My Cost of Living

We are not little-kid people.

2011-04-29T15:39:00.003-04:00

We are not little-kid people. Some people love newborns, love infants, love toddlers. We don’t. At all. Having a child has not changed that in any way. When the BOE hit age three, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Hell, both of us breathed a sigh of relief when we turned thirty, having felt like we wanted to be thirty years old for most of our coherent lives.

When you are not little-kid people, and when that has been more than confirmed via child #1, the decision to have another child is an odd one. We basically had to think of what we wanted our family to look like in, say, five years. Or even more so, ten years. And beyond. When we thought of it that way, we realized that we didn’t want there to be just one child in the picture.

This realization took a lot of time. In the first two years after the BOE was born, the idea of having another one would reduce me to tears. Of laughter. I thought people were smoking something very interesting when they mentioned the idea to me. It wasn’t until he was about 2 ½, and a much more reasonable little person, that the idea started to take hold. Just before he turned 3, we decided that we didn’t want him to be alone as I navigated my budding career and R worked on his. We will be moving a lot, traveling a lot, and I want the BOE to have a partner-in-crime who understands all of this. The BOE is not easily social, and I think that a sibling will really help him adjust to life with other kids around – you know, school, and other things that require being around peers, such as most of your life.

So the funny thing is, we decided that we eventually want to have a family of four. That does not include me actually wanting to be pregnant again. Or us wanting to have a newborn. Or an infant, or a toddler. We are so unexcited about those things that I actually looked into adopting, but that option is way too expensive for us.

So now, we are trying to conceive, the mind games are terrific. The first month off the Pill, I didn’t know what to think, honestly. The idea is that pregnancy = success and I am a goal-oriented person, so not pregnant = fail. Right? Sure, except for the fact that once I’m pregnant, then I’m pregnant. For 40 fucking weeks. I’m seriously not in a rush for that. I’ll take another chance to have a beer in there first. Also, that first month would have been particularly poor timing in relation to my work. Since chances were quite low, we decided it would probably not happen and it was a good time to get my body off the Pill and regulated again. Which turned out to be true. But somehow, I feel like I failed. Except I wanted to fail. The only reason I didn’t want to fail, honestly, is because I hate failing.

Month two of trying is different. The timing would not be ideal – later would be better – but it would work out fine, unlike month one which would have seriously screwed things up for my work schedule in ways that would not have been easy to fix. So now, I have to go into this month thinking that it would be fine if I got pregnant, but there is no rush, and a later due date would in actuality work out better. So there is no real “failure”…but then what exactly is the goal? I have trouble with anything that seems to be missing a goal. Or, there is a goal but I can’t sit around and want it too much because I actually don’t really want it yet.

I don’t do well with these kinds of situations. I do well with extremes. I either really, really, really want something or I really, really, really don’t want something. I think, I move, I speak, I live in superlatives. Now I need to somehow adjust to wanting something with a few added clauses rather than superlatives. I have to “see how it goes,” I have to “be zen about it,” I have to “let nature take its course.” I don’t do those things. Honestly, re-reading those phrases is actually making me angry, I hate that stuff so much. I think in ALL CAPS and italics, not in yoga calmness. When I want something, I mobilize all forces, I gather all my energy, and I work as hard as I can at getting that something. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I really put in everything I’ve got. In this case, that’s neither practical nor relevant. There is nothing you can really do to work hard at this, other than…well, you know. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t happen this month. In fact, it would kind of be better if it didn’t. So I need to kind of want it because it would be fine and it’s the end goal (it's the whole point of trying to conceive, isn't it?) but it’s fine if it doesn’t work out and then we’ll just try again and that would actually be better anyway. Wtf. I may just get another cat.

SoCal

2009-09-14T02:35:00.004-04:00

It's been almost a month since we moved to LA now. DH and I still both find it odd that we're in California, that we're on the west coast, that we're living on Pacific time. I think we're pretty settled by now, although there are still odds and ends that we run into that need fixing, buying, adjusting, or attention in some other way. We'll get there.

The strangest part about LA is how different the people are from NYC. First of all, NYC is heterogeneous socio-economically, but once you look within a socio-economic stratum, race/ethnicity becomes homogeneous. LA is the opposite: neighborhoods are socio-economically homogeneous, but race/ethnically quite heterogeneous. I prefer it this way, actually. I think it's healthier for the BoE to grow up with the idea that he can play with kids of all races and they all have the same manners and general lifestyle.

The second most strange part about LA is the plastic surgeried people. They're everywhere and it's creepy. There's nothing like a facelift and some collagen in the lips to make you look like you stepped out of a horror movie, imho. Plus, they all look the same, which makes it extra-creepy. I have to add, though, that those people are fewer than I expected (I guess I was expecting LA to be a hot mess of collagen), and that the other people on the street look fairly normal (whatever that means).

The BoE is gaining in speech, gaining in communication, and gaining in opinion and temper. He's a handful. I waver between thinking that he's incredibly smart and thinking that something's wrong with him. His verbal skills are way beyond his age, but he also has particular wants that are so specific that I worry about him. For example, he has a thing with lights at night: there can be *none*. We had to cover the green light on the smoke alarm with a piece of foil because he became hysterical at the thought that we couldn't turn the light off. There is a security light outside of his window; after much prodding last night, he finally explained to us that he wanted us to put cardboard or something behind his curtains so that *all* that light is kept out of his room, not just most of it. The communication aspects here are astonishing for his age. The specificity of his complaints and the level of hysteria he reached, worry me.

We tread lightly with the BoE. We let him choose as much as we possibly can; we use "no" as sparingly as possible to avoid conflict. I think this is the healthier way to do it, in order to not set ourselves up for a shut-off kid or fantastically awful teenage years (or both). This can be hard when he wants to only eat a meal while standing his chair, when he stands next to us and screams that he wants us to play with him during dinner time, when he wants to rummage through the fridge and touch every bottle in a particular order, when he wants to sleep with us at night and then proceeds to kick and punch us all night long in his sleep (ok, this happens every night), when he can't decide what he wants to eat but he's hungry, etc... If we decide to go with "no", and there's no clear explanation for it (e.g., "that's dangerous" - he understands things like that very well), we have to get ready for WWIII, and it'll last at least an hour. So we try to swallow the annoyances. I don't agree with parenting as a dictator, so this is my philosophy in action...it's trying as hell on my extremely limited patience, but we agree that it's definitely the best course for the BoE.

Other than DH, another person keeping me sane is my mom. She went through all of this before, with me. The BoE and I are very much alike. So much so that my mom has specific solutions to issues that come up, and we use the suggestions gladly. The most recent one has been to create a "pounding pillow" that he can use to punch and kick when he gets angry. I had one, too. It had my name embroidered on it. You know, because I'm a lady.

Beyond parenting the BoE and adjusting to life as a SoCal resident, not much has been happening. That was a necessary thing for me, taking some time to breathe, but I also hate it. I hate not working. It makes me feel unsettled and untethered and I don't like it. I recently started going back to the gym after a three-week hiatus, and I feel much better now, less panicky and neurotic in general. I know that the first few weeks of school will be insanely busy and frustrating at times, but I also know that I can't live without the workload. I need to be overloaded; I need to have endless to-do lists. I crave goals and meeting them and feeling like I'm getting somewhere even though deep down I know that they're superficial, arbitrary goals just like everything else.

I knew that being in between work and school would be the hardest part of this move for me. And now it's almost over; orientation starts on Thursday. I'll miss all the time with the BoE, but I'll love the time spent reading and writing. I just have to keep remembering during the busy times that they're always better than not-busy times. Hear that, future me?

Some thoughts on child-led parenting

2009-07-14T09:53:00.002-04:00

DH and I were talking about how attitudes toward kids vary so much. We find that people of our parents’ generation (although interestingly, my parents excluded) and some of our contemporaries, even, see a huge divide between children and adults, not seeing them as individuals (for the record, there are plenty of adults whom I would classify as children and vice versa!) but as a group with each its own rules. They separate them physically (“this is the kids’ table, this is the adults’ table”*), and mentally, by having baseless rules ("you wouldn't understand because you are young") and silly boundaries ("you can do that when you're 7"). Having meaningless (and, more importantly, explanation-less) "no"s is fantastic preparation for losing their trust and starting disciplinary issues, imho.

I disagree fundamentally with the overall philosophy, too. I think that kids are ready for whatever they seem ready for. We find that we can explain quite a bit to the BoE, and he really understands. Things like "first we're going to do this, then this, then this": he internalizes the sequence and calms down. Or asking him what he'd like, letting him tell us. They see this as ridiculous, especially given his age. I, in turn, see them as not thinking about the BoE as the person he is, but thinking of a generic list of age-related skills and pushing those onto him.

I'm not sure if this is a cultural thing - it's definitely more American to separate kids from adults than it is European, check out dinner tables in Italy or France - or if it's generational. I'm also not sure if this is directly linked to the fact that most people seem to really suck at reading other people, so they are generally in the dark about what their kid's needs are and they just super-impose their own thoughts instead. Either way, I think that the end result can be a perfectly functional kid, but the relationship between the child and parent is what ultimately suffers when the parent chooses to exercise unnecessary control. Let me add to this that, as a parent, being in full control is certainly easier: forcing them to do something on your schedule, sleep when you need them to, etc makes life a lot more like...well, before you had kids! But to that all I can say is, if you want your life to be like that, why did you have kids?

*The separated tables thing is one of my big pet peeves and an issue I raise a lot, because as a child I always wanted to sit and talk with the adults. My parents, thankfully, never forced me to sit with kids, but other parents sometimes did and I always hated it. People who were forced to sit with other kids when they were younger will now say, “but I wanted to sit with the other kids and talk about kids’ stuff!” and this illustrates precisely my issue with this: it underscores the idea that kids and adults are so totally different that they cannot share discussions. When I was little, I found listening to adult discussions fascinating and didn’t want to babble about Bert and Ernie; my sense is that not all adults want to discuss the news, either, and wouldn’t mind chatting to some 7-year-old about Legos. Even if it's not the top of your list of activities, it is this kind of interaction that teaches kids how to behave in various situations, and that's valuable knowledge. It is not to say that there isn’t a time and place for adult conversation without children present, but it is to say that that time exists when children are in fact not present, and when you are somewhere with children present, they should be included, not cast aside as though their world is entirely separate from your own big adult world. That’s just immature.

I like my job, and this is one of the reasons why.

2009-06-24T22:51:00.003-04:00

My boss and I were talking about going home after working all day when you have kids at home. I said, "It's like washing the dishes. [DH] and I argue over who gets to wash the dishes and who gets to play with [the BoE]. Because once you get to 8pm, washing dishes seems pretty attractive by comparison." To which he said, "Yeah, that's because washing dishes and cleaning your apartment is easy. Entertaining little kids is hard work!"

I can only hope that whoever is my boss at any point in the future holds the same views.

Sisters and temperament

2009-06-24T15:04:00.002-04:00

Recently, my mom and I were talking about what kind of person the BoE will be as his little (ok, perhaps not so little) personality develops. She was relating the differences between me and my two younger sisters.
"You know, someone at the playground would tell you that you are stupid," my mom explained to me, "and you'd clock them over the head, declare them a waste of your time, and never speak to them again.
"Your sister [the middle one], on the other hand, would come home, completely shut down. After awhile she'd open up a little and tell us that she was stupid because someone told her that she was."
I would add to this that my youngest sister's reaction to being called stupid would be to keep them talking until she found a psychoanalytic excuse for their behavior.

Somehow, I can already see my genes shining through in the BoE, every time the ring doesn't go on to the pole precisely and he throws the ring across the room with all his little might, balls his fists, and screams, "AAAAAHHHHH!"

Before I was a mother...

2009-06-23T09:48:00.002-04:00

On the forum, someone started a thread to finish that sentence. And so I did.

Before I was a mother...

...I didn't truly understand what sleep deprivation meant. I had been jetlagged...right? Bwahahaha!

...I had no idea what people were going on and on about when they complained about balancing work and kids. I also didn't understand when people with kids had to leave work at the end of the day. I blamed them for not organizing their lives better. I was one of those childless working bitches.

...I didn't realize how long it would take me to adjust to being a mother. I also didn't realize how long it would take DH to adjust to being a father.

...there was so much stuff that seemed incredibly important to me, every day, that seems laughable now. I had no idea that there would be so much stuff that would become so much more important than those things. I giggle now when I see people obsessing over, like, face wash, and any other detailed stuff that is purely their own. Now, I obsess over another person's little world, and my own world seems so secondary by comparison.

...I used to complain about the dumbest things, like thinking that my world was going to cave in because we didn't have milk in the fridge when I got up in the morning. Now, I'm glad there's food of any kind in the fridge, and I'll probably survive eating something else. I wasted a lot of time whining. (I still do, just about different things...)

...I used to really, really dislike days with nothing to do or days when everyone else just wanted to sit around and watch a movie. I was always ready to gogogogogo! Now, I long for an hour of peace and quiet on the couch.

...I used to shop for myself, a LOT, and now when I go into stores I'm immediately drawn to the kids' section instead.

...I didn't understand how hard it was to leave your kid with a babysitter, and how when you do, you just think about your baby the entire time you're gone from them.

...I had everything in my life "just so" and was constantly optimizing all those things. Now, I'm lucky if we manage to get the dishes washed by the end of each day, and that ring in the bathtub has been there forever...

...I didn't truly respect and admire what my mom did, raising three kids as a SAHM with not much help from my dad. My dad was a great father, and he pitched in a bit, but my parents had the working/caregiving roles completely separated. (For the record, I'm not judging their decision to do this - it worked really well for them.) I never understood why my mom was tired at the end of each day when I was still bouncing off the walls. I didn't understand that until the BoE was about 6 months old.

...I didn't realize how complicated it is to have a person with you or with your partner every single minute of every single day.

...I didn't truly understand how child-rearing and parenting have no handbooks, no rules. It's all made up as you go along, yet there are different "camps" of opinions for every area of dealing with your child, and they all hate each other.

...I never really had a reason to work hard to better myself, whereas now I strive every day to become more patient, more aware; a better wife, a better mother, and a better person, so that I can be the best support system for my husband and the best example for my baby. Bettering yourself in this way is really, really, really hard.

You're kidding me.

2009-06-14T12:20:00.001-04:00

http://jezebel.com/5288651/mr-big-plays-housewife-how-bazaar/gallery/

Wow, that's offensive. No matter how you read it, it's bad: either they're saying that when it comes to babies and kids, men are useless, or that a working mom is a cold-hearted bitch. Way to enforce gender stereotypes and make it just a little harder again for WOHMs and SAHDs everywhere, Harper's Bazaar.

Spirited away?

2009-06-13T22:13:00.002-04:00

The most recent email I received from Babycenter included this article about "spirited toddlers". I found this fascinating, because how they describe a "spirited child" is basically the BoE in a nutshell, though with some important differences. Despite the differences, it was nice to read an article that acknowledged that these high-energy, quick-tempered kids are a little tougher to deal with than others. I don't want to get compare-and-contrast-y, but I have to admit that it's can be hard to watch other kids. We tried to go to the Shake Shack last week, and the BoE couldn't sit still for the five minutes it would have taken us to scarf our burgers. He literally, no exaggeration, sat for 30 seconds and then had to leave. And by had to leave, I mean HAD TO LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. I get that kids are like this sometimes, but the BoE is this way ALL THE TIME. We can't go out for meals unless he can run around the entire time. And we all know that's not appropriate in the vast majority of restaurants, so no dinners out for us. (No matter how desperate I am, I refuse to be that parent who drives everyone crazy by wandering their toddler around a restaurant when they won't sit. Partially because I hate those people when I'm out for a childless meal, and partially because the BoE would have to be walked around from the moment we arrive at the restaurant until the moment we leave, which leaves me wondering why I'm spending the extra money to eat at a restaurant when I can't actually sit down to eat.) We went to a kids festival today, and once we realized that it was mostly a stage with storytelling and singing performances on it, we had to leave. We tried for an hour, but we both knew that the BoE wouldn't stand in one general area long enough to make it worthwhile for any of us to stick around. It was just annoying to have to constantly catch him as he ran in front of everyone else, picked up every single item on the ground to throw into the trash can, and touched everything he's not supposed to touch (like the tires on the hot dog/pretzel carts, chewing gum on the ground, etc).

Anyway, the main difference between the BoE and the "spirited kids" in the article is that the BoE doesn't react wildly to any stimuli, he craves stimuli. His reactions are so strong to other things. People don't scare him too much, although I agree with the author that plopping him on a stranger's lap is definitely not happening any time soon. Interestingly, animals don't scare him at all (which makes me really happy since I'm such an animal-lover). New things fascinate him. I guess, more specifically, I could relate to the descriptions of the reactions, not the causes of the reactions. He needs lots of interesting stuff in his little life: being surrounded by lots of people doesn't bother them, it makes him happy; lots of noise around doesn't unnerve him.

Some of the advice was great, though. I loved the idea of using sensory stimuli. When the fountain was on at the playground yesterday, the BoE got to play in a little "river" of water. As I watched him run his fingers through the water, I realized that I had rarely seen him so calm and focused. We already use lots of positive reinforcement, and we talk him through as much as we can, regardless of what he can and can't truly understand.

The part that hit home, for me, was that the author mentions that, as a parent, you have to careful how you discuss your child. And yes, I do. She cautions against describing him as exhausting and difficult to everyone I meet - and she's right. I have to get better about that. It's hard when I'm so...well, exhausted. I'm working on it, because at the end of the day, I'm proud of the BoE. He loves seeing and learning new things, and that really is a great way to be. As the author says, all those things that are tough and that I complain about are really being "persistent, energetic, and sensitive - all traits that are admired in adults." Good point. This morning at 6:45am, I woke up and opened my eyes to see his little face about four inches from mine. He smiled at me, said "hi mama," and gave me a kiss. He rarely sleeps and wants to master everything rightnowthisminute. I can relate to that.

