Daycare Blues

I hate sending that little girl to daycare! I know it's good for her, but my heart aches when she's away. She did just fine on Friday, but yesterday and today she cried when I left her. So so did I. Ugh. Heart wrenching! I hate it. She's in good hands, but I hate it. I know it's also good for me though because it means I should be able to get work done. Which I'm going to as soon as I'm done typing here.

The J is in Germany, so I've had no one to really decompress with about the daycare stuff except my mom, but the J is what I really need right now.

I sorta feel like the daycare woman is judging me a little bit for the way that I'm raising my child. This may or may not be true, but she was somewhat aghast (perhaps) that Magpie doesn't feed herself yet and that her food is still blended (I've been making it thicker). I understand from a practical standpoint that the woman can't feed seven babies all at once, and it's not like we haven't been working on it. Magpie just isn't a baby who is interested in putting things in her mouth, which in some ways is a blessing really. I know she needs to be eating more table food, and we've been working on it, it's just Magpie does things on her own time. The woman seemed a little curious as to why Magpie wasn't walking yet either--she's almost there. We're so close. And you know, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but yesterday I just wanted to cry because she made me feel like a bad parent. And of course I already struggle with that anyway. I just kept telling myself, "the pediatrician is proud of me; the pediatrician is so pleased with what we've done with Magpie. Don't worry."

We'll see.

You know, I just love this kid so much that my heart breaks. I just want to hold her all day long and watch her and play with her. Sometimes I wish I had the kind of job I could leave for five years and then find a similar one when she goes off to Kindergarten. I'm sure it will get better once I see how productive I can be; and if I can get lots done when she's gone, then spending time with her will be less stressful because I won't have the "oh shit I have so much to do" in the back of my head. I know daycare is good for the both of us.

On the agenda for today--book/article work. That means just reading for a couple of hours and then about 15 minutes of writing. And there you have it. We'll see what I can do.

It's been a long summer. Too much has happened for me to recap everything right now.

I'm wondering what to do with my little blog here. I have a lot to say, still, and I like this space, but I think I need to rethink what I need to use it for and how I think about myself.

There are four things on which I'm focused in various ways and with varying intensities:

1. My baby
2. My book
3. tenure and promotion
4. health-fitness-strength

So I'm stuck. I'd say 90% of my energy is on the Magpie. My god. That kid. I just want to spend all of my time next to her, around her, cuddling her, halting her from growing up. She goes to day care for the first time ever tomorrow, and I'm not dealing well with it at all! But now, after a year on the waiting list, she finally got in. There are many, many positives about this, but I don't deal well with change (as you guys know), and I just don't want her to go.

I have a book proposal due. What am I thinking??!!

I need another article for tenure. How am I going to do this??!!

Can I stay healthy enough for long enough to make some gains at the box??!!

This is where I'm at. I have lots of thinkings to do.

Summertime means no rest for the wicked (or those going up for tenure next year)

Wow, my poor neglected blog here. It's not as if I haven't been busy as hell. And I've neglected all of you out there, too. I've no idea what's going on with anybody out there right now.

But I anticipate some somewhat regular blogging at least for the summer because I have sooooooo much to do. I mean, I know I say that every summer, and that every summer is crucial, but I go up for tenure next year, and I'm still short one article. And I'm working with a guy this summer who did not get tenure, and I feel like that's the universe's warning to me to get my shit together.

I'm not teaching, but I am doing the cyber camp which is half the time of what teaching would be. However, I didn't really realize until yesterday exactly how time intensive those three weeks will. What makes it worthwhile is that between the two camps (one in July), I should make enough money to pay off, for good, all of our bad debts. This is my single biggest motivator here. Because that hangs over my head, stresses me out, and cripples every summer. So I've got to look at my writing and revising here I think in the same way that I view my workouts. A little bit each day, and be consistent at that. If I consistently work five days a week over the course of the summer, even if it's only writing 15 minutes a day (though I've got some reading and research to do), then I should have a thing or two to send out at the end of summer. I'm going to revise a diss chapter or two and finish that article I was working on during the spring. I don't know if my goals are too lofty, but if I don't have lofty goals, then nothing gets done.

