet, just now, when I blew my nose and saw a bit of blood, my heart started racing and my stomach dropped. I wonder if I'll ever fully lose those reactions.

Blogebrity

2007-01-24T09:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I attended a fairly small and informal talk given by Bitch PhD. I've never seen a blogger in real life, and as she's just now starting to straddle the line from anonymity into open identity, I'd never seen her picture. As I wandered around the building, trying to find the room where she'd be speaking, I found myself wondering if each person I saw was her -- but what does a feminist, political, open-marriage-embracing, maternal academic blogger look like?

Pretty much like you'd guess, actually. She does the confident, geeky hip look very well.

Her remarks were mostly focused around mentoring graduate students, and some obvious changes that could and should be made in the process. The focus was squarely on humanities disciplines, and if it hadn't been, I think I would have run from the room, gasping for breath. The length of time it takes to get a PhD in English, for example, and the job prospects afterwards are, to put it bluntly, depressing. Whatever issues I have, at least I'm not facing the question of, "Okay, now I've spent 8 years working on my degree, my personal life is shot, and I don't know how to take care of myself anymore -- which of these jobs outside of my discipline am I willing to take in order to pay the bills?" So. There's that. At least I haven't spent 8 years here, and I'll likely get a job in my actual, you know, field.

She did repeat the conventional wisdom, which I hate, that grad school is the ideal time to have kids. Her son was born while she was writing her dissertation, so she hired a nanny for three hours a day, focused intently on writing while the nanny was there, and poof! Everybody's happy. Again, a difference between the humanities and the sciences -- the competition and push for grants would never successfully allow that kind of schedule here. Obviously, I do have flexibility now, but there is a cost that isn't openly acknowledged often; it's become like a personal crusade for me to make those trade-offs explicit. I do believe that having kids while writing is probably easier than many other times, but there is a popular conception (which I heard over and over) that it was actually easy. Bald-faced lie. Recall bias. Call it what you will.

One other comment that she made that resonated with me was in response to a woman who earnestly laid out the chronology of her life: graduated college, took a couple of years off as she had been advised to do, did a terminal masters in order to get into a PhD program, now was in the PhD program and if she graduates after the average number of years will be - wait for it - OHMYGOD 32! And then, apparently, someone told her, "Don't forget about menopause!" So, she was panicking and felt like she'd been misled. Bitch addressed it perfectly -- told her that you have kids when you have kids, and you can't plan your life like that. More importantly, though, she reminded her that where you are is, well, where you are. This is the point -- not your eventual job, not your eventual family. You are living your life, not waiting for your life to start. That's how I've been approaching grad school, and truthfully is a large part of why I'm still here, instead of having pushed to finish. This is my life.

Disorganized thoughts, because that's all I have time for

2007-01-23T11:32:00.000-05:00

The conundrum, in a nutshell: my top priorities in my life are:

my kids
myself
DT and our marriage
my work.

The list is unordered, because each of these things is my top priority. They take precedence at different times, and in different ways, but I feel like I never get past these four things. What I've lost:

completely wasted time -- although I'm intrigued by getting a Wii, for example, I feel like I couldn't justify playing it, unless DT and I played together and it was serving as together-time, or unless it really is strenuous and I could count it as exercise, which I haven't truly done in months.
mental wandering time
haircuts, etc.
peace of mind.

It's the last one that's causing the problem. I feel such pressure on most of my time that I can't relax into whatever I'm currently doing, to borrow a yoga image. I feel guilty, right now, for writing this post instead of working on my dissertation, because I'm in the middle of a valuable, and short, block of potential-work time today. I'm writing anyway, because I need to begin to sort these feelings out, but I'm getting less out of it than I should because I feel the pull of other needs.

I just got back from WonderGirl's school, where her reading group put on a puppet show of a book they've been reading. I knew they were making puppets, but was surprised yesterday (yesterday!) to get a handwritten note in her school folder, "Dear Mommy: (her first colon -- I'm so proud) The puppet show is at 10:30. Please come. Love, WonderGirl." So, of course, I went. And I loved it, and she was happy to have me there, and I wouldn't have missed it, even if it took an hour out of my day for a 7-minute puppet show.

While I was there, waiting for the puppeteers to be ready, I basically attacked another mom, asking how she does it. Both she and her husband are tenured professors; she told me she was on the verge of quitting her job when she had her son because she just couldn't imagine how to do it. Their solution? Her mother retired early and moved here to help. I mentally list the other couples we know: one makes it work because the oldest child goes to the same school at which the father teaches; one mom works part-time, at home, when she can find a babysitter; one dad quit his long-distance consulting job to be home; one mom quit to stay home after the second child. We all have ad hoc solutions. For DT and me, I'm generally the ad hoc solution. He does everything he can to be flexible and pick WonderGirl up from school a couple of days each week, to give me an extra hour or two to work, but the fact is that he's the one who pays our mortgage and allows me to be a student. He only has so much flexibility, so I make the trade-offs, and the kids always win over the work. That's the right decision, and I make it knowing that it's the right decision, but I just wonder why I ever thought that I could do both well, much less put energy and time into my marriage and myself.

Mauling the language

2007-01-18T10:25:00.000-05:00

My research involves doing a lot of computer simulations; I write nearly all of my programs in (get ready to be disgusted and swear you never read this blog) Fortran. This morning, I've been spending time trying to adjust some code so that I can compile a program on a few different machines - they're each persnickety in slightly different ways, and I have to be careful with different issues. If I can get it to work, it means I can use more machines, though, and therefore run my simulations faster. This, of course, will free me up to do even more simulations, which means more work, which means... oops, better not think about that right now.

In any case, I've been banging my head against one particular platform for the last hour or so, not sure why my program was giving funky results. I just realized, though, that I had a typo in a crucial function. While trying to multiply two matrices, instead of using the "matmul" function for matrix multiplication, I was eagerly encouraging the computer to "matmaul" the data. This may have been my first digital Freudian slip.

Tutti

2007-01-16T09:17:00.000-05:00

Like many families with young kids, most of our grownup friends were introduced to us by our children. We've been lucky that our kids have good taste in friends, and we've slowly, but surely, developed a circle of families with relatively-similar temperaments, habits and drinking preferences. A typical weekend usually includes at least one accidental dinner party, where we meet up at someone's house and hope that our children play nicely so we can recharge with some adult conversation and wine.

(Side note: for a few years after I was out of college and my first bout with grad school, I used to complain about how hard it was to make friends in the "real" world. In school, you have a ready-made pot of people to try out and test for connections; once you're an adult it gets progressively more difficult to find opportunities to let those connections build. Now, I think kids are essentially the dorms of adult life -- if you're around the parents of your kids' friends enough, you're likely to find those gold nuggets of people that enrich your own life.)

Last night, we took the accidental kid-inspired dinner party motif much further than usual, and we had a semi-accidental chamber-music concert. One of our friends is also a former violist/violinist and has pestered me often to play with him. His enthusiasm for playing together is intense enough to overcome my incredibly rusty skills, as well as my natural inclination never to play my violin where someone else might hear me. We've played duets a few times and I always really enjoyed it, despite the shock of hearing how god-awful I am now. Last night, he'd arranged for two of his co-workers to join us and we had a true string quartet.

It's hard to describe, to someone who doesn't play, the intensity of being in the middle of a group of musicians. It makes your skin crawl in a good way, feeling the melodies and harmonies pass back and forth around and through you. It's almost like being caught up in a musical version of peristalsis. We played for a while, had dinner, played some more... it was one of the most rewarding evenings I've had for a while, not least because I knew my kids were listening and watching and absorbing that this was what adult life was like: you get to play music and relax with friends. While we were playing, I was thinking of my mom. Yesterday would have been her 65th birthday, and I'd been struggling a bit to think of how to appropriately honor her. The quartet was the right way: she was always the biggest supporter of my music, and if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have been in a position to be part of the group last night.

So, happy birthday Mom, and yes, I'll start practicing again. Thank you.

A truly random act

2007-01-03T10:30:00.000-05:00

Last night we decided to go out for dinner. This time, our excuse was that DT and I deserved a rest after spending the day tackling the mother of all organizational projects: The Desk and Filing Cabinet. Without going into gory details, let's just say that The Desk doesn't give up easily, and it was only with startling bravery and steadfast determination that we won. But win we did. HAH!

So, we ended up at our favorite local Indian place for dinner. When we arrived at the fashionable family-oriented time of 5:05pm, there was, somewhat surprisingly, a couple already there, sharing a thali. We executed our typical drill of ordering the kids' meals before we were fully seated, since hell hath no fury like a child stuck in a wooden high chair with nothing to eat for 20 minutes, and settled in.

