Breastfeeding (again)

So, I have some serious mixed feelings about this article.

I'm a firm believer in the fact that women and babies should be able/have the right to nurse in public. I nursed Bee in public, and plan on nursing Baby Boy (who needs a blog name) in public. I got lots of filthy looks in airports and in the BYU library, even if/when I did use a blanket to cover up. (Besides a blanket, I was never a very exposed nurser anyway...I'm not comfortable with the fact that a significant portion of the male population will sexualize/objectify me when I nurse in public, despite the complete innocence of my intentions)

Anyway. The thing that has caused some mixed feelings for me is that I support Facebook in its attempt to get rid of pornographic images from it's site....and there has to be a line somewhere. So the "no nipple" rule seems like a reasonable starting point. It's hard to make exceptions....I mean, saying that a baby in the picture makes it okay to show more breast just leaves room for people to exploit children in their pornographic production.

The part of the article that has me totally hacked off is the last paragraph. Bleargh.

Disaster

I had intended to write a good post about going to midnight mass at my Gran's parish today. I love to go on Christmas Eve and listen to the music beforehand, and feel like I'm doing something worshipful on Christmas. (Since our church has a rather interesting lack of an actual Christmas service, unless Christmas falls on a Sunday).

Instead, I'm going to write about how it's not a good idea for me to cut BeeBoo's hair. She had asked me to cut her hair ever since she saw one of her little friends getting a haircut in the kitchen of her house. So I said I would. My plan was just to trim a little off the back and even it up a little, since I did her last haircut, there were some long spots. Well, she's not nearly as good at being still as she was six months ago, and through a combination of me trying to slice a section before she moved, and her moving anyway, her hair is now in a (though cute) pretty short little bob. Oh well. It'll grow. I told Ben that his job, next time I try this, is to remind me to take her to someone who knows what they're doing!

On a slightly better note, I ventured out into the after Christmas MESS with my Kohl's gift card in hand, and got about $75 worth of maternity tops for $7.15 of my own input. I'm feeling pretty set at the moment. :-)

Projects

So, in light of the previous posts and the fact that I got mass quantities of gift cards for the fabric stores on Saturday (my mom's fam did Christmas early this year 'cause we're planning to spend Christmas morning with my dad this year), I bought more fabric than I know quite what to do with, all of it with jungle animals and blues and greens.

Good thing I know how to (and like to) sew, otherwise I'd be going nuts with nothing to do over break! Funny how a few days of freedom can so quickly recompose me. :-)

And it's a....

BOY!!! Can you believe it?

I'm totally floored and excited. Don't know what I'm gonna do with one, but can't wait to give it a shot!

When we took Bee with us to "look at the baby on a special computer" and told her it was a boy, she said "No it's not, it's a girl!" I think it might take a while to adjust. :-)

BeeBoo's "Frosty the Snowman"

I love that she fills in gaps with her vocabulary. This is what she sings lately:
Frosty the snowman
what a happy, Charlie soul,
with a pipe and button nose,
with two eyes,
and made out of the cold!

It's pretty great. I don't know how I used to get through writing papers with no relief from my live-in entertainment.

Ultrasound on Thursday! If I can just turn my papers in before then...

I'm getting kind of attached to "Jacob" if it's a boy...except it TOPPED the SS name index last year! I hate that...

Sub-four minute mile

So we just watched a movie about Roger Bannister. (It was kind of a bummer that I knew going in that he was the first man to break 4 minutes for a mile....killed the suspense a little bit) I think he's a really interesting guy....when they interviewed him after he broke the 4 minute barrier, he thanked his coaches and his pace runners and then said he felt lucky to have done it. I don't think I've ever seen an athlete that humble about anything, and this was a big deal!

Anyway, the point of this post is that no woman has ever done it. (Bannister broke it in 1954 on BeeBoo's birthday). I never ran anything close to that fast (my fastest mile was 5:50...not stellar at all). But at this point in the semester, there's definitely a part of me that wants to throw school out the window and start training for distance running.

Also, in looking for info on women approaching 4 minutes for a mile, I read that there was a woman who ran 100K at a 6:46 mile pace. That's under a seven minute mile consistently for over 60 miles. I'm wondering if it's true or just some internet urban legend.

End of semester blues

It happens EVERY SINGLE SEMESTER. At this point every cycle, I ask myself why on earth I'm still in school when there are so many things that are more appealing to me to be doing. And yet here I stay. There's something comfortable about the stress and the routine...at least I know I can do it, and do it pretty well.

The "write 15 pages over Thanksgiving" plan went about how I imagined it would. But I think I'll still be okay. I mapped out a plan for finishing before all the appropriate deadlines, and my worst writing day will be 10 pages on a Saturday. That's life, I guess. At least I have a start, though. That's always the hard thing for me. Sort of the same when I try to clean the house...I hate the idea of it, but once I get going I burn through it pretty quickly.

I wonder how many other graduate students who read Hannah Arendt's "The Human Condition" think of her labor/work distinction in the same way I do. In a gross over-simplification, she basically says that work produces some impact or lasting remnant, while labor is almost immediately consumed. It made me wonder about something like building a home or raising a child...I'm hoping BeeBoo will grow up to be a good, productive member of society, and find a way to contribute to the lives of those around her. That, for me, represents work. But it's made up of all of these tasks that are endless...as soon as I finish them, they're undone and need done again (cooking dinner, doing the laundry, dealing with the cloth diaper routine, cleaning the house). So how do we deal with the idea that in at least some instances, work is made up of labor? For me, that sort of makes the distinction fuzzy.

Amusing Bee moment of the day: I always worry because she doesn't eat. Ever. So today I asked "How do you live on six calories a day?!?!" She looked up at me and very sweetly said "Mommy, I don't live on calories!"

Loved it.

Boring

My life is pretty boring. At the moment I'm trying not to be burnt out with teaching. My classes are all progressing well, and I have ideas for all my final papers (which is more than I can say for this point in the past two semesters).

So I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. I have a goal to write 5 pages of each paper over break, and then five pages on each in each of the weeks following. We'll see how THAT goes! :-) I have this tendency ever since I came here to procrastinate. I never did it at BYU...here, it's my lifestyle! Odd.

I've also been thinking about Christmas. There was a dusting of snow on the ground this morning...it gave me hope for Christmas! I love snow. (Well, at least until mid-February when I'm so sick of it that I want to fly to the Dominican Republic just for the sake of having sun!) I have good memories of snow at Christmas time, and I can't WAIT to see BeeBoo's reaction when she sees it, since she's old enough to "get it" now.

Last of all, I can finally feel the baby moving around. I think it's interesting that the only non-boring parts of my life are kid based...this should probably send me a message. :-) But it's cool...and for me with my obsessive personality, very reassuring. I like to know that baby's still doing what it's supposed to. We did the hang-your-ring-over-your-belly test to see if it was a boy or girl....my wedding ring says boy. That'll sure be exciting! I've been getting mixed vibes...I don't have any inclination so far. Any thoughts there would be appreciated... :-D

BumGenius

So I have to put a plug in on my blog for the cloth diapers we've been using for the last 7 months. The only complaint I've ever heard from reviewers on them is "They only lasted a year!" Now, anyone that knows anything about elastic will tell you that if you're washing it every other day, you'll be lucky for it to last a year!

I have LOVED these diapers...so much that I just bought another dozen despite the fact that it's a $200 investment. (Again, if you think about that one...on average, we bought a $22 box of diapers for BeeBoo every three weeks....more often as a baby...that means that in a matter of 25 weeks [about 6 months] they've paid for themselves....or at least you've not lost any money on them compared to disposables) They work just like a disposable, you just have to wash them and put them together. They have a cover that looks like a disposable, with a pocket in the back that you put a thick diaper pad in. So you take them apart to wash, wash, put them together, and you're good to go! No pins, no separate cover.