What that means is that since the next three weeks are going to be a whirlwind of activity and stuff (plus I'm going out of town for this camp in two weeks), there's a whole lot of stuff that I need to get done this weekend before camp starts. The two biggest priorities are getting a month's worth of the Magpie's food cooked (about halfway there), and getting the bedroom, where my computer and desk are, organized and clean so that when I have a moment to work, I have a space in which to do it. So I'm super stressed, but I'm feeling a bit better this morning with some sleep and stuff. I'm still freaked, but I need to take the weekend to come up with a plan and get organized. I have one article left for tenure, which I know means I need to have like four out there. But I'm nervous. But I can do this.

Okay, time to get ready for the workout. At least, my body is feeling better and I have more energy, so I might be able to get a successful summer in the books.

One thing I hope to do with the blog is use it for coming up with my writing/plans for the day or week and use this as a progress report type thing. So, there it is.

Hope you all are well!!

Still here!

I'm just trying to bide my time, catch up on grading, and write a paper by the end of the quarter and waiting for the quarter to end.

Plugging along...

So I need to grade.

But I'm in too good of a mood to grade.

Therefore, I will not grade.

What I want to do is continue reading and spend a little bit of time working on my article/conference paper I need to work on. I was able to get ahead last week, and I'd like to keep that momentum. I feel like my schedule is pretty hellacious, but I seem to have gotten to a place that even when I need to grade, I can do that during office hours and still use my office hours to write and/or read. I've been reading at night during the week when everyone has gone to bed, and when the kid is asleep during the day so that I don't have to spend the whole weekend locked in my room working. Last weekend we actually went out to lunch and went downtown, and it was a beautiful day, and it was so lovely just to get out of the house. I'm pretty beat on Tuesday nights and then just totally and completely zonked by Thursday nights, but it's nice to only have office hours on Wednesdays and have Fridays off. I've also been able to maintain a pretty rigorous workout schedule; I've started another Whole30, and I've been able to get some sleep. So I hope I haven't gooched myself here.

Also, I was planning on teaching two classes this summer. They would have most likely been comp classes, five days a week for six weeks. I also work with this cybercamp over the summer, doing the movie intros, but this year I get to play a larger role and for more money. And then the opportunity arose to play an even larger role for even more money, so the J and I were thinking, maybe I should risk it, just take what I'm already doing, and not teach. We decided that that time spent teaching was going to knock out six weeks worth of writing I could be doing, and that while the extra summer money would be nice, tenure would be even nicer. The risk paid off. It looks like I can make a bunch more money with only three weeks worth of work (barely that long), and my time would be better spent both in terms of research and writing and with working with a summer program that I love working with. It's way more interesting to me, and while time consuming for those three weeks, the pay reflects the work and effort rather than back breaking work for 5% of my salary, which honestly, is not worth my time when I have other things that need to get done and are better for me (us) in the long run.

I think this is a better plan. My parents will be in for part of the summer, and god-willing we have child care by then, so I should be able to take advantage of the summer to get work done and still have a little bit of time to work, travel, and have some time to myself. I hope. We'll see. And now, it's time to get back to work.

For tomorrow's office hours:

• One hour grading.
• 15-30 minutes writing (I try to write daily in 15 minute chunks. It works for me).
• Remainder of time: reading/prep.

Have a good one!

Killing the Last 20 minutes of Office Hours

So everything got resolved with the grad class. But yesterday we had to meet rather than Monday, and that was a long sucky day.

I was exhausted after such a long heinous day, and I let them go an hour early.

My day hasn't really gone to plan, at least not for my office hours. I had intended on spending only an hour on "work stuff" and getting through a paper from last quarter because the stu wants to use it as a writing sample for grad school applications so I promised I'd go through it with a fine toothed comb. All of these things would have been possible in an hour had I not had to circle campus twice to find a parking spot. On top of running late anyway. Then I had to take care of a couple of things on-line for my own self, post some stuff to Moodle for the students (which took forever to download), and well, here we are with only 20 minutes of office hours left, not enough time to get anything meaningful done. So, I listen to Pandora and blog instead and sit here an miss my baby.

