Everybody says your life will never be the same once you have a child. Mine bears very little resemblance to what came before. I look back over what I've written here, on this blog, and so little of it seems to fit anymore. More specifically, while before it seems so much of my identity came from my work as a professor, now that part of my life seems to matter very little. All my worries about my teaching & students seem pretty inconsequential now. Petty, even. My days revolve entirely around Bino (a better pseudonym than D., and an actual nickname-- short for Bambino-- what we called him when he was still in utero). Sometimes it's a bit exhausting. At times I wish I had more time to read/write blogs or go for a walk or cook or do something that doesn't require me having him attached to me in some way. But it occurs to me that when he gets older I won't be allowed this constant physical contact with him. For now, I want to be near him, just about every minute possible. He must be seven pounds, now. He's growing and changing so quickly. I'm so glad I'll be around for much of it. I'm teaching just one class at the college in town. I can't imagine what my life would be like this fall if I'd accepted the full time offer I had elsewhere and P. had followed me instead...

We gave Bino a bath the other day-- and he loved it! He nearly fell alseep in the water and was all smiley when I pulled him out and put him in his towel...

He makes the cutest faces when he's just woken up (he also moves his arms and legs around adoringly) and when he's just gotten done nursing. He's more alert now than ever, and sometimes his eyes are wide and just looking, looking, looking. His cry sounds like "Naaaaaaaaaaaaa Nnnnaaaaaaaaaaa Nnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" and sometimes "Nnwaaaaaaaa". Though something P. read says that babies can't suck and grasp in coordination, Bino routinely holds his own pacifier in his mouth. He doesn't mind poopy diapers, but hates wet ones. He likes to sleep on us, in his car seat & in our bed, and generally wakes up quickly if we put him somewhere else for a nap. He gets the hiccups at least twice a day and waits patiently for them to go away, even though his whole body is moving with them.

He's hungry all the time. Like now.

part ii

They kept D. in the ICU for about a week. Happily, P. and I were able to spend nights at the hospital-- gratis-- in this special room reserved for mothers who want to keep nursing their babies through the night. After 2 days of sleeping with D. in the room with me, it was hard to be apart from him even as much as we were. We spent days going to visit or nurse D. every few hours, and nights were much the same for me. We got to know the nurses on all three shifts. I've never had as much respect for the nursing profession (and I thought it was a noble vocation before!) as I do now. These women-- a few in particular-- were so patient, knowledgable, kind... they are the ones (not the doctors) who really seemed to pull D. through all of this. We had a few scary moments-- D. was put on a feeding tube for a little while, after still having erratic drops in his blood sugar-- & every time another baby in the ICU went home and D. didn't, I felt a little bit jealous. I didn't learn the names of any of the other parents we ran into, though there was communion and some conversation with them, but I remember the names of their children still.

D. turns a month old tomorrow. He's doing well. He's gaining weight and inches-- he was six and a half pounds at today's doctor's appointment. He's a lot more alert than he used to be. I'm not getting a lot of sleep yet, and I'm getting very little done during the daytime yet, either. Occasionally we can get D. to nap in his playpen or (even more rarely) in his crib. Most of the time he wants to be held. There are few things sweeter than watching him veg out and drift off to sleep in my arms. And there's this thing he does with his head after nursing-- he leans it way back and looks up at me... adorable.

Today we finally got D. to go into his sling and we even walked around outside with him inside it. Hopefully that will make it easier fo rme to get something more done in the house during the day. I've also just found a way to type and check blogs with the computer on the coffee table and D. on my lap in this chair... so maybe i'll be able to check in here more often, too.

There's no easy way to close this. But I can't resist posting another picture. I love the way he naps-- arms and legs sprawled out like this.

how it began

Before another week passes, I need to write this down. There are so many things I want to remember about how D. came to us.