And these ones have never leaked. Well, maybe there's an exception to that statement. We're not great about changing Bee on a schedule, mostly because of shuffling her around. Ben will think I've changed her before I gave her to him, or vice versa...so she ends up in a diaper for a long stretch sometimes. But if there is a leak issue, it's because we've let it go too long. We use them over night, and they work really well. Also, she hasn't had diaper rash like she used to get from disposables.

So, if you're thinking about cloth diapers, these are a great bang for your buck, they're relatively easy to deal with (I mean, you have to wash them, but that's cloth diapers!), and they're easy enough to change that Dad doesn't have an excuse. The website I order them from is cottonbabies.com. Oh, also, an afterthought...they have a one-year warranty!

Worldview

These maps are really cool.

I just stayed up way too late spending time looking through them.

Ooooooo

Talk about sour.

My two-and-a-half-year-old just walked up to me with the little lemon-shaped container of lemon juice, popped open the top, and drank down a 30-second chug of it. And laughed when she came up for air.

I guess some things never change.

Hooray!

I have a tendency to believe that there's not a single politician in the world who actually does the things they base their campaign on. So who knows what is actually going to come of this "historic" election (even if this one is especially so, isn't every election historic in some sense?)

But. For the last eight years we've been existing under this artificial, continual "state of emergency" created by an administration that needs to justify its imperial leanings by using something....so they go to fear. That's the same currency that terrorism uses for itself. Hmmm...

Whatever happens in the next four years, at least we're (at least for now) working under a rhetoric that inspires hope instead of fear.

That's a change I can buy into.

Surprising?

I don't think that this should surprise anyone.

That's one reason why I won't have video games in my house. Ever.

I love that the researchers asked the Japanese children to rate themselves, and then relied on peer and teacher reports to evaluate the US kids...good methodology, that...kids lie. It's nuts!

I don't think that this one is a shocker either.

I love that the girl they quote who had her baby at 15 says she's sick of studies that blame everything but the parents...I'm sick of our culture that doesn't put any responsibility on the kids themselves!

A prop 8 question

So I googled Prop 8 because I don't want to start on the presentation I have to do in my theory class on Tuesday (which, by the way, I love....our discussion on Freud was the first one I've EVER had that didn't leave me SEETHING).

There's a site called mormonsfor8.com that lists, among other things, how much money LDS people have donated to supporting the campaign. One commenter on the site discussed the problem of the legalization of gay marriage resulting in lawsuits against churches that won't perform gay marriages.

He said this:

I see this line of argument as a transparent effort to frighten voters. It is as if you have no familiarity at all with the CA Supreme Court decision. Here’s a quote from the decision itself. Note, there is specific language in the decision that addresses your concern.

In re: Marriage Cases.

“Finally, affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 4.)72″

Does anybody know if this is true?

And, if it is true, what other reasons do we have for amending the CA constitution? I'm morally opposed to gay marriage (see my other post on this), but I wonder about the legality of it all....because I don't know enough about it.

Political emails

My sister-in-law sent me a snarky forward about Obama and how nobody voting for him can articulate why they're doing it besides resorting to the nebulous rhetoric of "change."

Personally, I have little faith in either candidate...I think that both of them will do both positive and negative things. But I have issues with the closed-mindedness. So I composed a snarky email to send back to her. Instead, I'm going to put it here so that I don't hurt her feelings.

Here it is:

I'd rather a statesman than a soldier. But, if tradition holds, which it probably will, then we'll end up with the soldier. Immanual Kant said so ages ago, and he's been right so far....the masses prefer the sublimity of the experience of war.

Don't worry about Obama. The big bad black man and his articulate feminist wife, even if they make it to the White House, won't stay there for long. Somebody will in all likelihood shoot him, if he gets that far.

I'm sick to death of the whole thing...I can't even vote in this election. But I can tell you that I'd rather someone who's in a position to be taught by people smarter than he is (by doing things like seeking support of people from the opposing party, ie Colin Powell) than someone who owes his money and career to interest groups and has politics so ingrained in his family that he can't help but be indebted, and I'd rather a first lady with a law degree than an arm candy model actress that some guy cheated on his crippled wife to be able to marry.

I think I've said enough. Please don't involve me in politics unless you'd like more of the same. I don't send you my political ideas (or many other ones for that matter) because I know you won't like them...I'd love the same courtesy.

The old rule...religion and politics. Just don't mess with 'em!

In rereading this email it sounds really snarky...that's not how I mean it. I'm just bugged by politics and the extreme wastefulness of campaign spending that could do wonders for our country, and support several small Central American nations. I love you to death!
Em

So I didn't send it. Aren't you proud of me? There's this part of me that wants to play devil's advocate just because EVERY PERSON I KNOW outside of school seems to think that the only way to be a good American and good Mormon, is to vote Republican. Always. Anyway. Rant ended.

Campaigning

So what if instead of spending fundraised money on ads and annoying calls, a candidate were to donate it to schools in urban areas and improvement projects in small dying towns.

Do you think they'd win?

I don't even know if it would be legal...

It's official

So, I'm going to have another baby. Ben helped, too, so I guess I should say we. But I'll be the one doing the having...so I get to say "I". :-)

We don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet, though my RIDICULOUS morning sickness makes Ben hope it's a boy.

BeeBoo talks about the baby in her tummy. :-D

The baby's due on Bee's birthday. Right in the middle of finals week....

Frustrating

So, I'm glad that I don't live in California. Because that means I don't have to vote on Proposition 8. I don't understand the whole thing, really. The full text of the thing just states that the California constitution will now include a clause defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.

I personally think that that's the ideal situation. Heck, it's the way I'm going to raise BeeBoo and whatever babies follow. What I get confused about, though, is why something so linked to religion needs to be politicized.

I've really been generating ulcers about the fact that the LDS church has decided to be SO actively involved in the process. It's beyond just the normal "get out and vote the way you feel is right." In a recent broadcast they've asked people to commit to vote a certain way, and to convince other people to do so. It just seems so out of the norm for what I'm used to.

Probably the thing that has nagged me most is a discussion we had with some folks while visiting family. Both people in this couple insisted on browbeating me into the idea that voting for Proposition 8 is the only option as a good Mormon, if I lived in CA and could do so. One of the arguments that the wife used was that the Catholic church was going to lose its tax-exempt status because their social services won't adopt out to gay couples. That made me think about the consequences for the Church and not performing same-sex marriages in the temple...so I thought maybe she had a point. Well, turns out, it's bunk. The Catholic church may lose money from secular organizations that are subject to non-discrimination laws and therefore can't fund Catholic social services, but the church itself won't be harmed. I HATE WHEN PEOPLE BUILD ARGUMENTS ON THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE.

Mostly because it just confuses me even more on an issue that I just don't know how to feel about.

Sooooooo sick

So, if I manage to make it through two hours of teaching without puking in front of my students, I will consider today a grand success.

I just want to go home.

A phenomenal day

Yesterday was a great day. Oddly enough, it was my long day of the week...but it was still phenomenal.

Maybe the biggest reason was that I only felt sick for about 20 minutes the whole day. This is a huge improvement over the norm lately.

My students did really well on their first In-class writing assignment. I always worry about it. But they did okay. And their average fell within the department's expectations, so I didn't feel pressured to artificially inflate grades so that they would be happy.

And I LOVE my Renaissance Studies/Comp Lit class. I could go there every single day and feel pretty great about myself. We always have good discussions, and the prof is great. I managed to not make a fool of myself in class today, and actually contributed useful things to the conversation. Nice.

Then, Ben made dinner. Also wonderful. And BeeBoo ATE! Which is not the norm and is absolutely great.