WonderGirl and Rocco were, for once, simultaneously on the peak of the sine wave that is kid behavior -- WonderGirl was coloring relatively quietly and only occasionally tricking Rocco into trading his full-length crayons for useless nubs, while Rocco was doing his best "I love you" smile to the other couple in the restaurant. Although they seemed friendly, I was trying to keep Rocco distracted and focused on our table, because it's obviously a bit awkward and creepy when someone's toddler is trying to seduce you while you eat. Instead of being irritated, though, the couple struck up a conversation with us, the man telling us that watching Rocco had made his wife tell him she wanted a baby. We joked about how they should stick around for the inevitable kid-splosion that would come later, and see how they felt about fertility and its aftermath at that point.

As our food came, we kept talking intermittently; the couple had never been to this restaurant before, and was asking what we'd ordered, because it looked better than their meal. They were friendly and interested in food, which is all DT or I really need to know about people. Eventually, they put on their coats and got up to leave.

As they passed our table, the man put a receipt down and said, "Your dinner is paid for. Happy New Year." DT and I both sat with our mouths open; apparently, "agape" is a cliched but apt description in that situation. We did manage to say thank you, and start to protest, but it didn't matter because they were grinning and pretty much ran out of the door. We didn't have much time to react.

I'm still not sure how to react. Here are the basics, as I see them:

We didn't need the generosity, weren't in military uniforms, don't look particularly needy.
Even though the above is true, these strangers still bought us dinner, for absolutely no reason.
I was nearly in tears for almost an hour afterwards; just writing about it now is bringing back the drizzly eyes.
It is stunning how much a small (or not-so-small, we eat a lot) gesture can affect you. Being on the receiving end makes it clear just how much random kindnesses can matter.
I wish I knew a way to bottle that initial rush of surprise and appreciation; it's inspiring at the time but turns cheesy pretty quickly.
For both DT and I, our first reaction was that we had to do something to make up for the fact that we didn't deserve the unexpected generosity. His first thought was to donate the amount of the dinner to a charity; mine was to resolve to give someone else that same sort of unexpected (and probably unneeded) surprise. I think we'll do both. I hope that we grin as much as they did.

Happy New Year, indeed. What a wonderful start.

A quandry and the year in review

2006-12-29T10:29:00.000-05:00

First, a question: if a water main breaks in your city, and the powers that be recommend not washing in the water until further notice, is it better to leave your children in the known germs from holiday camp and day care, or to take your chances with the maybe-germs in the water? Discuss.
________________________________________________

Then, because everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd go back and recapture the first sentence from this blog every month over the last year. I started blogging in March, so you'll have to make up your own stories about the fabulous adventures I was having (and keeping to myself) previous to that.

March: Well.

April: My father and his wife came to visit this weekend.

May: I've been working on the first bit, I mean third, I mean half, no, huge honkin' chunk of my dissertation for a couple of years now.

June: I was just browsing the iTunes music store, on a quest to replace our broken tape of Sesame Street Platinum.

July: I love me some Sen. Ted Stevens.

August: Life has taken a turn for the busier over the last few days.

September: There's nothing in this article from the NY Times that is surprising, but that doesn't mean it's not depressing: there is a clear separation between new moms returning to work who are able to pump, and those who aren't.

October: Sandbags are useful not only during hurricanes, but also during chest x-rays for toddlers.

November: I finally took the plunge and have a post up at Begging To Differ: It is not a small irony that this, my first post at BTD, is inspired by Playboy.

December: Well, blog, I've clearly been avoiding you.

What can I take from this? Mostly that it's a miracle anyone reads this blog at all. I finally have a New Year's resolution: be witty and engaging in the first sentence of my blog each month. If that's too much to ask, perhaps I might simply aspire to use proper grammar in the first sentence... we'll see how it goes.

Perspective

2006-12-14T09:10:00.000-05:00

I woke up cranky this morning. I have a cold that's not on the downswing yet, I haven't been sleeping well for a few weeks, I've got a lot of work to do for school and rapidly decreasing time in which to do it, both kids have holiday potlucks at their respective schools tomorrow (at the same time, naturally, and both requested foods "appropriate to your family's traditions" which, I suppose, means macaroni and cheese for us), did I mention that the potlucks are at the same time?, there are random items to be purchased for several events that I need to remember long enough to make a list that I will then forget when I go to the grocery store anyway, and to top it all off, this is the dead week in college basketball, when the players actually have time off for exams, so I don't get my favorite winter evening distraction. (Okay, my second-favorite.)

So, I woke up cranky. I snapped at WonderGirl and was oversensitive with DT. As we ate breakfast, though, I had a moment to see myself and remember that my prickliness was not pre-ordained. I told DT and WonderGirl that I was feeling cranky, and I was sorry for being that way. They were instantly forgiving. I'm grateful for that. It is amazing how much that one action can matter: admitting that you're in a foul mood and acknowledging that you're over-reacting to other stimuli because of it. I'm still feeling cranky, but it's no longer directed at other people, it's simply my state. What an improvement.

More beautiful things from the last day:

The pictures waiting in my inbox of an old friend's new baby, and the knowledge that there is one more family who has dealt with pregnancy loss and now knows the joy and relief of a healthy, safe baby.
The email from Dr. Nice that my current results are so encouraging that I should start writing my proposal and plan on presenting it in February.
Going on a field trip with WonderGirl's class yesterday to see a puppet show, and having her unconsciously cuddle up to me during the sad parts.
Watching Rocco and one of his friends manic-ly perform their entire repertoire of animal sounds.

Intent

2006-12-06T09:51:00.000-05:00

It feels like a lot of threads in my life have been converging lately to convince me to spend more effort practicing intentional, mindful living. I've been impatient with the kids and with DT more than is warranted, and certainly more than I want to be. I've felt vaguely shaky and unsettled for the last few weeks, without being able to put my finger on the cause. I've been intellectually aware of how fortunate I am, in almost every way, without being able to work up the corresponding emotional appreciation for my situation.

At the same time, I've had the serendipity of finding several small, hopeful ways to adjust my perspective. DT and I went to a workshop on nonviolent communication that has given us some corny but useful ways to neutralize situations that often lead to arguments in our house. The facilitator also made a statement that has stuck with me: "Other people don't cause your feelings; the most they can do is to be the stimulus." It's a sentiment that I've always believed in, but that I'm not always able to internalize -- I am responsible for my own emotional environment, and when necessary, I can selectively let in things that improve it. Along those lines, one of my favorite bloggers, Karen of Chookooloonks, started keeping track of "kind blogs" which aim to be places of positivity and grace. Through Chookooloonks, I also found the blog Three Beautiful Things, a daily list of beauty in the blogger's world, which, in turn, gives me a daily dose of peace.

So, I'm working on it. I'm trying to be more mindful and to know that my perspective and outlook are just that -- mine. My goal is not to become an out-of-touch Pollyanna, but rather a balanced woman, wife and mother who has her eyes open and, when she has a choice, chooses joy. To acknowledge the internet folks who are helping me (without knowing it) I've finally signed on to Karen's kind blog effort with this blog, and I'll finish this post with three of my own beautiful things from this morning:

- When I heard WonderGirl come out of her bedroom after waking up, I went to meet her at the top of the stairs, where she was sitting and looking out of the window. Her first sentence was, "Look at this. It is such a beautiful sunrise."

- Empirical and theoretical results which match in my research.

- A good morning hug with DT which went on longer than normal.

It pays to be informed

2006-12-05T09:13:00.000-05:00

I drive to school every day along a fairly congested surface street. There are several poorly-timed stoplights, where Rocco and I sit for one or two (or usually more) cycles. Sometimes we end up part of a truly modern phenomenon: a spontaneous, short-lived traffic community. When it happens, when we make a connection with Random Driver on Our Left, it's nearly always because Rocco is doing something cute. He has a sweet, flirtatious smile that gives the impression that it is only because he has seen You that he is interested in smiling, in fact, he's never smiled before, but You... You! are so wonderful that he's overcoming his natural shyness to give You the most genuine, innocent, slowly-spreading smile that has ever been given. He melts hearts, even in traffic. So, often, I'll realize he's flirting with someone in the next car and will catch the other driver's eye as they smile at Rocco or pantomime playing with him.

