Poop

Babe and I were napping together this afternoon and I was just awakened by the smell of poop, not from Babe or myself (thankfully) but from dog who we have started to let have free roam of our house now that boxes have been put away and doors can actually be shut. Well, dog poohed in the Babe's room on her rug! Someone forgot to shut that door and now I've got to clean up in there. This is now forcing me to clean up around the rest of the house as well. I usually take one evening to just clean from top to bottom but because our schedules have been mad crazy I've not done that in quite a bit and now just clean as I go.

We bought a riding lawn mower today, it will arrive on Tuesday and we'll begin the other fun side of home-ownership, yard work. I know that sounds sarcastic, but I don't mean it to, I actually like working in the yard, making clean neat lines, piles, putting colors together, watering, raking. Its weird because I hated it when I lived at home.

I have also waited until the very last minute to do homework that needs to be done today and so I will have to goad myself to now work on this.

Question for self: If I feel so stuck and unhappy here (in country, in Rivah city, with what I'm doing) why is it so difficult to get motivated to do things that would help me to be able to move forward and move out of this condition I'm in?

Answer: I don't know

Must clean.

inspiration

From my bro, who is also feeling the same way:

XXXXXXXX (12:09:50 AM): i just wanna do what Grandma saw in the both of us


Amen.

I'm down.

I just feel down. I lack the motivation and drive I once had. It used to be that I'd eat this shit and it would make me stronger, make me want to work harder, get back in the game, but now I just want to crawl in my bed.

I thought I'd be pulling myself back up by now and working hard to get back into school, but I'm not. I don't even feel excited about the whole business thing anymore. Things just seem really confused and messed up and like I can't focus to get them straight.

I just want to be in school. I miss it and the sad thing is I can't even get my flipping shit straight to focus to study for the GRE or to get application stuff together. I'm in such a slump, complaining and lamenting that I can't realize if I REALLY don't like where I'm at then I've got to be the one to change it. Its like I say it, but what do I do to really make a difference?

This makes no sense.

I miss my dreaming partner.

No motivation.

Bah. I've got so much to do and limited motivation which means I have to work in spurts. I did clean a bathroom today. Also responded to emails and phone calls.

The night is young. Perhaps I'll do more.

I hope.

I
need
to
work again.

But I just feel
blah.

Send working vibes me way ye ole net.

Things a Babe can Do

I realized that I hadn't posted a new list of things that a babe can do recently, so here we go.

1. Stand up with support.
2. Stand on her own for a few seconds.
3. Pull herself up.
4. Dance a very fast shaky dance to country music.
5. Pick out her favorite book from a pile of other books, currently _Elmo's Bedtime Tales_ or _Olivia_.
6. Point to objects she likes.
7. Point to objects she doesn't like.
8. Grunt for things she wants.
9. Grunt for things she doesn't want.
10.Give a kiss.
11. Stick her arms through her shirt.
12. Twinkle all her toes and her fingers at simultaneoulsy.
13. Play peek-a-boo by holding a blanket up in front of her face and then putting it down and screaming with laughter.
14. Go from being on her tummy to rolling herself over and sitting up.
15. Feed herself mashed up bits of food.
16. Kick the covers off when she's in bed.
17. Cuddle for naps.
18. Drink out of a cup.
19. Pull both socks off.

At 10 months she is quite amazing.

Recalcitrance 2.0

So I've been taking a class this semester and have come upon a theory that I welcome. Rarely do I study theory and welcome it, I usally have a hard time understanding how to put theory into practice (the real world). But, this time it kinda came the other way, I'd been experiencing something and could not really put it into words. I couldn't adequatley describe what I'd been going through, but now I have this theory that does a good job explaining what I'm going through.

Recalcitrance is something that Burke coined in his work Permanence and Change. It basically boils down to the idea that you can't just say anything and have it be true, the wolrd will and can force you to redefine your statements. For example, I could say, "I'll run out in front of traffic and be just fine." Well, if I did that I'd get hurt, duh, and so the physical world would have then forced me to redefine my statement to make it more true, "If I run out into traffic I'll get hurt."