Mostly I spent the day thinking about how great it is to be this person who gets to spend some time at school learning really great stuff (and getting paid for it), a lot of time at home teaching a two-year-old and thinking about how she'll react to the distant eventuality of a sibling, and a good portion of what's left over talking with Ben or watching funny/thought-provoking/sad/different movies just for the fun of it and the conversation that comes out of it. It feels like things are in an okay balance for now.

I feel really blessed because I get to do all of that....and because I get to indulge funny cravings like pomegranates and raspberries and farmer's cheese, all of which make me think of fall. I need to go to the orchard to buy some cider...

I'm glad that for the moment all of my contradictions that make me up seem to have made peace with each other.

Oh.....my......goodness

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Understanding that they're probably just pulling a stunt to bring attention to the issue, there are multiple reasons why PETA's suggestion couldn't be a viable business plan.

1) Who would eat ice cream made out of breastmilk? Weird Freudian implications there.
2) Breastmilk isn't structured like cow's milk. Mine, at least, I'm pretty sure would be too thin to make ice cream out of.
3) PETA apparently thinks we should neglect human babies so the cows don't suffer...hmmm....self-loathing much?
4) Even if every single lactating woman in the US would sacrifice the health of their child to supply Ben & Jerry's, I doubt production could meet demand. Our babies don't drink gallons of milk. Just ounces.

And viable business plan aside, it's just STUPID! Not to mention the degrading parallels they're drawing between women and cows...

"That's not a camisa, it's a shirt"

Thus proclaimed my two-year-old, extremely stubborn daughter. We had been happily Spanish-ing...it makes her laugh when I speak in Spanish, but she's getting better about repeating when I ask her to, or identifying things I point to. She had gone through a series of body parts with funny pronunciations (like "oto," "naliz," "pay," "orefa" etc). Then I grabbed my shirt and said "camisa!" Without a moment's hesitation she furrowed her brow, glared at me and said "That's not a camisa, it's a SHIRT!"

I don't know why that one was less acceptable than the others she accepted.

Along the same lines, on the way home yesterday Ben asked if we could stop and get a movie from the Redbox...I said I didn't have anything to do, so we could watch a movie. I had been feeling sick, so he asked "What is it you like for that? Schnapps?"

I laughed really, really hard. He was thinking Schwepps ginger ale....but it was still hilarious to think of him buying alcohol for me...and especially at the moment. :-)

Hooray for office hours!

So the semester has officially started, I officially have office hours, and can officially blog more often now! Hooray.

So far it's just business as usual. We do have some improvements over the norm though.

Ben and I have no overlap in our schedules. As in, BeeBoo doesn't have to come to campus with us at all! It's amazing.

I have basically the best schedule ever...I have all my classes on Monday and Tuesday, then Wednesday and Friday all I do is teach. And what about Thursday, you may ask? I have somehow managed to swindle a free WEEKDAY out of my life. Hooray!!

My theory class is MUCH better than the one I took at BYU (no apologies either...it just is). The professor has a great approach to theory. The first day of class he said that theory done well isn't perversely difficult...it isn't just hard for the sake of being hard. So when we came to class the next week having slogged through 300 pages of Kant's Critique of Judgment, he said "Well. 2 hours of Kant will be exhausting for all of us. Here goes." And we talked about it. And got to say things like "I didn't understand _________." And the professor would say things like "Well, I'm not an expert. This is what I think about _________." It was lovely. :-)

I'm taking a posguerra class and a Renaissance miscellany class. (How much more unrelated can it be, right?) Both seem good. The prof of the Spanish class is really knowledgeable and seems really open to discussion and questions. She also doesn't presuppose any previous exposure to the material on our part. (I hate when you show up to class to discuss a text and they say things like "As you all have seen before..." Well, I usually haven't, that's why I'm taking the class!) I feel in the Renaissance class a little like I used to in Pratt's class...really interested, engaged with the reading and discussion, but totally intimidated because the professor is so over-the-top brilliant! :-)

So life is good. Or will be as soon as they sort out my registration problem. (If they don't, I'll rant about it soon!) I get to take naps, which is a really good thing at the moment. I've been absolutely exhausted lately. And I have time to cook good food. (Though Ben cooks Monday and Tuesday...having all my classes on those days means I don't get home til 6:30 and 7, respectively). Anyway.

Sorry that it's not more interesting, but that's what's going on at the moment.

Reading

I checked out books on three Queens of England (or queen consorts more specifically, some of them, I guess), and two Queens (not queen consorts) of Spain to read in the last three weeks of vacation.

I just finished Eleanor of Aquitaine's biography, and just started one on Isabel I. (I decided to go chronologically...which is actually helping me with royal associations) I think Eleanor of Aquitaine is fascinating, and really complex. She's also the ancestor of practically every royal figure in Europe for a long time after her. (Maybe that's exaggerating....but you get the idea). And I'm already really interested with Isabel's balance between obedience and strong-mindedness, and she's not even Queen yet. (At this point, Ben would remind me that she's actually dead and therefore is done being Queen...but I mean that I've only read that far).

So it's been good reading. And I wish I had started at the beginning of summer so I could have thrown in some French Queens too.

Also, I made some hibiscus/mandarin/rose hip/lemon balm sun tea. I indulged and bought a big glass jar just for the purpose. It's REALLY strong...but I like the way hibiscus tastes. I put some honey in it. That helped a lot.

So today has been a good day, and now I'm taking BeeBoo out for a walk in the park.

The Little Mermaid

Anyone who knows me understands how I feel about a lot of Disney movies...particularly the princess ones. That's a whole different rant, and I don't need to bore anyone with repeating it here.

So BeeBoo watched The Little Mermaid with her cousin up in Michigan when we visited a little while ago. She liked it all right, and I figured the cousin-ly bonding outweighed any real negative effects. My watching it, however, did give rise to rants about the morally suspect nature of a movie that teaches little girls that if they disobey/completely defy parental authority at the ripe and terribly mature age of 16, they'll get to marry a prince. Not just a nice guy. A for real prince. I ranted for a while, joined by one of my wonderful aunts who feels the same way about the whole thing. After this episode, I jokingly taught BeeBoo to say "The Little Mermaid is morally suspect!"

Today when we got to BeeBoo's friends' house to play while Momma went to class, I heard familiar Disney-ish music downstairs. My friend told me they were watching The Little Mermaid until the younger of her kids got up from her nap. Despite my efforts to be passive, I must've made a face. She said "I couldn't remember if you were a fan or not...." I said "No, I'm not, but she's seen it before. It's fine." So my friend looks down at BeeBoo and says "Do you want to go watch The Little Mermaid with us?"

Innocently, BeeBoo looks up and replies: "Little Mermaid morally suspect!"

Now, I know that she only repeated it because I taught it to her. It still made my day!

Hmmmmm

I find this appaling. Makes me really mad.

Summer of French

It would be so much better if I meant French food or French cooking. But I don't.

I mean my reading knowledge of French class. That I'm taking to fulfill my third foreign language requirement. Like two of them won't cut it. Bleah.

All in all, the class itself has been really interesting and manageable. I like the teacher, and he does a good job of making life easy (by providing extra lists of vocabulary so that we don't have to do quite so much dictionary-thumbing) and interesting (by choosing good articles) for us. Class time passes pretty quick. So it's okay.

The bad things sort of outweigh that, though.

First, I spent $178 on textbooks, three of which are packets (which means that I can't sell them back). I've used them a total of three times. That's annoying. While I would rather read the articles we've done than dry, disconnected things from readers, I'd rather have had the choice to NOT BUY THE READERS. $178 is three weeks of groceries, two months of gas, four trips home, eating out five times, or a year's wardrobe for BeeBoo. (Not all of those things, one of those things as many times as I said it). So it bugs me that I spent it on books that I didn't use. (The "that I didn't use" being the operative phrase here).