2009-06-09T11:39:00.005-04:00

My mom often said that once you have kids, it becomes increasingly difficult to find friends who share the same values with you both personally and when it comes to raising your kids. As fate would have it, she's right. It would be easier if I could just subscribe to a particular group of values - crunchy mama, modern mama, housewife mama - and leave it at that. But, as usual, I don't find myself agreeing vehemently with any particular group.

Now that the BoE is a bit older and very mobile, we meet more people while out and about. It's hard to avoid others when the BoE is constantly running over and ~~stealing their toys~~ ~~playing with their cellphones~~ joining in the fun they're clearly having with their own children. Inevitably, this leads to some chit-chat about the kids. And also inevitably, you hit places that for me are a red flag. It used to be the ubiquitous "oh, my supply wasn't so great so we had to supplement with formula" which I have to admit, at this point I'm firmly in the camp of mamas who translate this to "I wasn't willing to put in the work and energy it takes to exclusively breastfeed." (As I said previously, some women do have supply problems. I know one of them, and it's been awful for her. It's not anywhere near as many as claim to, though, just like allergies.) Now, the response that shuts me down is the "oh, yeah, she's a great sleeper, we just had to sleep-train her." I didn't agree with squirting my cats with a watergun to get them off the counters, and I don't agree with abandoning my child in his crib to force him to sleep. (Then again, this could be purely a result of watching him bang his head against the crib slats within 2 minutes - yup, 2 - of putting him in his crib during bed time to give me a minute to cool down when getting too fed up with him fighting off much-needed sleep.) There is also the tough situation of a misbehaving kid "on the cusp of misbehaving age": you can't tell if the kid is really too old to be acting that way. Especially when the kid does something totally inappropriate, like shoving your kid (or you!) out of the way, taking toys, etc. The parent should be there supervising this regardless of age but of course the responses should vary by age.

More importantly, though, is that the stronger my own parenting voice becomes, the harder it is to silence it when it's not appropriate to speak up. I'm so used to having a monologue to the BoE about what's appropriate and what isn't, how do I shut it off when someone else's kid (or worse, some other adult) chews with his mouth open, eats before everyone is served, takes stuff without asking, doesn't say "excuse me" or "sorry"? Do I shut it off at all, or is my voice better than none for that kid (or that adult) to finally learn something?

Parenting isn't an exact science, so disagreements happen ~~most of the time~~ often. I also tend to ride the line more on big issues, so I rarely fall squarely into the camp of one particular opinion. But you know what? As the BoE gets older, my opinions are getting stronger, and it happens quite a bit that I pick sides. Now I'm curious how many friends I'll have left once they learn of opinions on breastfeeding, sleep training, feeding solids, etc. I hope that once we are outside of New York City, filled with neurotic allergy-med-addicted, Harvard-hopeful, private school interview prepping, way too rich parents, it'll be better. Or they'll just be replaced by a bunch of overly-tanned and Botoxed babes. Yay.

A typical day, for the record

2009-06-05T11:50:00.001-04:00

A typical weekday for us at the moment - and this is a vast improvement over previous months - looks like this:
5am: the BoE wakes up screaming, we put him in bed with us.
5am-~7am: the BoE wakes up every 10-15 mins or so and tweaks our faces, kicks us in the chest, does somersaults.
~7am (sometimes earlier): we all get up. I change the BoE and get him dressed while he protests loudly and physically. He runs off to the kitchen where he hangs on the fridge door and screams until he gets food. DH feeds the cats and makes coffee; we both get breakfast for all three of us together. The BoE eats a piece of pear and throws the rest of his food on the floor.
7:30am: The BoE is tired of sitting in his high chair. He runs around the apartment while we gulp our coffee quickly and do damage control (read: stop him from climbing up the shelves, taking everything off of said shelves, climbing into the bath tub, etc). One of us gets dressed to get him out of the apartment ASAP.
8am: One of us goes out with the BoE. Sometimes I go to the playground briefly and then bring him back to DH so that I can get to work, sometimes DH goes to the grocery store right away.
10:30am: back home with the BoE. He gets a warm bottle of milk and sometimes sleeps for 30 mins, sometimes an hour, sometimes not at all. If not at all, we know we're in for it that day. If an hour, we know we've got a great day on our hands!
12pm: lunch time. Again, we offer the BoE much food and he throws most of it on the ground. He eats some cheese and salami or ham. And grapes, always grapes.
12:30pm: time to go out again. If it's raining...well, time to find a dry place to go where he can run around. I go to work.
4pm: back home, time for the cats to eat, Bram to snack and have a warm bottle of milk and maybe lie down (ahem, rarely does this happen), and dinner to be prepped. This is by far the most hectic time of day.
5-5:30pm: I get home and take over the BoE and policing the cats. DH and I drink much-needed coffee. The BoE is a bit of a mess at this point, so I often gulp my coffee and go out with him again.
6pm: dinner time. The BoE throws more food on the floor, usually trying to feed it to the cats. Moules loves dinner time.
7pm: bath time. The BoE loves bath time, and he often plays for 20 mins there, getting up and down, moving objects around, brushing his teeth, etc.
7:30-8pm: running around the apartment time, as the BoE gets less coordinated and more crazy.
8pm: bed time. I give him a warm bottle while reading a book. Then we lie on our bed and he flops around, doing somersaults and trying to crawl off the bed, until he finally passes out, usually around 9pm.
9pm-11pm: DH and I work on our laptops, sometimes the BoE wakes for the rest of his bottle or needs to be rocked for 10-15 mins.
11pm-12am: DH and I head to bed.
Sometimes the BoE wakes around 1am and 4am, and DH and I switch off who goes to him then depending on who needs sleep more at that moment.
And then we do it all over again, every single day. Weekends are only different in that I'm around the whole day.

Things I wish I would have known before getting knocked up

2009-06-05T09:02:00.013-04:00

Or maybe not. I seriously think that if we had friends with kids two years ago, we would never have had kids ourselves. And that would have been sad, really, because ultimately it was the right choice for us to have the BoE now rather than later (or never, for that matter, although that's a silly juxtaposition of 'is' versus 'won't-be'). So I figured that I should write down my thoughts right now, now the BoE is 13 months old, along with bits of info that might have benefited me.

I am not a baby person. When I see other people with babies, I'm interested in talking with them about their experience having a baby, what their baby's personality is, and how their lives are structured now there's a kid in the picture. I find these things fascinating, just as I have always found people fascinating. I love seeing how kids are like their parents (one or both of them), how they are different from the BoE, and seeing what parents' reactions to their kids are. I am not interested in the baby (or the kid). I don't find other people's babies/kids cute, and frankly they sometimes kind of gross me out. I don't want to hug and kiss them. I'm just not that kind of person.

However, I love older kids. Once kids get to be 5 or 6, they are really interesting to talk to. No, really! Their store of knowledge and 'insight' is unparalleled in its zaniness and honesty. Once kids get to be 12 or 13, that's when I completely enjoy being around them. I taught high school for a reason: I liked that age. Much as teaching drove me insane, I loved my 9th- and 10th-graders. I hope that one day I'll end up in a mentoring position for either high school or college kids. Perhaps it's because I lacked a figure like this when I was in high school and college, perhaps it's because I like the "unfinished" nature of teenagers, the way they are still questioning and figuring things out, but I'm excited to reach that time with the BoE and find some other way to help kids that age who don't have anyone else.

Now, I knew these things before I got knocked up. And yes, it is a little different with my own kid: I'm actually interested as opposed to, um, not interested. But it's still HARD to get through these early years. DH and I have a never-ending loop of "this is a phase, this too shall pass" playing in our heads - and I have to admit that even getting to the point of truly internalizing that message took about a year. The first few months was just us going, "holy shit, this is what we're doing for 18 years?!" Of course it's not. That's what you're doing for the first few months. But it's really hard to lose sight of that fact. So, piece of info #1: kids change fast, sometimes even from week to week. That means that the stretch of decent sleep will end eventually (as it did for us this week), but it also means that the stretch of crappy sleep that follows will end eventually. And also, no one will ever be able to tell you how long eventually is.

That leads me to piece of info #2: you have no idea what sleep deprivation is until you have a kid. I am not a good sleeper; I never have been a good sleeper. I also never needed a lot of sleep and can function quite well off of very little sleep. Still, having the BoE smacked me upside the head like a fucking freight train. There is no way to prepare for or imagine the feeling of not having a decent stretch of sleep (read: more than 3 hours consecutively, and often those are the only 3 hours of sleep you get in that 24-hour period) in months. Yes, you stayed up to write a paper one night. Yes, you've been jetlagged. Yes, you partied sometimes. That is nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to never, ever having a day off.

So, here's piece of info #3: there is no time off when you have a kid. There are no calm, rainy days during which I can curl up with a book: the BoE still needs to go out for at least 4 hours a day, so good luck traversing the flooded streets. You'll dread rainy days like you used to dread beautiful spring weather on a Monday. There is no down time to collect my thoughts, my senses, and my patience. My down time is my partner's not-down time, and with that trade-off in mind, when you have a split of tasks like we do, there is no down time. During our down time from the BoE, we work. The only other way to get down time is to have a babysitter, which costs money and can be tricky depending on your kid's personality.

And, in a related note, piece of info #4: any time after 5pm is HARD with a kid. The kid's been up pretty much since 5am; nearly twelve hours later, it's not a pretty sight. Your social schedule will change drastically once you have a kid. Yes, you'll try going out to dinner with the kid once, perhaps even an early dinner. You'll quickly realize why people don't prefer to do that. It's exhausting and annoying and you spend the whole time wishing you were in your own kitchen, where it's ok for him to scream and throw food on the floor.

Of course, there are those patient people who tolerate this. Piece of info #5: you appreciate totally different people and objects than you did previously. The people who enjoy playing with your kid (while not touching him) are directly beamed down from heaven as far as I can tell - especially those who can tolerate doing something excessively mundane, like peekaboo or opening and closing a cabinet, for a long time. The people who rid the playground and park of trash are my most favorite people every morning. The people who smile and wave at the BoE are the best people ever. This goes for objects too: the lock on the kitchen trash? Priceless. Any object that's new and different and therefore entertaining? Worth it's weight in gold. Plastic ducks for in the bath tub? The most genius invention ever.

Somewhat related to this: piece of info #6: you will become one of those people who appreciates their kids' minor accomplishments. One day you'll be sitting there and they'll pick up a spoon and feed themselves yogurt and you'll act like your baby is Einstein incarnate. I'm not kidding. Other 'genius' moves: putting objects in a box and taking them back out again, taking big bites using newly sprouted teeth, and communicating pretty much anything with you.

On the subject of communication, piece of info #7: your kid will babble in a foreign language and, by some magic, you'll usually know what they're saying. The BoE will spit out the most mysterious combination of letters and I'll know that he wants some water. Now, the BoE is quite verbal so his letter combinations aren't *that* far off. "Wa" is water, "bata" is bottle, "gape" is grape, etc. But it still takes being in tune to your kid to truly understand what the hell they're trying to say.

I know that I'll think of more things to add to this list...

Boys will be assholes.

2009-05-31T22:13:00.003-04:00

I was hanging out in the bedroom this evening with Bram. The apartment next door to us has a balcony, and a family with three boys lives there. The boys were on the balcony playing. Suddenly, a scared Dolman jumped away from the window and I realized that they squirted him with a water gun.

Now, seriously, and I mean really seriously, when I'm present, you're better off squirting my kid with a water gun than my cat. In my estimation, people can retaliate or deal or whatever, but animals just get confused and eventually mean if you treat them like that. Not that humans don't, so my logic isn't totally sound and I get that, but stay with me for a second.

DH's response was that little boys do stuff like that. This sort of bullshit sets me off. When you see a cat lounging in the last bits of sunshine on a windowsill, your first response should NEVER be to grab your fucking watergun. That's just an asshole thing to do, no matter what gender you are. Anyone who ever uses "boys will be boys" as an excuse for terrible behavior, manners, or reactions has some fucked up family history going on and needs to stop living in the 1950s. Boys are perfectly capable of being decent human beings just as girls are perfectly capable of being assholes, it's all in the upbringing and character. Basic behavior is taught; beyond that, if you are motivated to hurt animals (or hurt anything, really) you are a sick, sick SOB who should be locked up, not a "little boy". In this case, I don't really care about the parents (although they should have been watching their kids), what I care about is that it occurred to them at all to SHOOT A WATERGUN AT A CAT. Who was doing nothing at all to them. Fuckfaces.

The worst part is, eventually I'll see those assholes around and I'll have to pretend to act civil even though I have now moved into full-on hatred mode. Once I hate someone, usually for doing something I just can't forgive because it's such a massive character flaw that I know that person is an ugly person who can't ever been changed, it never goes away. I could meet these kids in 20 years and still feel the hatred boil up inside me. Yes, I'm serious. I hold grudges like nobody's fucking business, and I hold the strongest grudges against anyone who teases or hurts animals.

Eventually, I'm sure that it'll happen that someone will mess with the BoE and it'll piss me off just as much. What will I do then? Will I launch into a tirade of obscenities? (Possibly.) Will I bottle it up inside and let it eat at me for weeks afterward until the stress affects my health, and then blog about it in an effort to exorcise some demons? (Much more likely.) Are both of these options not showing a good example to my child? Yes. I'm not sure how to address that part yet. For now I'm sitting on my couch with all three cats, trying to figure out how to navigate a world full of people who don't behave like I want them to.

2009-05-28T11:04:00.004-04:00

Via arstechnica, DH alerted me to an article about the autism-vaccine "link". When I was pregnant, we read through the information and concluded that there was no statistically significant reason (yes, seriously, this is what I do for a living) to not stick with the regular vaccination plan. We cheered when, at an info session, a doctor at our pediatrician's practice said, "Basically, people who don't vaccinate want to kill babies. That's the only thing I can think of." Reading this article, I should feel a sense of "told you so", right?

Not really. I have to admit that I'm more fascinated with people's tendency to disbelieve. No matter what the scientific community says, no matter what statistics show, the debate has taken on a life of its own. Some people will simply believe that everyone else is feeding into the madness, trying to deliberately mislead them, creating a conspiracy X-Files-style.

This kind of conspiracy theory runs rampant in parenting, and I believe it's the latest installment in people looking for other people or factors to blame. There is a lot that can and will go wrong in parenting, and few parents want to admit that it's their fault. No, it's ADHD, it's allergies, it's everything that has nothing to do with genes or the way you raise your children, right? In this case, the medical community is also an easy target since it's hard to trust anyone in there when you're constantly worried who is in bed with whom. How does big pharma fit in? Is your doctor really recommending what they think is right? Is that seriously the cost of that?

Anyway, the important point for me in the debate is that a drop in vaccinations has seen the returns of childhood illnesses that can lead to all sorts of awful effects for those children, including death. People's innumeracy becomes extraordinarily blatant when juxtaposing the numbers for risk of autism from vaccinating (well, 0, but some people believe there is a small percentage there) versus the risk of catching a childhood disease with terrible effects, of which chances are much higher! As Gross states, "...the risk of a serious allergic reaction, the most severe side effect for MMR, is less than 1 in a million. The risks of not vaccinating are far greater: before the measles vaccine became available in the US in the mid-1960s, 450 people died and 4,000 suffered acute inflammation of the brain each year." Logically, one should choose the option with a smaller chance of something bad happening, but people don't juxtapose these numbers - in fact, they don't look at numbers at all. If this were isolated to their own kids, well, we could cry child abuse but few would go that far. However, it's not isolated to their own kids, it's bringing back childhood illnesses to everyone where once they were almost eradicated. That is the true tragedy here - and, as Gross points out, the people affected are those who can't afford vaccinations or those who can't be vaccinated due to childhood illnesses. Some people tiptoe in between the yes/no vaccination camp by adjusting the schedule based on books written by people who are neither doctors nor scientists. Gross relays the opinion of a doctor who believes that "[t]hese untested, “made-up” schedules just increase the window of risk for children by exposing them to potentially deadly vaccine-preventable diseases with no benefit."

The shameful irony? Every time I buy a pack of Pampers, they donate a vaccine to a child in need in a third-world country. What is it about having a comfortable life that makes people come up with problems that just aren't there? Are people really so bored? Or so distrusting?

The evolution of education...

2009-05-21T09:40:00.002-04:00

...or, more precisely, the lack thereof. I started thinking about the current state of workplaces and people's work/personal habits versus education after reading this article in NY Magazine. I agree with Anderson and will take it slightly further: we should stop attacking technology's effect on people and start thinking about how useful this is and how we can harness the power of people's new tendencies when it comes to networking, gaining information, and sharing information.

The general argument (which Anderson covers in the first half of the article) is constantly that people can't handle all the distractions in today's technologically advanced world. What if we approached this from the angle of, people need to learn how to not only deal with said "distractions" but use them to their advantage? Bundle all your tendencies together and you have a pretty functional - and multi-dimensional - work flow.

I refuse to think of things as distractions but rather as enhancements to my work: the more I can add, the better my work will be. Before teh internetz were in my home, I had the TV on and my best friend on the phone while I was doing my calculus homework. Now I have seven tabs open in Firefox and am intermittently working on the window in each tab, which all hold different functions for different aspects of my life. I don't really see a difference, except that frankly it's easier to have all my so-called distractions right next to each other in the same format rather than scattered about my little bedroom carpet.

I understand that not everyone works the same way I do. I learned how to read upside-down while eating breakfast, fine. Right now I'm getting a bottle ready for the BoE when he gets home, writing an email to my boss, re-reading the article about which I'm writing this entry, and catching up on new posts on the blogs I follow in Google Reader, all while writing this - and without all those other things going on in my head, this post would never get written. However, I see each of these "distractions" as teaching me something new, making me think about each thing in a different way for the other. The grant proposals which I help to write at work are informed by blog entries I read in my Google Reader hours prior; my parenting is influenced by the posts I read on a moms' message board, open in another tab. My schedule is kept in GCal and I check it regularly in the tab next to that; it also sends little updates which I often see through Growl. These are not distractions, these are things that interweave with everything else I do in my life. I watch people on Facebook go about their days sometimes, and I see this as a fascinating view into the world just as, ten years ago, I might have sat at a cafe watching people on the street go by. People will always find such "distractions", it's just that now they are all contained within the same screen and tracked more easily.