My physical world has been challenged since my grandma passed, last June 20. Challenged, because so much of what I thought and believed was shaken and things I never imagined happened. My grandma's death changed the way my family functioned, at one time you could always find us together on a Friday night at my granny's house, but now its not like that anymore. And we are all trying to redefine our selves and our beliefs, our statments as we are met with this new kind of reality. I think that for me, so many times I was still trying to operate in the old way, like the old me, but that old me was being met with fierce opposition in this new reality. Trying to force things that just were not working really made me hurt. I'd had a lot of people tell me, in a lot of different ways that I needed to welcome the new me here and allow her to flourish. The new me was not made up of only my grandma's death, but the Babe's birth also. Within six weeks I was to be reshaped by two very cataclysimc events and I have had a very hard time allowing that new person to operate. Sometimes I let myself get so washed away in the way things were that I don't realize that there is a new version of myself, and she's not at all bad.

I guess just as with anything, there are always kinks that need to be worked out in new versions.

I'm working in an office...

my own office here at home. Because I had a Kafka/Gregor Metamorphosis moment and decided that I no longer wanted to feel sorry for myself or feel angry because I don't have a teaching job. So, I got up and decided to start a business. I know, random and weird as it may seem because I'm not the "Trump" type, I'm more the "Nutty Professor" but hey- a woman has got to do what a woman has got to do and that's to help put food on the table and pay for this house so I've started a consulting business and am trying to woo my first client.

Different, yes, but still it involves teaching (business communication/vocational ESL) and it allows me to plan and do lots of work from home.

I am the fourth person in my family now to start a business and I'll admit it has not been easy. I had to do a lot of soul-searching and reflecting and it took me getting really angry and really sad in order to move forward with this, but I am. And I'm glad.

family clap.

I know it sounds corny and hoaky (is that even a word?), but my family used to do this thing, a family clap. Say for instance, someone found out they did well in school, or got a raise, we'd all clap for that person and kinda holla a bit to show our support. Then, after that person got a clap, another person would want some attention and family love too and so they'd throw something out. Here's an example:

Cousin 1: I got a 100 on my math exam today.
Family: Way to go! Yahoooooo! *claps widely*

*another cousin, thinking about something that would warrant a clap, voices: I ate oat bran cereal today, instead of sugary coco puffs!

Family: Yahooo! *claps even louder*

We really hadn't done any family claps since my gma passed, almost 9 months ago now. I think mainly because we all kinda avoid hanging out together, its something about being together that reminds you that person is not there. But its a catch 22 because we do actually like being together. Our family's version of a fun weekend was clammering over to my gma's house, sprawled on her bed, her floor, around her dresser, telling stories, laughing at the TV and just enjoying one another, and then having the family clap.

But tonight, the clap returned. We were all in my mom's house, cousins, aunty, bro, DH, babe, erbody who was normally together and my cousin announced something, about his electrician work, and we broke out into a random family clap. At the moment, I can't even remember what about, but I just know we clapped.

Sit and Watch.

Today I had lots to do. Appointments that needed to be scheduled. Dishes that should have been washed. Laundry, oh the laundry, I didn't know that a 10 month old made that much laundry. Floors that were sticky from babe's new found passion of 'feeding the floor' and should have been washed. But I didn't do any of this, I just decided to take some time and sit and watch babe.

Babe is now 10 months old and while she has not crawled, we've tried most everything and still try to get her on her belly and to move like we do, but she is just not interested, but what she does love to do now is to pull herself up and try to wiggle-walk.

If you've ever seen the videos or kids dancing to the song, "Walk it Out," that's what babe does. Her legs go in every which direction, but forward, and she is so happy with herself. She hates sitting now, even for a moment, she wants us to hold her hands and help her brace herself as she pushes up and then stands and tries to walk. Today I just watched her in amazement, so happy, so proud of herself, this child wants to be mobile.