Sometimes the other driver will clearly be giggling at whatever odd object Rocco has decided he must clutch throughout the drive - a full-size Duke basketball, his ridiculously poofy winter coat, a wilted board book (upside down), a hat that he prefers to wear on his face instead of his head. Yesterday and today, I have to admit that I was hoping to avoid such an interaction. For some reason, Rocco has become obsessed with a booklet about the Mirena IUD that I brought home from an ob/gyn appointment. He turns the pages slowly and studies the diagrams and tables with a remarkably intent expression. I think it's funny, and tell myself that I'm doing my part as a modern mom to raise a male who will understand the importance of being educated about birth control; at the same time, I'd be just as glad if Rocco postponed any future traffic flirtations with the guys in the local waterproofing company's truck until he was done digesting the information.

Hmmm, surprised it wasn't 100%...

2006-12-04T09:04:00.000-05:00

Your 'Do You Want the Terrorists to Win' Score: 91%

You are a terrorist-loving, Bush-bashing, "blame America first"-crowd traitor. You are in league with evil-doers who hate our freedoms. By all counts you are a liberal, and as such cleary desire the terrorists to succeed and impose their harsh theocratic restrictions on us all. You are fit to be hung for treason! Luckily George Bush is tapping your internet connection and is now aware of your thought-crime. Have a nice day.... in Guantanamo!

Do You Want the Terrorists to Win?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Quiz via Bitch PhD.

How I spent my NaProWriMo vacation

2006-12-01T09:42:00.000-05:00

Well, blog, I've clearly been avoiding you. Not only did I not post every day in support of NaBloWriMo, I didn't comment on another blog every day. Also, I guess you're not surprised to hear that my proposal is not only not completed, it's, um, still blank. NaProWriMo remains uncelebrated.

But. But! Several things of note happened during November that didn't involve active writing.

We celebrated WonderGirl's 5th birthday with an awesome Halloween redux birthday party, lots of wine and the coolest bike ever. Seeing her face (very) gradually register that the bike she was looking at in the park was actually her birthday present was one of the highlights of my year.
My paper was published! When I looked at my Google Reader feeds after coming back from Thanksgiving, the first thing that popped up was my own name. On my paper. My paper! I've been too afraid to read it again, though, for fear that the typesetter added something crazy after our final approval of the proofs. It's published! Whatever else happens, I've contributed to my field. Hooray!
We travelled to DT's sister's new place for Thanksgiving and had a truly nice time. WonderGirl got along very well with her cousin, which hasn't always been the case, and the adults allowed themselves, I mean ourselves, to relax and enjoy being together.
My advisors let me know that they think I'm making good progress (fools!) and one of them actually suggested I might be done with the research part of my dissertation by May. She didn't share the drugs she was using, but it did feel good to think that someone, somewhere, thinks I'm going to finish.
For some reason, I have incredible anxiety that I have a festering blob of skin cancer somewhere, but I've been too afraid for years to actually find a dermatologist and have my skin checked. I finally went to be checked this week, and the dermatologist found nothing that even rated a close look. After literally five years of being afraid (for no good reason other than a severe fear of all cancer), I can relax and know that I don't have an ugly surprise waiting in that department.

Oh, and I don't have any cavities. Do you think I can include that in my proposal?

When you least expect it

2006-11-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

My mother died nine years ago last spring. As I think (believe, hope) is common, I sometimes panic that I'm forgetting everything about her. I struggle sometimes to remember even the sound of her voice; I can bring it back most easily when I picture her on the phone in our kitchen, talking to her own mother, with her Southern accent more pronounced than usual. I try to keep Mom somewhat present in our family -- I talk about her relatively frequently with WonderGirl, and my clumsy attempts to answer her early questions about death have resulted in WonderGirl's firm idea that my mom is underground, playing games with other people who have died, such as the father of one of her preschool teachers.

I'm always grateful when something brings up unexpected memories of Mom. It helps to stem the tide of forgetting, or more precisely, the tide of worrying about forgetting.

I'm wearing tights today, and I noticed in the full-length mirror in my department's bathroom that there's a hole in the heel and a run up the back. Instantly, it reminded me of one of Mom's projects: collecting old hose and tights with holes and runs. She'd read somewhere that they made perfect stuffing for home-made throw pillows, so for months? years? she and I dutifully saved our dead hose in a drawer. When there was finally enough nylon/cotton volume collected, we eagerly zipped it into a pillowcase and created what would always be known in our house afterwards as The Pillow of Death. Given that Mom was a math teacher, and was all about real-world math problems and everyday estimation, we should have already guessed that a throw-pillow's worth of pantyhose weighs approximately 71 pounds. Although never proudly displayed on the couch, we kept that pillow in the den anyway, tucked away, our secret weapon in case of enemy invasion.

I remember that.

The aftermath

2006-11-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

My predictions for last night were all completely wrong. My in-laws had what I will euphemistically call "car trouble" and didn't make it to our house, but will try again today. This is in some ways a good thing, because DT and I spent most of the night with the TV on, listening with one ear, and occasionally saying, "Holy crap!" as it appeared that the Democrats might actually have a chance to take over some seats. Neither of us really thought it would happen. Our little victory dances this morning would have been curtailed out of politeness if DT's parents were already here, but it was so much fun to hear Rocco imitate our woo-hoos of excitement that I'm kind of glad they're going to be a day late.

Of course, in our state, the Republicans kept solid control of everything. But at least now I can accuse them of being out-of-step with "real" Americans instead of vice versa.

Now, I'm just hoping against hope that the Democrats really do change some things. The legislative high road is pretty empty; I hope they jump on up there. Work with the Republicans to pass things that people care about. There is a part of me that wants revenge for a lot of the petty (and not-so-petty) crap, a part of me that would love to see impeachment hearings. However, as I told DT this morning, if there's a choice between spending time passing a livable minimum wage (or health care for kids) or spending time going after Bush, for God's sake, let's worry about the people that need it most first.

On some level, Bush is, finally, a comma. Suck it, Karl Rove.

The party line

2006-11-07T10:01:00.000-05:00

I'm nervous about the elections today. I follow these things a little too closely, probably, and don't have a long history of happy Tuesday nights in November. 2004 was particular painful for me; DT's parents were visiting, and my intensely-conservative father-in-law had the job of trying to comfort me as I realized that things were not going the way I'd hoped. For the last two years, I've felt guilty for putting him in that position, and I've hoped that we wouldn't repeat the scene. Of course, he's driving down to visit us as I write this, and he and DT's mom should be here by the time the polls close. This doesn't feel like a good sign to me.

My first vote ever was an absentee ballot cast more against Jesse Helms than for his opponent -- not exactly an illustrious, or productive, start. I now live in a blue island in a red sea, which means that when I voted this morning, there were virtually no truly-contested races. My state senator and representative will certainly be Democrats, as will my congressman, and there is no way my governor won't be Republican. Because I'm idealistic about voting, though, and I refuse not to participate, I tracked down voters' guides from the League of Women Voters, the local paper and the local independent paper. DT and I shuffled the kids off to the polls this morning after we left the house, and we doggedly made choices through all eight pages of races, amendments and referendums on our Diebold machines. After agonizing for a few days over which of the five candidates (all without bachelors degrees!) I should select for our county school board seat, I discovered as I voted that we've been slightly redistricted, and I should have researched a different race.

My predictions for tonight: I will repeatedly (surreptitiously) check the internets while we catch up with my in-laws after the kids go to bed. My mother-in-law will pretend not to notice because she doesn't want to talk politics. My father-in-law will pretend not to notice because he doesn't want me to dissolve into tears again. When we do talk about it later, he will be shocked (for the third time in the last several years) that I voted for some Republicans. He will forget again before 2008 that I have ever voted for a Republican, and he will lump me in with "you Democrats." I will chafe and DT will remind him that the Democrats are way too conservative for us, at which point my father-in-law will say, "Huh. Let's eat dim sum!" We will eat dim sum.

Predictions for the races? I have no idea.

Grad student hack

2006-11-03T14:43:00.000-05:00

I'm a fan of the website Parent Hacks. I often find little tips that are at least vaguely useful, but I've never thought of something I do that might help someone else. Or, at least, I don't really think my little parenting techniques are hack-worthy until I read the same thing, submitted by someone else. But I'm not bitter.

My point (yes! I have a point!) is that I have a grad student hack to share. I use Google Reader to keep up with blogs and news, and it only recently struck me that it would be a good way to keep up with the main journals in my field. Now I have RSS feeds for my favorite journals, and I don't have to remember how long it's been since I've checked for new articles. Now, unfortunately, I also have no excuse for not reading the latest relevant articles.