My overarching point, though, is how this is affected by education. Everyone works in a different way, sure, but currently the world works in a particular manner as well. Instead of constantly asking people to turn off their tendencies, we need to focus our educational system on getting people prepared for the outside world full of evil distractions. On the most basic level, students need to learn cellphone manners. On a more complex level, students need to learn the place of Wikipedia entries in their work. But overall, we need to start from the very beginning preparing students to interweave all these different aspects of their lives into a workable system for them. If you think you can turn off your cellphone when you need to work, think again. DH has a Blackberry on him most of the time, and his work is not even so life-altering. If you think that you can ignore your email, think again. My boss doesn't touch his email until 4pm every day; he gets away with it because he's a fancy professor. He's also often emailing me at 2:30AM because that's when he's finally finishing up with getting through his piles of email.

You can't just turn off all electronic devices or take medications like Adderall because you can't focus. You have to multitask. And if you can't, that's a failure of our educational system. We have to teach students early on that this is the way things go. If you can't actually do more than one thing at the same time, you have to figure out a way to flit from one thing to another. There is a lot to do in a day, and then it just becomes all about time management. Either that, or you have to become comfortable with the fact that lots of people are going to be passing you by as you go through your life.

We're going to Hollywood!

2009-05-06T21:11:00.002-04:00

Ok, not really. We're moving to LA. And the school year just ended. This means that I'm in that unenviable (or maybe not) position again of having 300,000 personal things to do while work is slow, and yet I'm way too much of a goody-two-shoes to spend a bunch of my work time doing personal things. I carve out time to run quick errands, have quick appointments (eye exam before we go, etc), and all that stuff, but I couldn't just not work all day when I'm supposed to be working. I know, it's all a little "wehwehweh", but still, it's bugging me.

I thought about cutting back my work hours, since there isn't that much to do anyway at the moment, but financially that's a crappy option. Especially since there isn't that much to do at work. If I could just cut the goody-two-shoes act and work a little slower or intersperse work with more personal stuff, we'd be all set! Psychologically, I'd love having one day a week of no work right now. Honestly, I don't have the pressing urge to be with the BoE, but I wouldn't particularly mind having a day to spend with him. Most importantly, I know that DH could seriously use the break (he's a little "up to here" with the BoE by now), and I could use a chance to breathe before school starts.

But financially, it's just not a good choice to make. We need the money, and, more importantly, we need the health insurance. If I cut down from 100%, I lose coverage, and so do DH and the BoE. Yikes. I might be able to work out something around this issue, but it hardly seems worthwhile to stretch the patience of my boss and coworkers when work is already really slow. It's worth it to just put up with working every day. Even if it means taking a break to pack a box or two. Ugh...kinda.

It's the end of an era...

2009-04-29T14:09:00.002-04:00

...the era in which life revolved around my boobs. Bram's life, to be exact. I was down to BFing him once, at 5am, and I skipped it this morning. I guess that means he's weaned, provided that he doesn't show interest tomorrow morning. And if he is, it's an awfully strange feeling.

I've been feeling sort of "out of it" lately, and I think that this might be why. For the past year, I've spent inordinate amounts of time getting milk out of my boobs in one way or another. Now I have all that time back again, and I'm feeling inundated with time. That's the irony, right? I spent all year bitching and moaning about BFing, and now that it's gone, I'm bitching and moaning about it being gone.

Someone recently said that she felt bittersweet about it. I guess I'd agree with that, though ultimately I feel more sweet than bitter. But yeah, right now I'm feeling the bitter part a little more. It's another transition, and transitions are never easy.

As the Brammy turns one...

2009-04-22T22:14:00.002-04:00

...a new wind is blowing... The BoE is starting to get feisty! He's starting to see what we'll do when he does things he knows he's not supposed to do. He'll stick something in his mouth, we'll say no, and he'll stick it in his mouth again while watching us very closely.

This is where I have to be careful of consequences, because the last thing I want to do is start saying no, no, no or invoke stupid stuff like "time-outs" (I'm adamantly anti-punishment-related crap like that for many reasons related to basic child development). He's obviously not at the point of truly responding to "no" yet. The natural thing to do is to redirect, but that's not always easy when (1) the BoE is *so* focused on that one thing and that one thing only, and (2) space is very limited. We often have to take him out of a situation (like, away from the books for a few minutes), but we practically have to go outside to do that.

Needless to say, we are anxiously awaiting spring temperatures.

On another note, he's one tomorrow!!! Our little Brammy...it seems really weird, in a cliche kinda way, that I was in labor exactly one year ago. Although I could've said that on Monday, too. Heh.

CA schools tour: Stanford

2009-04-06T15:23:00.002-04:00

We ended our week at Stanford. And Stanford is...well, it's what everyone says it is: a country club. They have a lake, a stable with an equestrian area, a driving range, a golf course, and a huge, perfectly manicured campus. It's where the rich kids go to ~~play~~ ~~meet other rich kids~~ be educated.

Family-wise, Stanford wins. They were incredibly supportive of DH and the BoE being around, which was awesome for us. The big issue around there is the cash money, namely that you need a lot of it to live around Palo Alto. And the area sucks. You pay a ton to live in the 'burbs. UGH. I hate strip malls, and I hate that Crate & Barrel was on the campus map. I don't hate Crate & Barrel per se, but I hate that that's the destination that needs to be marked. I preferred the indie shops and coffee places at Berkeley by a lot.

I didn't click with the people at Stanford like I did with the people at UCLA. I wish I did, because that would make my decision so much easier. Stanford has a fantastic program, and the people are amazing. I sort of wonder if I just clicked with the UCLA people better because they're younger; Stanford's faculty (at least in this department) is older and probably busier. I'm going to talk with others at Stanford before I make a decision to see if there is someone else with whom I could work in addition to the people directly in the department.

The other students at Stanford were amazing. I really liked them and really got along with them. I felt like students were taken care of - as soon as I walked in, they knew who I was. Obviously, this is easy for a smaller department so in part I'm expressing my preference for a smaller cohort. But it's important, especially given that I'm in a relatively unique situation moving a family over to CA.

I'm leaning toward Stanford, if that wasn't yet obvious, but I'm not 100% sure yet. I just don't think that I can give up the prestige and the money=resources for people with whom I'd love to have coffee, you know? But in either case, we're west coast bound...

CA schools tour: UCLA

2009-04-06T15:18:00.001-04:00

I'd be working with three people, one of whom is still a mystery (I missed meeting her this morning after a delayed flight) and two of whom are fantastic. There's a fourth person who is not only fantastic but also an Andrew disciple. The program is as flexible as I could hope for: I can easily switch out of courses I've already taken and into courses in different departments. It's the first place I've been where I've been challenged on my narrative of ideas, proving that he was listening closely and wants to push me. I find this intimidating as hell and at the same time amazing. It makes me want to improve my ideas and theories and motivations so no one else can level the same criticism, which is exactly what the feedback from a mentor should do.

Campus is gorgeous, though not as beautiful to me as Berkeley. Berkeley's campus felt immediately comfortable to me, perhaps because the types of undergrads there could be relatively easily interchanged with most of Brown’s undergrad crop. UCLA's campus felt familiar - probably, as one of the professors pointed out, because it's been in so many movies - but slightly stand-offish in its manicured-ness. Berkeley was messy with people and signs and I liked that; it made it feel appropriately lived-in.

LA is insane. It's huge; it's busy. The freeways are unbelievable in their disrepair, crowdedness, and vastness. I liked the energy but wasn't drawn to it like I was to New York City. However, the anonymity still holds: no one in LA cares if you're there or not. Except I've found a spot at UCLA where a bunch of great people want me there. Finding a niche in a huge city, finding a place to belong despite the anonymity, finding an ally in the madness of traffic and noise and bleakness, I'm drawn to that. The exact atmosphere of LA didn't hit me in the face, but now I'm on the plane leaving it behind, I'm recognizing a fondness for it that surprises me.

Update: I wrote this on the plane ride back from LA to San Francisco. I managed to meet with the mystery person at Stanford, and she was great too. That makes things all the more complicated...

CA schools tour: Berkeley

2009-04-06T15:15:00.002-04:00

Berkeley has probably the nicest campus I've ever seen. There are all different kinds of trees and it's extremely hilly. It seems like each building is a different style - all beautiful - and they are not lined up perfectly along a grid or any form of axis for that matter. I spent the day going back and forth between the department, which is in a not-so-interesting building and a center with which I'd likely be affiliated if I went to Berkeley, which is in a creaky old house. I have a soft spot for old houses, so I was sold on that piece instantly.

The people are very laid-back. There is little pretense that goes on at Berkeley, other than thinking that the Berkeley way is better than everyone else's. :-/ So the professors don't think themselves better than the students - or at least they don't exude that attitude, unlike several other places I've visited - but they do believe that Berkeley's way of life and study is better than other schools, most notably Stanford. The proximity of the two schools belies the incredible differences between them: Stanford believes in holding your hand, while the Berkeley way is to let you fly free and find your own way. Each has advantages and disadvantages, like anything else: Stanford offers a more comfy grad school experience and more chance at publications while Berkeley offers a chance to find your own way prior to the start of a tenure-track position, which would arguably make those early years as a professor a lot more palatable.

Berkeley is strongly pro-natalist, a huge advantage for me. There are lots of grad students with kids and kids are welcome around campus, though not in the entirely family-friendly way of Madison. Their policies are excellent, so it would make it relatively easy (at least accepted and financially not punishable) to have another baby if we decide that's what we want in a few years.

Berkeley also offers a joint demography/sociology Ph.D. program, and though that's slightly outside of my realm at the moment I think it could be a good career choice to take those extra courses and the extra prelim. I'm interested in the methodology, and I think it would lead me to interesting projects. It also creates a nice niche in a large department.

And that's the issue with Berkeley: it's freaking huge. Not as huge as Wisconsin, but still big. So's UCLA, but Stanford offers a very different experience in that regard. Though I think I have the ear of a few faculty members at Berkeley, I wonder how much attention I'd ultimately get. They are available but not overly supportive or right out there campaigning for me, and I don't think that the program is structured enough to foster a sense of "cohort" in a university-supported way; they just except you to bond with each other generally. I'm not sure I'm on board with that, but I'm also not quite ready to give up having a babbling brook on campus.

My Gcal looks like it threw up on itself.

2009-03-26T21:43:00.003-04:00

The odd thing about parenting differently than your own parents is that you realize really fast that no matter what you do, you'll screw your kid up somehow. Every parent has that realization at some point (if they don't, um, you might want to check for a certain condition that rhymes with schmobotomy). But I feel like you cross the line sooner when you're actively building a different system for your family than the one you had growing up.

It's HARD to create your own parenting situation! It's much easier to mimic what you experienced. OK, at least in my own experience, and seeing how hard it is to break cycles, I'm assuming this holds true for many people. Case in point: my parents kept to a schedule every day, not in a strict way but in a matter-of-fact way. Dad left and returned home at the same time every day. Meals, snacks, grocery shopping, errands, and bath time were all at the same time each day. As a result, I am overly dependent on schedules and at the same time hate them with a vengeance, to the point where I can't really work a 9-to-5 job without going insane. I need a schedule to function but I'm instantly bored and antsy after being on the same schedule for a few days. Is that because of the scheduling or because of my nature? God, who knows. I'm not starting that debate (though it is one of my all-time favorites). The point is, I'm screwed up too, even though I had a fantastic childhood.

We're terrible at having a schedule of any kind. I don't have a specific time at which I need to be at work: sometimes I have morning meetings, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I feel like heading out quickly, sometimes I'm unmotivated. It works for me and it works for my job, so my career and I are well-matched. (It's about freaking time!) The question is, does it work for the BoE? That's a good question. I worry that his sleep issues are related to my lack of schedule; perhaps if he knew what to expect from his mornings and afternoons, his nights would be better. Instead, we sort of keep him in our bed until he just won't stand being there any longer and then we finally drag our lazy asses out of bed.

I feel guilty about this. I feel like I should bound out of bed in the morning with renewed vigor the moment he's ready to get up. I should go to bed at a time that makes it possible to have a decent energy level at 6am (read: not midnight or later). I should shower at the same time, at least on weekdays, and he should go out in the mornings bright and early. But why? Why should I feel guilty? There are many families who have a similar non-schedule and their kids didn't (all) grow up to be axe-murderers, right? No matter what, the BoE will have his own issues when he grows up. Whether I am a morning person or not (not), he'll have some sort of issues. The best you hope for as a parent is that they're those issues that he'll talk about with his college roommates in an attempt to build camaraderie, not issues that seriously screw him up. I might as well have an hour-long cuddle session every morning while he still tolerates it.

The downside of the lack of schedule is, indeed, that I need to keep track of absolutely everything via Gcal. If it's not at the same time every day, then who the hell knows what's coming up the next day? My Gcal does. And it sends me reminders for everything, that genius. Did I mention that it's color-coded? That has to be the result of some other aftershock of being parented by an organized person, right?

Really, this is all about sweatpants.

2009-03-26T14:54:00.003-04:00

For a lot of women, finding pants that fit and look good at the same time is no small feat. I'm one of those women, especially now that my body is not quite like it was before. (Although I'm almost back to sanity weight-wise, the shape has changed quite a bit). Anyway, jeans are always the scapegoat for all pants-related rants. I would like to add to that: sweatpants. It's nearly impossible to find sweatpants that don't look super-dowdy and don't increase the size of my ass by at least five inches.

I found them, though. I found the perfect pair at the Columbia bookstore. I paid a fortune for them (well, ok, $50, which imo is ridiculous for sweatpants). But they are the perfect sweatpants. They also have holes all over the inner thighs and crotch-area at the moment from being worn to the gym, to the pool, and to way too many other places while I was pregnant. Oh yeah, and I'm one of those get-home-and-change people. You know, the moment I walk in my front door the idea of keeping my regular pants on just seems overkill, but pajamas seem a bit too relaxed. Sweatpants it is!

So now I need to go on a search for a new pair. But not just any pair. I decided that my new sweatpants will be emblazoned with the logo of the school I'll be attending in the fall (and for many subsequent years, if the years-to-degree numbers aren't lying). What school? Yeah, I don't know. Which is why, every time I head to the pool for family swim time, DH points out that my sweatpants, though sexy, are not exactly family-friendly. Yeah, I know dude, but replacing them is tied to a HUGE decision which I'm not yet willing and able to make.

So really, making a huge life decision? All about finally being able to replace my old holey sweatpants. That's right.

Going south

2009-03-21T16:57:00.001-04:00

The LO, who from now on I'm going to call the Ball of Energy, or BoE for short, woke up at 4:15am today to eat. This is remarkable for several reasons. The first reason is that he's consistently woken up between 1am and 2am for many nights in a row now. The second reason is that he didn’t wake at 11pm as has become relatively customary. The third and most important reason is that my alarm clock was set for 4:30am, so this let me feed him, put him back to sleep, and then hop right into the shower. Is the BoE telepathically connected to my cheap-ass alarm clock? I think it's likely.

Yes, I got in the shower at 4:30am. I'll admit it was less of a "hop" and more of a "dragging my body over the edge of the tub into the warm water, I promise it's warm water and it won't be so bad". The cab came at 5am to drive me to the airport for a 6:15am flight. I don't recommend a 6:15am flight, for the record.

I went to visit Duke today. Duke is a loaded option, since my parents are buying a house in the area that will be available for rent-free living for us. That does not make it not in a small town in North Carolina, however, and it also doesn't fix that’s Duke's ranking is not as high as my other options' rankings are. Duke's program is policy, not sociology, and thus it would place me in a vastly different arena career-wise.

The career question is a big one. A policy program will not allow me to apply for positions in a soc department. What it will do is give me an "in" to think tanks, which have always fascinated me. It will also allow me to apply for positions in a policy department. This is a pretty big contrast to a straight soc program, and on top of that, the Duke program is still in its infancy and thus lacks the track record to prove its point.

That all said, the program is fantastically run. The people are eager and energetic, and the students were great. The facilities are awesome, and they are clearly not lacking in funds. I was drawn to the fact that policy connects more closely to the business world, so the whole atmosphere was more one of professionalism and less one of tortured genius. Whereas soc departments tend toward the awkward philosopher-type, this tended more toward a business school setting. It was like academia meets social skills. Then again, the people were also more business-y, which meant a bit more patronizing, there was more of a clear hierarchy, and I felt that all the "top" people being male was telling. When I asked if I’d be able to take a higher-level methods course, I was talked in a circle to explain just why that wasn’t a good idea. I wasn't sure if this was because they would look bad if a student failed, if they didn't trust that I could do the course work, or something else, but it didn't sit well with me.

I still haven't had that moment of complete belonging. I've read some students' accounts of walking onto the campus or into an office at the school that they chose, and just knowing it immediately. I don't know it yet. I hope I will when we get to California, or this choice is going to be much harder than I anticipated.

Thoughts on my way to Baltimore

2009-03-14T11:03:00.002-04:00

I never think about the fact that the world wakes up before we often do. I feel that getting up at 7am is early, but when I got in a cab this morning at 6:25am, the commuting world had already long begun. It reminded me eerily of getting in my little black Honda Civic in Providence and filing into the long line of traffic on my way to Boston. That's only an eerie memory because it wasn't a terribly happy time for me so it's not a time about which I think much. Getting to work was half the battle; getting though the rest of the day after getting up at 5am provided the other half, especially given that I regularly stayed until at least 9pm. Funny that I felt so important at the time, and now I realize that my current freedom makes my old self look like a prisoner by comparison.

In a naively dreamy way, I was sort of hoping to see the sun rise as I left Penn Station, but it's winter so it's still too early for that. It's probably better or I'd be waxing poetic about colors and things like that – I find myself to be much more introspective either really early in the morning (or as I define really early) or late at night. I maintain that I have an "edge of distraction" which is still asleep or has fallen asleep during those times. Once my e.o.d. is asleep, I'm free to think and work and focus as I please.