We'd only been in New city for 3 or 4 days-- and the movers had only brought our belongings 2 days before-- when my water broke in the middle of the night. I woke up, gushing, nudged P. awake, & called my mom as P. and I tried to figure out what to do. Back in Old city, I'd actually bothered to pack an overnight bag for the hospital just in case, but at the last minute, P. and I decided to pack most of what was in the bag in something else and use the bag for things we needed on the car trip-- we figured the baby wouldn't arrive soon enough to worry about it. The day before D. came, I'd thought about packing that bag again, but didn't get around to it. I jumped in the shower and P. tried to pack, hastily. When I got out of the shower and got dressed, I started leaking again, and wanted to change clothes, but P. kept rushing me, trying to get met to the hospital. We wound up taking an old towel in the car fo rme to sit on, and I kept leaking on the way to the hospital.

We showed up at the emergency room and someone wheeled me through this maze of hospital corridors to a different part of the hospital where babies are born. They confirmed my water had broken, got me settled into a bed, and called my OB, who I hadn't even met yet (I had scheduled an appointment with her for 2 days later). An incredibly nice and soothing nurse named Julie took down all my information and stayed with me while we waited. An on-call doctor came to do an ultra-sound and confirm that D. was still breech. Some minutes after he left, D.'s heart rate went way down, and suddenly my room was flooded with nurses-- at least half a dozen. I was given oxygen, told first to lie on my side, and then to get on my hands and knees. The nurses handled everything very calmly, but it was a chaotic and confusing few minutes. I couldn't see P., I didn't know what was happening... the heart rate went back to normal again, my ob arrived, and I was prepped almost immediately for surgery. Everything seemed to go incredibly fast.

In the operating room, a kind Indian woman anesthesiologist gave me a spinal. My nurse, Julie, was there, and told me to arch my back and lean into her, to hold her scrubs if I wanted to. I can't explain how nurtured I felt by this woman... I was nervous about the needle going in, but didn't even feel it. I started going numb almost immediately. I couldn't even move myself onto the table. The screen went up, P. was brought in to sit near my head, and D. came out of me, apparently urinating, minutes later. I cried.

They took D. away pretty quickly, and P. wound up going with him, and letting me get finished being sewn up and taken to recovery on my own. Eventually I was taken back to my room and D. was brought into me. I'm not sure I can recall getting to hold him for the first time, but I know that the first few days together with him were entirely bliss-filled. I stayed in bed mostly and held and nursed D. while P. spent some time back at the apartment trying to finish unpacking or hiding boxes to get ready for my parents' arrival. The morphine and other pain killers made all that time blur together. I felt like I was inside a dream.

There will have to be a second chapter here, about D.'s time in the special care nursery, but that will have to wait for a while as D. is rousing himself for what's likely to be a midafternoon snack.

he's arrived

So much has happened in the past few weeks, I can't even begin to catch my breath. I've been aching to write for some time, but circumstances just haven't allowed enough time.

Our baby has arrived. In the very early morning of June 25th, my water broke, not even four days after P. and I moved into our New City apartment. We hadn't even finished unpacking boxes. D. was delivered by c-section some few hours later, weighing in at 4 pounds and 11 ounces of cuteness. Because he was early and small, they've kept him at the hospital all this time and P. and I have been through an emotional rollercoaster that all parents of "special care" kids must. As D's glucose levels fell and rose, so have our moods. We've spent more nights at the hospital now than we've spent at home, and that might continue a few more days. We finally seem to be on an upswing that will last, and hopefully we'll be able to bring the baby home by Tuesday. Cross your fingers for us.

(Isn't he cute? P. and I don't think we've ever seen anyone so beautiful. Everytime he looks up at me with smiley eyes, I think my heart will burst.)

growing

My belly is so round and full now I'm not sure how it could possibly get any bigger, but if the baby really does hang out there for these several more weeks, it undoubtably will. While the baby used to sit in closer to my sternum, he leans out now, and while I can't discern which part is which, I can definitely tell where he is in there. Sometime he rests legs or arms under my ribcage. My fingers have swollen-- I cant' get on my wedding ring. My watch used to move easily around, and now it's uncomfortably tight. And yet, all these changes are terribly exciting, too, in spite of the discomfort. They mean that something's happening. There's a baby coming.

bipolar grading

Believe it or not, I'm still grading. Only one huge stack of papers to go, then final grades to calculate for three classes, and boy, will I be happy when it's over.