(Proposal update: HAH! But I did do my presentation, and it was good. So that's something.)

Day 1 update

2006-11-02T11:09:00.000-05:00

I'll sum it up: not good. I planned to give myself a good way to ease in to this NaProWriMo thing, namely that I would start by simply writing a report on a project I recently completed. It's not technically part of my proposal, but it has to be done, it's fairly straightforward, and it would get me in the writing spirit.

I wrote about five sentences.

Today probably won't be much better, as I have to spend time putting together a presentation for tomorrow, but I'm going to redouble my efforts. Surely I can write an entire paragraph. Surely.

Totally unrelated - if anyone has a suggestion for a Cinderella doll that will make both me and my soon-to-be-5-year-old happy, I would love to hear about it. I'm fine with indulging princess fantasies, but I'm not so keen on freakish unrealistic Barbie bodies yet. Googling phrases such as "cinderella doll feminist," "cinderella doll realistic" and "cinderella please let me keep my lunch down" haven't gotten me far, although I have now read several middling college papers on body image and have also discovered the importance of realistic, rooted hair in dolls.

I buy it for the articles, natch

2006-11-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

I finally took the plunge and have a post up at Begging To Differ:

It is not a small irony that this, my first post at BTD, is inspired by Playboy. Generally speaking, I don't think Playboy and its brethren contribute a lot to our society: I don't condemn the women for posing or the consumers for buying, because some pretty basic human instincts drive both behaviors. I do subscribe to the idea that unrealistic sexual images can create barriers to real, healthy adult relationships, and that, in my mind, is a shame. That said, I may be buying the December 2006 issue.

Miss December (do they still name the Playmates?) Cindy Margolis posed for Playboy after years of demurring. One of her reasons? To raise awareness and money for RESOLVE, a well-known infertility organization. Margolis' three children were born with assisted reproduction techniques: a son through IVF and twins via a surrogate. Although infertility affects around 10% of the US population, very few celebrities go public with their stories. I certainly understand and respect their need for privacy, but it is incredibly refreshing to hear frank discussions of infertility from women such as Margolis or the Dixie Chicks. Kudos to Margolis for understanding that more public voices can make infertility less stigmatizing for many couples:

[It] is very important to me, to make fertility mainstream so everyone understands it.

Talk about giving back -- not only is she donating part of her profits to RESOLVE, she'll likely end up helping someone's husband give a "sample" in the pursuit of an IVF or IUI pregnancy.

Happy National Infertility Awareness Week, everybody.

NaProWriMo

2006-10-31T09:51:00.000-05:00

First, there was NaNoWriMo. No way in hell I'd do that - writing an entire novel in a month?

Then, there was NaBloWriMo. This seems more doable, and I may try: blog every day during November. Of course, it probably won't happen, with birthdays galore, Thanksgiving travel and, you know, November weather.

There is an obvious need for a different Na**WriMo, and friends, I'm stepping up to the plate. I'm going to have my own personal WriMo, NaProWriMo: National Proposal Writing Month. As I write that, it seems obvious that I should change the "Na" part, since there's no sodium involved. Oops, I mean, there's not a national component, as far as I know. On the other hand, I'm sure there are actually dedicated grad students all over the US who will, in fact, write their entire dissertation proposals in the space of one month, without even needing the motivation (which I apparently crave) of a fancy name for the process.

Here is my goal, then: to actually work on my proposal every day in November, except for the days we're visiting DT's family over Thanksgiving, since they wouldn't understand and really, why does a woman need a job when she has kids? I'm not going to commit to finishing in November, but I want a good draft. I'll be blogging my updates. Wish me luck.

In which I hope not to jinx my son's health

2006-10-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

I think Rocco is over it, whatever "it" was. This weekend, our little guy was basically back to normal -- his cackle happily / screech unhappily balance was tilted back to the cackle happily side. He is walking just as well as you'd expect from any 14-month-old with an oddly-protruding belly, which is to say that he often falls down for no apparent reason. I think that's normal for him, though, because I'm pretty sure he's genetically related to me. He has been fever-free for several days, and he doesn't react with shock and disappointment at our betrayal whenever we try to feed him. He spent the weekend playing happily with WonderGirl, apparently thrilled to be allowed to act the part of her pet dog, as she led him around in circles, using a laundry bag as a leash. (Not around his neck, of course, he held his leash willingly. Gotta be some interesting gender politics stuff in that, but I'm too tired. Damn Daylight Savings Time.)

Friday was his first truly good day. He didn't seem either under the weather or recovering, his throat wasn't sore, he didn't erupt with random whimpers. It was the first day in probably six or seven weeks where he was fully healthy. As relieved as I was to see that he could actually be happy again, I was just as relieved that I was able to believe he was healthy. There was a nagging part of me that wondered if I was so used to worrying about him that I was overstating his illnesses. It was liberating to relax again. I could hug him without subtly feeling his belly for excess heat.

It's been hard for me to accept that we really don't know what was wrong with him. Kids don't usually stop walking for a week; it's odd to tell other parents about the experience and have no one say, "Oh, yeah, that happened to us... [insert reassuring story]." I kept waiting, but all I got was, "Wow. That's scary." In case you've happened upon this blog because your child has stopped walking, I have no idea what to tell you. DT thinks (and I'm inclined to believe him) that Rocco had a longstanding strep infection that led to an inflammatory process of some sort that made walking impossible. We don't know if it was a hip, both hips, his back, or what. The diagnosis of toxic synovitis was thrown around some, and it seems appropriate, if not quite as snappy as "refusal to ambulate." This was all complicated by a bout with roseola that started just as he kicked the strep infection. There's nothing like spiking a high fever just after finishing antibiotics to make you wonder what in hell is going on with your child.

All I know is that I'm thrilled not to be going back to the doctor for yet another copay, I mean, follow-up today, and I'm vaguely optimistic that when I take Rocco and WonderGirl for their well-child checks in a couple of weeks they may, actually, be well children.

The sound of one neuron firing

2006-10-25T09:14:00.000-04:00

I haven't been doing much dissertating lately. With Rocco's mystery illness and doctor visits, WonderGirl's fall break and our recent (much-needed) trip away for a long weekend, I've been away from school quite a bit. Both Rocco and WonderGirl have class parties later this week (different afternoons, dodged a bullet there), and DT has needed to cover lots of extra clinic shifts lately, so I'm picking up WonderGirl from school most days, which means leaving my office by 2:45pm.

A better person would probably make this work. Someone else could sit down and get six solid hours of work out of a six-hour workday. It wouldn't be an immense amount of progress, but it would be obvious progress. Me? I end up spending more time than I'd like catching up on email, blogs, the most interesting forum on the internet, and frankly, my own sanity. My only alone time comes during the day, so that's when I take it. Lately, though, with all of the other things going on, I haven't had the alone time at school, and when I do have downtime at home, I spend it decompressing from parenting instead of spending it getting little incremental pieces of schoolwork done.

Again, a better person would snap out of this more easily than I have. My habit is to let a lack of progress wash over me like molasses. I get overwhelmed and depressed that I'm not getting anything productive done, so I sit around and mope until it's time to pick up the kids. Then, of course, I'm disappointed in myself that I still didn't get anything done. A month ago, I was feeling flush with optimism -- my paper was accepted and in press, my new project was moving steadily (if not quickly), and my work ethic was impeccable. Now, um, yeah.

Not much to report, except that it will be a freaking miracle if I do my proposal this semester.

In an effort to break out of this, I present my goals for today: grade the quizzes for the class I'm TAing, begin the report on my research rotation, email my advisor about the problem that has my research stuck. If there's extra time: stop beating myself up.

The workers unite

2006-10-20T09:06:00.000-04:00

How the mighty have fallen. I just got a spam email from Billy Bragg.

Confessions of a reality TV virgin

2006-10-18T09:16:00.000-04:00

We don't watch much TV in our house -- we do record The Daily Show and Colbert every day, but don't have any other regular habits. (When basketball season rolls around, we more than make up for our below-average screen time, but sadly, we're not quite there yet.) Last night, in a strange coincidence I can only describe as Unusual, the kids were in bed, DT was occupied, the dishes were washed (helps when you don't cook), lunches were made (helps when you forget to take your already-made lunch from the previous day), and I had time to work on knitting a hat I've promised to WonderGirl.

