Top Ten--2011

Top Ten Awesome Things about 2011:

1. The Crisis has made some progress in the right direction. And it's not nearly as bad as it could be.
2. Huge strides in my quest to get more publications under my belt.
3. My job is going really well, mostly, and I have opportunities that would probably not otherwise be available to me.
4. The Hubby and I have figured out a date-nigh/babysitting exchange with another family that has been really valuable.
5. The Babydoll and The Baby Boy are doing quite well in school and in extra-curricular activities.
6. Friends who had been wanting a baby for nearly five years, and who had a stillborn in the process, welcomed their beautiful, healthy son. A number of other friends also welcomed healthy babies into their families.
7. Finally had my bridal portrait framed, three years after I actually posed for it, and 10 years after I actually got married. (Of course, The Hubby cracked the glass in the process of giving it to me for Christmas, but, oh well.)
8. My hair is doing great. I'm learning to handle it in its unrelaxed state and I've had a very useful shift in my definitions of beauty. I feel sassy and I learned to swim (kind of)!
9. Regarding another crisis with family friends, one unrelated to the major crisis in my life, another year has passed that moves them closer to a resolution of a very bad thing.
10. The little world in my house is pretty good; my children are mostly unaffected by the horrible things that I know are going on and they are, I think, really and truly happy children who express their love for us and each other; my husband still loves me and I still love him. And I like him a lot of the time, too.

*And here's a bonus: I finished the awesome list much more quickly than the suck list.

Top Ten Sucktastic Things about 2011:

1. The Crisis will not freaking go away. It gets better, then randomly and unpredictably gets worse. And there's so little I can do about it.
2. The Crisis insists on sprouting branches, most of which I can barely do anything about.
3. We lost an elder in our family.
4. Still have friends who haven't yet been able to realize their dream of becoming parents.
5. Still not on anybody's tenure track.
6. Still having migraines, despite efforts to change my diet (although that's helped some) and I might need to switch medications again.
7. Something that I wanted to happen for a long time fell into my lap and then was snatched away. It still has not materialized in a successful way.
8. My faith is . . . challenged. And confused. But that might just be this week.
9. I missed a perfectly free Stevie Wonder appearance because I was at a conference.
10. Failed goals.

Listen Up, White People (Pissed Off Edition)

Seriously, the next time you need to blame your own crazy, illegal, or evil behavior on some anonymous stranger, I'm going to need you be more creative. Can we PLEASE make this the last time you decide to make imaginary black people your obvious scapegoat? I mean, really--the criminal is imaginary. You can make them anything you want. Pick something else!

At least this nutso chick decided to use a woman instead of the standard issue black male . . . .

Cheese and crackers! (Okay, now I'm ready to return to my normal self and being friendly with some white folk. Thanks for indulging me.)

Thanks for the warning, but . . .

Honestly, I'm exhausted by the barrage of information on chemicals that will kill and maim us. Has anyone read the article in Parents magazine? Now I see one on CNN.com that is just as scary. In short, the only escape seems to be not to sit on anything, or cook anything, or drink anything, breath anything, or touch anything. Anywhere. At any time. But I guess that's just as well, since we also should not drink milk or juice or eat meat or vegetables or fish. Or else we'll be deathly ill. In which case you cannot take medicine. That will destroy the liver. Or something.

All the might be related to and may be a contributing factor. It's all so overwhelming. Can someone do a study that isn't frivolous or totally alarming? And can you actually come to actual conclusions before you scare everyone? The world is, it seems, unavoidably toxic. Cheese and crackers . . . .

Bleh

Again, an essay that I thought was really solid and smart was declined for publication (read: rejected). I was really proud of this one and liked the project a lot. I thought it was perfect for me. I'm sad. :(

Manic Monday

Just when your day feels like it's going head first into the crapper, a few brilliant students show up.