I think I have a somewhat unhealthy attachment to how well my students do. I'm not a grading machine. I feel proud and disappointed and frustrated and sometimes even angry as I grade. With exams, the emotions seem limited to pride or sadness. When a student does poorly, I feel compassion mostly-- I feel sad the student wasn't able to recall the information needed to do well, or wasn't able to analyze a passage as thoroughly as she might have. I never take it personally if a student does poorly. Essays are a different story, though. My first-year comp. students finished up the semester with research papers (for example). Some of them turned in the best work I've seen from them all semester-- that's the idea, that's what we were striving for! When I grade these essays, I feel proud of the students. I can see how much progress they've made, I can tell that they've worked hard, and I'm glad to see it paying off for them.

But there's another group of students who, in spite of all the incremental assignments we used for the paper, appear to have turn in something they threw together at the last minute. These are the students who I've had to struggle with a bit more. I've given detailed feedback on drafts, I've met with students in my office, I've done my best to give them feedback I think can really help them improve. I don't mind spending that time, but when I see the final product, and there's no evidence of revision, I'm very frustrated. There are also students who are relying entirely on web sources, even though the requirements for the essay state repeatedly that they're to use primarily books and journal articles. I know that I shouldn't take it so personally, but I have a hard time not doing so. I work hard at trying to find the potential in each essay that I read, and at trying to encourage students to develop it-- but some of them just don't care.

And then there are the plagiarists. While I spent more time talking about plagiarism in this semester's comp classes than ever before, I am still getting students copying word-for-word from their sources and thinking it's okay to do so if they just put a page number afterwards. We did exercises in class on paraphrasing and summarizing, and they were told repeatedly that failing to include quotation marks around material borrowed word for word is not kosher. I've called their attention to this in previous papers they've turned in, and even had a few extended conversations about this in my office. And yet, here it is again, in the final paper of the semester. It's frustrating, and disappointing. I feel like I did all I could to prevent this from happening, and yet I still feel like I must have failed them.

I guess the good thing to be said is that I didn't have any over-the-top cases of plagiarism in any of my comp sections this year. That happened instead in an upper level Shakespeare class, in which one student copied and pasted pages of text from the Encyclopedia Britanica. I feel far more emotionally invested in this situation than I should be. I am disappointed, and even at times angry. In accordance with university policy, I contacted the student by email to tell him what I've discovered and what will happen next (he'll hear from the registrar). The student wrote back and claimed he cited his sources (they are mentioned on the Works cited page), so he didn't think he was doing anything wrong. I find this extremely hard to believe-- less than two full paragraphs of the entire essay are his own work, the rest is literally plopped in from an online source, and he thinks that suffices as a final essay? He expressed no concern at all in his message, just essentially denies he's done anything wrong. He seems nonplussed; I'm exasperated. Something's wrong here.

Final exam week is supposed to be a stressful time for students, and yet I feel far more stressed on this side of things than I did when I was a student and on the other side of things.

P. and I recently finished reading this excellent book (aloud, to eachother, mostly in the car). The writer is a psychoanalyst from Britain who has a lot to say about developmental psychology and biology in babies and young children. She claims that human responses to stress are wired in babyhood (during the time the brain is growing and new synapses are forming, etc.), and can even be somewhat influenced while the child is still in utero. So every time I feel stressed now, I start to worry about the large amounts of cortisol I'm sending baby's way. I wish I could just calm down. I want to create an environment that will allow the kid to feel safe and confident. I'm hoping some of this time away from work next semester will help, but I have a lot of work to do. I'm not in control of myself as much as I wish I were. I need to develop some new strategies for soothing myself and for keeping my mood at a more even keel. Where to begin, though? When to begin is a little easier to answer: as soon as I get the rest of this grading done.

highs and lows

There are probably Kubler-Ross -like stages for dealing with news like this. I think I got the shock and (misdirected?) anger all at once. Now I'm blaming myself. I'm still not so happy with how the doctor presented this to P. and me the other day, but since we've been talking and reading more about clubfeet and possible treatments, we feel better able to assert ourselves at our next appointment and to ask the questions we need to.