Next, I don't know that my ability to read French is any better as a result of taking the class. I've learned a lot about how to use my dictionary and wordreference.com in order to prove that I'm capable of reading French, but I can't say that I've learned much other than several useful fixed phrases.

Maybe most annoyingly, I just don't care for French. **caution: rant ahead** I'm a pretty open-minded language learner. I mean, I study Spanish in ALL of my time. (Not just free time....ALL of it) And I took Portuguese and enjoyed it even though I get frustrated at my bad accent. And I'd like to learn other languages, difficult but useful ones like Swahili and Arabic. So I went into this whole French thing thinking that it'd be a pretty sweet deal....I'd learn a little about the language, not have to speak, get the culture some. But the more of the rules I learn, the more convinced I become that it's a ridiculous language! I guess not all languages can be as orderly and rule-based as Spanish. :-)

And last, but not least, we meet RIGHT in the MIDDLE of my day, EVERY DAY! So BeeBoo has had a REALLY BORING seven weeks...we don't do much other than watch her BabyTime (sign language...that's just what she calls it) every morning, scramble to get ready, run to her friends' houses to play, come home for nap, eat dinner, do some family time, go to bed, repeat. Bleah.

But, I'll be done next Wednesday. And I'll have almost a month before I have to be a teacher-student-mommy again. I'll get to just be a mommy for a while...and hopefully I can be a fun one since I won't have this silly class in the middle of every day!

Free time

So, I never thought too much free time would make me so crazy.

Ben and BeeBoo are out of town at the annual family reunion at Bethany Beach. I'm really bummed out because I don't get to go. It's really fun...the family rents out a bunch of beach houses, and we spend every morning on the beach under a huddle of beach umbrellas that serves as our little headquarters. Usually someone brings an inflatable pool for the babies/little ones, and everyone bobs on the waves out in the FREEZING cold water. It's (the water that is) never been above 73 degrees when I was there. That's cold. From what I hear, BeeBoo is liking the sand a lot, but going out in the water with her dad from time to time.

I've cleaned the house from top to bottom (it's probably cleaner than it's been in years), gone to Coldstone for ice cream, done both my French translations and studied for my exam, and watched more movies than we normally see in a month.

Oh, the movies are Osama, Bee Season, Radio, Intolerable Cruelty, Prime, The Bridges of Madison County. Radio was distinctly the best, Intolerable Cruelty the worst. Bee Season was fascinating and not what I expected it to be...T, you would love it, and mom you should watch it. Osama reminded me that pretty much only in the US should you expect a happy ending...I thought I need to learn more about Afghanistan before I try to watch another film like it. I enjoyed it, but felt very culturally ignorant.

I'm going to go to Borders to just bum around and read books about flowers, country houses, growing herbs, and orchards. It'll be super fun. Maybe I'll even splurge and get a steamer. Love those things!

I think the point of this post is that I've already forgotten how to be single. I can't imagine the transition people go through who move from married to single, especially with their kids. I mean, I even know this is only temporary, it's a vacation and there's no trauma involved, and I STILL don't know what to do with my time. Or how to cook for just myself. :-)

It's been a good week. Maybe I'll make a tradition of sending Ben off with the kids for a while...it can even be to do something I'm really envious of. Just to make me appreciate having them and how absorbed into my life they are.

Summer, and no internet

So, we don't have internet at home. And the only time I'm on campus is long enough to run to and from a French class.

When I have office hours again, I'll blog more. Promise. :-)

Sunshine, Iowa farmland, and the best pickle ever

This will be a long post.

I went to Kalona, Iowa today with Mom. It's home to the largest Amish community west of the Mississippi. I have no idea how to summarize the experience. It sounds cliche, but it was really a perfect day.

On a practical, sort-of-boring-mom note, BeeBoo maintained her good potty-training habits and was accident-free despite the fact that we were travelling all day. This was wonderful, and reinforces my perception of her as the amazing baby (I guess she's really the amazing toddler, now)

On to the truly good stuff. :-)

The sunshine was the first best part. We expected a sort of cloudish day because the weather in Iowa has been sketchy. We set out in a sort of chilly, grey morning, but before we had driven 30 minutes, we were into blue sky and sunshine that turned the new green of the trees (yes, there are LOTS of trees in Iowa) and the fields a shade that made me feel really happy, springy, and just plain alive.

Part of what made the day so wonderful consisted in its total lack of stress. We had a very basic plan of a few things we wanted to do: see the Stringtown grocery and buy some bulk food items for Mom to show me how to seal with a dry canner, see cheese-making and buy cheese curds at a local cheese factory, go to a fabric store and a bakery. We ended up doing all of these things plus a few others. And it was okay to deviate from the course!

We hit the grocery first because it was our most purposeful spot. We both had things we wanted/needed to buy. We picked up a wide variety of storable things (wheat, barley, split peas, oats, grits, pasta) and then some spices. I also bought some teas/ingredients (which, of course, make me extremely happy)...I got oak bark, pennyroyal, and red clover blossoms. There were two Amish girls in the store that caught my attention...one stocking shelves and the other running the cash register. The girl stocking shelves was wearing a really beautiful shade of dark purple. She smiled at BeeBoo when she realized that my two-year-old was saying her ABCs (even though BeeBoo consistently omits "p"). And the girl at the register was more reserved, but also friendly.

As we came out of the store, a man drove by in a horse and buggy. BeeBoo pointed and said "pretty horsie!" The man didn't react...I don't know if he heard her or not.

We went to the cheese factory next. They had plaques all over the walls from the Iowa state fair and other exhibitions they had won or awards they received. It was a smaller operation, and they didn't offer tours. (This was good....BeeBoo won't last through them) But there were windows you could watch the giant forks rake the cheese curds as they fell out of giant tubes into big rectangular troughs. BeeBoo was quite amazed.

We bought cheese curds and dill pickles. Mom and I both have an attachment to dill pickles for a couple reasons. 1) They taste awesome. Way better than sweet pickles, which are a plague. 2) The little girl in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" talks about pickles in a way that reminds us both of childhood and the delight in simple things that kids have. And I try to imitate/not lose. So we ate our very salty, very garlicy, very strong, very WONDERFUL pickles and then some cheese curds. If you have never eaten cheese curds, it's something you should try. They're good cheese for one thing, but for another, they squeak against your teeth when you eat them. It's really funny. I couldn't convince BeeBoo that she should go for it.

Then we went to the bakery. The ladies there were the smiliest people we saw all day. One cute little girl was sitting on a bench in a copse of trees eating her lunch from a woven basket. She smiled at me and BeeBoo when I got little one out of the car. We bought oatmeal bread that I smelled, poked, and pulled for about two minutes before I ate it. It was light enough to not be chewy but heavy enough to fill me up with one slice. And it smelled like early mornings at Mamaw and Papaw's house (Hannah, T, Mom, and Pat, you know what's up). BeeBoo even ate it. We also bought a dutch apple pie for us and a raisin pie (I know, weird, but Ron doesn't like sweet stuff) for Ron. And, best of all, we bought CHOCOLATE CRINKLE COOKIES! They're brownies that think they're cookies. Yummy soft chocolatey goodness with powdered sugar on top.

The other stores that we went to were pretty uneventful. One was a byway antique shop that a pair of sisters owns. BeeBoo wanted to hold everything. The best thing I saw there was a set of colored pencils made from straight twigs with leads inserted in the middle. The other was a fabric shop. There were some calicoes for quilts, but mostly solid staples for making sober, dark colored modest dresses.

We saw a couple of cute kids wandering around...the little girl had on a beautiful blue kerchief over her head and little blonde curls sticking out from under it in front. And one guy that was bringing a horse back from the fields smiled at us when we smiled at him as we passed. The Amish farms are impeccably kept.