Maybe she can teach me how to dance.
We sat in her room for a bit

anybody read any good....

stuff on Motherhood in the 19th century in America?
I need to find some stuff....suggestions welcomed.

I kinda did it.

Last week I took a midterm in my ye ole grad course. I have not taken a midterm in like, uh, 8 years. I got the highest score on the essay.

um, yeah.

*does a shuffle.*
*looks around to see if anyone else is looking.*
*notices that she's alone.*
*breaks out in the running man and cabbage patch.*
*does the snake.*
*starts to pop and lock.*

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good.

There's no place like home.

I really didn't move around very much as a kid. My folks were living in an apartment when I was born and moved into a house when I was around 2 or 3. We stayed in that house until my baby bro was born and then moved about two miles down the road to a larger home when he was about 2 or 3. For the most part, I lived in that last house until I got married at age 24. I did have two sabbaticals. The first came when I called my dad a dictator and moved out to my granny's. I lived with her about a year and then moved back home to start afresh with my family and work things out. Things didn't stay fresh very long and when they soured, I moved back in with my granny.
When I lived with at my granny's house I shared a small bedroom with my cousin. I stayed on the top bunk and had one plastic tote for clothes, two drawers for my things, and a desk for books, papers, and pictures. There were six of us living in a small three bedroom house with one bathroom, but we were all so happy.
At my parents house I had my own room, access to two bathrooms, and lots of space to move around. Most of the time I stayed in the room with my bro, camped out on a mattress on his floor. It was easier to be in their house if you surrounded yourself with others.
When I got married, the first apartment we lived in had one bedroom, one bath, a small closet kitchen, living room, and an office/dinning room space. It was by far, one of my most favorite places and remains to this day, my most comfy home (second only I guess to my granny's space). We didn't have much furniture or things, just our books, papasan chairs, and lots of book shelves. There were lots of windows that made it drafty in the winter, but it also provided the ideal place to sit and just people watch. We lived on the third floor and we sat on the corner of a really busy intersection. Across the street was a playground and soccer field. I loved it. The action in the summer nights of the lights being on over at the park and people playing sports in the evening, the steady ebb and flow of cars and lights. It was in that apartment that I found out I was preggers with babe.
We moved when I was about 4 months preggers to a larger apartment around the corner. Same complex, but a larger space and it was on the first floor. That apartment was horrible. From the beginning there were problems, backed up pipes, people starting fires in the laundry room (which was housed in the basement of the building), strangers wandering in and out of the building, vacant apartments that drew unsavory creatures, gas leaks, and the final straw was that the floor in the living room crumbled to pieces when a pipe burst and caused water and goo to leak down to the subflooring.
We moved in with my parents, babe, DH and I and waited for the house we'd gotten in the county to be fixed so that we could move in.
So thats where I'm at now. But I'm wondering why I still haven't felt settled in just yet. Certainly, we are unpacked, cook good meals, enjoy our books, and more importantly our babe! But for some reason I'm still not feeling like its home. Now don't get me wrong, after a long day of work I am ready to come back and take a shower, unwind and get to bed, wanting to recharge. But its not the same as when I lived in that first apartment.
Haven't quite figured out what's missing just yet. Perhaps it is something I've lost or not yet unpacked along the way.

