Pfft.

That's what I have to say to this day already. I'm just super stressed and a bit overwhelmed right now.

Since last winter, when I finally figured out my "system" for my survey classes, it has not taken me this long to get through grading. Generally I'm done with the midterms within two or three days of collecting them, even if I'm only grading them during office hours. But damn, I have just had essays and papers and everything else forever it seems like. I never even got this far behind when I had a comp class thrown into the mix! I just cannot seem to get my shit together this quarter at all. I blame my schedule; therefore, I blame myself. Teaching this late in the morning is not working for me at all. I just have to hang in there and make it through this quarter. I have high hopes that next quarter will be better. I have to. I expect my reviews to be awful this quarter. I thought the second trimester was supposed to be better, but I guess I started the quarter still in the first, and that just kind of set the tone for the whole shebang.

Which brings me to my next bit of angst for the day: I'm attending a baby shower for a friend in a couple of hours. Yes, it will be nice and lovely and all that. Why is it causing me angst? Because she has had like the most perfect pregnancy on the history of the planet. She is only just now, in month 8 starting to have backaches and get tired. She describes her pregnancy thus far as a wonderful and amazing experience. They cry during ultrasounds. Not to mention that I'm larger than she is at my piddly 4.5 months. Look, I know I sound catty. And I'm so so so very happy for her that she has had the best pregnancy and gets sleep, didn't have morning sickness or nausea or anything like that. Has been able to maintain working out 4-5 times a week, still. Can still do a pull-up and can still run. Am I bitter and jealous? I am not ashamed to admit that I am. I totally am. While I have more energy and am feeling better and will admit that I don't mind being pregnant, it has not been the "oh my god! I'm so happy! What a miracle! How wonderful!!" experience of some. It's not been as bad as others' experiences I'm sure, but today is week 18, and I still have morning sickness. I have already gained 30 pounds because my diet is jacked up. I hate pants (except pj pants)--although the unintended side effect of this is that I now have a ton of cute dresses and ironically dress nicer now that I'm pregnant than I did before. Am I a terrible human being? Is it wrong that I'm totally jealous that she had the pregnancy I hoped for and that I just feel sorta sidelined by my body? Sigh. It makes me feel terrible. She's my friend. I hate being jealous of my friends. But I am. At least I admit it I guess and can move on. The shower will be fun though. I like baby showers. I hope there are games. I rock at the games. Especially the baby mad-libs. I actually won a game at a shower I helped give once. :)

In other news, I went to HR yesterday to talk to them about maternity leave, and I am happy to say that I will (financially!!) be able to take off the whole of fall quarter! That means that I'll get from roughly June 29th until December 4th to be with the baby! Yay!! How much of my paycheck I'll get depends on if they only count my teaching days as leave days and base it off of my spring schedule, which I hope will be my permanent schedule for a while, or if they want to be jacknobbers and base it on a five day work week (which hardly seems fair if I'm teaching MWF). Three day a week schedule means between my leave and the shared sick leave pool, my entire quarter is covered with paid sick leave. If they decide to do a five day a week schedule, then it only covers 6.5 weeks of the quarter, and I'm out almost a month's pay. However, if this is the case, then I use up my paid leave first, and then the unpaid kicks in. So if this is the case, then at least I have a month and a half to make arrangements here (plus the J's paycheck), so that's more manageable. And we had decided that if I have to have unpaid leave, as long as it was no longer than a month, then I could go ahead and request the entire quarter off. And since my boss has been actively trying to discourage me from taking maternity leave in the fall ("I don't understand why you need fall off if you're having the baby over the summer. I don't have anyone to fill your classes."), I asked HR if she could deny my leave, and she said that the FMLA request protects me legally and that it doesn't matter if my boss is pissed or not. She can't deny it, and she has to deal with it. Now, I'm totally aware that she may decide to punish me down the road with terrible schedules and horrible classes, but I'm not giving up maternity leave for the sake of making her life easier or for the good of the department. I'm giving her ample notice (as a matter of fact, I told her in December that I was planning on taking fall off if it was financially feasible for me) so that she can do what she needs to with the schedule, which I think is totally fair on my part. It's not my job to find someone to teach a class that she may assign me for the fall when she hasn't even made the schedule out and doesn't even know what, if any courses, they are going to offer in my area in the fall. That's why she gets paid the big bucks. However, I take comfort in knowing that she can't make me not take it, and she can't deny my request.

That being said, I guess I'll take a less than ideal pregnancy if the trade off is that I get to stay at home with the baby for five months and a week. That's way way waaaaaaaaay more than most get, and at the very least, most of it should be paid leave (although, with a 3 day a week schedule, all of it should be paid leave). Then, winter quarter, my parents are coming in for the quarter to provide childcare for the quarter for us, so I won't have to worry about finding a day care or babysitter until about March of 2014. So I'm thankful for that, too.

Well, in any case, I'm feeling better now that I got that off my chest. Also, I had a good cry in the midst of all of this already this morning (I'm really stressed about how far behind I am, what I need to grade this weekend, and how much needs to get done by 10 am on Tuesday).

So I'll have something to eat and then get ready for this shower business.