I'm trying to spend this e.o.d.-less time thinking about grad schools. Visiting Wisconsin was fascinating, and I mostly have to listen to my visceral response: I didn't want to be there. Madison was a great town, surprisingly. It was family-friendly, almost to the point of driving me insane: the wholesomeness was overwhelming. Kids were welcome everywhere, which meant there wasn't anywhere kids weren't allowed. I love my LO, but I don't necessarily want him to be present at every single point in my life. I have a whole life outside of his world – not in a creepy I-have-two-families kind of way, but in a career way. I like that my current work situation allows LO to come along with me sometimes, when DH has a meeting or needs to be somewhere else, because shit happens and workplaces should tolerate that. But those situations need to be limited: I'd be pretty annoyed if one of my coworkers constantly had their kid along, and I'd imagine that they feel the same way about my LO. This is when it becomes important to remember that just because I love my baby doesn't mean that everyone else loves him or even feels like tolerating him (or any kid for that matter). Nor should they: he's not their kid. Frankly, I don't love other people's kids all that much either. Sometimes I need to be able to go to a restaurant or a bar or even a store where kids are not welcome.

But the point was Wisconsin. (Just because I'm focused doesn’t mean I can keep my mind on one thing at once. It simply means that I can sit still and work for longer stretches of time.) It was a big surprise to me to realize that I missed the "bad" parts of life. The vast majority of people in Madison seemed lovely and the houses were cute. The kids were well behaved and the restaurants were laid-back with decent food. It was all very un-intrusive. I missed the intrusiveness of New York. I found that when the cab crossed over the Triboro and I saw the skyline, I felt tremendously relieved. I'm even more of a city girl than I ever thought - I always thought that stigma lived in hyperbole in my mind, but it turns out that it's fully true.

Despite all this, I still felt that we could live in Madison if we had to. My career is my career, and if this was the place for my core training, then so be it. However, I felt that the argument for it became less of "I could work with so-and-so and take such-and-such classes" and more of "we could afford to have two kids and the health insurance deal is good". Not that the latter is unimportant. But the former trumps it. In the choice of grad schools, if the argument is between one that's better for family and one that's better for my career, my career wins. I can't say that without guilt, but at the same time I fully realize that the guilt is unfair. My mom may have put family before her career, but all five of our lives were dictated by my dad's career. What's interesting is how easily people place guilt on me as a woman making this choice whereas it seems the obvious and guilt-free choice for a man. We went from place to place for dad's career - not that I resent this life, because I don't. And I guess he did make the choice to not go to any places to which he'd have to travel by himself (six weeks gone/six weeks home, or something like that) or places that were unsafe for families. Ultimately, though, he chose the places that made sense for his career, and I will do the same, knowing that this is just the first time I have to make the choice to uproot my family.

Growing up

2009-02-15T11:55:00.002-05:00

Parenting is a funny thing. I felt like we fought battles in parenting philosophy all the time when LO was, well, littler. But now I realize just how much bigger the battles become as he grows. And I also realize how the main philosophy to which I subscribe is something along the lines of it being incredibly silly to have a firm philosophy most of the time.

A great example: letting a child cry in his bed. There are those who say NO, not under any circumstances. I was one of those people when LO was really little, and I still believe it for that age. However, now we have a stubborn, dramatic, willful almost-10-month-old, and life is different. I still think that just plopping the kid in bed and letting him/her scream his/her little lungs out for an hour is cruel and should never be done. However. There is a chance that we may get to the point where we will have to leave him in bed by himself for a bit to calm down. Not now, not in a week, but if he's one and still playing the game he's currently playing, changes will have to be made, and they will be in his best interests as well as ours. Keep in mind, this kid screams bloody murder when he drops a Cheerio that was intended to go into his mouth, so we have learned the difference between "it hurts", "I'm really upset", and "I'm faking it but boy am I loud" screams by now.

You see, LO would never, ever, ever sleep unless we nudged him toward it. There are those who advocate no schedules at all - the baby will simply fall asleep when the baby is tired! Those people have never met our baby. Our baby would just never go to sleep. But he's exhausted. His coordination falters and he falls into the wall, the floor, the couch, himself. He rubs his eyes and then opens his eyes wide and looks at us as if to say, "no, no, look at my eyes being so wide open! I'm wide awake, honest!" If I don't sit quietly and read him a book, nurse him, let him tumble around our bed, and then rock him for a bit, he'd never go to sleep. Maybe he'd go to sleep when we do, maybe not. He loves sitting in between our sleeping bodies and playing: throwing a cup in the air, doing somersaults, and downward-dogging/falling over sideways.

The funny thing is, I was the exact same way. I still am. The world is an interesting place, and going to sleep means losing valuable time to learn and see new things! Why would you want to miss a minute of that? He currently points at everything and wants us to tell him what the object at which he's pointing is called. He can't always mimic what we say (although sometimes he does - he loves backpack and baby), but you just see him gobbling up the information so hungrily.

And this is the thing that happened to my philosophies: strongly-held parenting philosophies just don't work when you have our LO. I was going to have a natural childbirth, but he wasn't coming out that way. If it weren't for the epidural, I would have had a c-section. If it weren't for my stupid stubborn philosophies, I would have also realized that hours earlier and been able to get out of immense amounts of pain earlier. I chose to suffer through it because I was so damn busy with my philosophy, and the truth was that I was one of those cases for which medicine exists. We would have tried co-sleeping, but he was all over the bed every time we tried, even when he was young. We would have tried carrying him more, but he wasn't happy being carried everywhere and preferred to lie on his own in the stroller, on the Boppy, or even on the floor.

And now we have sleep. It has been six months now since I've had more than 4 hours of consecutive sleep, and often that 4-hour stretch is the only sleep I get. It's completely true that you don't know sleep deprivation until you have a child, but the part that's not true for us is that it improves over time. It was ideal from months 2 through 4, and then it went downhill fast. I guess it's better now, somewhat better: he sleeps from about 8pm until 7am and is only up at 1am and 5:30am. But sometimes it takes an hour to get him back to sleep again, sometimes he's just up for the day at 5:30am, and, most importantly, because of our work schedules, we don't usually get to bed before midnight. Of course, I run around all day without breaks so that I can be there for breakfast and bath time and dinner, so there are no naps, usually not even a rest on the couch for 20 minutes.

Seriously, if you think that the feeling you have after staying up all night writing a paper is good preparation for a baby, think again. I get anywhere between 3 and 6 hours of sleep at night, run around from the minute I get up until the minute I go to bed, and never get a break. I would imagine that most parents, especially those with physically active kids like ours, have a similar schedule. You just can't imagine what that level of sleep deprivation feels like. Nor how every morning at 7am, when a little voice calls "mama, mama" from ten feet away, you don't mind getting up (that much) at all.

Yup, I'm still breastfeeding

2009-01-07T12:10:00.003-05:00

And I have to say, it hasn't made me into a nicer person. I should explain that. See, breastfeeding is hard. Remaining committed to breastfeeding while working full-time is really hard. Now that I've done it for 8 1/2 months, I have considerably more respect for other women who have done it and considerably less respect for those who haven't. The reason for the latter isn't that some women choose not to breastfeed; this I fully understand and respect. However, I am really, really tired of the excuses. Very few seem able to simply say "it was hard and I quit", which would be completely valid in my opinion. It's usually "oh my supply went down" or "it was harder for me than for others". These things do happen, but they are considerably more rare than the number of people claiming them as excuses make it seem. And not being able to overcome those things is yet more rare.

For most moms, quitting breastfeeding is a choice. For some it isn't, and I understand that. But for most, it is. Yes, there are lots of barriers to encounter as you go from month to month. My supply dipped more than once. The only way for me to keep it at an acceptable level is to have 2% milk instead of 1%, which I don't like. I also have to eat a *lot* more, more red meat (which I also don't like), and a bowl of yogurt before bed. I know that the extra yogurt and the extra snacks throughout the day (especially the peanut butter and cheese) aren't doing wonders for my figure (ahem). I'm anxious to get back to my old shape and every time I spoon out a bowl of yogurt I know that I'm putting my old jeans on hold for yet another day. It's hard to play mental tug-of-war between the guilt of snacking and wanting to make sure that the milk is enough in quantity and fat content (I've found the latter to be as important as the former) for a growing and (very) active little boy. Breastfeeding can be uncomfortable. When the temperature dips, I hate having to sit half-naked several times a day. My nipples regularly get raw, even now, after 8 1/2 months. Pumping continues to suck, and fitting it into a work schedule has not made me any new friends, to put it extremely mildly.

But I chose to keep doing it, though I encountered many, many, many long days and nights during which I contemplated quitting. This is why I understand why most women quit: I'm a stubborn little bitch. I made up my mind to do this, and goddammit I'm doing it. And if people at work don't like it, all I have to say is nipple or breast and they'll shut up (I'm serious). Were I not like this, I would have quit months ago. And a lot of women are not like this.

The point is, it's been my choice since day 1. Sure, there are women for whom there is no choice. There are women who do have medical problems. My sister's employer can't breastfeed after having several bouts of aggressive breast cancer. Some women do indeed struggle with chronic and severe supply problems. Some women work jobs where it really just isn't a possibility to pump the three or four times a day like I did for awhile. Or even once. But again, I think that lots more women hide behind these legitimate excuses when they don't apply to them because they don't want to admit that they chose to quit because it was hard. And time-consuming. And not really the lovely bonding experience they were promised.

Were I to ever to this again (and though it's for another post to discuss this further, I still have yet to see the point of me having another baby), would I breastfeed again? Up to three months, yes. Up to six months, maybe. Beyond that...I'd have to see how it was going. Getting through the fifth, sixth, and seventh months was really tough - though that may have partially been our fault for being a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to solid food. (He was almost 7 months when we really started trying different foods, feeding them regularly, etc.) Now he's eating three meals a day, increasingly more at each meal, and he's breastfeeding 5-6 times a day, which should really be 4-5 times a day but he still eats twice a night (at 3am and 5am, approximately - yeah, I'm exhausted). Down from 9-10 times a day, this is easy by comparison! So could I go through that again? Maybe. But if I don't, it is statistically likely that it will have been my own choice.

My applications are done!

2008-12-17T12:29:00.006-05:00

Yup, it's true, and that basically means that now I'm officially in limbo mode. My brain keeps wondering off to thoughts such as "What if I get in here?" or "What would it be like to live there?" or "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could go to school there?" Those types of thoughts are generally interspersed with "No! No! Don't think about it!" since there is absolutely nothing I can do right now and getting my hopes up isn't the best idea. On the one hand, I could take a page from DH's book and believe that it will be fine, that I'll get in somewhere. But given that several applications' deadlines were actually extended this year because of the high number of applicants and subsequent server crashes, I'm not willing to be that optimistic. Of course, I'm not an optimistic person anyway, so it's hard to separate logic from personality in this case.

I have to say though, I'm a bit fried now. Those applications nearly sucked my will to live (yes, that's a Wayne's World reference, which means that I'm officially old) and now I have to transition in to preparing Christmas gifts and getting ready to face the airport during the holiday season. Nothing like finishing one stressful activity for the sole purpose of being able to move on to the next one... (OK, not really "sole purpose" - most of them were also due this month.)

But an update on the LO: he is a mobile and intense baby. DH and I watched a show called The Baby Human on Discovery Health (back in the days of pregnancy, when we still had cable TV and time to watch it). In one of the episodes, they showed how different babies reacted to a plant in the room, given that the babies were not allowed to touch the plant. So there was a super-laid-back baby who glanced over but couldn't really care less. There was one baby who wanted to touch it but the mom just said no and distracted him/her (don't remember the gender) with a book or a toy. And then there was one baby who kept trying to get to the plant, no matter what the mom tried to distract him, and then got so distraught that the plant had to be removed from the room altogether. LO is a carbon copy of that last baby.

Whenever he has his moments of IWANTTHATNOIWANTITIWANTIT, DH and I just look at each other and say, "Oh, the plant. Let's move the plant." We're working on the "no, not for you, ok moving on" but he's still too young to really understand it. I refuse to start with all the no's when he's too young to understand the word. He's still exploring and I prefer to take a laid-back approach. I'd rather just not have stuff around that he's not allowed to touch than try to explain to a baby who's not yet old enough to get that chairs are not for eating that he can touch one item that's green (avocado) but not another (Christmas wreath).

Because I'm still thinking of Oh! All the places I could go for grad school, and because of the way that LO's personality is turning out to be, I often think about whether the city is a good environment for him. No matter how much we worked on having him sleep in various locations, talking around him when he was asleep, leaving the light on while he was sleeping, he has turned in to a difficult sleeper. It can take him a long time to go to sleep at night, if he wakes he's not a happy camper, most noises wake him, and he refuses to go to sleep with the light on. In this way, the city is the worst place ever for him. If the neighbors slam a door, he's up. We're already running a fan (and a humidifier) while he sleeps to try to overpower some noises with white noise. If we're trying to get him to take a nap, a honking car/garbage truck/screaming teenager/argument over a parking spot (the "Fuck you, buddy" people, as we call the people trying to park) will defeat all of our best efforts. And, more importantly, once he's asleep at night we don't dare to flush the toilet, talk at a regular volume, or use the microwave; we also have to stumble into our bedroom blindly since it's so dark in there we can hardly find the doorknob. He's extremely mobile and thus we could use five rooms (preferably ones that are padded everywhere and have nothing in them), not two that function as every single living space (kitchen, living room, office = one room; bedroom, nursery = the other room).

Then again, he needs constant entertainment, and where better to get that than Manhattan? He loves going to Fairway (seriously, according to DH he's friends with the people at the bread counter and the check-out lines), which is so busy that I can barely handle it. This past weekend, I walked around with him while chatting with him non-stop, and he sat happily in the carrier watching people, looking in the stores, and listening to me for three hours. I guess part of what is hard for me to watch is that I know how he feels. And I know how to fix it: he needs to be kept busy all the time, moving from one activity to the next before he even knows that his need for a transition is coming up. This personality is the reason my mom never went back to her job after I was born. She knew that it would be more than a full-time job to make sure that I was okay. A person with that much energy and intensity can easily become a frustrated, impatient, contrarian toddler/child/teenager/adult if the world doesn't seem to move fast enough or keeps saying "no you may not do that". If his personality continues to be this way, which it seems that it will, we'll have to make sure that he goes to a school that's not super-strict in rules and regulations, that he has lots of opportunities to play a variety of sports, and that we buy stock in one coffee-producing company or another.

The final thought here is: there is no top choice of school for me. There are people with whom I've love to work. There are schools at which I'd love to be a student, because the reputation is great, or because they have child care options, or because they offer maternity leave (if we do decide to have another LO, it would have to be during my grad school years). There are places in which I think LO would thrive, and there are places in which DH could find cool and relevant classes/jobs/peers. But there is not one place that is the perfect fit for each adult/child/cat involved in this decision. Though it is my career and ultimately my decision (because my DH is awesome), it's impossible for me to not also factor in everyone else's wants and needs.

When life gives you perspective...

2008-11-24T14:34:00.003-05:00

A coworker of mine just found out that his unborn baby has a heart defect. The baby will have to have heart surgery three times in his first year of life. His wife is currently 21 weeks pregnant, so they found out at The Big U/S - the one where you can find out the sex of the baby.

It's funny how blase we became about our appointments. Some even became inconvenient. Every time they told us all was fine and, nearing full-term, good luck with the delivery. That was it. We trudged back and forth to the doctor's office, sometimes complaining. I forgot how easily The Big U/S can become one of the worst days of your life; things could not work out the way you planned or expected or even visualized. The chances of getting pregnant in a given month, provided a healthy mother and father, are about 20%. Part of this low number is because of the risk of miscarriage each time: sometimes the miscarriage is so early that you don't even notice it. Even if you manage to hit that 20% and get pregnant, there is still a chance of miscarrying before 13 weeks (in the first trimester) and then another chance - albeit slimmer - after that. A healthy, uneventful pregnancy is something to celebrate, not expect.

None of this is as easy as a lot of people think. Getting pregnant isn't always easy, then staying pregnant (and being pregnant), then giving birth, then getting through the newborn weeks, then seeing your baby hit milestones from there...it's just not easy, and a lot can go wrong during any of those phases. Personally, I never thought about this before we started TTC - it was more about planning to be ready for a baby. the "am I ready?", "are we ready?", "is it financially feasible?", etc. Not that I don't think this is an important train of thought, because it is, but I never thought that it might actually take a few months to get pregnant, and that there can be many different issues, and the chance of one of those many things happening is not all that small. I guess my point is, I just don't think enough about how crazy lucky it is to have a healthy baby.

This surprises me...ok, then again, maybe it doesn't.

2008-10-30T22:50:00.003-04:00

I read a lot of online parenting stuff: blogs, forums, articles, etc. I guess that's what happens when you don't know many people with kids. Or when you just like surfing the webs and kid stuff is foremost on your mind. Anyway, I've noticed something that really irks me. OK, granted, lots of things really irk me. Yeah, ok, two things really irk me. Two things. We'll stick with two for now.

(1) When people post their baby updates, after going to the pediatrician, they always seem to celebrate like it's...1999, I guess, if their child is in the 90th percentile. The thing is, the baby updates consists of height and weight assessments at their current ages. People post with relish that their little one "is in the 90th percentile for weight! My little chunk!" Now, perhaps it is because I spent a year being part of a massive research effort on child obesity, or perhaps it's because I have some background in statistics, or perhaps it's just because I don't love stupidity all that much, but my guess is that, medically speaking, you actually do not want your child to be anything other than average in these measurements. True, perhaps you're hoping for a tall one. Fair enough, studies have shown that height can help in getting you jobs, higher salaries, and more advantages about which my MIL hates to hear. So let's focus on weight. Percentiles mean that your child is being compared to other children. If your child is in the 90th percentile for weight, it means that your child weighs more than 90% of the others. Is that really what you want? Really?