During the whole day I was really conscious of my now-short hair. I usually don't think about it, but I felt really exposed with my short short hair. I also had this feeling of intruding in a world that I didn't belong in....not that any of the people I met made me feel that way. It was all internal....I felt like the way of life that the Amish live would be so difficult in some ways but so fulfilling in others. And I figured that I wouldn't be cool enough (here read disciplined and selfless enough) to do it. Disciplined because of staying in one place, selfless because of doing all the sewing/cooking/cleaning/etc that I don't want to do.

I also started wondering about being a missionary among the Amish. I know that the Church is true, and I love the Gospel. For some reason, though, I feel like I wouldn't want the Amish to give up their way of life to be like us. And I'm conflicted over how I "should" feel (however that is) and how I actually feel.

So I had a great day...good food, great cultural experience, lots to mull over now for the next little while! Perfect.

Visiting Mom

I am in Ay-ah-way. :-)

We had a good, late-night trip. The BeeBoo behaved herself really well...stayed up until ten. We got in at 3 a.m. And slept. Soundly.

My mom has the coolest guest room ever. :-) She and Ron painted it a really beautiful lilac color, and then there's green accenting it in the closet curtain and the bedspreads. The bed is really comfortable...I slept so well. And she found these great antique linens with green and purple embroidery patterns (grapes, lilacs, etc). I really like it.

We're going to make a grocery list and then go to a carnival. I'm SO excited to be here and just spend time.

Killing lots of birds

Not literally. Like the saying...you know...only I'm killing more than two in one go!

I like to do a big spring cleaning after school gets out. Helps make up for feeling negligent during the entire school year. :-)

I've also wanted to make BeeBoo a new "big girl" room that she can move in to.

I've been tired of this apartment (and others like it) for a long time.

I've wanted to decorate/paint/make curtains, and just generally be domestic, at least since January.

Today I did all of those things! Well, today was the culmination of lots of them. We're moving into a new apartment, which I cleaned really well (it was already in great shape, so I can't take tons of credit). We painted (thanks to my Dad's impeccable guidance we didn't make too much of a mess of it) one or two walls in each big room of the place. I'm so excited to be in a place that lets you PAINT! That's a whole different soapbox. :-) Once we got that done, I put together BeeBoo's room that Gran and I have worked on for FOREVER (I started cross-stitching in January, we started sewing in March) and it looks FANTASTIC! I still have to make the pillows for it, but I can't until the forms come. So.

Life is really great at the moment!

Running

I FINALLY got to go running again. I'm home, and free...turned in my last paper yesterday!

I feel safe running around my dad's house...we used to run out here when I was in high school. My dad and stepmom recently bought a border collie...she's really cute. I took her with me on the run....my shoulders hurt now.

But running in Ohio rain sure felt good. :-)

Hooray for breastfeeding!

This article is exciting.

Of course, they probably include babies that nurse for a few weeks and never again...but those are still really good stats.

Nursing was a hard adjustment for me....learning process that I didn't think was going to be hard. HA! Shows what I knew. But it was WAY worth it.

Sexualizing girls

This makes me mad.

This is also the reason why I bought board shorts and a shirt for my daughter instead of the BIKINIS THEY SELL FOR TWO-YEAR-OLDS!

When it comes down to it, Miley Cyrus is neither here nor there for me. I don't know her, and if she wrecks her life it has no affect on me. The deeper issues are what bother me about this whole thing. This is, yet again, an instance in which a teenager THINKS she knows what she wants. A good number of folks, including these people, note that teenage brains aren't capable of adult reasoning...the teenage brain is still developing in terms of impulse control and decision making.

So who cares if the 15-year-old says "I think this will be a great artistic opportunity" or even "It's my body" or some such argument that (while valid in some cases) doesn't apply in this situation! Someone needed to take responsibility for teaching this girl, and keeping sexualized photos of her OUT of the hands of sex-crazed sickos.

HOORAY!

I'm excited! For two things.

1) I turned in a paper this morning. Always a good thing.
2) I JUST BOUGHT A PLANE TICKET TO GO SEE MY SISTER AND GO TO AL'S WEDDING!!

Both of these things are good, but the second is WAY more exciting, and lots more fun. :-)

Progress

I actually got some paper-writing done last night!

So to celebrate I got to go canoing (canoeing?) with Ben and BeeBoo and some of our friends this morning.

It was a little chilly, but still really fun. Here're some pictures.

I just don't know

So I've been following the story of the FLDS women and their children, the custody cases, kids being put in foster care, etc. There are lots of issues involved which interest me (protected rights, women's issues, Mormon vs pseudo-mormons etc...if you're reading this post, you know me well enough to know why I'm interested).

I may be demonstrating my ignorance, and maybe there have been exceptions made, but as I understand it, all of the mothers, even those with very young children, have now been separated from their children. As I started really thinking about that, I realized that this includes any number of women who are probably breastfeeding (since these folks seem to be all about stereotypical "good" mothering). This means that the mothers and babies involved in this intensely emotional, physical, sensory, bonding practice, have been forced to stop it. In a really short period of time. Which means not only a number of emotional issues for mother and baby, but also the practical problems of pain for the moms who can't nurse (and though expressing milk helps, it's not a truly good fix) and babies who in all likelihood will refuse either a bottle or the formula in it.

This makes me VERY angry.

I think most of my anger is selfish...I'm mad because I don't know how to feel about the whole thing, or why I feel like I even should HAVE an opinion. I'm all for taking teenage girls who have been married to old men (whether they think it's what they want or not...there are any number of teenagers I know who do really stupid things because they think they want to) away from an abusive situation. I think that a certain amount of intervention in the cases of pregnant teens who have probably been abused by knowing adults is justified.

But could it really hurt to let the nursing moms stay with their babies? Or at least give them time to wean them? But then there comes the issue of where to draw the line.

Oh, it's all so CONFUSING! I can't help but think of how I would react if someone took my nursing baby from me. And that's just plain hard.

They have GOT to be kidding

This article amazes me.

I mean, it's one thing for them to let my goofball brother into the Marines in spite of tattoos. It's another thing entirely to say "Let's give guns and access to military training to people who have violently assaulted innocent people. Oh, and while we're at it, let's send people who have made terrorist threats over to *ahem* fight against people who hate our country."

Cause THAT'S a good idea!

Final papers

I finally actually started WRITING one of my final papers (and it's not due for more than a week...more procrastination than I ever would have dreamed of at BYU, but good for me here!). As a result, I've come to a conclusion. It won't be shocking, but here it is.

I'm SO glad I'm not a woman living in colonial Mexico.

Reasons why:

I would have wanted to be a nun, so that I could read, write, study, etc.

I couldn't have been a nun, because I have indigenous (here read Native American) blood. No "pureza de sangre" (non-Spanish speakers, this means "pure blood" and was actually a legal thing in Spain back in the day) for me, so no nun-hood.

So I would have had to be married to an overbearing man, because I'm too much of a chicken to die in poverty.

And then I would have been forced to kill myself, so as not to be miserable when I realized that the poverty probably would have been better.


All told, being a PhD student, bad as it can be, is better than that. And I have Ben and BeeBoo, which is a condition I much prefer to being a colonial Mexican nun.

What society thinks women want

I thought this article was interesting.

I don't know exactly what I think of it, but I thought I'd come rant and ramble a little to come up with a reaction.

I don't feel like "society" is pressuring me to do the things I do. I think I've stumbled into them of my own free will and choice, if not while terribly well informed. "Society" doesn't tell me to be a professor...there are big chunks of it that say I shouldn't. "Society" doesn't tell me to be a mom...there are people who think that having kids is selfish, and others who think that it's foolish. So both of the things that take up most of my time, I do because I want to do them.

