Note to self: when feeding penne with red sauce to toddler at lunch, do not leave nice jacket draped over the chair next to her high chair where she can pat it and identify it as “Mama’s!”
Two?
Yesterday I took the Gadlet to a bakery to buy a gift for a colleague and while I was there bought the little G a cookie. (A Lemon Sable, to be precise.) She loved it, and devoured it right there in the store. When she had finished it, she looked at me and said, “Cookie?” I said, “No love, only one cookie today.” Then she got this really thoughtful look on her face, and then said, “Two?”
Clever girl. I had to laugh. And then explain that cookies were a special treat and only came in divisions of one.
Gadlet Blurg
Last night at dinner, I gave the Gadlet some applesauce. She looked at me and said, “Applesauce. Happy.”
I asked her, just to clarify, “Does it make you happy to have applesauce, sweetie?”
She said, “Yeah!”
Things I Hate More than Grading — 2009 Version
Yep, it’s that time of year again. And since I have roughly 1000 pages to read before this whole thing is over, I thought I’d return to my favorite procrastinating activity: coming up with stuff I hate more than grading.
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The Top 5 Things I Hate More than Grading – 2009
1. Vomiting Toddler
This was probably the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed in my whole entire life: my sick, listless, utterly silent 18-month old dry-heaving. I’d grade thousands of papers rather than go through that one again. Luckily for me, there are both thousands of papers and many, many more episodes of vomiting in my future.
2. Screaming Toddler
There’s something about it when she hits that high note that just chaps my ass. For those of you who don’t know, Kid Scream is genetically programmed to just weasel right in between all of your social defenses and stick like a jabbing little knife right into your gut. Nothing in the whole universe is that effective at getting your goat.
3. Diarrhea
In said Toddler, or self. Either way, I’d rather grade.
4. Surprise cat poop in the garden that you reach right into with bare hands thinking you’re going for a weed to pull.
5. Mass-Market Machine Generated Telephone Call…
on my CELL PHONE informing me that my ten-year-old car’s warranty is about to expire unless I act immediately to remedy the situation by giving buckets of cash, my SSN# and my first-born to the people at the other end of this phone number, but if I act now and stay on the line I may be able to prevent disaster from befalling my vehicle.
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Well, that’s the new list. How about you all? Anybody got anything else they hate more than grading?
And on a related note, do you find yourself getting progressively more and more pissed off as you grade? I swear by the 29th paper, I’m just LIVID that the hapless student has added yet another their/there mistake to my global life list. I know that that particular individual hasn’t made the other previous 348 mistakes, but I find myself wanting to rip the paper apart, tromp on it up and down in muddy boots, and then kick it out the back door for the feral neighborhood cats to poop on instead of my garden. And I know it isn’t fair to be so mad at the student just because I’m exhausted and tired of grading and their paper is the last one on the list. That’s when I know it is time to take a break and write a nice cathartic blog post about how much I hate grading.
Poop
While rocking my adorably precious daughter to sleep today for her nap, (not a regular practice, but a necessity today since she was so crazed by a cold she has that she needed help to fall asleep) she looked up at me sweetly, pointed to my nose, and said “poop.”
Yep, apparently my teeth are yellow and my nose looks like shit.
Ah, parenting. The ultimate deflation of one’s ego. You walk around with some sort of bodily fluid on you at all times and you’re so damned tired you don’t have time to do laundry (plus you’ve ceased to care about 300 vomits ago), so there goes your clothing and your self-respect. You never have time to get a haircut because who can figure out how to entertain a toddler in a room full of toxic chemicals and wickedly sharp objects? You are way fatter than you used to be and everything, I mean everything, is drifting southward like it’s all trying to cash in on a free ticket to Aruba without you. But in the midst of all of this craziness, you at least hold onto the notion that your kid thinks you’re beautiful and amazing.
Until the day comes that they decide you need tooth whitening and a nose job.
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In other news, I’ve suddenly realized that I’m overextended. Hm. I wonder what gave me that idea?
And I haven’t spent more than 1 hour of consciousness with my husband in the last two weeks. I’m starting to both forget what he looks like and wonder a little bit about why I want to keep him around at all. I mean, at least when he was here he washed dishes and smelled nice and occasionally watched the kid. In his defense, every night he’s been able to be home, I’ve been at work late. So he’s definitely been putting in the Gadlet time. But, man, our schedule sucks right now and the two weeks before it is all over seem interminable. The Gadlet keeps saying, “Dada? Work?” She knows what’s what, clever girl.
Other academics out there, here’s a question for you:
Always at this point in the semester I start to get really misanthropic and start to really, really hate dealing with people. I think it’s the introvert part of me rearing its head and saying, “OK, enough with this public contact. Get me back to the dusty back end of the archive and leave me there for weeks without talking to anybody!”
Seriously, I kinda get angry when students come to me for help this time of year. At the end of the winter semester, it is no problem. But man, it just kills me now to have to be so available to everyone who needs anything. It’s gotten to the point that anytime I hear my office building door open, I cringe because I’m afraid it is probably someone coming to see me. I’m worried I might even get a bit snappish with some students who have legitimate questions just because I’m so very tired of dealing with people.
So my question is, does this happen to you too, or am I particularly unsuited to this line of work?