I turned on the TV for a bit of distraction, but not so much that I would mysteriously and consistently drop stitches, leading to a hat full of holes instead of yarn, which I would unsuccessfully attempt to repair, and which might, even now, be sitting at the bottom of a tote bag, cleverly disguised as a knotted ball of yarn with no hat-like qualities. For instance. In any case, the first channel I checked was showing Dancing With the Stars. I'd heard of it, and I am an upapologetic fan of Jerry Springer's radio show, so I left it on.

It was great. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I enjoyed watching. The dances were fun, Emmitt Smith was amusing; I actually Tivo'ed it for WonderGirl to watch later. Here is my question: have I completely lost my standards? Have I not kept myself in TV watching shape, and has my crap-ometer gone on the fritz? My only previous reality-TV experience was the first season of Survivor, so perhaps I'm just reacting to the genre. I don't think I'll make a point of watching another show, but I did leave it on until nearly the end.

I'm either pathetic or a pioneer, not sure which.

The girl hair conundrum

2006-10-17T13:40:00.000-04:00

Proving that the Scheduling Gods have a sense of humor, DT is the parent who picks WonderGirl up from school on Tuesdays, aka Ballet Days. It's the only day he can reliably leave work early enough to get her, and (I think) they both enjoy the Dad/daughter time. She has a snack, then he takes her to ballet, gets her dressed in her regulation-pink leotard and regulation-pink tights, and makes sure she doesn't walk in the parking lot in her regulation-expensive ballet shoes.

When she started ballet at this studio, I knew it was a bit more traditional than the 8-week ballet sessions she'd been doing at the local Y. There were prescribed colors to be worn by each level of dancer, frou-frou Disney princess ballet skirts were scrupulously not allowed, costume fees were equal to the GDP of small neighborhoods (let's assume that metric actually exists), and the "real" recital by the older classes requires a ticket for admission.

Along with all of this came the entreaty that we pull our daughters' hair back into a bun for class. I never expected this to actually happen on WonderGirl's head; my sole bow to the request has been that I make sure she starts the day with a ponytail. Past that? Not much I can do. Then, two weeks ago, she left class with a typed, 11-point set of directions for making a bun. Two of the steps include hairspray; four include bobbie pins. The word "wispies" is used.

Watching DT read the steps was one of the funnier moments I've had in a while. The man can get blood from a 26-week preemie; he can execute the necessary joint locks to stabilize a 350-pound twelve-year-old; he can (somewhat) navigate the new Medicaid HMO system. He cannot, apparently, make a bun out of girl hair. I'm curious to see how far the studio will take things, because rarely have I seen him so riled with the injustice of a request as when he realized they would expect him to create order out of the chaos that is WonderGirl's head.

_________________________________

Rocco is perceptibly better. (Again, let's just assume "perceptibly" is a word.) He is standing a bit more on his own power and has taken a few steps here and there. He's not normal, though. We went to the doctor yesterday and had some reassuring bloodwork results. Our usual pediatrician expects it may take a few more days, but that the issue will resolve on its own. The current diagnosis is toxic synovitis resulting from a previous viral infection, of which there have been many. (The official ER diagnosis? "Refusal to ambulate." Uh, yeah. After making fun of the ER diagnosis, what did our pediatrician write on the billing sheet? Two guesses. Oh, look, you only needed one guess!)

Last night, he had the strength and energy to walk around in circles, cackling in shared hilarity with WonderGirl. (Circles on purpose, or left hip lagging behind, I don't know...) Watching them was good for my heart, and I'm feeling a bit more confident that he's going to be okay. Truth is, I'm exhausted from worrying, though. I want a boring, healthy week, and I want it now.

More things I've learned

2006-10-12T12:41:00.000-04:00

1. Unlike chest X-rays, sandbags aren't necessary for hip X-rays.
2. A child that stops standing or walking over the course of a couple of days is a scary thing.
3. I should trust myself when I think that the lab switched rapid strep tests and ask persistently for a re-test.
4. Pharmacists who work at 2:45am and fill your prescription in under 3 minutes are wonderful people.
5. Getting an X-ray at midnight is much quicker than getting one at noon.
6. Nurses who take 20 minutes to draw 5 cc's of blood from a one-year-old, then get irritated at the child's crying, making helpful comments such as, "It's not really that bad," probably should reconsider that career move from school counseling to nursing.
7. Although having a pediatrician in the family is wonderful when you're not sure if someone has an ear infection or not, having a pediatrician in the family when someone has more unusual symptoms isn't easy for anyone. The discussion over whether to head to the ER goes from, "What did the on-call pediatrician say? Okay, then I'm going," to "Well, it could just be viral aches, or it could be muscular dystrophy, or it could be arthritis, or it could be a really freaking huge worm that is eating our son FROM THE INSIDE OUT!"

Rocco is sleeping now, and we're hopeful that he will start walking again in the next couple of days. The current thought is that his strep infection is giving him hip pain and leading to his reluctance to use the lower half of his body for anything other than scratching me with his toenails. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Depression and mothering

2006-10-06T08:40:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it. I read Dooce. I like her comic timing; I'm intrigued by her obsession with her husband's clogs; I like being able to read most of her posts in under a minute. Part of me, like about 200,000 other people, feels like I know her in at least a slightly personal way. That's why her most recent post, her 32-month letter to her daughter, took me slightly aback.

I was reading merrily along - funny plane trip story, check, story turns poignant and revealing, check, cute pictures, check, discussion of Leta's diet, check, analysis that the whole family will be glad they can go back and read later after Leta's grown up, check, sudden and cutting description of Heather's depression - wha? With just a few sentences, she nailed it. The end:

I had hoped that I would never find myself this low again — I would not wish this crushing emptiness on my worst enemy — but now that I am here I’m not quite sure what to do this time, except trust that you and your father will stick by me, will be here when I do feel better.

And so I apologize that my depression is a part of your life, but I also promise that I will do everything I can to fight it so that your memories of me are not painful. So that my memories of you will be in color.

My own mother suffered from depression, and there's really not much I feel like I can say about it. It was hard for her, and it was hard for the rest of the family. She resisted taking "happy pills," which to be fair, weren't quite as well-accepted then as they are now, and there is a part of me that has never understood that. She didn't want to artificially change who she was, and it was her decision. End of story. There wasn't the common lay acceptance then that depression has physical roots.

Now that I'm a mother, too, and I've had my own bout with milder depression after Celeste died, I can more vividly appreciate what my own mom went through and what Dooce describes. There is a spiralling pull of wanting to be a good mom but just not being able to do the things you imagine. Mix in an intense fear that your low points will be all your kids will remember. It's unforgiving. My heart goes out to depressed moms and dads, those in our family and those I've never met. I hope, as Dooce wrote, that they can also trust that they will feel better, and that their partners and kids will still be there. Years later, I'm still working on completely forgiving my own mom for not doing everything she could to mitigate her depression. Sometimes seeing things from both sides doesn't actually make it easier.

Finally, a secret handshake

2006-10-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

Like so many other women who have dealt with infertility and/or pregnancy loss, I've wished in the past for a secret handshake, some way to affirm that, even though I have two kids, I have been there. Some way to affirm that I know.

Now, the good women over at Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters have come up with a plan. Paz writes:

For anyone who has ever had a miscarriage, struggled with pregnancy, and all things infertile...there is a movement upon us that you might want to join. It's rather simple actually: a discreet ribbon on your right wrist to signal to others that they are not alone in their struggles.

As someone who has had 5 m/c but am currently 5 months pregnant (YEAH), I wonder who looks at my big belly with sadness because they are in the month-to-month struggle. I mentioned to a friend that I wished there was some secret nod or international sign as if to say, this belly was hardwon. Well, she posted this quandary on her blog and the response has been quite overwhelming...and a movement has been born!

The pomegranate-colored thread holds a two-fold purpose: to identify and create community between those experiencing infertility as well as create a starting point for a conversation. Women pregnant through any means, natural or A.R.T., families created through adoption or surrogacy, or couples trying to conceive during infertility or secondary infertility can wear the thread, identifying themselves to others in this silent community. At the same time, the string serves as a gateway to conversations about infertility when people inquire about its purpose. These conversations are imperative if we are ever to remove the social stigma attached to infertility.Tie on the thread because you’re not alone. Wear to make aware. Join us in starting this conversation about infertility by purchasing this pomegranate-coloured thread (#814 by DMC) at any craft, knitting, or variety store such as Walmart or Target. Tie it on your right wrist. Notice it on others.

Why pomegranate thread?