Today did not begin well. We had sort of a lazy weekend, mostly at home, but we are in the middle of house-buying and that decision is totally freaking me out. I'm the worst decision maker you'll ever meet, so I'm scared to death to pull the trigger. What if it's the wrong house? Wrong neighborhood? The schools turn into Eastside High? (from Lean on Me) Our neighbors hate us (incidentally, one of the neighbors has turned out to be my current department chair!) That has been running through my head while I was running through the house trying to get ready and get the children ready; we were all sleepy because they wouldn't stay in bed last night, in part due to someone shooting off firecrackers, which make my daughter's teeth chatter, literally. Anyway, the house, plus potty training that isn't really going anywhere--did you know that a little boy can pee through the crack between the toilet seat and the bowl?--was churning into a hot cup of crap.

But I'm glad that I read the Our Daily Bread devotional this morning. It noted that the original list of deadly sins listed sadness because Christians are supposed to have a joyful heart. So I figured I should climb out of this emotional ditch before I left the house but it didn't really happen. I was laboring to avoid meltdowns all the way to the front door, and I didn't do it with grace and love, let me tell you.

The first class of the day was annoyingly quiet during the writing workshop, so I was concerned that the writers wouldn't get the help they needed. Of course, a digression into Lifetime's The Pregnancy Pact (which, apparently, is going to come up in every single class today) got things perked up pretty quickly. But then one of the bunches of students who have reappeared from the fall to ask for rec letters came to bring a thank you note. She drew pictures on it herself! It was all brightly colored and cheery. Man, did I need that! Then, I met with my majors and they were smart and on top of things. And they were clearly impressed with my insights into the novel. At one point I suggested an interesting connection and one of them said, "And that's why you have a PhD! That's so smart!" Yay for me!

So maybe I'm not just a loser who can't pull it together. Of course, the day is young . . . .

Hot, Steaming Bowl of Crap

In the interest of not totally falling off the blogosphere, here's a quick post.

The last seven days have dropped an out-of-freaking-nowhere bomb in my life and I'm not sure how long it's going to interrupt what has been a pretty happy life. I'm struggling to "praise God anyhow" (as Baptists like to say), but I'm hopeful. Life has dealt us a big ole bowl of illogical, poopy, crap. But I'm grateful for so much happiness in the middle of a not great situation. And I know that I don't deserve the enormous good I've been given anymore than I deserve the bad. And I know that if God wasn't bigger than this, I wouldn't be a worshipper.

Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Guess I'll Go Eat Worms

I was going to write a post today about the push-pull of motherhood and work and staying at home with children and the external intrusions that try to define women. Instead, here's what I'm writing:

So, I'm watching "The Real Housewives of New York" and here's another person who is going on and on about a career that is fabulous and enriching (both for soul and for purse) for which she was not particularly trained that was a hobby and just blossomed like a big ol' freaking flower and now has her all on TV with a book and I'm sitting here with squat.

Where's my stuff? Man, I suck.





*P.S. And here's what else I'm wondering: If you could (or had to) enter a totally different field, what would it be?

In Medias Res

And you know what else? They think they can just do whatever they feel like to us. Like we don't matter and should just take scraps and crawl away saying, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" Like I haven't worked my rear end off earning degrees that make me qualified and then folks just want to throw me away. You now what? Kiss my grits!--

Oh, wait. You don't live in my head, huh? Let me explain my stream of consciousness type vomit of thoughts. I've just had this epiphany that faculty are the peons of the university setting.
As much as I'm trying to forget about how messy and just wrong my job loss is on a number of levels, my impulse is just to let it go (along with some money that is probably still owed me) and move on. In fact, I received two pieces of promising news lately, so perhaps I'll have somewhere to move to, at least in the short term. But when I think about the way that faculty are often cut out of the shared governance that is supposed to happen in higher education, it reminds me that continuing to work in academia anywhere means that I have to accept a certain lack of control over my own career. So much happens to faculty, from course load to course distribution to office space. Even when rules are followed--and they were not in my situation--it seems that faculty is at the mercy of students and administration, caught in the middle.