(2) People need a whole lot of mollifying. Forums are nice when you're having a bad day, sure, but they're clearly not for getting serious opinions or having a remotely controversial discussion. When people do try to give opinions, the poster will retaliate with "I thought this was a supportive place!" or something like that. Which makes everyone apologize - which actually incenses me the most, to be honest. The whole thing disturbs me. I mean, sure, you need a few people around you who assure you your butt doesn't look huge in those jeans. But I also want to know that there are people around who will tell me that "red shiny leggings? ...yeah, not for you." It makes me feel that people have never really learned to debate or share opinions which are not their own - which sounds awfully obvious now that I type it. That's why I blog, right? For clarity? No, that's why I drink martinis. Shit, I'm getting everything confused.

Sarah Palin gets a perfect attendance award.

2008-10-03T10:36:00.005-04:00

I watched the VP debate last night, along with lots of other people. I spent most of the time cringing at Palin's parroting of the party's slogans, repetition, and avoidance of the actual questions. And all the reports of the debate can say is that she was pretty charming and didn't fuck up?!

Now, I'm one of those people who is annoyed with the fact that schools give out awards for perfect attendance. This may be a European notion, but the idea of giving out a prize for doing what you're supposed to do is utterly inane to me. I'm so tired of this coddling culture. It's no wonder that kids aren't reaching higher - if you get a freaking award for just showing up, what's the motivation to do any more than that? I remember when I moved to the US and went to junior high here; I was baffled by the low expectations and silly things for which people got patted on the back.

And that's how I feel about the VP debate commentary: Sarah Palin got good reviews for showing up and not fucking up royally. When did that become the benchmark by which we judge vice-presidential candidates?! I, for one, want someone in office who is intelligent and knowledgeable, not someone who would be a formidable beer pong opponent or even just a great drinking partner. Apparently, that makes me quite different from a lot of the United States, and that makes me sad. (Despite that fact that I, even as a mom, still value drinking partners.)

Tangentially, it also makes me sad that a lot of New Yorkers don't realize how bad it is in lots of other states. People here are often naively optimistic, like "oh, people will see through this". The thing is, they won't. People are idiots. You know why? Because they got a perfect attendance award in second grade and learned that the only thing they really needed to do to succeed in school was show up.

Mediocre expectations

2008-09-19T15:25:00.003-04:00

Before I had a baby, if something was difficult, I'd have lots of cheerleaders. "You're a girl! With a career! Doing math/science-type stuff!" It was very exciting to guidance counselors - ok, once I got out of high school, where they didn't think that girls could become engineers. But that's another story for another time...

Anyway, now that I have a baby, if I say that something is difficult, the first reaction is, "oh, you can quit." With breastfeeding: "you don't have to do it. You did your best. Formula is fine too." With my job: "You know, it's okay to go part-time now that you have a little one at home." With the gym: "Don't worry about being in shape right now, you can always do that later." With the class I'm taking: "You don't have to take this for credit. This is a very hard class."

Why did having a baby miraculously transform me from "full of potential" to completely mediocre and "we have no expectations for you any more"? What happened to the "you can do it, go girl"? I'm still exclusively BFing. I'm still working full-time. I'm still taking a double-credit course (essentially taking two courses, in other words), and I'm still taking it for a grade. I'm still going to the gym twice a week - I only excused myself from going three times a week because I have to run up and down stairs all day to pump and I take the subway to work and walk a bunch while carrying a laptop, books, paperwork, and a breast pump.

This is a lot on my plate, and I know that. Some days are easier than others. When I have a hard day, the LAST thing I need to hear is, "you don't need to be doing this." On most days, I'm fine. Some days, it's hard and I'm overwhelmed. Before LO arrived, people seemed to understand this and respond with "wow, you had a tough day, but you'll make it!" And now, suddenly, it's fine for me to give up...?! I find this incredibly frustrating. Don't expect less of me just because I have a baby at home. My mind is not at home during the day, it's at work. Because I love my work. It's also in my class. Because I find the material fascinating. It's with BFing at times, sure, because I feel very strongly that my baby should be breastfed. And it's at the gym, because I feel good when I'm in shape and I find working out to be good stress relief.

Most people seem to think that once I packed up the birth control, I packed up my potential. I feel that it's exactly the opposite: having a LO at home makes me work harder during the times I have to work and focus more on exactly what I want to do. If it weren't for him, I might still be applying to statistics Ph.D. programs. But somehow, I found the clarity to understand that I need to stop being stuck to the idea of having a Ph.D. in math/science-y stuff and work on the stuff that really motivates and fascinates me (and happens to include a very quantitative component, at least for the direction in which I'm planning to take it). This requires letting go of my mother's opinion that "people who do math/science degrees are smarter than people who do non-math/science degrees", which sounds stupid when I'm typing it now but it's the message that has been bludgeoned into my head since I was born. I have to just accept that people won't understand that I could do a stats degree but I choose to do a sociology degree instead.

I guess my point is that now, I'm more comfortable making choices like that for myself, ignoring all the voices in the background, and moving on with my life. So maybe I need to take that a step further and not listen to anyone saying that I should remove something from my schedule and that I am now held to lesser standards than I was before I was a mom. Maybe I need to give up on finding a role model, finding someone who has done this already, and just work towards being that role model for some other woman some day.

Overwhelmed.

2008-09-17T15:01:00.002-04:00

I think that my brain is on hiatus. It saw the lecture notes, and it saw the spreadsheet of applications, and it saw the R code to make pretty little graphs, and it turned around and ran away. If anyone sees it, I'd love it back. I kinda need it.

So how do you fix it if it IS "broke"?

2008-09-15T15:05:00.003-04:00

(Side note: This post seems to be a non sequitur, but it's actually not: I'm working on my grad school applications, so I started thinking about my time as a teacher again.)

I still believe that the students’ mind set was the main thing stopping them from succeeding at some level. I gradually realized that I was not the best person to change it. I didn’t have the patience, nor was I ever a good cheerleader type - but I am a good choice of person to study it. Their attitude, to be sure, is not 100% their fault. And the kids I taught sure needed a much stronger attitude than kids at private schools do in order to get to a place that resembles success in some way. But it was ultimately the main thing stopping them from being successful nonetheless, and the only thing that was in their control; thus if it could be tackled, the problem would be well on its way to a partial solution.

Others in their vicinity echoed their mind set, both the “I can’t do it” and the “I don’t want to do it”. There was the “what’s the point?”, from the teachers addressing educating their students and from the students facing education as a whole. There was also the victimization angle, the “no one cares about me because I’m poor/black/Hispanic/etc”, which was really a tough issue for me to face as a blond white girl. This all pissed me off because it felt to me like they were creating more obstacles where there already were so many, and I also knew that, although often to a lesser extent than they believed, they were very right. There were many (often more potent) obstacles there before their minds even began creating additional ones. Because I allowed myself to become pissed off at things like this, I knew I wasn’t the best person to be in the trenches, one of the people on the ground combating the issues.

It was the students’ attitudes that pissed me off the most. I would fly into vicious (verbal) rages when they would fight (yeah I know, does that make me any better? probably not), knowing that they would be suspended and miss class, that it would go on their academic record, and that there would certainly be more fights in the future to avenge that one. Downward spiral 1, student 0. I would be beside myself with anger when a student would become apathetic. I’d prefer to say that my passion was out of love for the children, but that would be completely bullshitting myself. I was there because it seemed out of order and I’m way too anal retentive to ignore things that are disorganized and out of control. I wanted to organize it, set everything in their respective places, make things run more smoothly, and I knew that from the start. This isn’t to say I didn’t like the students; by contrast, some of them I liked quite a bit, many I still remember very fondly, and from some I still receive emails periodically with updates on their lives. But it is to say that I wasn’t there out of some missionary-like, heart-felt volunteerism. (I only have that sort of emotion for non-human animals – I’m not sure why. I think that on a certain level I believe that people can help themselves whereas animals are more defense-less.) The reason those things would piss me off so much was because they were contributing to the chaos. They were adding more fuel to the mix of the uncontrolled, problem-breeding, burning landscape of school grounds. Plus, they were things that were in the students’ control. The (lack of) stuff in the school, the oppressive and totally inappropriate curriculum, the ridiculous administration, the stifling rules, none of that was in their control, but their own attitudes and behavior were. Of course, the latter becomes inexplicably mixed into the former and it’s not that simple at all. However, it never made sense to me why you would shoot yourself in the right foot just because someone had already shot you in your left foot: if you still have one good foot, get hopping! Granted, we need to fix the right-foot-shooting part of the educational system too, but this is still another piece of the puzzle.

Beyond a certain point, a point numerically lower than what most people tend to think, it doesn’t matter how much money there is in a school system, nor where you throw it. Well actually, it does matter if you can throw it in the right places so that everyone feels warm and fuzzy and appreciated and comes into the school with the attitude that the students can graduate. A broken school is not just broken in one place. Sure, the kids have lots of problems at home – more about that later. I found that a broken school had terrible administration, terrible teachers, terrible staff, terrible security, and so on. All levels of people were pathetic. The textbooks, the lack of computers, even the lack of toilet paper in the bathrooms didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that human capital was as low as it could be, even with so many warm bodies around. The only way that the material things mattered was if they could up the spirits of the people living alongside the objects. The few times I saw nice material objects brought in, they sat there in shiny newness for about a week before they were destroyed. Then all the students would sit around them glumly lamenting the fact that no one cared about them, all their stuff just always got destroyed, and so what was the point? I never understood why they didn’t connect that there was a large group among them who destroyed the objects in the first place. Somehow, they all seemed to believe that it was a vast conspiracy against them – even the ones who did the destroying in the first place! When confronted about the destruction, the culprits would usually shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t care. What’s the point?” Indeed.

Funny thought

2008-09-10T10:30:00.002-04:00

The conference room in which the class I'm taking meets has a dry erase board on a stand in the corner. On that board, someone has written a reminder about a colloquium from 5-6pm on April 23rd. I was planning to go to this, except LO was born that evening. What a weird thought that is.

Our alarm clock

2008-09-02T12:53:00.002-04:00

This morning at 7:30am, DH and I woke up to little baby giggles. It was time to get up anyway, so I got up and walked to the crib slowly so I could see what the LO was up to. He had rolled himself to the head of the crib, where I've put two teddy bears (one which plays music) and his Raggedy Andy, which my mom made for him. He had Andy wrapped in a tight hug and was rolling from side to side with him, giggling. Every once in awhile, he'd stop to smile at the embroidered smiley face. Now that's an alarm clock.

On motherhood (in which I think about role models, I guess)

2008-08-31T19:42:00.002-04:00

I am actively searching for role models, and since 4 months of motherhood have passed I have found a few, though none are at the level of being a confidant or even a close friend. I've found blogs, forums, and people whose lives I can watch from afar (work colleagues, mostly), but no one with whom I can verbally, in person, share the latest experience I had pumping or the days when LO is digging his nails into my neck and I feel terrible handing him over to DH and rushing off to the subway. And again, not feeling bad because I don't want to go to work, but feeling bad because I feel bad leaving him, in a very undetailed way, and because I feel like I should want to be home with him and I don't.

I think that ultimately, my greatest fear is that my slowness to build an emotional connection with LO, and my want to continue working, will make me in any way the kind of mother that my MIL is. Of course, this isn't possible, because I have a constant sense of what works for LO and what doesn't. I'm very tuned in to him in a way that she can't be for anyone because it's just not in her nature. But I remain constantly fearful that when I need a break from LO, when I want to go to the gym, that in this personal choice, in putting myself first, I reflect her in some way. This is clearly because my closest examples of mothering are her and my mom. My mom gave up her job and was always there for us. She is the endlessly patient, completely devoted and involved mother I could never be. She was with us all the time, the entire time, until all three of us went to college. She was the mom who baked everything from scratch and made everything from construction paper, markers, and imagination. I have to find my own path, my own definition of motherhood, that incorporates her love and devotion but works quite differently on a day-to-day basis.

DH and I share being the primary caregiver. He takes care of LO during the work day, we share him the rest of the time. I have no examples of how to do this. We're muddling through it, but there are times when I'm just not sure: Is it okay for me to go the gym? Am I in charge now or are you? Should I BF or you bottle-feed this feeding? When there is no very clear line between who is in charge of the baby and who is the helper, when you just both play the primary role at different but inconsistent times, you very often end up with too many cooks in the parenting kitchen. I grew up watching a clear division in household roles, and I have trouble visualizing how things work without that division.

I hope to have a relationship with my son that is similar to the relationship I have with both of my parents. I know that this will likely take more patience than I have and I'm scared of that. Although I have to say, I am now capable of BFing without feeling like I have restless body syndrome, and spending an hour rolling around on a foam mat with squishy fabric cubes is pretty amusing with a giggly baby. I do have to admit that I usually am emailing, chatting, reading, or doing a crossword puzzle during the former and sometimes am keeping an eye on the TV (on mute!) during the second one. But all in all, I think that DH and I both try to listen to LO as he is himself, rather than imposing a schedule or system on him for his needs, and ultimately I think that this just might be a good start. We are our own role models, in a way, which makes a bad day feel that much worse but a good day feel that much more like an accomplishment.

On motherhood (the first few weeks at home)

2008-08-31T19:41:00.002-04:00

I was ready to deal with sleep deprivation. I wasn't ready to deal with not being able to recuperate at all after such an intensely long labor. I needed some time for myself to heal and think about it all, and I hadn't really thought about the fact that there would be no such time. I guess it works out better if you don't have 48 hours of pre-labor and then 39 hours of labor; I guess you feel more up to dealing with a screaming bundle than I did.

He felt oddly leech-like. I had no emotion surrounding BFing, and I wasn't at all "completely in awe" or "totally in love". I was still confused. And weirded out. And physically exhausted. I'm not much of a sleeper, but my body desperately needed a rest.

Those first few weeks at home were awful. My mom and sisters were there in the beginning, which made that time bearable; being with them was admittedly fantastic. I honestly don't know how I would have made it through the first week without my mom. They were really helpful. MIL was also gone most of the time; when she did venture over she'd always manage to do something that would make me so upset afterward that my emotions would overwhelm me in way they never had before. I lived in the constant fear that we'd have to see my in-laws. Just as I had felt when pregnant, I felt helpless, like I was stuck with other people's decisions because I just wasn't fast enough to make them myself or move quickly enough to avoid them.

I didn't question or regret having a baby by any means, and I wasn't depressed. The majority of my frustration was because I (1) felt endlessly guilty that I wasn't head-over-heels in love with the tiny bundled worm in the crib, (2) missed work and the people at work, (3) I wanted to be left alone to be with my new family, and (4) nothing anyone had said was true.

The hardest by far was (1). I felt that there was an expectation that I care deeply for this person (I guess it was a person?) whom I barely knew at all, just because I had carried him for nine months. The truth was, I didn't know him. The only thing that was familiar to me were the swiftly kicking legs - I remembered those very clearly from the aching pains in my ribs at night - and the hiccups that would arrive punctually at 6pm. I remembered those too. The fact that I was expected to piece together an emotional bond from karate kicks and hiccups is absurd to me now, but boy did I feel terrible back then.

The second point was tough for me because I had finally found a place where I belonged, and now I was ripped out of it for what seemed like an eternity (ok, 6 weeks) to ooh and aah over onesies. It just wasn't me, and I felt like I was back in high school, forced to interact with the girly-girls when I really just wanted to do my calculus homework.

I was surprised at (3). It's rare that I want fewer people around me - usually, to me it's the more, the merrier. It could have been that more people around often included the in-laws and that was way too stressful for me to handle. But in general, I wanted time to see what the hell my new life was all about, and I didn't feel that I had the freedom to find this time. And this was not related to being busy with the baby - I just wanted time for DH and I to deal with the baby all by ourselves. And people just wouldn't leave us alone, goddammit.

The fourth point was to be expected but still came as a surprise, oddly enough. Everyone had said that I'd fall madly in love instantly. Wrong. Everyone had said giving birth would be the most profound experience of my life. Wrong again. Tiring, sure, impressive, okay, but profound? Not really. Most importantly, everyone had said that I'd think differently about my work after having a baby. This one was particularly wrong, and I am still incensed at how many people, even people who know me well, maintained this opinion. It amazes me that men are expected to head back to work when the baby is a week old and there is no discussion of how hard it is (other than sleep deprivation) while women are expected to want to be home for months on end. It took me 8 days to crawl up the walls and email my boss to beg for something to do because my brain was melting and I was so, so bored. The worst part about this is that no one seemed to feel otherwise, so I felt completely, utterly alone and lik I was a terrible mother and just a bad example of female-ness.

During this time, the baby did nothing. I felt oddly protective of him. People told me to sleep; I wasn't all that tired. People told me to enjoy these days, because "boy, do they grow fast!" I wished that were true so hard that I thought I might burst. It wasn't until weeks later, when I read Faulkner Fox's Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life, that I realized I wasn't (all that) crazy. Fox makes the point that she didn't feel connected to her children until they started talking. Just sitting there just wasn't in her nature. I bet that I'll feel the same way, because even his incoherent babbling now makes me feel so much better about him than I ever did in the beginning. Having to sit there to feed him was boring, rocking him to sleep was boring, and then I'd watch him sleep, which I think even the most devoted mother would agree gets pretty boring after a few minutes.

I spent most of those weeks begging people to please not wake him. He'd eat, DH would change his diaper, he'd eat some more, and he'd go to sleep. Two hours later, we'd do the same thing. Twenty-four hours a day. During his sleep time, we'd desperately try to get people to understand that this truly was all we did with him, and no, he wasn't there to play with or entertain them. LO was an exceptionally good sleeper - he started sleeping through the night when he was just shy of 4 weeks old - so I guess this might be why people were so confused. At that time, I resolved to write it down: do not hassle parents until baby is at least 2 months old.