Pomegranates, a longstanding symbol of fertility, serve as a strong analogy to those suffering through infertility. Though each pomegranate skin is unique in colour and texture, the seeds inside are remarkably similar from fruit to fruit. Though our diagnosis is unique—endometriosis, low sperm count, luteal phase defect, or causes unknown—the emotions, those seeds on the inside, are the same from person to person. Infertility creates frustration, anger, depression, guilt, and loneliness. Compounding these emotions is the shame that drives people suffering from infertility to retreat into silence.

I think this is a wonderful idea, and I'll be buying my thread tomorrow. If this symbol becomes even 2% as pervasive as livestrong bracelets or pink ribbons, it is bound to help someone.

What I have learned during my extended blogging absence:

2006-10-02T09:49:00.000-04:00

Sandbags are useful not only during hurricanes, but also during chest x-rays for toddlers.
We are always told "If the fever persists for more than x days, call your doctor." Why? So that your doctor can say, "If it gets worse, come back." When your child is spending the majority of his time crying and refuses to eat, it is fairly difficult to decide what "worse" means.
"Worse" means "not breathing well." Luckily, we never saw "worse."
A thermometer which stops moving quickly once it gets to the 97-degree range is a beautiful thing.
A thermometer which then betrays you by shooting way past 97 degrees the very next day is... not a beautiful thing.
A side effect of ibuprofen can be... wait for it... fever.
A side efffect of fever can be heavy wine consumption for the surrounding area.

Oops, I did it again

2006-09-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

I went to Kroger on Wednesday, aka Senior Citizen Discount Day. We better make that orange juice last, because I may not have the nerve to venture back into the parking lot for a long, long time.

Ibuprofen: it's what's for dinner

2006-09-19T20:04:00.000-04:00

...and thank God for it. Tylenol can kiss my grits -- why do I even bother? After a couple of wonderful months, during which Rocco was apparently too busy to get sick, he's succumbed to Virus The Eighty-sixth.

What he would say, if he could talk*:
"Mom! Come here! No, don't come here. Pick me up! Hey, if you pick me up, I'll claw your face. Who told you to pick me up? Hey, is the stove on? NOW I'm happy. If you move me away from the stove again, I'll claw your face. Hey! Why am I suddenly not near the stove? How dare you try to feed me applesauce. What is this crap? Wait, I like that -- is that applesauce? Why aren't you giving me more? WAITER!"

But now, finally, the ibuprofen has kicked in, he's sleeping (albeit fitfully) and I can go fix myself a nice, stiff drink. Cherry-flavored, from a dropper. Ah, that's the stuff.

*Completely unrelated: Rocco spontaneously played peek-a-boo last night with WonderGirl, using his bath towel. His first two-syllable word is, apparently, "pee-boh." I'm trying not to take it personally that he doesn't yet distinguish "Mama" from "milk" or "more" or "maitre d'."

More free advice

2006-09-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

A tip, especially for others with hypochondriac tendencies, if you notice a lump in your breast during a self-exam:

As your heart begins to race, your stomach drops out and your cheeks burn, go ahead and move near the sink. That way, when you palpate the lump more thoroughly to examine the borders, the milk that squirts out of the one gland that apparently hasn't gotten the post-weaning message swon't require extra cleanup.

Next step: sit down, take a deep breath and say a thank-you that your life didn't just change.

I'd like to give the world a hug

2006-09-12T09:21:00.000-04:00

We live in a heavily international place. (Tangent alert: I couldn't decide what noun to use instead of "place." "Community" implies interaction between people, which I don't often see. "Town" is misleading, since towns are small, while "city" is misleading, since cities are much larger than the area I'd like to describe. "Region" sounds larger than a city, and therefore is wrong, ditto for "area"... I think I may have hit upon something. People are disconnected from each other because we don't know where the f*** we live. Moving on.) Anyway, there are refugees from all over the world, along with academics from many of the same places. We like this on several levels: WonderGirl and Rocco are exposed to kids from all over on a constant basis, and our local grocery store carries seven different kinds of eggplant. Everyone wins.

The best part, though? Hearing a 21-month-old at the playground, standing in the familiar Superman pose at the top of the ladder, prouding proclaiming himself to be "Super JoJo!" in French. We can avoid having to pay for extracurricular language instruction for the kids - Super JoJo is going to save them if they fall on the slide and hopefully conjugate a few verbs at the same time.

_______________________________________________

Shit. I had just typed that post when a fellow grad student came into my office to talk. She just lost a baby at 15 weeks. No idea why -- pathology was normal, chromosomes normal, no obvious sign of infection. She's from another country, has no family here other than her husband, but like so many women who go through this, talking to her family on the phone only made it worse anyway. It sucks, but there truly is a line between people who know how this feels, and people who don't. I'm glad she felt like she could talk to me, and I hope she's serious when she said that it helped. This is a tangible benefit of being at least a bit open about my own history.

But argh, my heart is racing now. It's been a year and four months since I lost Celeste, and conversations like this just bring it all back. She should have been turning 2 in a few weeks.

Here's the irony: when I was pregnant with Rocco, I mentioned to this same student that I'd had two miscarriages. She was dismissive, to say the least, and clearly had the attitude that if you were healthy and took care of yourself, your baby would be born without any problem. It's a little unsettling to see her now dealing with those same attitudes. I have a bit of "I wasn't really wishing this on her" guilt.

On a much less-reverent note

2006-09-11T10:07:00.000-04:00

Okay, I know I just linked to Bitch PhD on Friday, but I have to do it again. Guest blogger John Patrick has a wonderful primer on these points:

Ethnicity is not pedigree. No more fractions!
Ethnicity is as central to identity as gender. No more "zero-culture fallacy." No more "I don't you as "ethnic;" I don't care if you're black, or white, or green!"
Relative vaginophobia.

Read it, but the language is NSFW.

9/11/2001

2006-09-11T09:05:00.000-04:00

What I remember:

It was the second week of classes, my first semester of graduate school. My probability theory class, which met from 9-11 am, was on break. I was 7 1/2 months pregnant with WonderGirl, so I'd made my typical break-time trip to the bathroom. As we reconvened, an epidemiology student named Clark returned, wide-eyed, from the coffee stand, which had a TV. His information was muddled, something about planes, the WTC, the White House. The Washington mall was on fire. Planes were coming down all over. No one knew what was happening.

The rest of class sat there, unable to digest what he was talking about. My instructor waited a moment, then started teaching again. I wanted to get up and leave, but who leaves in the middle of a required class two weeks into the semester? (If you don't know how to react, I guess you keep reading My Pet Goat.) I wondered if my instructor pushed on because she was Chinese and didn't get the significance. I wondered if I did get the significance. I wondered if this was one of those times where everything changes, and if so, how much.

After class ended, I left school. I needed to see DT, who was working in the nursery of a hospital a few miles away that morning. When I got to the front desk, asking for the nursery, hugely pregnant, the receptionist tried to point me to labor and delivery instead. I couldn't explain myself, but finally found DT in the NICU, hugged him, then went home to watch the news and try to process it all. I listened to NPR on the way, as they reported the towers had fallen. It took several days for me to realize their fall was a surprise to most people -- in my experience of the day, it all happened simultaneously. I didn't know about the sick period between, where no one knew what was going to happen. I didn't know that a plane could enter a building and leave the building upright. I just didn't know.

I remember the next several hours, watching TV, with everyone in the country seemingly assuming that their location was the next obvious target. My school is near a large federal institution, so it was evacuated as a precaution. How many small towns are near nuclear sites, how many large cities have high-profile buildings, how many medium cities are symbolic targets of another kind? Everyone thought they were next.

Like so many Americans, I spent time on the phone, connecting with my family. We all needed to hear each others' voices, even though none of us, in fact, were next. I remember my brother's anger, remember thinking that I hadn't made it to anger yet, I was just afraid.

My most enduring memory of the day was a strange relief that WonderGirl hadn't been born yet. Whatever else was scary and uncontrollable, I knew she was okay. I remember having my first true understanding that there were situations in which I wasn't going to be able to protect her. That day, though, she was still cozy and unaware, kicking my internal organs, reassuring me that whatever else I couldn't do, I could nurture her a little while longer. My body was a buffer between her and whatever madness was going on. It was the one thing I could do while I waited to see what it all meant.