There are millions of other thoughts running through my head about the complexities of higher education, but I had this realization about being a worker bee. It feels like a veil being lifted. When I was a student, I had no idea that there was so much behind the scenes.

Feelings, whoa, whoa, whoa

TD, you know my motto is, "Feel how you feel." We can't wallow for long in the viccitudes of life, but sometimes giving in to the "blah" is the only way to keep breathing air. That's how I felt on Friday; I just decided that trying to be professional didn't preserve my job and being cordial didn't make the circumstance better for me. So, I was kind of pissy. I almost didn't shake the woman's hand at the end of the debacle. Whatever. So, sister, if today you need to fall face down in a bowl of ice cream, do it. If you need to scream about how unfair life is, have at it, because it is unfair. When tomorrow comes, do what you need to do then, too. And while life has beat some of the optimism out of me, I do believe that each day we have what we need to get through that day. Tomorrow we may need something else, but for today, we have enough mustard seed hope, enough tiny sparks of joy, enough focus and strength of character to keep us off the floor.

But, doggone it, we ain't got to like it!

My firstborn came in my second pregnancy, too, and even though I told you not to get excited, you did. So I'm excited for you. And, I will do for you what you did for me: while you can't plan or wait, I'll anticipate your shower, I'll buy the cute outfits, and I'll gather lots of toys to pass down to you (and to declutter my house, but that's just a bonus). From my vantage point, what does it matter? Whatever is going to happen won't be changed because my heart got happy. Plus, I need something to be happy about--what else do I have to do? That's where I am today. I don't know how my job situation will resolve itself, but I'm trying to be open. Of course, the other side of the truth is that I had planned to write a post on how many people have told me that they've "never seen the righteous forsaken," to which I always want to respond, "What if I'm not righteous? And what does forsaken look like?" Nevertheless, I'm hanging onto survival.

Here's the thought for the day: "If you're going through hell, just keep on walking. You might get out before the devil even knows you're there." If this isn't a country music moment, I don't know what is.

Plans

They say the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And then there's that saying that man plans and God laughs. And life is like that. We make all of these plans--go to college, get a good job, get married to a great guy, have two, maybe three perfect and beautiful children, great friends, buy a lovely house in a good neighborhood and prepare for happiness and good times to ensue. Sure you expect the occasional hiccup, but nothing that you really can't handle because you have made plans and you are following the steps to achieve them. But it doesn't always work out like that.

I sympathize with your situation, SM. You have made plans to go to work, to do the best for your students, and then someone comes along and tells you that those plans don't matter. What can you do?

I sympathize with your situation because my own plans have been thwarted. The news that I had earlier was a second pregnancy. I won't talk about how I had planned to have the first baby and be a happy mother taking care of her 3-month-old son right now. That's not how life worked out. So, I adjusted and created new plans. I had planned to be pregnant right now, reveling in my sizeable baby bump. I was so looking forward to wearing all of my new maternity clothes. I had planned to be checking into daycare centers for the fall about now. I had also anticipated going to my baby shower in March and glowing as I got to open diaper genies and boxes of Huggies. Alas, that is not the way life has worked out for me. My baby came much sooner than we had planned. Thankfully, she is still with us, but we are now faced with emotional and physical difficulties for which we never could have planned.

Now, I am learning not to plan. I am trying to "keep it in the now" as George says in Mama Day. I don't anticipate what will happen tomorrow because there is absolutely no telling. Who knows? Maybe I will still get to have that baby shower, but it is not something that I am planning to attend. If it happens, it will happen. If it doesn't, I would not have dreamed about it or anticipated it or even thought about what it might be like. And this is the way that I am approaching each aspect of my tiny baby's life right now as well as my own. Maybe this is not the best way to live, but it is a good way to survive.

I know this post seems a little nihilistic and I don't mean to be this way because I have things to be optimistic about, but sometimes, my disappointment about my pregnancies takes over. And now, considering your wrongful firing, the pessimism prevails. Maybe tomorrow might bring happier times.