I agree with the idea that perfect balance is impossible. There are seasons when different aspects of life demand a disproportionate amount of time. For example, just after BeeBoo was born, had I tried to take classes, teach, and mother, I would have DIED! (Breastfeeding demanded intense attention for us...maybe other people pick it up faster, but I enjoyed the process...mostly :-) So she got a four-month, mom-is-totally-into-me phase. And she's due for one again this summer...which is good, and overdue.

I guess what I'm saying is that instead of creating a cultural paradigm shift of lack of balance, we should work on the principle of punctuated equilibrium. (Hey, if she can mis-apply Thomas Kuhn's scientific term, I can use Stephen Jay Gould's...thanks to Pratt's science and lit class for that one!). Instead of worrying about changing what anyone else thinks, we can recognize key moments at which the structure of our lives change...drastically, suddenly, completely even.
And accept them as part of our own evolution.

So, rather than make everyone think the way we do about life, why not just operate under the assumption that (barring injuring other people) we can do what we like, when we like, the way we like, and it'll be okay? Cause, usually, it is.

Spelling

I'm losing my mind. I've been writing either in Portuguese or in Spanish all day long. Just now I tried to look up "simpathy" in an English-Portuguese dictionary.

Honestly. My once meticulous English spelling has been shot to heck by wonderful, systematic, phonetic romance languages.

Americans, consumerism, and food

So this article has me thinking, and almost up in arms.

Eating out IS a luxury, it isn't "almost a luxury." I think that our country is one of the few places in the world that thinks of eating out as a convenience, or even a necessity.

And, what on EARTH are these families buying that they spend $900 a month to feed four? Granted, BeeBoo doesn't eat much, but her foods (non-hormone produced eggs, milk and cheese; juice; crackers) are among the most expensive things we buy...we wouldn't buy juice if it weren't for her. We budget $250 a month for food. Double that (which would feed four adults and two babies), and it's $500...I just don't get it.

While it is unsettling that the prices of EVERYTHING are going up, if we would change our habits it would certainly help things!

Tea

I'm writing this while I'm waiting for a cup of tea to steep.

I recently bought a variety of herbs and spices to keep in jars on my counter....I'll admit, it was largely because they're pretty, but they're also really practical.

For example, I've been cranky because of leftover kidney stone pain, girl pain, and a headache. So I went in and mixed up nettles, raspberry leaves, and hibiscus, plus some chamomile to help me sleep.

I'm really grateful for my aunt T and her teaching me about how awesome tea is, and how much stability it can bring to my otherwise bouncy mind. :-)

Home for the weekend

AGAIN! :-)

So nice to not be 2100 miles from my family. Although, since it's the end of the semester I should at least PRETEND to do some work while I'm here.

But, meanwhile, my aunt T and I have been playing on the internet. Among other things, we found this speech that MLK gave...it's a sermon, really. It reminds me of the "Beware of Pride" talk President Benson gave.

Running

This woman's idea is really cool.

So life CAN be good!

Not that my life is ever really that bad. But.

Spring is here! They're spreading mulch on campus, the daffodils are up, there's water in the little streams that criss-cross between my building and the special collections library where I have some classes...things smell like earth. And BeeBoo is getting good at flowers, bubble, tossing rocks into creeks, kicking balls, and playing outside.

Then, my transfer credits and other requirements have ironed themselves out to the point that I will indeed be able to finish all my coursework in time to take my exams in my third year. I'll have to take one class while I'm preparing for them, but I figure I can do it. So I'll finish on time! HOORAY!

And, perhaps most importantly to me at the moment, I figured out my maternity coverage. And it's actually really good. And there's a CNM that practices less than two miles from here and delivers at the hospital in town. And the doctors that practice with her look and seem nice! And they all have at least 20 years of experience. Which is good.

So, I get to nest all summer long, rest and read plays, exercise lots, and think about having another baby! This makes me SO GLAD! About so many things.

Life is really good.

Procrastination

My recent habit, newly established while here at my new school, of procrastinating things til the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND, has yet again been reinforced. I got a 92 on the 9-page paper that I wrote in less than 7 hours, over a period of 18 hours. I give all the credit for the great language score to my dear Venom-ous friend who did such a marvelous job of teaching me Portuguese! :-) The rest of it, I can only guess, is the result of this being the 150th (give or take :-) big paper that I've written in the course of my education. I'm sort of torn...I hate that I'm buying into this "do what it takes to get by" mentality, but I'm also enjoying being able to do things like go to the park with BeeBoo, watch movies with Ben, visit family...etc. Balance is nice, except that it makes me feel like a slacker.

There are a few other things I've wanted to rant about...I'm going to steal AL's subdividing idea so that you can skip what you want. :-)

HOME
I went home last weekend. BeeBoo hunted Easter eggs and had her portrait taken (through the generosity of her Granny-Great!), and did a marvelous job of both. The photographer really liked her, and Louie was around to make faces at her so that she smiled in a lovely way. :-)

BeeBoo didn't ever master the concept of gently putting the eggs into the basket...we ended up with lovely "CRACK!" sounds every time.

After the AWFUL week last week, going home felt like someone taking a warm blanket out of the dryer, wrapping it around my shoulders and telling me to sit on the couch watching Jane Austen film adaptations while they give me tea to drink. :-) (Like I can't think of a certain aunt who's actually done that before...)

SUMMER TEACHING
I'm not teaching in the summer. As happy as I am because of the MASS quantities of free time I'll have to paint and settle us in our new apartment, it's going to make finances hard. I've been spoiled long enough now that finding a non-teaching job is looking anything but appealing. Maybe Ben's internship will be paid (oh, hope of hopes).

CLASSES
STILL don't have my transfer credits. Which means I still don't know how long I'm going to be doing coursework. Which means my need to control my planning at least a year out is TOTALLY frustrated. Which means that I can't confidently say when this next baby will be able to come into my picture. (I've been ready for about 6 months now, which means that in all likelihood it won't matter what they say and I'll have a baby in about a year) It's just frustrating to have something as insignificant as bureaucracy affect something as important as my desire to add to our family....the only way I can sum THAT feeling up is BLEAH!

But on a good note, since I'm fulfilling one of my foreign language requirements with a graduate level Portuguese course, they're going to count it not only as language, but toward my total credit hour requirement. Small blessings, I guess. Hooray for AL and Venom convincing me that I could do it...

Ironically enough....

.....PhD comics once again echoes my sentiments.

Two school things

1) I'm fed up enough with my department's policy on coursework, and the fact that at the moment it looks like I'm going to be forced to do THREE YEARS of classes instead of two because they won't accept some of my MA credits, that I am seriously considering not finishing my PhD.

Rash, you say?

If I were doing it just because I'm mad, yes.

But here's the thing. If I have to do three years of coursework, I'll have to take my exams my fourth year (instead of my third) and then I'll have two options: finish my dissertation in one year, my fifth (which is impossible), or stay on beyond my funding for a sixth. I'm not willing to shell out what they charge for out-of-state tuition here. So if it's going to take me longer than they'll fund to graduate, I'm not willing to do it and may as well just quit now.

2) And on a much lighter note, yesterday at 7:30 pm I had not yet started my 9-page research paper for one of my classes. Not really a big deal, except for the fact that it's due today at 2:30. I've recently fallen into this TERRIFYING trend of procrastinating things until the last minute (I've had nightmares about two hours that I counted on to finish something ticking away in moments). But so far things have been fine, and this paper is no different. Last night by 12:30 I had 6.5 pages. I got up at 7 this morning, came in to my office, and just rounded off the ninth page about five minutes ago.

This is a good thing.


So, those are my two school things. I'll be sure to post on whether or not I can demand my way forcefully enough to get out of here in a reasonable amount of time.

Travel support, and other mad rantings

I got a travel grant!! YAY! That means that the department will defray the cost of my plane ticket from that conference two weeks ago. Granted, I still paid the hotel, food, and registration costs.... *sigh* It was worth it, though.