Yesterday was a day of highs and lows. We attended our first childbirth class at the hospital. We had a tour of the labor and delivery rooms, nursery, etc., and got a lot of information from the nurse leading the class. I had no idea one needed to have a pediatrician already lined up before the birth! The nurse suggested interviewing doctors before choosing one. If we really are dealing with a birth defect, that's going to be terribly important. As nervous as I might sound now, the class itself was a bright spot in the day. I was excited about going, and I'm excited thinking about our little guy arriving. I think these classes (every week for six weeks) will make the time go by faster. We start separate Lamaze classes next week, too.

Here are the lows. First, I got the idea in my head that if the baby has a problem with his foot, it's my fault. Maybe I didn't take enough folic acid; maybe I shouldn't have had caffeine those times I've had it while pregnant. Maybe I squashed the kid accidently or did something else wrong. It's torture.

The other complication is this: while I'd been trying to deal with the situation by telling myself that we just don't even know if there's a problem or not yet, P. has been preparing himself for the worst. He handles all sorts of stresses like this, figuring that if he can resign himself to bad things happening, he's better able to deal with whatever comes. But his communicating these feelings of foreboding to me ("I'm pretty sure the baby has problems," he says) has made me jumpy and sometimes even panicked. I get easily overwhelmed thinking about this too much, especially now that I've started thinking I may be responsible for the problem. The "if this is the case, we'll do that" approach feels much safer to me. But P. works differently, and so we clash. Last night after getting in bed, P. started looking up yet more information about club foot on the internet, and it just got to be too much. I tried to explain the panic it was causing in me and wound up causing more tension between the two of us than I ever wanted. I guess I need to get a better grip on things, somehow.

Better news? Only a few days left of this crazy semester. Maybe I'll calm down a bit once my grades are in.

baby feet

We had a second ultrasound today, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The doctor said the ultrasound technician had made a note about one of the feet, which could have just been in an awkward position at the time of the ultrasound, but which also could be a club foot. "I'm sorry to hit you with this zinger," she said. Whatever that means. She said that in six more weeks we can have another ultrasound to check and see how things look then. The whole conversation took only a few minutes, and she was speaking so casually, it was hard for P. or me to figure out how seriously we should take things. I'm confused. The ultrasound technician spent very little time with us: if there were something present that looked like a problem, wouldn't she take a little more time to check things out? Or wouldn't the doctor take a closer look herself? And why wait six more weeks before we can check again? Why not have another ultrasound at the next appointment (in 2 weeks)?

P. & I did some reading about this when we got home, and it wouldn't be the most terrible thing ever if a club foot were what we're dealing with-- there are ways to correct the problem after birth. The news is still a bit unsettling, though.

I have to confess that I chose this ob in part because she's a she, even though a friend at work had much to recommend another (male) doctor in town. My ob has always been very business-like and a little abrupt with us. Most of our appointments haven't lasted longer than 10 minuets. That was okay with me. But this time, that quickness and demeanor didn't feel quite so good. Moving early is starting to look less daunting-- maybe a new ob would be a good change?

a humble poll

As ETBA (estimated time till baby's arrival) approaches zero, P. and are having to make lots of new, important decisions. They're decisions we unfortunately have to make without all of the information we'd like (this sounds familiar-- it was the same deal with deciding where to take jobs). The biggest one concerns where exactly we should have the baby. We can either have the baby here and then move, or move and then have the baby. But I'm oversimplifying even this. We're not even sure yet whether we'll be able to extend our lease-- if we can't, we have to be out of here no later than June 30. The other variable, of course, involves when exactly the baby will make his arrival. Will he be early or late? On time? It matters.

I've been trying to ask every mother I know to weigh in on this, and I'm getting conflicting advice. Some say that it's definitely better to have baby here if possible and then move. In that case, I won't have to worry about finding a new OB in a new city, and I'll be able to avoid a drive half-way across the country during which we'll have to stop every hour for me to stretch my legs and/or use the bathroom. This camp claims that newborns are very easy to travel with-- that the baby will sleep most of the time, anyway, and that moving 2 weeks after the birth is perfectly do-able. Besides, it's much cheaper to pay another month's rent here than in New City.