Not backwards but forwards

Once upon a time, in a world far away there lived a young woman who had a plan. Her plan was to go to graduate school and get a PhD in rhetoric. She was going to far away place from her native greenland. This new place was down a cold road, but she was not afraid. She knew that if she could get in, she would make it and do well. Well, she did. She got in. She celebrated and was congratulated. Then, things started to happen. Nothing that the young woman could control, her DH's mother took ill, she got preggers, and things just started changing. It was a lot to take in and at first she was quite angry. Bitter in fact, because she thought that now she would truly be behind. She had been told once by a wise elf, "Never move backwards. Even if you can only take a half step forward, don't go back." So she prided herself in always moving about this way. But this, she could not fathom. She had succeeded in getting into a good school and getting full funding, it was at her fingertips and now gone.
***
I've been reading blogs by folks who are in academia, either tenured or up for tenure or finishing dissertations, working on course work, etc. That was what got me into reading blogs and blogging in the first place. I also was having a conversation with a good professor friend/mentor/sister who is very well known in her profession. She helped me to see things in a different way. She said that coming into the academy after you've had some 'livin' experiences can often help you see through some of the bull-shish that is sure to be there. I think that my problem was that I kept thinking, "I'm doing this backwards, I'm not doing it in the order I was supposed to." Now, who has dictated that 'order'? Lots of folk, my dad, society, some 'progressive' thinkers, "Get into school, finish your education, don't have kids until you are COMPLETE."

Well check this one out, maybe realizing your completeness can come in different ways. In no way do I think I feel 'complete' but I do have a greater awareness that I didn't have pre-babe. An awareness of what matters to me, to others. What if I feel like I know more about myself now because I've had to take on another role as mother, this person called "Mama."

***
And now the woman lives still in a green land, now with a babe who dances and eats crunchy cereal in her yogurt, and loves to read books about farm animals, and eat her mother's books on philosophy and literary theory. She wants to become one with the knowledge. And her mother is learning that through her. While her mother does not consume books through her mouth, she is voraciously reading and thinking and seeing connections with research that she never realized were there.

This same woman is though still nervous. Still kicks her feet around and looks sheepish when she's thinking about having to 'get back out there' on the 'graduate school horse.' Afraid she'll fall off and once and for all have to really think of something else to do. But there is babe, babe who is teaching me in knew ways, so perhaps during one of their late night reading frenzies, babe will point out a new direction.

Chai

Last night I got even sicker. I woke up, or rather couldn't sleep and had chills and a fever. At some point I bumbled into the bathroom and tried to take a shower. I had what my bro and I call the 'shakes.' The shower worked for a little bit but then the fever went up and broke at some point during the night because I woke up and was soaked, my hair, shirt, pants, the blanket I'd wrapped myself up in. It was miserable. I also had a 'fever dream.' I don't know if any of you have ever experienced this, but it happens sometimes when you have a fever and are just having really weird dreams. In the dream someone was trying to get me to deliver a package and walk a straight line while doing so. I was freaking out and trying to hide. Weird-o.

Yesterday I submitted my first piece for publication. I won't know until a while if it was accepted, the editors seemed interested, but who knows. I'm not holding my breath. It does feel good to know that I did at least have a deadline and was able to meet it.

On the job front, no word yet from anywhere. I'm not really worried yet, I think that because I've been an adjunct for so long (frown, I know, mistake it is) {look at me doing Yoda}, I've always kinda had it looming that maybe I won't get classes for the following semester, but semester after semester I did, sometimes I'd be teaching six courses, two American lits and 4 freshman comps at two different institutions. So, because I got used to the steady flow of work I never really thought it would stop, well now it has. After this semester I don't have any courses, any where. What's weird, is that I'm not scared at all, or worried. I realize I don't have any control over policies or hiring (especially when I KNOW I'm a damn good teacher-no big playah pants there, its just the truth). I've been toying around with starting my own consulting business for the past year and maybe its just time for me to do something different.

I must now fix myself a cup of chai with soy milk and eat a mini pound cake slice.
Small pleasures.

I am ill.

There are horrible colds, viruses, and other assorted bugs running rampant. Our house has been sick for the past week now, first it started with DH. He had a bad cold, headache, stomach stuff, etc. Then babe got horrible fevers, now a cough that she actually seems amused by. Yesterday, I got sick. My throat was scratchy and today it felt like my sinuses were swollen.

When I was young, my sick routine was to eat grilled cheese, Ramen noodles, and hot coco.

Today I craved apple juice and drank the entire gallon of apple juice we'd bought for wee babe. So I managed to get some clothes on and take a trip to Target to get more juice.

My head hurts and I've been writing this paper for the past 2 hours.

Must finish.