We got into the co-op housing place that we looked at. Which means that not only will we have a split-level townhouse, and a washer and dryer in the kitchen, but we'll save about $150 a month. Also a good thing.

On a not so good note, my transfer credits from BYU haven't come through yet. BLEARGH Makes life pretty hard to plan, in terms of classes in the fall, how long it will take me to finish my coursework here, if I can have a baby in May or need to plan for the next fall....yuck.

Also on the less-than stellar, they're not offering any classes that seem interesting to me. Oh well. Life goes on.

All told, once this week is over I'll be in pretty good shape. :-)

Conference

So, I haven't posted in what seems like forever. More than a week, anyway.

I went to the AHCT conference in El Paso. It's one of my favorite events...if I can help it, I'm going to make it a yearly thing. Several papers were very interesting, most of them were at least mostly interesting. :-)

Even better than the papers, we got to watch four plays...which was really fun. The company from Spain that did "El alcalde de Zalamea" was really good. Those of you that don't do Spanish Golden Age theater...there's a rape scene in the play. From the beginning of it, just because of staging and things, I thought they were going to do it on stage. They didn't (turns out they only didn't because the theater operators censored them), and I was REALLY glad. I thought their staging was the best of the week. And I LOVED their costumes (I'm kind of a costume snob...)

The best part, though, was that I got to hang out with a lot of my very favorite people in the WHOLE WORLD (like AL and my thesis advisor and her husband)! Now that they're all scattered, I feel like I don't ever see them. So that, I think, was probably the best thing over all.

Basically they only drawback was that I had to leave my BeeBoo. Some people that had been at the first conference I went to asked where she was...I mentioned that even though she slept through most of that conference, she's almost 2 now. They understood why I opted to leave her with her Daddy. When they dropped me off at the airport, BeeBoo back in her car seat took her thumb out of her mouth, said "Bye Momma, love you!" So I said "Love you, I'll miss you!" She said, "miss you!" I almost died. But I was okay.

All in all, it was a really good trip. Oh, and I learned that when I get a day that all I have to do is sit on an airplane, without worrying about a little one, I can do a week's worth of reading in less than a day. Interesting....

Print quota

Here they have this system where you log on to use any computer from campus. Once you've logged on, it tracks all of your activity, including (among other things) how many pages you print. Thus, they give you a certain number of "free" (as in, included in the "technology fee" billed to your bursar account) pages to print from campus computers. I get 1000 as a grad student. I get 300 extra because I'm an instructor. I also rolled over 500 that were left over from last semester.

As of this afternoon, I am officially out of print pages. Yes, I've printed 1800 pages this semester. What have I printed, you ask? Reading assignments for two classes.

This means that not including the books I've read (which are a decent number) and the random articles I've read here and there online, I've already read 1800 pages. Now, this 1800 pages refers to one side of a page. Usually, I shrink the pages (to try to save trees and my print quota) to the size that there are two pages of whatever I was supposed to read per side of a piece of paper. Assuming I did that half of the time (I know I did it at least that much), that ups the amount I've read to 2700 pages. Add in to that the Arabian Nights, Tale of Genji, Decameron, Odyssey, Divine Comedy and sections of the Bible that I've read for Comp Lit, two plays that my professor gave us for Portuguese, and the two books I read for my presentation in my colonial lit class, and I don't even want to know what the total comes to.

I'm feeling something between admiration at myself and despair over my plight. Hooray for being a girl and a grad student!

Good and bad

So, my extra comp lit meeting that is sometimes a struggle for me to get to because it's the ONLY "school" thing I have on Fridays, is canceled today. WAHOO!

Now if only she had decided this BEFORE 6:30 this morning, I could have slept in instead of getting up early to do my reading. Ain't that always the way??

So I'm totally doomed

I was looking at baby pictures of BeeBoo. I'm talking BABY baby....just born teensy.

And I'm doomed. I totally want another baby.

But I'm scared out of my wits that I'm just basically not good enough at this to do it!

So. I have moments that I can't WAIT for the timing to be right for the next one, and moments when I'm so scared that I never want to have any more babies.

Don't really know what the point of this is. Mostly just rambling.

Thanks, mom...

...for making me order my own food at restaurants, even when I whined about it.

Because now, thanks to your impeccable instruction, I am a fairly competent, independent adult.

Unlike the OBNOXIOUS undergraduate students who are incapable of 1) accepting responsibility for their own actions or 2) following simple steps to fix things that THEY MESSED UP.

Examples:
Of case 1: Today a student who skipped class yesterday came up to me and asked if it would be an excused absence because "I was confused and thought that classes were canceled yesterday." So, we had an ice storm. But not a blizzard. We're in college, we don't have snow days. Why on EARTH would it be an excused absence? I (relatively) calmly and with a (n almost) straight face told him that there are four absences built into the course for just such "misunderstandings." He was miffed. I internally rejoiced.

Of case 2: Today when I went to the computer lab to print out the 250 pages (yes, you read right, 250 pages...and really it's 500 because I put 2 pages per side to save trees and my print quota) of reading for tomorrow, I noticed that the printer was out of commission. This happens frequently because students don't report paper jams, preferring to leave and go to another lab. This tendency bothers me because it is quite easy to pick up the phone that is IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT to the printer, push the button that says "PUSH ME" and read "the printer is broken in Ballantine _____" from the script that is PROVIDED NEXT TO THE PHONE! So, I called before I even sat down at a station, and while I was sending my jobs to the printer someone came to fix it. I thought, "yay, now it will be fixed for my jobs to go through." The tech left. A girl in front of me in line grabbed her print job before it finished printing, causing a paper jam. She said "D*&%, now I'm gonna be late to class because I have to go somewhere else to print this!" and left. She did NOT call the tech to fix it. She did NOT bother to fix the problem she caused. So I called AGAIN and had the tech come. They had to reset the printer, which made it lose the jobs stored in the cache, mine included. I had to wait in line for a computer AGAIN, and RESEND my print jobs, then wait for them to print. This fiasco caused me to miss my bus, which caused me to not get home in time for Ben to catch HIS bus, which caused me to have to waste my reading time to take him to school which caused extreme frustration which caused RANTING ON MY BLOG!

Okay. I'm done being angry now. I'm going to go do my reading (yes, all 500 pages of it) before BeeBoo wakes up. (You think I'm joking....I really do read everything before she wakes up.....)

At least, thanks to my mother, I acknowledge that just as I CHOSE to be angry about the fiasco, now that I've chosen to be done with it I can go on and be productive.

A near-perfect weekend

So, this weekend was awesome. Friday was the best part of it, I think. I went to my CompLit seminar and did a presentation. When I brought up my two "potential-problems-we-should-discuss" points, the professor said "Yes! Perfect!" I'm thinking that's good. :-)

Then BeeBoo and I went to a friend's house for a really basic, intro to music type dilly for little kids. SOOO much fun. Highly recommend it.

I went to the fabric store to get things for making BeeBoo's "big-girl" room set, and came home and took a nap while she did.

Then I went to cafezinho (Portuguese coffee hour...everybody just goes and talks for two hours...I only went for one, as I am free-time-ishly challenged).

Finally, we ate Korean food for dinner, which means that not only did I not have to cook (itself a wonderful thing), but we had really tasty pork and kimchi. Then we watched several episodes of "Numb3rs" on DVD. It's a pretty good show.

Saturday was almost as good, and we have a newly-cleaned and -vacuumed apartment....YAY! And BeeBoo's little cross-stitch squares that her room will be based around are coming along...3 down, 15 or so to go. :-)

Life is just good. I really like when I have time/energy to do other things besides just survive. And I'm REALLY glad that Ben can support me in it....and not be upset because I didn't want to cook on Friday, for example. ;-)

Says it so well

I've posted lots of comics lately. They just do such a good job of encapsulating my life! I can't help it.