9 months tomorrow! I can't believe it. She's so gigantic! And funny and smart and clever, vocal, spirited and active. I'm constantly amazed by this little creature we created. She is the most amazing thing ever. My heart aches to be away from her.

I've met with all three classes now, and 2/3 are great. The survey class, I'm afraid, seem to be full of uninspiring duds. But perhaps their first impression was just bad. We'll see. I'm not going to be pessimistic or a debbie downer about them yet. I feel like it's going to be a very long quarter though. I'm already exhausted.

Oh, did I mention that I signed up for this? I can't remember. On the one hand, it's been good for me to do it because I had been really really down about my working out, my confidence had been super low, and I'd been feeling really disconnected for quite some time from that community. And even though the last two competition work outs have been really disappointing for me, it's been good for me to partake in the competition because as you know, I have to be working toward something, I have to feel tough in the gym, and I need to feel like I can accomplish something in order for me to be able to get anything done in all aspects of my life. I feel better more consistently working out, even if I am still really struggling with my postpartum body. It's tough on the body to be an old mom and to have had a c-section. And I was in really good shape before and pretty good shape during my pregnancy, but that damn c-section is taking my body forever to recover from. I'm only just now really starting to feel recovered. So 9 months it's taken my body to really heal from that. Sigh. I do wish things had been different, but oh well.

And oh look! Office hours are up. Peace out! :)

Hating all the things

Once again, my totally incompetent, completely flaky boss has taken my perfectly wonderful workable spring schedule and fucked it up royally.

I have a grad class. Boss: "When you like to teach your grad class?" Me: "Monday nights because the J is home on Mondays and he'll be able to watch the Magpie." Boss: "Perfect."

What does she do? She gives me a schedule that has me teaching the grad class from 6-9:30 on TUESDAY nights, a class that starts before the J gets home from work, by a full hour. A class that puts me on campus from 10:00 in the am until 9:30 at night. Child care aside, that's horrendous anyway.

I didn't notice this on the schedule because I had no need to check it. She told me the class would be scheduled for Mondays. I noticed last night after students were emailing me in confusion about the date of the class.

Her response: "Oh, well, I don't think there's anything we can do." I have the emails to her that show us agreeing on the Monday time. She emails the students so it "looks like her fault" which it is! to ask them if they can change to Monday because I can't teach the class on Tuesday, but puts in the email, "if you can't come on Mondays we'll just leave it as is." WTF? I can't come on Tuesdays! Why give the students an out? Why not just leave it with if you can't make this class, I will give you any other class of your choice and make it sub for this one. Fuck you boss!

What the hell am I going to do? I emailed the students myself and bribed them with food at the end of the quarter. I think my email was better than hers because I said I understood that it puts us all in a difficult position my asking them this and that I understand that I'm not the only one with scheduling and child care and work issues. I was so excited and hopeful about the classes this quarter and about my schedule but now, I mean, seriously, WTF? It's just expected then by her that J will take off work when mom leaves to watch the kid? Use up his vacation time because of her incompetence?

Maybe the students will come through for me and it will all work out. There are still a few days yet.

Any advice? What the hell can I possibly do about this as an untenured professor? Or, like last spring, am I going to have to take another one for the team (it doesn't seem that my male colleagues in the same position as me are asked to make the same sacrifices) because I'm untenured? Do I just suck it up, make the best of it, and avoid her for the quarter?

ETA: It looks like the students as of right now are able to make the change, which I do hope is true. Plus the grad chair just emailed them to tell them that class is on Mondays, whether they like it or not, which I'm sure she wasn't that harsh about it. It looks like we have to meet this Tuesday anyway so people can get their stuff in order to make the change, but thanks for letting me vent. I just needed to get some of the rage out and hopefully everything will work out.