Guilt with a capital G and that rhymes with T and that stands for trouble

2006-09-08T10:11:00.001-04:00

Last night, DT and I went to our very first PTA meeting at WonderGirl's new school. After the meeting (hilarious because it's a Quaker school, and people kept forgetting they were supposed to sense consensus instead of calling for votes, leading to cries of, "Aye. I mean, WAIT! We don't do that!"), every classroom had a back-to-school night, during which the teachers revealed the mysteries of our children's school day. It was Wonderful, Glorious, Inspiring. WonderGirl's teachers are apparently angelic geniuses, or genuis angels, I don't know which. There are good ideas oozing out of the walls in that classroom, and I truly wish I could have hired the teachers as parenting consultants around the time WonderGirl started, oh, interacting with other humans. In stark contrast to WonderGirl's previous preschool, the faculty and staff frame all of their requests in such a positive way that you just can't wait to comply: "The kids are doing a great job recognizing which snacks are healthy, so thank you for continuing to send healthy snacks so they can practice," or "We're having a wonderful time combining gross motor skills with math lessons, so we're looking for exciting, large maninpulatives for the children. We've had several parents graciously donate body parts and we're so grateful." To which I say, "Here! Do you need more? Please take my arm - it would be an honor to spend my life one-armed so that the children (oh! the children!) will enjoy math!"

The school is clearly the right environment for WonderGirl. We enrolled her because of its diversity (it's a mini-UN), its focus on social justice and on values which we cherish (conflict resolution, respect for all beings, smoothies), and its combination of academic flexibility and challenge. There have turned out to be more advantages than we had even considered, and WonderGirl is flourishing there, to put it mildly. But, here's the rub. We had planned for this to be a stopgap solution. When I graduate (WHEN, not if, dammit!), we planned either to move to a different city (and presumably to a decent school district) or move within our current location to a decent public school district. We never considered that this might be a permanent school, but now both DT and I are having a difficult time imagining moving her out. It just feels that right. The problem with the scene is that we have chosen to send our child to a private school, and for that, I feel capital-g guilty. Before we had kids, I earnestly argued that I would join a local coalition of folks working to make our local schools acceptable and would send our kids there; I didn't want to take advantage of our standing to opt out of the local schools, when so many other kids just don't have that option. Now? Apparently not. I am well aware of the fact that she won't shrivel up and die at our subpar local elementary school (which is, ironically, further from our house than her current school - so much for "local"). But. I guess my voracious appetite for depending public schools is sated when it comes time to send my daughter to one that is, frankly, not inspiring. My liberalism apparently has bounds that have surprised me.

In a coincidence that you might call spooky (or might pragmatically note is inspired by the start of school), Bitch PhD has a post today on the same subject, different side of the equation. To be fair, the situation Bitch describes is a bit different. Our local school is much less diverse, allocates its resources in dramatically different ways, and doesn't focus on building community and pursuing a life of simplicity, integrity and equality. WonderGirl's school has an aggressive financial aid policy and uses tuition from well-off families to subsidize other students with the goal, and result, of economic diversity. We chose her school for philosophical reasons, not just as a refuge from our public school. We didn't apply to other private schools, and I assume would have sent WonderGirl to the public school if she hadn't been admitted to this one.

I do think Bitch is right that parents today place too much importance on every decision they make, assuming it will determine the course of their child's life. (The care and feeding of that neurosis is another post...) In that vein, maybe we could have given our local school a year or two, then reassessed the situation and made a change if necessary. Maybe WonderGirl would have decided she hated school in those two years, maybe she would have made life-changing friends, maybe she wouldn't have felt physically safe, maybe she would have loved her teachers, maybe she would have been bored, maybe she would have been challenged. I have no idea, because now we've started down a path that is going to be harder to leave than I'd originally thought. I don't really know where it goes, and I suppose none of us, on any of our paths, do. For now, though, it's winding through some beautiful scenery and I'm going to enjoy it. I might as well, we've already paid tuition.

The human body is mad cool, yo

2006-09-07T10:31:00.000-04:00

Big biology news today: three teams of scientists (from UNC, Michigan and Hahvahd) jointly published work that hints at the incredibly complex balance of cell proliferation, aging and cancer. The groups each worked with a particular tumor suppressor, p16^INK4a, in different tissues. The gene's expression gradually increases with age, and its increased expression seems not only to prevent age-related out-of-control cell growth (cancer=bad), but also prevents stem-cell proliferation (stem cells=good). It's a fascinating and tricky balance. Tumor suppression is increasingly important as we age, but the flip side of that is a loss of the stem cells that are so important for renewing our tissues. I supposed the debate turns to whether we'd rather get cancer or have garden-variety age-related degeneration. From the linked NYT article, one of the lead scientists summed it up optimistically:

“There is no free lunch,’’ Dr. Sharpless said. “We are all doomed.”

From a science standpoint, almost as interesting as the research itself is the fact that three separate groups worked together on something so high-profile. The group from Carolina shared its knockout mice with the other groups, since they were all looking at different tissues. Cool, cooperation in science, putting the common good ahead of egos and careers, yadda yadda, right? Uh... then there's this gem at the bottom of the article:

Press releases by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the University of Michigan attributed the advance to all three teams equally. But the press release issued by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where Dr. Scadden has an appointment, described him as the leader of the multi-institutional team, with the other two teams confirming his work. Dr. Scadden made no such claim in an interview, and acknowledged Dr. Sharpless’s generosity in lending his mice.

Smacks of the portrayal of Robert Gallo in And the Band Played On. Dude, if you didn't at least make the mice, you better get your institute's PR department under control.

It's back to school we go

2006-09-06T09:28:00.000-04:00

I have become what I have beheld and am content that I have done right.

Yes, I am now that scary advanced graduate student that no one wants to talk to. Last week, I began my sixth year of school here. Sixth. Our department's recruiting materials gaily indicate that most students take between four and five years to finish, depending on a student's previous coursework, wink wink, nudge nudge. In fact, during my now-considerable tenure, I have seen exactly three students finish in less than five years; one student that was a seventh-year when I came is still officially in the program.

Clearly, our department doesn't put a premium on efficiently graduating students, but it's a bit of a dirty little secret. Typically, when students get far enough along that they've lost their funding, they get jobs and only work on their dissertations part-time. They're not around the department much; they lose their office space; people forget that they're still in the program. They may not have degrees, but at least they're not flaunting that by being visible. I'm a little different. Rocco's daycare is right by school, so I spend all of my working time in the department, and I'm not easy to ignore. (Perhaps it's because of the red boa I wear whenever I'm feeling particularly brilliant and productive.)

Last week, our new students began orientation and it quickly became clear that I was like some sort of first-year-eating virus. It was a similar feeling to when I'd walk around the undergraduate section of campus pregnant: everyone avoids eye contact, just in case your "condition" rubs off on them. I'm okay with that, though. The new students will spend the next few weeks dancing around each other, figuring out who will study together, who will drink together, who will spend more time with her dog or fiance than with her fellow-student cohort. These negotiations will feel weighty and consequential. I won't miss that. I'll be the old one, eating lunch with the assistant professors and staring at WonderGirl's artwork at my desk when I'm thinking or in need of inspiration.

On notice

2006-09-03T14:02:00.000-04:00

You've been warned.

Pumping as a class issue

2006-09-01T09:52:00.000-04:00

There's nothing in this article from the NY Times that is surprising, but that doesn't mean it's not depressing: there is a clear separation between new moms returning to work who are able to pump, and those who aren't. The article draws a nice line between managers at Starbucks who are able to pump privately and conveniently in their offices and counter employees who must save up break time to pump in the customer bathroom. Is it any wonder breastfeeding rates are so low among women with less education and lower-paying jobs?

Where, exactly, is our commitment to families and children? Why on God's green earth are we expressing that commitment by obsessing over whether embryos should be flushed down the sink instead of used in research, instead of putting our collective energy toward creating policies that would encourage breastfeeding for all families, regardless of class? Why do we spend so much effort castigating women who can't/don't/won't breastfeed instead of actually giving them the tools they need to increase their likelihood of successfully breastfeeding?

We have a burger emergency

2006-08-31T11:30:00.000-04:00

There is a hilarious audio clip here, in which a stressed-out mom (her children are HUNGRY! don't you understand?!?) actually calls 911 to try to resolve an issue she has with... Burger King.

Really.

The woman apparently was given the wrong burger at the drive-through, had a confrontation of some sort with the manager, refused to just take her money back and move on, because, again, her children (think of the poor children!) were hungry and she had to go get on some freeway somewhere. What to do? Well, call 911, of course. Egads.

It's worth a listen, if for no other reason than to appreciate the Job-like patience of the 911 operator. Though incredulous throughout the call, she does calmly offer some good advice. She also asks the right questions, such as, "You want us to protect you from the wrong burger?"