I've ranted before (see my October 4, 2007 rant) about the assumption that moms have lots of free time. So go read this. I like it. Lots.

Politics are crazy

But the more I read about Michelle Obama, the more I think she's an incredible person. People asked her if she was afraid of extremist groups who might threaten her family because of their race and involvement in politics.

She said "There are inherent risks for all people, but particularly for people of color, so, you know, I can't live my life worrying about what might go wrong. What we are going through, Barack and our family, is nothing compared to our leaders who pushed through on the civil rights movement.When I think of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King and true fears that they had and true sacrifices that they made, I think I don't have any right to hesitate for doing something that I think is important out of fear."

Well said.

I guess some things never change

Sometimes I can't help but think that people will never be able to see past their differences enough to respect other people.

Why would someone in a public position think it was okay to do this?

This guy can't be serious

So this guy in Spain decided to launch the most ridiculous lawsuit I've ever heard of.

Seriously, go to the link and read the article.

What person in their right mind would sue the family of someone they killed?? I thought that my students were bad with their attitude of entitlement. I guess there are worse people in the world...

PORTUGUESE!

ACK!

I just wrote the longest thing I've ever written in Portuguese...a 300-word proposal for my final paper. (Which will then become the longest thing I'll have written in Portuguese...9 pages)

I only made 10 mistakes in accents...who knows how many in grammar though. But it made me happy. And it's done! Which is good. :-)

I love "baby blues"

This is really amusing. Unfortunate, but still amusing. The two after it are funny, too.

Ranting again (but this one will be short...

...because I have to finish reading for Portuguese before 10...and it's 9).

My little sister told me today that my brother broke up with his girlfriend. Well, his fiance. They're both really young so it doesn't surprise me all that much. (He's almost 20, she's 18).

What makes me mad is that my brother (who is a Marine stationed in Japan) broke up with this really nice girl here at home because he can't control himself. He's (for all appearances) hooked up with this Marine girl in Japan.

So, the fact that a good portion of men in this world treat women like they're disposable...enjoy them while you're interested and then throw them away sort of mentality...makes me angry. The fact that my little brother is one of them makes me furious. Livid. Ready to go on a rampage.

I'm with AL on the kicking out of stupid brothers. We're all trying to convince my brother's ex-fiance to keep the ring even though she wants to give it back. She doesn't want to burden my brother. I say burden away! He's the fool in this situation...She can at least pawn it. :-)

Small miracles

So we went to Iowa last weekend to visit my mom and stepdad. I love spending time with them. And we basically just relaxed and didn't worry about a schedule all weekend. It was great.

On the way home, about two hours into the 9 hour drive, we ran over a semi's mudflap. Granted, the flap shouldn't have been a big deal. But apparently they attach with this huge, rather sharp metal bar. So our back tire got shredded (it was melted flat to the road when we stopped).

As you can imagine, I was pretty much over the edge. We had to get home in time for me to teach this morning.

But then, a snowplow driver pulled up behind us. He diverted traffic into the other lane, helped Ben change the tire, and told us where to go to buy a new tire. So we turned around and drove to Williamsburg, IA. Once there, I was pretty sure we'd be stuck for, oh, you know, DAYS, or that they'd rip us off because we didn't have any other option. The nice tire store man sold us a pretty decent tire for $30, and put it on for free in less than half an hour. It was great.

So what could've been a total disaster only set us back an hour, and $30. Thank goodness for small (or even large-ish) miracles.

Education...

...is basically my favorite thing. Ever.

This is so interesting. I love to read. And write. And study. And teach. Isn't it great that we can?!?!

I get so mad

I couldn't come up with a better, more articulate title. I don't have words for this one.

But for people who think that feminism's rhetoric is dead because its purposes have been accomplished, and that woman have achieved a similar status to that of men, I have a question. Why do things like this happen? Or this?

It has begun again

A new semester. And all of the trappings.

Slightly better than a normal new semester adjustment, I went to Nashville to visit AL last weekend. Hooray for good friends who eat yummy cheesecake with me! And am going to Iowa to visit mom this weekend. Hooray for no school on Martin Luther King Day! :-)

I don't really know what to say...classes are good. My Portuguese lit class is definitely the favorite, followed closely by a colonial Spanish lit class. My comparative literature class leaves some to be desired, but is overall manageable. And I get to read the Arabian Nights for it. Can't beat that.

Ben has adjusted okay. When he came home from one security class, he said "it's like this class was made for me!" Which made me happy, because he doesn't usually find classes he enjoys that much. And BeeBoo likes her babysitters. :-) She gets to play with a little girl her age, which is good for her.

So life goes on. And basically not much changes.

More random stuff

I've been home for three weeks now. I spent New Year's Eve around the kitchen table at my aunt T's house talking with my two cousins about life, boys, feminism, school, and being an adamantly determined woman when the need arises. They're both well on their way to being smart, independent girls, and it makes me really happy. Then on New Year's I helped with making the characteristic food...cucumber sandwiches and sweet stuff before dinner, then mashed potatoes, pork and sauerkraut for dinner (notice that the mashed potatoes come first. Why, you ask? Because they, despite the deliciousness of meat, are the most important. We make 10 pounds of them for family gatherings). There's something about cooking with T that makes me happy.

While I was doing these things, my two little cousins (who are 7 and 9) occupied the BeeBoo. It made me remember when T would come out to the valley house and Hannah and I used to run out to the car fighting over who got to take the babies in and play with them. (So inherent to female nature, we're just born nurturers....riiiiiight. Why don't people ever notice how little girls like to play with babies because that's what the grownups do?) I used to think it was so self-sacrificing for her to let me play with her babies. Now I see that she probably welcomed the respite as much as I do. And I love watching those girls with my little one. They teach her things, and are so sweet.

Also of note is the observation that my toddler enjoys swordplay and a toy tool set as much as do her male cousins. Despite this observation on my part, one of my in-laws commented that "it's interesting to see how BeeBoo, the first girl in this bunch, follows all the trends...she's more empathetic, more verbal, less physical..." bleah bleah bleah. My first response was to say that it had less to do with her sex that with her disposition and our parenting. But that implies (which is not my intention) that we're somehow better parents because we've raised this amazingly verbal child. I think she is the way she is 1) because God made her that way, 2) because her mother, grandmother, Granny-Great, and double great grandmother all love words, 3) because she spends all of her time with adults! She thinks she's a graduate student, I'm pretty sure (see the "I'm gonna be mommy" post). I just thought it was interesting that while I noticed her swordfighting and playing with tools and credited it to her desire to play with the boys, the rest of the family focused on how she would say things like "Ben sad" and then hug her crying cousin
and credited it to the fact that she's female. Hmmmm

Lately I've been forcefully reminded of the difference between being verbally and actually supportive. I'm so glad that I have a spouse who actually supports my pursuits, rather than simply giving me permission to take them on.

Tomorrow I'm going to sew a quilt together. I'm being so domestic! I get to go to Gran's house and work on it. Always good for two reasons. 1) I learn sewing skills from someone who's really good at them, 2) I get to hang out with Gran! She's pretty much the most amazing woman that ever was. She was a single mom for most of her three girls' growing up years, and now manages to coordinate choir practices, high school reunions, cookie exchanges, lunches with friends, Sewing (with a capital S because it's a group that meets and chats while they do the activity, not just the activity itself), take food to people who need it, visit older people, be Eucharistic minister to a nursing home, attend more funerals than I would ever have time for, sew clothes for her granddaughters and their dolls, cook for her whole family and all their kids, remember everyone's favorite everything....the list goes on and on. She's amazing.

It snowed today. My sister that's a senior didn't have to go to school. There should definitely be snow days in college.