Know When to Fold 'Em

I am having one of those weeks where everything I touch turns to s***.

I was planning to work extra hours at the library to make up for the time I missed last week due to my combined bacterial/viral infection.  But on Tuesday, an hour into that attempt, I got called to come pick up Nora because her fever was near 102.  Billy stayed home with her on Wednesday, so I was able to make some progress in my KA Porter inventory, but since Nora's fever persisted in going up and down, I haven't been back to the library since then.  Today I finally took her to the pediatrician, who prescribed an antibiotic for a minor ear infection.  Can't wait to change those diapers!

Despite my physical absence from that job, I still get to see the emails circulating about all the mistakes I've made in the inventory.  If you'd like a slice of humble pie, sign up to be the most inexperienced member of any team and make sure it is your job to do the bulk of the data entry.  That way, when four or five trained individuals clean up behind you, you can find out just how inept your lack of experience has made you.  I don't know if they expected me to start off this poorly or not, but my niggling perfectionism makes me feel like I am letting everyone down.  I bet they wish they hadn't hired someone with a small child and no experience, the voice inside keeps telling me.

Monday was my first post-semester work from home day, which meant I was supposed to get serious about this dissertation prospectus.  I finally tracked down a dissertation from last year that will be hugely helpful in helping me position myself within the ongoing conversation about Modernism, maternity, and feminism.  The bibliography reads like a list of all the texts I knew must be out there but which I could not seem to find on my own.  The first two chapters, which is all I've managed to read so far, are brilliant.  Truly.  It's like reading a dissertation on your topic that is wildly better than you could have even dreamed up.  The proper reaction to this would be enthusiasm: I can do something like this too!  I was right about all of these things!  If this dissertation was directed by a pre-eminent name in the field, and this woman got a tenure track teaching job, as well as a teaching award in her first year, there is hope for me, too!  But I am having the opposite reaction.  Holy s***.  I am SO far away from having any ideas this good. When was the last time I felt like I had a really good idea?  Oh yeah, it was in November.  And just last week my well-meaning advisor told me that idea had been "too obvious."

Which, incidentally, confirms all my fears about myself as a thinker.  I generally think every single one of my ideas is obvious.  Usually my advisor says things like "It's only obvious to you.  Most people can never appreciate how unique their own ideas are, because to them, those ideas always seem obvious."  So it was pretty crushing to hear that the one time I did think I was onto something unique, it came across as "meh."

Last night I was feeling so frustrated that I decided I needed a little change of pace.  I had begun working on a crib quilt for Nora, and I decided that I might feel better in general if I devoted my energy for the evening to a small task that I could actually finish.  Ideally, finishing a gratifying project should give me the inspiration I need to keep plugging away at my other seemingly endless projects.  First, I discovered that the piece of fusible webbing I had purchased for the project was too short.  Eh, who cares if I spent an hour measuring fabric to maximize the length of the blanket.  I thought.  She won't notice if it is 4" shorter.  So I trimmed the quilt and progressed to the next step, only to discover that I could not fuse the webbing to the polyester backing as planned because the backing melted under the heat of the iron.  Nice planning.  Oh well, I thought, I'll just pin it.  After quilting a few rows, I ran out of thread without even realizing it been running low.

I didn't even mention that my daughter has been sporting a four pointed diamond bruise on her head because I let her face plant into a dog bone!

So, in short: this has not been my week.  I want to quit everything.  The only thing that gets me through weeks like this is focusing on the positive.  There isn't a lot to work with there, but here goes:

The pediatrician said "Congratulations Mom and Dad" about the fact that Nora made it to 19mo before getting her first ear infection, and a minor one at that.  Thank you, breastmilk!

When Nora's sick, she's cuddly.

Summer "Break"!

I've submitted my students' grades, so I'm now on summer break! This means I can finally get my prospectus written, which really just means I'm on a break from working for other people... not from working. This does mean I'll spend more time at my laptop, so maybe more blog posts? In the meantime, here are a few recent photos.

We had a low key Mother's Day after a family dinner the night before. We went to the park and wandered around to look at all the animals and plants because the play structures were soaked.

Although we've been fighting a nasty illness in our house for two weeks, we have managed to spend some more time outside. Nora loves the peonies that came from her great grandfather's garden. Pop would have lived to meet her, and I'm sure that if he could see her develop an interest in these "flow-uhs" he would take her under his wing to cultivate her green thumb.