A friend in the other camp claims very forcefully that it's better to move as soon as I turn in my final grades, regardless of the expense it takes to do so; that it's infinitely better to travel pregnant with stops every hour than to try moving after the baby's born. Not only might the car trip be more stressful, but it will be very difficult to get settled in with a baby someone's got to hold onto and without a LOT of help on the other end.

So what do you think? Which is the lesser evil?

I'm kinda consumed with work these days, and probably should be grading, even now. I hate how I've neglected this blog, but when I get this way, when I've worked myself into this big blob of stress, I really just don't like who I am or how I write.

The changes coming in these next few months excite me, but also make me verrrry anxious. Sometimes I feel that the way things have worked out is a good thing-- that the situation will force me to try out a nonacademic job which I have sometimes dreamed about. And yet I worry I just don't have the personality to go out and get such a job. I've only ever been in school-- how do I sell myself as something else? I also worry that finding non-academic work means less time with the baby. And then there's also that fear that I'm just not good enough at anything to get a job I might actually like doing/find meaningful.

See? You don't want to read this.

help

Dear friends of the blogosphere,
It's been a stressful past few weeks. P. and I both got job offers in desirable places, but they were too far apart from each other to make it work. It came down to making a choice between his offer (which might give me part time, adjunct work) and mine (which would have given him a visiting full time instructor job). P. did extremely well on the market this year-- four offers and many more campus visit requests (several of which he turned down), but was worried that taking a ntt position right out of grad school would hurt his chances on the market next year. Emotionally he had a hard time turning down the jobs he did. I was/am also a bit freaked out since leaving a t-t job and giving up another, better t-t offer for low paid adjunct work seems very risky, especially if it's true that only 40% of English phds find academic jobs in the first place, and also because historically I haven't done as well on the market as P.

At any rate, seeing P. so sad and worried really got to me. He was convinced, and convinced me, too, for a while, that even if we went to my offer and both went on the market again next year we'd end up having the same problem. Since his offer was in a better location for finding jobs outside of academe (because we really want to stay together- no long distance commuter marriage for us), we figured maybe in the long run it was smarter to go there. He was feeling guilty. I was the one who even talked him into it; I'd toyed with the idea of exploring jobs outside academe anyway; if we moved to Big City, I could finally try my luck. Plus, with the baby coming, it might be nice not to have to start a new tt job only four weeks or so after the kid is born. Sure, our finances would be a bit tighter for the year, but eventually I might find something, and I could apply for both academic and nonacademic jobs until then, right?

The night we made the decision and I turned down my offer (an offer so generous I really don't think I'll ever get another one like it), I felt strangely calm, even like celebrating. It was so good to have the decision made and behind us. I felt like at last we could move forward; I was resolved.

But now, I'm just sad. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up teaching, and I'm worried I won't be able to get back into tenure-track work. I'm hoping I can use the extra time off to work on publishing a bit more; maybe that will help, but still. I'm scared. And I'm not sure sure HOW to break into other kinds of work, either. The only experience I have is what I've gotten from the academy. The job I have now is the first real job I ever took. I went straight from undergrad to grad school to here, no stops in between.

It's hard talking to P. about this because I don't want to make him feel guilty. I honestly want him to be excited about his job and future. It's just, with my current school now making plans to hire a new person, I'm feeling kinda sad. I need to make plans, figure out what to do with myself, and soon. I've read about non-academic jobs I might have interest in, and they all require writing samples-- preferably free lance work. But how do I get free lance work? (This is an honest question-- if anyone can help, please tell me!)

I know I'll feel better about this decision once we're in Big City and the baby is here, but for now I'm feeling very lost and futureless.

bedtime poems

I haven't written in ages. Though there's been plenty of wonderous things to write about, I've been so busy (and still icky feeling, unfortunately), that I just haven't been able to get my head in the right place to write.