It's a girl thing

2006-08-28T09:57:00.000-04:00

One of my buttons, which gets pressed frequently, is the idea that a large percentage of a particular child's behaviors can be explained just by looking in his/her diaper and checking out the genitalia. I would never deny that there are general differences between men and women, particulary in relation to physical size. Clearly, the brains of adult men and women are different, as well -- but it's impossible to know if the changes are due to socialization or if they actually cause emotional and intellectual differences in men and women. This point seems to get missed consistently.

DT and I always vowed to raise our children in such a way that they could become whoever and whatever was comfortable for them. I think we've done a fairly good job so far. WonderGirl definitely loves pink and spends a large percentage of her time modeling dress-up clothes and performing in imaginary ballets. She also loves bugs, plays with boys and, like Hammie, would jump from the fridge to the dishwasher if we didn't have a strict "no jumping from furniture to furniture" rule in our house. I hope and expect that Rocco will also feel comfortable exhibiting a blend of his masculine and feminine energies.

It's tired territory, so I'll just say briefly that I don't know why we, as a society, have so much invested in teaching boys to be boys and girls to be girls. My gut feeling is that there's an element of truth in it all -- girls are probably more likely (on average) to enjoy ballerina endeavors, for some biological reason, but who can say that for sure? The socialization starts early and is aggressive. Even my mother-in-law told me recently that buying presents for her granddaughters is much easier than for her grandsons because "girls like everything." One of her grandsons loves cooking and all things kitchen-related, but she's never indulged that interest with a relevant gift because... well, who knows? When I asked, she just looked at me with a bemused expression and repeated several times that it would be "weird." When we were shopping together for Rocco's recent birthday, she found a wonderful, soft pillow-type stuffed animal. It met most of her criteria for purchase: happy eyes (don't ask), fur that didn't come out when you pulled, and conservative political leanings. The only problem? It was purple. She danced around the issue for a good three minutes, assuming that I wouldn't want him to have it because, you know, it was purple. We ended up taking a different toy home for him - a nice, masculine puppy.

My real pet peeve, though, are parents who have two children, a girl and a boy, and ascribe all differences in their children to sex. As a statistician, I'm completely offended by this: if you have a sample size of 1 in each category, you simply can't draw conclusions. When I see differences in Rocco and WonderGirl, I assume that they're differences in Rocco and WonderGirl, not girls and boys. The next parent that tells me that their children were different from the beginning because they were boys or girls damn well better have at least three of each.

(Technical issue: I can't get the cartoon any larger, but if you click on it, you can read it.)

Good thing I never get embarrassed anymore

2006-08-24T16:06:00.000-04:00

I have never been the world's most graceful woman. Not as a child, even though I took ballet for years; not as a teenager (ha!); not in my pre-mom days; and apparently, definitely, not now.

I just walked into a plate-glass window. While holding Rocco.

Luckily, we're both fine, although the young man on his way to work at the Italian restaurant by the dastardly plate-glass window certainly seemed concerned. I have to say, I've often wondered what it would be like to be a bird: wearing feathers (even to casual events), being able to employ vertical space, and using a beak to eat are all activities that I find intriguing on some level. Flying into a window? I didn't need that part of the avian experience.

Acclimating

2006-08-23T09:46:00.000-04:00

Although I don't quite believe it's possible, WonderGirl started school this week. I've actually been a bit surprised by my own reaction -- even though she has been in daycare/preschool since she was a baby, it feels like a huge step. The cliches about time flying are feeling true (for the first time ever, quite honestly). I also lay in bed last night, thinking about my two growing children, each asleep in bed, and got almost overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility to them. Usually I am good at doing the daily tasks of parenting, and I usually manage to complete the medium- to long-term tasks that are required. I think, though, that keeping up with the "tasks" has prevented me at times from really considering the fact that DT and I are now the Dad and Mom. We're not playing house; we truly are a family, and Rocco and WonderGirl will think back on these exact times when they think of their childhood. I know that none of this is particularly insightful on my part, and it's something that I always know on an intellectual level. For some reason, right now, I'm feeling it viscerally in a way that doesn't always happen. It's a little scary.

Hmm, that's not what I meant to write about today, but there it is.

Moving on -- the good news is that WonderGirl is overwhelmingly in love with her school, her teacher, her new experiences, her lunchbox, the blue bars on the playground, everything. It is a honeymoon like I never expected her to have. Instead of being frightened or having a difficult transition as she came to realize that things were going to be different from her old preschool, she has flourished. She is positively looking for things to enjoy, and DT and I are basking in her reflected glow.

It reminds me of people traveling to unfamiliar places -- WonderGirl clearly takes after DT in that she is eager to soak up the new culture, learn the rules and integrate herself as quickly and as much as possible. She has a 4-year-old confidence about these things that I can't relate to at all. Her tendencies are encouraged by the attitude and philosophy of her school; there is clearly a lot of attention paid to making students feel welcomed. I would be lying if I didn't admit my own jealousy. I'm starting my sixth year in my department and believe that, after two days, WonderGirl is more a part of her school's family than I am. Perhaps if I wore ponytails and mismatched shoes more often I would be similarly welcomed.

__________________

One of the odd things about WonderGirl's move is that I truly have no idea how things work at her new school. Our family was/is a fixture at the daycare, and there is nothing there that could surprise me. Now, however, I'm reliant on WonderGirl to describe her new situation to me, and some things are clearly getting lost in translation. I hear all about recess (both of them! each day! hallelujah! says WonderGirl) but don't quite get the other classroom routines. Actual conversation as WonderGirl described the "centers" in the room:

Ruth: What center did you choose?
WonderGirl: Blocks.
R: Who did you play with? Were there other people in the block center?
WG: Not me!
R: I thought you said you chose blocks.
WG (looking at me like she is already tasked with caring for an aging, slow parent): I thought you meant this morning.

So things come out slowly (turns out she was at the listening center in the morning, then the block center in the afternoon with two other kids, DUH, Mom) but they're coming out. Meanwhile, I have to wonder if they truly do have "silent lunch" and if so, how much her teachers charge in consulting fees to share their secrets of coercion.

We're baaaack....

2006-08-21T21:08:00.000-04:00

We're recently returned from a great adventure. Pitiful as this sounds, we just completed what I believe is our first vacation not to see family since before WonderGirl was born. It was wonderful. We spent almost a week at the beach, where WonderGirl got closer to her version of sea legs, Rocco proved that he has neither sense nor fear when it comes to the water (and, particularly, to auto-face-splashing), and DT's mom babysat one afternoon so that DT and I could ride bikes to a cute little wine bar, then ride home embarrassingly buzzed after one glass for people who did actually attend college. Typically, our vacations are enjoyable because they allow us to reconnect with family, but this one was actually relaxing. (Did I mention we saw a shark the last day? But still.)

The only downside to the experience was that the house we rented had a wonderful selection of books, including Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which I've wanted to read for some time. I wish I hadn't read it; now I have an unquenchable thirst to use semicolons.

In further family-reading news, WonderGirl loved Beezus and Ramona, no surprise there, but appears to have missed any negative associations with Ramona's behavior. I may have unleashed something larger than myself and not entirely pleasant for the family.

Ramona Quimby, age timeless

2006-08-11T10:52:00.000-04:00

The Lovely Mrs. Davis is celebrating Sesame Street's 37th season with a blog carnival of sorts. She asks this question: What television, music, movie or book from your childhood are you excited about sharing with your own children?

This is timely for our family, as I am salivating (but not on you this time) at the prospect of WonderGirl's entry into the world of chapter books. We read to WonderGirl a lot, mainly because that's the only way we can get her to sit still and cuddle with us, and we absolutely need some cuddling to balance various other "joys" of parenting. Now, WonderGirl's beginning to read on her own just a bit. I think she's almost ready to appreciate two crucial points: the advantage of being able to set her own reading schedule instead of relying on us to read to her and the payoff of following characters and stories over a longer arc than that contained in a picture book.

To that end, I made a purchase this week to which I've been looking forward for a long time - Beezus and Ramona. I had a serious Beverly Cleary habit as a child, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I can't wait any longer to get WonderGirl hooked also, so I'll be reading chapters aloud to her tomorrow as we drive to the beach to begin our vacation. I'll read to her and remember my own mother reading to us on our long car trips. (At some point, I'll probably wish I'd picked a book with a slightly less implusive main character than Ramona.) Hopefully, when we come home, WonderGirl will want to read the next book in the series, and on some future trip, I'll watch her in the back seat, her expression changing as she reads it to herself.