I think that ultimately, what made these first weeks so awful was guilt, confusion, and misguided planning. I felt terribly guilty that I wasn't bonded and in love with my baby. I was confused as to what my role was right now, but I knew I had to assert myself somehow or people like MIL would take over and threaten my LO. I felt threatened but was helpless as to fight-back tactics because I wasn't physically myself and didn't know where I "fit" in the world anymore. And I kept trying to plan how our days and even weeks would go, which is impossible when your LO is less than 8 weeks old. It's not worth trying even your morning, let alone a day or a week. By planning, I also mean that I extrapolated the current situation out indefinitely. Thinking about dealing with a 3-week-old baby for years to come would shoot anyone's sanity to bits. For some reason, I didn't think about how fast he would change, until he started changing. I guess that when you are without examples, not knowing what to expect, and you are a planner like me, then you end up with a scary imaginary future.

On motherhood (after giving birth, in the hospital)

2008-08-31T11:06:00.006-04:00

I am one of the more unlikely people to be a mother. I have little patience, am stubbornly career-focused, and dislike loud noises. But for some reason, there was a point at which getting pregnant just seemed like the right step for us, so we pursued it. This is not to say that the last year has been without difficulty.

The moment LO was born, I did not feel that immediate bond, love, or connection. My very first reaction was visceral confusion. He seemed awfully big to have just come out of me. I sort of wanted to see him, but I can't say that I was just dying to hold him and all that. I felt bad about that.

We had him in our room for about three hours before he went to the nursery and I went to my recovery room (first a shared, and once we saw it, then a private room). I didn't really care that he had to go to the nursery to get all his little tests done. I still don't know what his Apgar was and I still don't care, either. He's fine, so what does it matter? I was beyond exhaustion and starving. I hadn't eaten or slept in 4 days. I was pretty much delirious.

The nurses were my heroes: it wasn't food time (it was midnight by then) so they gathered all the food they could find, which consisted of little containers of peanut butter and jelly, melba toast (which I happen to love way more than one reasonably should), and yogurt. I ate it all, carefully concocting pb&j sandwiches (ok, melba toasts) with a plastic knife. Once we had been moved to a private room, it meant that DH got to stay the night, and we went to sleep.

We woke up at 6:30am the next morning because a nurse came in to check my IV. Despite my attempts to drink water or chew on ice during labor, I had still gotten dehydrated. She disconnected me from the IV, we got breakfast, and DH and I hung out and watched The Colbert Report, a re-run from the night before. The baby was still in the nursery; they said they had to check on some fluid in his lungs, and we were fine with that. I was just so incredibly relieved to be not pregnant any more, and to be not in labor any more, that I couldn't begin to care about anything else. I felt like I'd been freed from the jail of being huge, aching legs, nausea, etc. Being pregnant made me slow and not in control of my own body, and I hated it 99% of the time. That first morning after giving birth, I also wanted a cup of coffee a whole lot - which I noticed intensely because I hadn't felt like coffee since about five weeks into my pregnancy.

The idea that we just sat there and didn't really worry seems very odd to me now. How could we ignore the fact that our baby was down the hall with strangers? But we were both exhausted and hungry, and we just glad to have a few minutes to ourselves. I even got to shower for the first time that week.

Around 11am, LO was brought to us. I was still confused by it all. He mostly slept, cried a bit and wanted to suckle. Breastfeeding was weird to me; it seemed so awkward. We wanted to see him, I guess, but we weren't sure what to do with him. When he went to sleep we'd bring him to the nursery. I had read everywhere to make sure that he can be in your room, exclamation point. Make sure that he doesn't have to be in the nursery! So I asked about that in my pre-baby innocence on our hospital tour: "He can stay in our room all the time, right?" Of course, they said, but if you need a break, the nursery is there. I scoffed at that. And here we were, gratefully dropping off our little burrito in the glass-walled nursery.

I got some help breastfeeding from an LC, which was amazing except for the fact that MIL was back-seat-driving the whole interaction, like many other things those first few days. It's one of several MIL interactions that I have filed in my brain as painful, uncomfortable, and perpetually enraging experiences. It was like our wedding planning all over again, except this time we couldn't let anyone take over. Because this was our baby, not a get-together from which no one will ever remember what kinds of food we had or what "our colors" were. BFing was not easy and I was given shells to wear and a pump to get some food out, which was spooned into LO's mouth. He wasn't latching so well. Luckily, doing this on day one saved me much pain and anguish down the road, because this fixed the latching bit within two days.

At night, we would bring him back to the nursery, and he would be brought to us to feed. The second night, this became a disaster as he wanted to feed on the hour. He was hungry; I didn't have milk. Shit. We had to leave the hospital the next morning, and we couldn't because he wouldn't stop feeding. After hours and hours (including 3 hours of straight nursing), we turned to the next thing we had decided we'd never, ever do with our baby: formula. We gave him literally one spoonful. And he went to sleep for hours.

During the time he slept, we checked out of the hospital, and fell into the most warping experience of my life. We left the hospital and stood on Fifth Avenue, trying to hail a cab. I wasn't allowed to lift anything. We had several bags, suitcases, and a car seat with a two-day-old baby in it. And we were just out on the sidewalk along Fifth Avenue. Luckily, we had a very nice cab driver who happened to have young children of his own. He was ridiculously patient with our fumbling with the car seat and all our crap and drove carefully over the pothole-y road through Central Park. We gave him a huge tip.

Politics make me ill.

2008-08-30T10:19:00.004-04:00

I hate it when people justify their opinion with a personal situation. Case in point: McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin is pro-life and points out her child with Down’s Syndrome as a reason. That’s absurd. That by no means sums up why women should have the right to choose an abortion, or birth control for that matter. And here starts my rant on reproductive rights.

First of all, you are a sample size of one. Second of all, you can’t just emphasize the end of the road you chose as a reason for choosing the road in the first place! The road forked, you made a choice, and you have all the reasons in the world to continue to agree with the choice you made, otherwise you’d be leading a pretty miserable life, right? That doesn’t mean that if you’d chosen the other path, you’d be pissed at yourself right now – by contrast, if you had chosen the other path, you’d be heralding the end result just as much, I bet. Because it's in your best interests to do so.

If we had those awful tests come back to say that the baby had a chance of having Down's, I'm honestly not sure what we would have done. Because you never know if the baby actually has the disease until (s)he's born. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers decide that the 1 in 25 chance of Down's means that there is a 24 out of 25 chance that it is a perfectly healthy baby and they gamble the odds. This has nothing to do with the fact that I believe that if a woman has been raped, she can choose to abort a potential pregnancy. Or if a 16-year-old with no means of handling a child gets pregnant, she can choose abortion instead of derailing her hopes of graduating from high school. Pro-lifers need to be forced to spend some quality time with people who couldn't afford to have kids or weren't ready for them but had them anyway.

I know that pro-lifers responses to these arguments are often something along the lines of, "Look at [this person here], if his/her mom had chosen to abort him/her, (s)he wouldn't exist." Um, this is not logical! That's like me saying, "If I had chosen not to eat that apple, it would still be in the fruit bowl." Huh? Or, "Hey, this person had a baby when she was 16, and she finished high school!" Which is like, "This person is fine now despite a multi-year fight with cocaine addiction." There are a lot of addicts who don't make it through their addictions, but you're consciously choosing to show off the one who did.

I'm also really tired of pro-lifers seemingly thinking that pro-choice is pro-abortion. As DH says, the opposite of pro-life is to abort all fetuses, which is obviously ridiculous. Similarly, being forced to carry the pregnancy is absurd. I have no problem with a person's choice to have a baby even when it's unplanned. But I also think that that person should be allowed to choose to not have that baby.

All of this pales in comparison to the attacks currently being made on birth control. We can debate abortion all we want, but I think we can all agree that using condoms isn't killing anything, no matter how religious (or crazy) you want to be about it. As a woman with a career, I take attacks on birth control as a personal attack on me being able to live the life I want to live. As it stands now, the Pill costs $15 a month, and that's because I have great health insurance. Even my great health insurance won't cover the cost of an IUD, for which I'd have to shell out around $500. This makes family planning already the territory of people with money to spare, which is crazy too. If you don't have money for birth control, I want to bet that you don't have money for diapers. So we need to fix the fact that birth control costs money so that we don't have to subsequently help people buy diapers. Trust me, it's cheaper to pay for birth control than a baby. I've tried both.

On that subject, I often find that people who argue against birth control do conveniently have two or three carefully age-spaced children. Which means that either there is a lot of oral sex in your household, you are very sexually frustrated, or you're using birth control. I want to bet on the last option. The only people who can argue against birth control are families who subscribe to the orthodox form of a religion who just have kid after kid - not that I agree with that lifestyle (at all!), but at least they're not being hypocritical.

This is all a bit jumbled - I can't really organize my thoughts well on things about which I feel so strongly. However, I think that my overarching point has to be that I'm tired of people who can't consider things logically because they get distracted by cuteness or other emotional ploys. This is the same thing as the problem of which town to blow up, the one of 2,000 and the one of 20,000. Duh, the one of 2,000. This is a very logical problem. But lots of people just cannot make a choice here because they get distracted by the whole death thing. I get that it's not a fun choice, but there is a very logical answer. This might be a terrible example, actually, now that I think about it, because I don't believe that abortion is killing anything. It's a good thing I'm not running for office, or Fox News would be telling everyone right now that I like to blow up babies. But anyway, my point is that this is what happens when you put a person, with Down's or not, in front of a camera, and ask people if they would've aborted this particular baby and then extrapolate to their views on abortion in general. It's an absurd connection and doesn't at all consider logically what happens to all unwanted babies. What about the ones that are found in the dumpster? Sure, that's one (or two or three) babies, but so is that baby with Down's in front of your camera, news stations.

Just to torture myself, I did the math.

2008-08-27T12:42:00.003-04:00

I breastfeed or pump 7 to 9 times in a 24-hour period. Each time lasts between 20 and 45 mins. So for simplicity's sake, let's say 8 times for 30 mins each. That's 4 hours of time in each 24-hour period, or 28 hours a week. I also work 40 hours a week. I'm about to start a class that will meet for 6 hours a week and have approximately 5-10 hours of homework per week.

28 + 40 + 6 + 5 = 79 hours a week. That's right, 79 hours a week of my time is full.

Let's add to that total my times with LO - getting him, up, changed, and dressed in the morning, and bathed, in pj's and in bed at night. Not counting the feeding (because that was already added in there), that's about another 2 hours. 81 hours. Let's add to that commuting time, which is about an hour in total for each day I go in to my office as opposed to working from home, so let's say 4 hours a week. 85 hours. And somewhere in there, I have to fit my applications to grad school.

For the record, I enjoy having a full life. I love that there is a smiley baby to wake up to every morning, I love my work and my career, and I love the future towards which I'm working every day. But holy shit.

This does explain why the 9-to-5 jack-hammering outside our front window is a bit much for me to handle today. It also explains why I'm not so pleased with the idiot who scheduled a meeting downtown from 3 to 6pm today. What were you smoking, man who doesn't have children...oh, right...

Keeping mum

2008-08-25T22:33:00.003-04:00

One of the harder things to deal with is that my career allows no room for ambivalence, even when it's not truly ambivalence. I know that DH and my choices for our lives are the correct ones for us. Yet of course there are some days or even just some moments in which I wonder if they truly are the correct choices. Those moments can never, ever be shared with my coworkers, and yes, that does make me feel lonely at times.

This makes me sad mostly because it's exactly getting through those moments that makes ultimately makes me better at my career. I get through my ambivalence and come out on the other side even more sure that our choices are working for us. I have that much more energy to feed into my work. I want to be able to share things like that, but every way I put it seems to underscore the fact that sometimes I second-guess myself. And there is no room for that in academia.

Guilt

2008-08-20T14:41:00.003-04:00

I feel guilty when I’m not working. I feel guilty when I am working, not really because I miss being with my baby so much but because I feel guilty that DH is stuck at home with him. I miss LO too, but not until after a few hours of quiet work time have passed and I feel better about my productively and professional self again. The guilt is constant and inescapable.

My work ebbs and flows. When it ebbs, I live in a cloud of guilt (for not being motivated to entertain myself with all sorts of educational activities related to my job) and boredom. When it flows, I immerse myself in the world of being busy and am happy until I’m overwhelmed and crash. Then it ebbs again, and the cycle continues.

I have lots of days where I think I’m crazy for choosing work over being with LO. Mostly, it’s when work gets tough and I wonder why I would put in extra time and struggle with academic life, whereas staying at home with him seems so easy. The thing is, it’s not easy being home with him. It’s just not as heady. It seems easy because it doesn’t require me to push my brain to its outer limits, to invoke my creativity when I’m just not inspired. It also would mean that I wouldn't have to face the struggle of starting my career. But I have to logically remember that I would go insane very quickly if I were to actually stay home, be a stay-at-home-mom. It’s hard to be logical when I’m lying on the floor with a 4-month-old baby boy tugging on my ear with tiny pudgy fingers and gnawing on my nose with soft drooly gums. When I pull my face away he gives me a big smile and I wonder how important grant applications really are.

Thoughts on high school (yeah, high school)

2008-08-20T14:40:00.002-04:00

Most of the things that make me a bit dysfunctional are things I do to make myself seem normal. If I had grown up being more comfortable being strange, and just doing the things that were more natural to me, I’d be a lot more stable. I probably also wouldn’t be compelled to write all this down to make sense of my own weird experience; I’d probably just accept that I’m dealing with motherhood in an emotionally different way than others might.

I stopped reading in seventh grade because it made me seem too smart, and smart wasn’t cool. It was a temporary thing, but I still think that psychologically, this is where it all started. It was the moment I stopped doing things for myself and began adjusting my persona and activities to make other people more comfortable with me. I could tell that I made people uncomfortable – it’s tough not to when you read the newspaper at age two – and I wanted badly to fix that, for some reason. Why I felt so compelled to make myself more palatable to the general population of suburban Louisiana in 1993 is entirely beyond me. I guess it was just that that was my world at that time, and I wasn’t a rebel, didn’t want to be an outcast. So I stopped reading.

I did well in high school, very well. It was easy to do well, however, when none of the material was particularly challenging. Calculus came to me naturally; liberal arts coursework was graded mostly through effort and by then I was putting in effort. The only subjects which could have kicked my ass royally were chemistry and physics, and those were so badly taught with such low expectations that I could’ve been high the entire time and still escaped with an A.

I wasn’t high any of the time. I wasn’t that kind of teenager either. I was frustrated, though more with my location and lack of challenge or personal closeness than with “the world” or “the Man” or whatever else it is against which rebellious teenagers rail and thrash. I was a great student, belonged to tons of clubs, played tennis, and did ballet.

The clubs were funny extensions of my want to belong and not figure myself out yet. With my friends, I joined clubs like Amnesty International, even though I remain ambivalent on my view of the death penalty, and Model UN, even though I had no interest whatsoever in international politics. Had I been more self-aware and comfortable with my thoughts in public, I might have started a pro-choice club of some sort at my high school, or volunteered at an animal shelter. I am extremely passionate about a woman’s right to choose to have a child – even more so now that I have one myself and I realize what a massive commitment it is, or should be – and I feel much more strongly about animal rights than criminal rights. But I sat there writing letter after letter to government and prisoners of conscience, not at all processing what it was that I was doing. All I knew was that my friends were there writing letters too, and that’s what I wanted at the time. My choice was finding myself and facing loneliness or suppressing myself and be surrounded by peers. I chose the latter, though as I look back now, I realize that the former would have probably made me feel less lonely.

Is self-awareness a lot to ask for from a high school student? Probably. But I can’t help but feel that a piece of me died unnecessarily in high school, the piece that could have made me much more able to figure out my thoughts and wants in the present.

Work, Society, and Sleep

2008-08-20T14:39:00.001-04:00

It took me awhile to realize that combining work and having a baby with DH staying at home put me in a position I hadn’t really been in previously: being contrary to common societal set-ups of a family. I’m not one to run counter to things, and much as I hate to admit it, it makes me uncomfortable to make other people uncomfortable. And other people are definitely uncomfortable with this arrangement.

“Do you really trust your husband to be at home with your baby?” asked one of my coworkers. I was caught off-guard, or I might have answered, “no, he’ll probably kill the baby, but that’s okay.” Actually, I would never have said that. But deep in the back of my mind, I hope to one day become the person who speaks those kind of retorts out loud. The question was an absurd one, especially because DH is much better suited to take care of a baby. He has the lion’s share of the patience in our household. After 15 minutes of wailing, I can’t handle any more, whereas he sat there rocking LO to sleep for hours in his first few weeks, as LO’s tiny brain tackled the harsh introduction to the outside world after spending ten full months in a comfy womb. He also is much more creative, and I excitedly await the block-building, Duplo and Lego structuring, and cardboard box transforming which I know will happen within a few short years.

Something else that continually incenses me is the people who ask DH if he’s bored, if he’s going crazy, if he misses work. Not that he doesn’t miss it - he does miss adult time and he enjoyed his work. So actually, it’s not an inappropriate question for him. What I hate is that if I were the one at home full-time with LO, no one would ask me that. No one asked me if I missed my job in the six weeks I was on maternity leave. No one asked me if I wanted to go back. Instead, everyone was incredulous that my leave was “only six weeks long” and I constantly felt scolded for being a bad mommy once I returned.

Truth be told, I lasted eight days. It was eight days postpartum where I wanted to bang my head into a wall repeatedly. I missed my work, I missed my coworkers, I missed my time as a thinking adult. My work is intellectual; it’s all about conceiving ideas, thinking through them, and them writing them down coherently. Dealing with LO at that time was physical, mostly: changing the diaper, rocking to sleep, walking around the apartment. He also slept a lot, which should have made me feel lucky, but innately I was disappointed that I didn’t have more to do with him. I was home for him, but yet I spent the majority of my days and nights watching him sleep, waiting for him to get up again.