We had our sonogram, finally. It was amazing and strange, and the first time I really became aware that this little person that's growing inside of me is really something other, something that's not me. We could see little fingers, little hands moving to touch his own face. I can't help but think that this creature is learning, already. How strange it was to have a peek into this other world, one I imagine as warm and silent, though I'm told he can hear us now, may even be able to see light shining through my belly.

We've learned that he's a he, and that makes the personhood and otherness of this baby seem even more real. Those details somehow create more, not less mystery around the whole thing for me. I can't wait for us to meet.

Today I rediscovered another poem from my childhood, in this book that P. bought for the baby. It's a wonderful book-- comes with a CD which has lots of poets reading poems. I love the selection of poems there, and how much emphasis seems to be put on the pleasure of the sounds of the words. Anyway, since I know others have begun posting poems weekly, I'd just post this. It was one of my favoirte poems as a kid. I learned all of the words by heart. I found it romantic, somehow. I guess I still do.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Eugene Field

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe---
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
That lived in that beautiful sea---
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish---
Never afeard are we";
So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam---
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home;
'T was all so pretty a sail it seemed
As if it could not be,
And some folks thought 't was a dream they 'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea---
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

15 weeks!

Can I just say how excited I am to be more than a third of the way through this? We're having the sonogram and will attempt to locate boy/girl parts at the end of the month. I'm still feeling sick. My doctor prescribed some medication, finally, which wound up averaging (I kid you not) $40 per pill. It works well (for 24 hours, even, the first time I tried it), but since I was only given 6, and we can't afford the refills, I'm trying to save them up for this campus visit (early next week!).

Also, I'm wondering, if this academic job thing doesn't work out, might I have any chance of becoming one of these?

my parents... again

So I'd been feeling terribly guilty about how grouchy I've found myself feeling during all these phone conversations with my mom. She calls a few times a week, and is always full of questions. I've found myself answering them in short sentences, wanting not to engage, wanting to keep my pregnancy and the rest of what's happening to me mostly to myself.

Now I'm starting to realize that I have good reason for feeling this way.

So, I mentioned this campus interviewI have coming up. It's at a school a really like, and in a part of the country I'd love to live in. If P. weren't to get a job somewhere else (I won't be surprised if he gets several offers), it would be a good place to bring him too, as there are large cities (= more jobs) close enough by. So I've been trying to pull together material for my research and teaching presentations. I was excited about the possibilities there.

But then, my parents called. My mom talked first, asked me if I was still going (???), asked if I'd found out more information about what the visit will entail. I told her a few more details, and she wondered aloud if it was "worth all that trouble." "Are you really suggesting I call and just tell them I'm not coming?" I asked her. No, it wasn't that, she said, but then she asked "what if they want you to commit right away?" and she asked about P. I told her that neither of us has an offer in hand yet, and this place is actually a really good opportunity. She reminded me that "you're married, and you two have to go together," and then suggested that really I just need to be waiting for P. to get a job because that school could probably come up with something for me, anyway. No, mom, actually spousal hires aren't that easy to come by-- we can't rule out anything yet--

she hands the phone to my dad. He mentions the high cost of living in the area where this school is, told me I better make sure to ask about insurance and benefits, etc., and then also brought up P. "Your job's really secondary at this point," he said.

What the fuck is wrong with them?!?!? P. and I have talked about the two-job situation extensively, and he's never been anything less than supportive about my career. We're already planning to do everything we possibly can to end up in the same place, but we recognize that doesn't always happen. We recognize we'll have difficult decisions to make later on, but we'll try to go where there are the best options for all three of us. I hate my parents' butting in on this (though they assured me in precisely those words that that's not what they were doing). It makes me angry and it hurts my feelings for them to tell me that my career is "secondary." This is a competetive school-- I had to beat out a lot of people to get as far as I have. It hurts not to have gotten a "congratulations" or even a "good luck" from them.

All my life I've had issues with trying to please my parents. I got a ph.D, I got a job my first year on the market, and they were proud. But now that P.'s degree is finished (and probably becasue I'm pregnant, too), that's all over. Now they find it necessary to talk to me about what my new and "secondary" role should be.

update

one more rejection, but also a campus visit request. I have a one in three chance, and it's at one of my favorites of the places I interviewed with at MLA. Yikes. trying not to get my hopes up too much, but I'm feeling far more motivated now than I was.

where do i belong?