Edit: So when you post from your phone, the photos looks like this?  Note to self.

[S]he loved youth

Of the Professor in The Professor's House, Willa Cather writes "... he loved youth-- he was weak to it, it kindled him.  If there was one eager eye, one critical, doubting mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant.  That ardour could command him. It hadn't worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time."

I think about this all the time when I am walking around campus.  Especially on nice days.  I know what this is like.  There are so many reasons to love working on a college campus, but for me, being surrounded by kids who are at this stage in their lives is one of the best.

I made my campus visits as a high school senior.  I only visited schools that had already admitted me, so there was no anxiety about it.  I was making the most exciting decision of my life.  The weather was beautiful at all three of them: Valparaiso, Wake Forest, and Furman.  I could not wait for college to begin, because it felt like waiting for my real life to begin.  When I walk around Maryland's campus on a beautiful day, I can remember exactly what that felt like.  How beautiful and exciting everything was.  How cool college kids seemed and how much freedom they had.  How much fun they seemed to be having just walking around.  I think about how that "lively curiosity" college students have was inspiring when I was 17 and continues to be refreshing now that I'm 30.

Today was a beautiful day on campus, so I took a few pictures on my walking commute.

It's a rough life, right?

Somewhat relatedly, I took Nora to campus with me yesterday for my department's end of semester party.  This deserves a post of its own, but it's been a long week, so I'll keep it short:  It was a delight to see her in my work element.  I thought she would run around the mall, but she mostly stood in place and stared all around her.  My friends and professors were very excited to see her, and after about an hour of shyness she warmed up to the situation enough to show off her personality a little.  I'm at a stage in my program where I don't have much interaction with other members of the department unless I actively seek it out, and that's hard to do with so little spare time in my schedule.  It was extra nice to have everyone together in one place, to hear briefly how they've been doing, and to let them see that my current "project" is not limited to reading, writing, and teaching.

Remember Down Time?

Nora is sleeping in this morning.  I hope it is not illness related!  I've already gotten up, showered, gotten ready, made my grocery list, eaten breakfast, and packed my lunch.  These things all go so much faster when she is not toddling around at my feet or clamoring for my attention.  I had forgotten about that.

This gives me a chance to sit down with my coffee (which for once is in a real mug, not a travel mug!) to see how far I can get in the blog post I've been milling over in my mind for the past few days before she wakes or I have to wake her.

I can barely remember when I used to have down time.  Graduate school has a way of making you feel like you should treat every minute away from work like it is precious... but because I'm me, it also has a way of making me feel like I can't afford to spare any minute away.  Nonetheless, I did try to make a conscientious effort to take time off once in a while.  These days, my "time off" from school is spent mothering.  And my "time off" from mothering is spent doing school work.  I don't know quite how to find much time for myself in between.  To be fair, I don't need much time to myself.  If I have to split my time between two things, these are the two things I most want to be doing.  But when I put her down to sleep at night, and begin the effort to force myself to get back to work, I am envious of Billy, who gets to spend his evenings watching the Orioles, even though I am reminded every Wednesday, when I work at a desk for a mere five hours, that his work is no joke.

But I also know I cannot sit still to save my life.  In the downtime I do allow myself, I've been working on a quilt for Nora.  Two Mondays ago I gave myself a "me" day, which meant I watched Mad Men guilt free before spending the entire day running errands.  Maybe I am nostalgic for time to sit and "do nothing" not so much because my life doesn't allow me the time to do it, but because "doing nothing" is a state that seems appealing and yet has never really been a part of my life.

I don't know.  But Nora is peeping away on the other side of the wall, so I don't have a chance to think about it any further.  Isn't it nice how happy she wakes up when she sleeps long enough, rather than insisting on waking up just because she can tell there's activity going on in the house?

This blog post was also supposed to include this detail, which I didn't work in: I am thankful for audio books for allowing me to reclaim my commute.  My trip to the library to grade on Monday also yielded me the chance to peruse the books on CD selections, so I'm currently listening to A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers.  This is a book I never, ever would have had a chance to read otherwise.  If you are ever trying to think of a gift for me, take yourself on over to audible.com.