People say you should sleep when your baby sleeps, but I’ve never been much of a sleeper. I didn’t sleep when I was a baby. When I was two and started reading, my parents breathed a sigh of relief. They gave me a reading light and a stack of books, and I read all night instead of bothering them to talk with me or read to me. I actually found that having a baby who gets up every 3 or 4 hours or so at night settled me into much better sleep than I’d had before. Bedtime was no longer a stressful time, worrying about needing to sleep through the night. I always felt compelled to do so, for some reason. Now, because I knew I’d be woken up regularly, I didn’t feel so OCD about making sure the doors were closed correctly, I had gone to the bathroom within five minutes of bedtime, and everything was lined up the way it needed to be. It didn’t matter, because I knew I’d be up three hours later anyway. This made me calm about sleep in a way I have never been before.

Thoughts on breastfeeding

2008-08-20T14:38:00.002-04:00

I feel trapped in one of those bear traps with the big sharp teeth; it clamps shut every 3 to 4 hours. Just as my concentration starts, just as my creativity begins, my focus suddenly appears, I have to grab bottles and pump or hold LO and feed. I don’t belong to myself any more, and I hate it. At the same time, I love the quiet moments at the end of the day when I feed him to sleep. He’s calm and smiley and drowsy, and I feel connected to someone like I haven’t been before. He often calmly interrupts his gulping every few minutes by looking up and giving me a huge smile. In the evening, he falls asleep on my lap while holding my hand behind his head. When I put him in his bed he lets my hand go and smiles with his eyes closed before turning on to his side and putting his tiny thumb in his mouth.

The combination isn’t working for me. I can’t combine my work, my focused, schedule-less work, with producing enough milk for a growing boy. And yet I do it every single day, hitting the frustration at the end of the day every time, and waking up the following morning to do it again. I’m going to do this for a year, I’m going to, goddammit.

I am a very unfocused person until I focus. It takes time, lots of time, but once my mind settles down and my focus begins, I am lost in a world of producing work at a rate of which most people can’t conceive. I know this of myself, it’s why I ultimately sought out the kind of work I do. I can’t work in an office: it looks like I’m goofing off all the time. Plus, I can’t sit still and can’t be alone when working.

There is a balance of focus for me. If it’s quiet, my mind wanders to every possible tangent until I can reel it again, start again, and then it goes off again. My branch of thought grows so many small branches in so little time, it becomes instantly impossible to see where the original branch began and where it’s going. If there is something else going on in the background – preferably people talking, but music works too – it removes the edge. The little branches are elsewhere, not connected to my main branch, and my mind can move and grow for miles.

Enter the world of breastfeeding. My life suddenly became pumping, and then starting the process of moving towards focused work. On a normal day, I goofed off a bit, thought about things a bit, began to focus my nebulous groups of thoughts into a cohesive branch. Aha! There was the branch. I saw it’s raw texture, the bark, the creases, the little green stumps that needed to grow. It started to grow…and then it was time to pump again. My concentration was shot as I gathered all the plastic pieces, assembled them, hooked myself up, and began to leak milk into the clear bottles. Twenty minutes later, I started the process again. And again three hours later. By the end of the day, I had so many ideas stuck somewhere in my endlessly constipated brain, I wanted to scream. But I couldn’t scream, because I didn’t have time: I had to pump again.

Back after a long hiatus

2008-08-20T14:37:00.001-04:00

I left the blogging world for awhile, thinking it was best to just keep my thoughts to myself. Now I think that I really would like to publish some of the ideas I've been writing down. I'm not quite sure why. But we'll see how it goes.

Since my hiatus, I've (1) not gotten into grad school, (2) decided to apply to sociology and public policy programs with a quantitative focus, (3) had a baby boy. DH has changed his job to working 1/3 part-time from home, so he's home on weekdays with the LO. This semester will include me working full-time, pumping for an exclusively breast-fed baby, taking a double-credit class, and working on between 10 and 15 grad school applications. Life is full. It's good sometimes and it's bad sometimes, and the balance of the two will give me plenty of blog inspiration.

2nd trimester!

2007-10-17T09:22:00.001-04:00

Depending on how you calculate the whole second trimester thing, I believe I'm finally there! When I went in for my NT scan ultrasound, a medical student observing said that, really, if you divide 40 weeks by 3, you get 13 1/3, so one trimester should be 13 1/3 weeks long, so 13 weeks should be the right measure. I'm with her. Today I'm at 13 weeks and 1 day.

It is a *much* better time now. Eating dinner is much easier - though still not simple, I can eat more complicated foods than plain starches. I have more energy - staying up until 10:30pm is fine. I have days where I have more energy and less nausea and days where those trends reverse, but on the whole I'm much better.

On Sunday night, I even slept from 10:45pm straight through until 6:15am! This may seem like the most mundane detail of my life to anyone else, but to me, it's the longest stretch of sleep I've had since I was 3 1/2 weeks pregnant (and still unaware of being pregnant, but already getting up for bathroom breaks all night long). It was pretty exciting.

The dreams have calmed a bit, too - there are fewer and they are still weird but less horrific. The cats are usually not involved, and I'm generally not being robbed, chased, or berated for something random any more. I haven't been stuck packing a suitcase but not able to find any of my clothes or anything else in, like, three weeks!

Now that people at work know, I can also be more up-front about the appointments and all that, which is another big relaxer. I'm still working out what my leave will be, so we'll see what happens there... I have another meeting about that today. They're really flexible and they're being great about working with me so far, so I'm pretty happy with that.

All in all, I'm doing well! Nighttime outings are still on the back burner, but brunch...hey, I'm up for that. Especially if it involves cheese.

Frustrated.

2007-09-18T12:00:00.001-04:00

Today, I'm cranky. Really, really f*cking cranky.

I slept...okay. Waking three times a night to hit the bathroom gets old really fast. (Some nights, I can actually keep it down to one time, but that's becoming more rare.) I'm trying to figure out what schools to apply to, but I have no choice but to stuff the thoughts of where I'm going to live next year and raise my child into tiny pockets of energy that don't interfere with work. I have no time for personal stuff. None at all. I wake up, eat, and get to work. I work until I'm so tired and nauseous that I can barely get off the couch any more, around 5pm. Then I lie on the couch like a f*cking potato for the rest of the evening, with only a break to attempt to catapult some dinner down my throat, preferably without tasting any of it, around 7pm. Since this is already 2 hours into the worst nausea, eating doesn't really work at this point. From 8:30pm until 10pm, I try my best to stay awake so that DH wont have to go to sleep at 8:30pm, because that is fairly absurd. So, no time at all to play.

The thing is, I like my work. Though if this one woman doesn't stop nagging me with, "Hey, is this done yet?" I'm going to stuff my laptop up her you-know-what. Other than that, I like my work. But I have a lot of stuff to think about that's not work-related. Like schools to apply to. Baby stuff we're going to need. Financial things. What does the law say I can do - because we all know that HR and my insurance company are going to screw me over as hard as they can, so I'd better be ready to put up the fight of a lifetime. How to move with DH, three cats, and a baby.

And then there's the biggest dilemma: I can't tell people at work yet. I'm waiting until 12 weeks, or at least until I have one more ultrasound. I'm personally scared enough about the time in between those little views on the screen, the last thing I need is for my work to be in on the secret right now. So I just look lazy. Great.

So all I do is work, all I want is a few minutes to think about schools and the baby, and I can't do the latter because I don't want to jinx anything since I just hit 9 weeks today. I'm tired of dinner time being so damn awful, but then again I'm also scared when I feel better - symptoms aren't supposed to let up yet. I'm tired of being tired, but again, I feel bad thinking that, because I should be happy that my body is reacting as it should to hopefully create a healthy little baby.

Oh yeah, and my balance has disappeared into the great beyond. So I keep hitting myself, bruising myself, and walking into door frames. I just hit myself in the tooth with a knife trying to lick peanut butter off of it. (I can hear my mother tut-tut-ing right now.) Grrr.

On the whole, I'm just terrified for any sane person who has to deal with me today.

Nausea

2007-09-15T08:09:00.000-04:00

So, I think I'm fairly lucky so far on the morning sickness bandwagon: I'm nauseous in the morning, but fine once I eat, and I'm nauseous at night, but fine once I just go to bed. That said, there are certain things that just really bring on the nausea. I figured I'd list a few, just for posterity:
(5) Red meat and any raw meat. But even pictures of cooked red meat are disgusting. Grocery stores are the Spawn of Satan right now.
(4) Perfume/cologne. Just freaking awful. All of them.
(3) Mac 'n cheese. But that may be because I ate it right when I transitioned from "perfectly fine" to "ok, so that's morning sickness".
(2) Bags of garbage. This can be a bit of a challenge in the city, even if I rarely go out after 5pm.

But the definite number (1) is...people who are unattractive, sweaty, or otherwise dirty. I'm not kidding - I wish I was. Sweaty people coming back from the gym or from a run are sort of bearable, but I have to look the other way. People who are just unattractive (especially overweight) really do me in. I wonder if I just have a heightened sense of health or something - that would go along with no longing wanting to OD on chocolate most of the time. It's really strange. Plus, it makes riding the subway a treacherous experience.

Sleep

2007-09-15T07:52:00.000-04:00

I have always had a contentious relationship with sleep. When I was a baby, I didn't do it. When I was a toddler, still not; instead, I had books and a flashlight to them by as the night went on. I always hated it when my parents would go to bed, and the downstairs was calm, quiet, and dark. When they would have people over, I would curl up at the top of the stairs and listen to the background drone of adult voices, feeling so much more secure with some volume. Silence made my ears ring, and darkness made my eyes create weird patterns of dots that moved like a kaleidoscope.

As a teenager, I would pretend to sleep until noon, because I felt like I should. But I never really slept. I'd go to bed at 3am, after going out and then watching TV or reading, and then I'd wake up at 7am and stare at the ceiling until noon, pretending to be petulant and on a different schedule than the rest of the civilized world. Then again, I guess I really was.

Either that, or I was on everyone's schedule at once. During the week, I'd get up at 6am to go to school after going to sleep at 3am or 4am, having watched Letterman and then Conan, written some emails, done some work... Eventually I got sick, slept a whole bunch, and felt fine.

The point here is, I shouldn't be surprised that pregnancy is altering my sleep habits, because they have always been interesting. I'm exhausted constantly. This is the first time I can sleep for 9 or 10 hours a night with ease. Then again, those nights are interspersed with random times, like last night, when I just can't sleep at all. Mostly, this is because I'm bombarded with terrible, awful nightmares. I don't generally dream happy dreams; when I dream, it's usually quite horrific. But these dreams are something new altogether: they are completely, fiercely realistic, and never good. Most of them involve some portion where stuff gets stolen from me, whether it's people breaking in, mugging me, me misplacing something and someone taking it... I also often dream that the cats get hurt, and then the rest of the dream is spent thinking, geez, if I can't take care of cats, what the hell am I doing with a baby?! That part is more unoriginal and unsurprising.

Anyway, I do know from my personal history that though I'm a bit of a bitch if I don't sleep at all, I am fully functional. So at least that'll help for those first few months of baby. I guess those will be the few months where I actually get to appreciate my weird sleeping habits.

Yay for TIME magazine!!

2007-08-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

The August 27, 2007 issue of TIME magazine has an article that almost made me cry. It's called Are We Failing Our Geniuses? and it talks about how we are failing our gifted kids in the U.S. educational system. Yay! Yay!

So far, the most amazing quote is EXACTLY what I've said for ever and ever:
"American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn't even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can't make sense to spend 10 times as much trying to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential."

I'm, like, shaking, I'm so excited to see my opinion on this in print.

It goes on:
"We take for granted that those with IQs at least three standard deviations below the mean (those who score 55 or lower on IQ tests) require "special" education. But students with IQs that are at least three standard deviations above the mean (145 or higher) often have just as much trouble interacting with average kids and learning at an average pace. Shouldn't we do something special for them as well?"

As a very first reaction, besides my blinding excitement, I think that a huge danger is here that many people just think that "smart" kids can figure it all out for themselves. They don't realize the demons that end up in your head when you're so outside of everyone else's methods of thinking, learning, acting, and reacting. They don't see how you are just as ostracized, at least mentally, as those who are placed in special classrooms. They assume that having the capability to learn and process things very quickly automatically means that your social skills are also superior, or something to that extent. How wrong that is.

Another first reaction: if rich parents don't stop calling their kids "gifted" randomly, I'm going to punch them. And I don't condone violence. Being well-prepared for education by attentive parents does not equal gifted. Being able to memorize lots of stuff does not (necessarily) equal gifted. Being able to book-learn well really does not equal gifted.

Anyway, my heart is warmed today.

Weird.

2007-08-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

It's four weeks exactly now (4w0d, says the ticker), but since no one knows yet, it seems much more surreal than it otherwise might. Since Monday, I've had this weird feeling that everything changed except nothing at all changed. It seems as though it didn't really happen, those two lines or that digital read-out (it's hard to miss when the little window says "pregnant" in black font). It's only the third day I've known for sure (I'm not counting that faint, faint line on Sunday morning), and time seems to creep by sooo slooowwwlyyy...

I'm counting the days until I can tell everyone (22), yet I'm terrified to tell everyone. Mostly, I'm afraid of all the stay-at-home moms et al who will tell me that "you'll see", the life I have envisioned will not be possible. Whether they say so outright (my mom) or say so passive aggressively (DH's mom), it's not something I need to hear. I'm not crazy; I'm perfectly aware that our plan - having a baby, moving, finding a new job for DH, starting school on a 5-year plan making $20K/yr - is not going to be easy. Our lives are going be incredibly challenging. But that was partially the idea, and for the other part, how will it possibly ever be easy, when neither of us wants to entirely give up our careers? The philosophy that will actually be the hardest to explain is that my job is the priority to us, not DH's. That will likely not go over too well, and I'm mentally preparing for the confused/judgmental sideways glances. As much as I can. I need to focus on the parents who followed a similar path and made it (or are making it) just fine: my cousin (and his wife, toddler, and fetus), and various professors - all of whose organizational skills I envy.

The last two nights I've slept a little better than I did the two weeks before that, which is of course very welcome, given that I'm constantly exhausted. The cramps come back at night but are much better than they were Monday - *fingers crossed* that they will diminish as the week marches on.

I'm kind of confused about what I should and shouldn't do - the food things are no surprise, since I was being careful during every 2ww, but now I somehow feel like I should wrap my stomach in foam peanuts and bubble wrap. Yet somehow it's okay to continue my exercise routine - well, within reason, given how hard I usually push myself physically. The doctor said to keep my heart rate under 130 bpm, which means absolutely nothing to me. I do understand that I can no longer push myself in spin class until my peripheral vision disappears. Fine. I'll table that for the next 36 weeks, though not happily, I have to say.

All in all, it sounds as if I'm bitching and moaning. Ok, maybe I am. But I can't even begin to say how thrilled we both are with that second little pink line (ok, and the extremely obvious Arial font). I tried not to get too hopeful, and I think that made it that much more of a huge surprise, really. Oddly enough, now's when the real tension starts - making it through the fifth week, the second month, the first trimester... I'm anxious to get to the doctor, but there are still three weeks in the way...time to keep busy with planning how to tell everyone, looking at strollers, thinking about names...and trying not to get too weirded out by the whole thing. In a good way.

Some nice quotes

2007-08-08T17:51:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Not Remotely Controlled by Lee Siegel. Really, the whole book is a collection of his columns from New Republic. It's interesting - just his thoughts on various television shows and personalities, except he's a cultural critic, so his thoughts are actually really interesting. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book.

Talking about Transgeneration:
"They might have felt empowered by reading the story of Tiresias, or by knowing that in various ancient cultures shamans were men who dressed and acted like women, eventually marrying other men. But this is America, and their journeys are strictly foregrounded in the medical technologies of surgery, drugs, and counseling, which has the effect of both normalizing their fate and turning it into an illness that can be cured, or repaired." (p. 201)

Talking about reality television in general:
"Only in America could reality become a trend. But then, only in America do we take time out for a "reality check", as if anyone so far gone as to lose his sense of reality would actually know what to check in order to get it back. I mean, get real. Of course, only in America could the admonishment "get real" be a reproach, and "unreality" be a sin. And now that we're on the subject, only in America do we say "I mean" before we say what we mean, as if it were an acceptable convention for people to go around saying what they didn't mean, and it had become another convention to make the distinction, before saying anything of consequence, between meaning and not meaning what you are about to say. Already I'm, like, getting dizzy. Which raises the question of why Americans distance themselves from what they are saying by putting "like" before the description of something, as if people are nervous about committing to a particular version of reality, or to a direct, unmediated, non-metaphorical experience of the real. "Like" is annoying, but it is a powerful tool of detachment and defense; it is verbal armor." (p. 237-8)

On Johnny Carson:
"In America, the death of an American star is really the occasion for garrulous, obsessive, round-the-clock denial of death." (p. 327)

I just realized that all the quotes are quite unpatriotic. Oh well.

Strengths vs. Weaknesses, and Other Controversies

2007-07-23T17:43:00.000-04:00

One of my biggest frustrations with society hit me hard this past weekend: the never-ending support for weaknesses versus the never-ending complete lack of support for strengths. That doesn't sound right. To be more specific, by the latter I mean personal attributes that are commonly perceived as strengths. And by not supporting them, I mean actively mocking them and acting as though that's okay because hey, you've got strengths!

We went out for drinks this weekend with a friend. A friend of his came along. I was at the time in the middle of reading Atlas Shrugged. (Ayn Rand - I have since finished it, and it was fantastic. But that's another post.) Upon mention of a book of 1100+ pages, they practically gagged and looked at me like I just randomly spawned an extra arm. These are two college-educated people. All they wanted to discuss is (1) current drinking, (2) past times when they had been drinking, (3) future opportunities for drinking, or (4) food. I felt 40 years old. I like food and all, but I'm sort of past the whole drinking-a-whole-lot-every-weekend thing. I wanted to leave after five minutes, and we stayed four hours. Why? The only thing I can think of right now is masochism. *shudder*

But back to my original point, the whole time I felt really...embarrassed for (1) liking my job, (2) liking my plans for the future, and (3) enjoying books. (I like numbered lists today. Deal with it.) The next day, I felt embarrassed for counting out my money to the cashier at the bodega so that the change would be an even amount. People laugh in a patronizing way when giving me the bill to split up after having dinner with a group of people.