First post-mla rejection came today. There will be more.

I dream of getting out of this line of work, but where can I go? I'm not even sure how to begin, where to look for something new.

two hearts

another day at the OB. The whole appointment took maybe 10 minutes, but we heard the baby's heartbeat today! On the way home, I remarked to P. on the strangeness of my having two hearts inside of me, and he informed me that that topologically, that's not really the case. Sure it is! Baby's heart is beating about 170 beats per minute. Excitable little thing. In four weeks, we have the sonogram. The nurse claims they'll only do one unless it's medically necessary to do more, so if we can't tell the sex of the baby next time, we might just have to be surprised. I'm feeling very grumpy about this nurse. This is the same nurse, who, when I called pre-MLA interviews to ask about the possibility of nausea medication, refused me, when the doctor today offered to give me something without my even having to ask. grrrr.

I'm still puking and feeling nauseous almost all of the time which has made me a bit grumpy and unpleasant. I hope this passes soon. I've also gotten into this terrible habit of imagining what the dishes I eat might look like thrown up. I have more knowledge on this subject now than I ever wanted to have.

The interviews went okay, I guess, but I hestitate to get too excited about anything. I am getting more and more anxious about our soon-to-be three body problem, though. So far, none of P.'s conference interviews match up even with states I've interviewed in.

I sound grumpy to myself even here. Don't mean to. I am excited about the pregnancy, and have plenty to be happy about, and things are good with P. But this ugly sensation makes it hard to think about much else.

Hope to see you all on the other side of this soon.

st. p.

p. has been taking care of me, these past several days. i'm still pukey and nauseous, and can't even bear to walk through the kitchen. so p. has been cooking and cleaning and bringing toast to bed. eating has always been one of our favorite things to do together, but food has lost all it's pleasure for me, and so p. has also been subjecting himself to boring things like bagels when he might otherwise be having mexican or thai or at least something not in the bread group. we cancelled our latin american christmas plans because of me. i feel terrible. yet he is saintly and cheerful and begrudges me nothing.

called the doctor's office the other day, mentioned i had job interviews coming up, asked if there was anything at all they'd be willing to do to help me with the nauea. they refused, on account of the fact that i am keeping some food and liquid down, and suggested i try any of the overthecounter stuff listed on a pink sheet they'd given me earlier, or having toast in bed, or ginger tea, or all the other things i've already been trying which haven't worked. so p. took me to walgreens, where i talked to a fatherly pharmacist who recommended-- "you're going to laugh," he said-- cola syrup instead. 2 tsp. over crushed ice, as needed. surprisingly, it does help a little, but only for a while.

i have seven interviews over the course of 2 days next week. really hoping i'll make it through without puking on someone's shoes.

aplogies... er, apologies

I've had a hard time writing here lately, and have grown tired of my own whiny postings. Apologies to whoever's been reading them. I know that these sick feelings will pass eventually, and I just need to focus on doing the best I can to get through the end of semester, parents' visit, the holidays, in-between-holiday MLA interviews, and preparations for next semester's classes.

I have 6 (interviews) so far, which is more than I've gotten in any other year. Now I just need to prepare for them. I'm naturally a bit of a shy person, and interviews can sometimes be a challenge for me. I need to be able to relax, have some confidence, and just talk about what I do and what I love. It's that engagement that really needs to come across, I think. Wish I could borrow a bit of P.'s charm to take with me, though.

Every time a call comes in (P. has received 3 interview requests for this big math conference in January), we start dreaming about what it would be like to live in New York, in Connecticut, in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and other places. Finding jobs near each other will be a challenge, but when we're not stressing out about that, it's pretty fun to dream.

mortified

The nausea, unbelievably, is worse this morning than it's ever been. I have been trying to nibble on saltines and sip gingerale in the hopes that my stomach will settle down before I teach. And yet this image of me upchucking midsentence in front of the entire class keeps passing through my head. How mortifying would that be? Extremely.