Cheers –
You know it’s time to…
go ahead and shell out that $36 bucks for the stupid tooth whitener that you’ve been eyeballing on the shelf at the grocery store but have deliberately chosen to not purchase both because it is almost forty bucks for some stupid amped-up toothpaste paint and because you are afraid that if you use it you’ll turn out like those strange alien celebrities whose teeth glow in the dark when….
You’re in the bath with your baby (which is awesome and so sweet. Plus, much easier to wash that squirming little money, too…) and she’s leaning back against your chest, and you’re holding her head and body while she relaxes and floats in the water, and she’s looking up at you with total adoration when suddenly she points her finger into your mouth, touches your teeth and proclaims with great exuberance and pride at having made an Important Discovery:
“Ye-Yo!”
Uncertain that you have heard this correctly, and only a bit hurt by the kid’s direct honesty, you check to confirm that she’s saying what you think she is.
“Huh, Gadlet. What color are Mama’s teeth?”
“Ye-Yo!!!”
Yep. Time to run out and get me some of that stupid day-glow forty dollar tooth crap.
Either that or teach the kid the word “white” pronto.
GWTW
Why, oh, why did I assign Gone with The Wind to my class on the Civil War in American Popular Culture? Did I not REALIZE that the damned thing is 233 minutes long — and that I’ll have to sit through it YET AGAIN on a night that I could be doing so many other more important things like copyediting, grading, reading, eating, sleeping, or cuddling my kid? I mean, shit, it’s not like it is all THAT important to the subject at hand…. sigh.
April is the Cruelest Month
I love teaching, but man oh man do I wish I’d thought a bit more carefully about what I was doing to myself when I took on an honors student, four independent study students, and agreed to serve on another honors committee and an MA committee, in addition to teaching my three classes. It didn’t occur to me way back in September/January that the proverbial shit would hit the fan come April.
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I’m starting a new thing where in addition to facebooking my little status updates, I’ll do some here too. That way I can continue to blog in short little blurbs. I guess we’d call that a blurg. (And when a blurg goes to the burg with a dude named Furg… sorry. Too much Dr. Seuss these days. The Gadlet is particularly fond of the Wocket in my Pocket. She’s also a big fan of Hop on Pop. Doesn’t really like One Fish, Two Fish quite yet, though.)
Quick Gadlet Blurg.
Today, she asked for a specific book before bedtime by making a click with her tongue on the top of her mouth. I couldn’t figure out what she wanted. “Tock? You want a book about clocks?” (there are lots of those, even Goodnight Moon is actually about clocks that Tock, in case you didn’t realize it.)
“Yeah,” she said.
“Which one?” I asked. She pointed and grunted at her bookcase. I didn’t see any book about clocks, even marginally. “I don’t know which one you want. Can you show me?” I asked.
So she hopped down, reached over, and pulled out the book called “Baby Talk.” And proudly said “Tock” with the tongue click, and trotted back to my lap. Someday I’m going to have to explain homonyms, but until then, I’m just charmed by her homonym confusion. And am only a little bit worried that I need to improve my enunciation!
Wordless
Um, hi.
If anybody is still out there, sorry for the radio silence. I’ve been absolutely crazy with work since the defense. Plus there was this whole stomach thing that drained me physically (literally …. eeewwww!!!) just as I was at my most drained emotionally and intellectually. I’ve been feeling all used up, with nothing extra left to spare.
I’m certainly not done with the blog, and haven’t given it up, I think I’ve just been feeling utterly without words lately. Like I’ve used them all up and haven’t generated any more in the reserves. Even simple words just to describe my experiences are hard to find.
For those of you who follow the more personal side of things, the Gadlet is so fabulous. She’s learning her letters and numbers. At 19 months, she’s learned most of the letters and can now count to … 2. Yep, kid’s a genius. Although that genius thing kind of falls apart because right now she says “yeah” to everything we say. Like, “Hey Gadlet, is your Mama a supermodel?” “yeah.” “Is Dada an NFL Quarterback?” “yeah.” “You want some Tripe for dinner?” “yeah.” “Can we cash in your college fund and go on a bender in Vegas?” “yeah.” It’s pretty funny. We figure we’re gonna pay for this blatant abuse of her trust when she figures out “no” and then we’ll hear nothing but “no” for the next two years. But she’s taken to holding our faces and giving us kisses of her own volition, which is so lovely it shatters my heart into a million pieces every time she does it. So hopefully that will continue well into the “no” phase. (Wow, I managed to find a lot of words to talk about that!)
Anyway, there’s about 4 more weeks left in the semester. After that, I get to devote myself full time to revising and polishing, then I can turn it all in. So the diss. front is pretty good. I imagine that I’ll return to a more regular accounting of (and for) myself when that gets going again.
Until then, cheers and I’ll be back in touch soon!
Posted in Dissertation, Parenting
Dr. Stewgad, Ph.D.
I’ll post all the gory details tomorrow, but just a quick note to let you all know that it went really, really well. The committee loved the project. We had a nice conversation and they passed me in about 20 seconds. Not even conditionally. They even said it was “beautifully written.” (!!!)
It almost was enough to make up for the last 13 years of agony.
And now, to bed. I might actually sleep all night for the first time in weeks!
Thanks so, so much for all of your good energy and kind words today. They were really, really appreciated.
Pretty Hard, Dammit 