So, maybe it's just the aftershocks of Atlas Shrugged, but I realized that I constantly feel embarrassed about my strengths. People openly mock strengths, whereas people's weaknesses are supposed to garner complete sympathy. I don't really get that, honestly. For true physical (or in the mental sense, chemical) weaknesses I indeed feel bad. (Not "feel badly" - if you're the kind of person who thinks it should be "feel badly", stop reading my blog. I don't like you any more.) But for all those bullshit allergies, for Restless Legs Syndrome, and for all those who claim they are not good at Pre-Algebra, I don't really understand why people enjoy advertising that they're failing the Darwinian race of survival and, worse, expect my sympathy for that. If I felt tired after walking up a set of stairs, I'd feel like I was a freaking failure who needed to go to the gym more, not someone who needed sympathy. If I couldn't wrap my brain around a concept, I would study it more, not attempt to find empathetic morons who didn't get it either.

I feel immense satisfaction when I'm strong, physically or mentally; I also feel horribly defeated when I'm weak, whether physically weak, weak-willed, or struggling to grasp something. And the latter makes me grit my teeth and work harder. Why is my state of mind not that of most people? Because our society is perfectly okay with weaknesses. There is a commercial that says it all: "Holiday overindulgence can't be helped." It's not your fault that you're a disgusting glutton, not your fault at all. It's a weakness that is not within your control. What?!

I would even be able to deal with constantly being forced to have sympathy for people who don't actually have weaknesses but think they do and I have no choice but to have sympathy because that's the socially acceptable thing to do. Except I can't, because my strengths are laughed at, mocked, ridiculed, and being touted as the reason I can never ask for anything because I have all these strengths that others don't have. For one day, I'd like it to be socially acceptable that I can multiply large numbers in my head. I don't want people to be impressed (truly, that's the last thing I'm asking for), I just don't want to be made out to be a freak of nature. For one day, I'd like people to nod and smile as though it were a regular conversation (about drinking, perhaps) when I say that I'm reading a book with 1100+ pages and philosophical/political connotations. Not say, "oh wow, you must be smart" or "ugh, I hate reading" or "are you crazy? 1100 pages?" but maybe "hey, I'm reading War and Peace and I love it!"

My ultimate goal is to one day meet a woman who also learned to read when she was two. Just to have a few moments in which I won't be weird or alone.

I'm going to stop listening to People.

2007-06-06T23:44:00.000-04:00

When I was about to get married, the biggest slice of wisdom I received (repeatedly) was the assertion that my relationship, and therefore apparently my life, would drastically change upon saying "I do". This freaked me out like you can't imagine. I had images flashing in my head of me being the married woman, in that suburban creepy way. Once we got married, I realized that all those People were either just not that bright, had shitty relationships, or were living in some sort of time-warp or bubble. Not a damn thing changed for either of us, except the fact that as long as we are both employed, we don't have to worry about health insurance should something happen to one of our jobs or one of us. That's pretty nice. Other than that, whether we got married or not didn't make a damn bit of difference to me in the first place and it still doesn't. I'd be just as happy being unmarried right now.

I thought that was bad. Even writing it now annoys me. If only I had known... Once you start thinking about kids, all hell breaks loose in the world of People. The worst by far is the continuously stressed point that once you have kids, you just want to be home with them all the time. Yet another one of those irritating points you can't refute if you're not in their situation yet. All I can say is, No. I. Won't. People who say that (1) haven't met me, or (2) don't know me at all, even after having met me, or (3) don't listen to a damn thing I say when they hang out with me.

I guarantee you, I am as much of a stay-at-home mom as my dad is. I have no homemaking abilities or emotions. I'm just not that maternal. It happens, in the same way that stay-at-home dads happen. I have no interest in anything to do with small children. In many ways, I see the fact that I have to carry the child as my burden, almost to the point of just not wanting to have kids at all. Being pregnant would made me dependent on other people and slower than usual. Two things I hate in anyone, including myself. I think I want to have a kid in the same way that fathers want kids: offspring to be there, make it a family, have some happy chaos in the apartment. I don't want to delve into stupid television programs, lame toys, or baked goods for school events.

Funny, I always imagined myself to be like dad, in a "hi, honey, I'm home!" way, coming home from a long day at work. I never really thought about the fact that I was a woman and that that made my situation different from my dad's. Eh, whatever, I'm still I'm applying for a PhD in Statistics. Let's not even begin to discuss all those People who told me that I'd never get through college math classes...supposedly, I would see once I got there that it was just too difficult for girls. All I can say to People now is "Would you care to discuss multivariate regression? No? Ok, then suck it!"

Advice from an unlikely source

2007-05-21T11:21:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I went to hear Peggy Orenstein speak about her new book, Waiting for Daisy. It was fantastic - I've read all three of her books, and they are all fascinating to me. Anyway, I spoke with her after the talk and she signed my copy of her book: "in the spirit of wabi-sabi". I read about that concept in her book later, but then I researched it further.

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept, essentially meaning "nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect". I've also seen it defined as "finding beauty in imperfection" and as a combination of impermanence, imperfection, and incompleteness.

The funny thing is, she must get a lot of perfectionists talking to her about their lives, because this really is an idea that could certainly help me, if only I could get it through my thick skull. Not that I need therapeutic assistance, but this idea of not planning everything and finding beauty in the sort-of spontaneity is a great one. I'll never be someone who randomly decides to hop a plane to Jamaica, just for kicks - that's more my sister's territory - but I could stand to have a different sandwich for lunch sometimes, you know? OK, that's exaggerated too. The point is, I like wabi-sabi. And I like that different cultures have words for concepts that don't even exist in other cultures. (Like gezellig in Dutch - and German.)

Point taken

2007-04-10T09:00:00.000-04:00

My sister sent me this article from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?hpid=topnews

It's about how even when a world-famous classical musician, Joshua Bell, plays in a Metro station in DC, only one or two people stop and listen. Honestly, I had never heard of him. I know some classical music, listen to it sometimes, but definitely do not know musicians by name.

My first thought was, well, in New York City, people do tend to stop and listen to street musicians. But in rush hour? Maybe not.

My second thought was, I think that's why I enjoy the idea of academia. I feel like it will give me time to reflect and think about things more. I can't sit in a cubicle all day and pretend that whatever I'm doing in there is remotely important. Especially compared to thinking about life, about the people around me, about issues and non-issues, about the clash of cultures, languages, people, countries, ideals, and problems. I like to think, I like to be challenged, and rushing off to midtown every morning just doesn't have that reflective side.

It's not over yet, it's only beginning.

2007-04-09T08:59:00.000-04:00

So I visited Seattle. It was an okay city in my estimation. I can see why people love it - it's clean, fairly organized, has better transportation than most American cities, has beautiful scenery, great coffee places, and plenty of opportunities for middle and upper-middle class people to live in free-standing houses with gardens. Which are pretty too. The issue is, that's not really our definition of "ideal". I prefer public parks to personal gardens, apartments to houses, subways to buses, and the sound of people to the sound of nature. Both of us are such "city people", it was really hard to imagine us settling in a not-so-little craftsman-style home on a hill. Admittedly, it was gorgeous - so was UW's campus - but it didn't feel like home.

UW was interesting. The people were great; everyone was really nice. I loved the professors, and I liked the students as people but was not that impressed with them as students. From the schedules and syllabi that I saw, it seemed that I would have a nice, easy time there for a few years. True, after two years or so I'd be on my own, writing my dissertation. But I like a challenge.

I thought of it as Sample Surveys in the Columbia Stats department vs. the Applied Regression class I'm taking at Teacher's College: the former kicked my butt and I learned a ton, and the latter is a breeze and I'm not learning nearly as much. I much, much prefer the former, despite the B on my transcript. I chose that B because I knew it would ultimately be more satisfying. I knew I had no hope of an A in that class from the beginning. It's not about having time to watch TV or getting straight As, it's about challenging myself - at least for me it is. I was happy at Brown and I'm happy at Columbia. I hated being "the smart girl who gets As" at St. John's and in high school.

So I chose to turn down the offer at UW. I realized while I was there that the people whom I liked the most were all in the Statistics department. Granted, this would have been a degree in Sociology with a minor concentration in Statistics. It really was a great program for me in terms of fit. But given the caliber (and recruiters and hiring teams must know this) as well as the fact that I'd have a degree in Sociology, not Statistics, it led me to believe that it would not be a brilliant investment in my future. When all was said and done I'd be able to teach basic Statistics in a Sociology department and be fairly marginal unless I gathered a specific and popular Soc focus for myself. The truth is, I'm not that interested in focusing on one area of Soc; I'm interested in the methods piece of the puzzle. I realized that the only way for me to get the Statistics classes I want and be in that position of teaching that sort of material and being the methodologist on a research team would be for me to get a PhD in Statistics. So, that's the ultimate plan.

Oddly, a lot of PhD programs in Statistics actually require you to take computer science courses, so that works out well... Anyway, so now I have a year to breathe (and a summer to write my Master's thesis), and I'll be madly typing up applications again in the fall. We decided that I should pick schools that are the best fits for me, eliminate the choices that are just too difficult to handle (i.e. Wisconsin-Madison), and then see where I get in and pick the best overall option from there. I'll try to apply to five schools to keep it coherent but to also spread my choices around a bit. No eggs in one basket, but no 30-packs, either.

So, now that the decision is made, I'm relieved, at times a bit let down that it was so anti-climactic in the end. Then again, I get to do this all over again in a few months: the applying frenzy, the waiting for emails and snail mails and phone calls, and then, hopefully, the visits.

Oh, irony

2007-03-23T18:08:00.000-04:00

Funny, when you think about it. I came to New York because I felt like it was one of the few places where you can be different without being stared down. There are people running around here wearing head-to-toe Pucci (not kidding - including fluffy dog with Pucci jacket - and riding a little girls' bicycle) and people wearing turquoise sweat suits with hot pink diagonal stripes (the ones that go swish-swish when you walk). That means that a girl like me can wear slightly funkier outfits and not be stared at in a what-planet-you-from-girlfriend kind of way. I still think that's true.

The catch is, that's nice when you're 23. Now I need to start thinking about what to do next; if we stay in NYC, saving for an apartment will definitely be next on my list of Things To Do. In order to move in that direction, I have to get a job that pays decently well. (E.g. not teaching - not that I'm going back to that, but it's a good benchmark. I made about $55K/year when I left teaching.)

I'm interviewing for a great job right now at a company that connects hedge fund managers and private equity people to industry experts. So, essentially, this is smack in the middle of the world of finance. Oddly, I actually like the people with whom I've interviewed a whole bunch. I like the urgency of the job; I like that the people I've met are really quick, social, smart people - and a lot of them happen to be women at this firm. They are very down-to-earth people - yes, I was shocked as well.

Anyway, but then I'd just add myself to - no, not even, I'd merge with the horde of navy and black suits in midtown Manhattan. From 8am until 8pm. Every day. I'd make my way up Third Ave, through the clouds of cigarette smoke, up to a faceless office building with just a giant number on the outside of it. My heels would click-click into the elevator with all the other suited shiny people, happy in their knowledge that their yearly six-figures are slowly trickling in, on a biweekly basis, just as they had planned when they majored in econ.

Eventually, three or four years later, we'd stand in line to bid on a 2-bedroom apartment on the UWS. We'd face the coop board alongside others with the exact same goals and dreams. Then, we'd have a kid or two and join the masses at AMNH and the Children's Museum. We'd add to the statistics on rich toddlers, and we'd join the train of Bugaboos - selected in our favorite color that's not too gender-specific but still happy and child-like. Then, we'd stand in line to apply for the very, very few decent public schools in the area (hell, if we were Park Slopers we'd set up a tent and sleep in line for a spot). Or maybe we'd push desperately for one of the few spaces in a private school - you know, the fight to be allowed to be one of the few, the proud, to pay upwards of $20K a year for your kid to be decently educated.

Then, we'd want to get the kids out of the city every once in awhile. So we'd go to the Hamptons. Or no, that's too East side. We'd go to Martha's Vineyard. Hanging out in a rented home, we'd pretend it was charming and restful. And "real", in a the-rest-of-Manhattan's-down-the-street-from-you kind of way. The people who stand in line at Zabar's with us on Sunday afternoon would be the people standing in line with us at the ice cream shop. But we'd all pretend it felt very genuine, like being "in the country", really. Rather than the city. Because we'd all need a break. From standing in line at Zabar's.

Then our kids would go off to college. In their first-year dorms, their native New Yorker status would slightly flummox some other freshmen, annoy some, and lead to lots and lots conversations that sound very similar to this: "Oh my God! You also know that coffee place on the corner of 109th and Amsterdam? I totally love that place!" They would be blasé about money, about rich people, about all that privilege they grew up alongside (and, to an extent, with). They'd grow up with a sense that they are privileged, but not truly understanding why, not really getting what makes them different than middle-class Jimmy who now lives down the hall from them and has never heard of Nobu menus or Badgley Mischka gowns or bar mitzvas that cost as much as an average American wedding.

I have to say, I appreciate that I never really knew about designer stuff until I first visited New York. I mean, I read Vogue and all, but I never saw that stuff in a within-reach way. Not with Century 21 downtown, or with friends who actually purchased and wore stuff like that. It was a dream-world. I definitely know people who grew up in NYC and are still not quite settled with having less than others, with living alongside those who have endless money. I also know people who see it in perspective even after growing up here: those rich people vary in character and nature, so clearly, money does not buy being a considerate or even decent human being. Additionally, there are those who grew up next to it and who still just yearn for it, for any expensive objects, or objects that other people see as expensive, in the way that I do in jest or I did when I was eight and didn't really understand the whole concept and function of money entirely. They define their lives around having not just champagne, but Dom Perignon, not just salmon, but the best smoked salmon, just imported from [insert country name here, like anyone would actually know]. And the trouble is, they do know. That's one of the few, few things they do know. That is exactly what I do not want my kids to become.

Would my kids be able to see the world how I see it, if I bottled their life experiences into one tiny island?

I still love designer strollers

2007-03-23T12:15:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/nyregion/
23kid.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
(needs free registration)

A median income of $284,208 a year?! Huh? What now?!? I'd better get to work, seriously!

I like this quote:
'The cost of private school often becomes pivotal. "Even though philosophically and politically I believe all public education should be of equal quality and wish that my kids could go to the public school," he said, "I would challenge anyone to look at the school and tell me that if they had a choice they would send their kids there."'
Yup.

The funniest (in a sad way) part is:
'"We were just at the Children's Museum, and I didn't see a lack of diversity there at all," Ms. Bers said.'
Just because there are Jamaican nannies and Hispanic janitors there doesn't mean it's a diverse place...!

(On a side note, I know the guy who did this analysis - Andy Beveridge. His work is methodologically good, IMHO.)

Anyway, this is exactly what worries me. I love people who work hard, make money, and care about their children's educations. I love designer strollers (if you hadn't yet noticed). However, I am starting to doubt if it's mentally healthy for a child to grow up amongst only really poor and really rich people. I didn't really hit the phenomenon of NY kinds of income until I went to Brown, and then I think I could see it in perspective. I still revert to wanting that kind of cash a WHOLE lot every once in awhile (e.g. when in front of expensive shoes), but for me, money will never trump family, whether that's my parents, in-laws, or, one day, my own children. And that's what I worry about: can you live in Manhattan on the terms of having that kind of cash, $284,208 a year, and still be with your kids in the evenings, on weekends, for holidays? Can you? I'm starting to doubt it, given that the jobs for which I'm interviewing that offer the path to that kind of salary (and put you already half-way there, at least, for full disclosure) also offer 12-15 hours a day in a cubicle.

New York, New York

2007-03-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

There are four fundamental kinds of New Yorkers: the ones who want to be a part of it, the ones who want to be able to say that they're a part of it, the ones who are a mixture of the first and the second, and the ones who transition from the first into the second at some point during their stay. The second and fourth kinds leave NYC eventually. The behavior of the third kind varies. The first are in it for the long haul.

I think I'm the third kind. I want to be a part of it, but only really on my own terms, and I do really enjoy telling people that I "made it" in New York City.

Perfecting motherhood

2007-03-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that motherhood and child-rearing have now been "perfected" (not really, of course, but in jargon) to the point of it being ridiculous. This is my concern with raising kids in Manhattan. I really think that kids are a lot more resilient and flexible than parents who planned them so carefully have come to think that they are. It helps that I believe that nature plays a slightly larger role than nurture. (Though of course I believe both are involved, I put nature at about 60-70% and nurture with the remaining 30-40%, rather than the more socially accepted 50/50 split.)

I think that the you-can't-actually-have-it-all conversation assumes that each part of "it" is perfect, ideal, the best you can possibly make it. There are certain things I refuse to compromise (ie. having dinner together on most nights of the week), but there are others that I think one needs to be consider as flexible (ie. the time to play classical music to one's stomach when pregnant). Do I think that leaving kids with a nanny all day, every day would be a good idea for us? No, definitely not. I think that then we would be maximizing our careers, not our kids. Do I think that a stay-at-home-100%-of-the-time parent is a great thought? No, not really. That's maximizing our kids, not our careers, which would drive either of us nuts in no time at all.

I guess my point is that placing the focus on maximizing one part of the game is not the way to go, though I admit that for most people it is the only choice. For us, though, since we are both capable of flexibility to a certain extent (though neither of us is self-employed or something that flexible), I think we need to focus more on how we can make work what we would like to make work. For example, if we want children, how can we make that work? I mean, rather than building a huge career and then realizing at 35 that the empire I built all those years is going to come crumbling down around me if I have kids. If kids were totally a non-issue for me, and my career was my "thing" right now, I'd go for my career in a heart-beat. But I'm gradually realizing how quiet a house is without kids in it. It seems unnatural and stoic. The chaos of children is a fundamental part of a household for me. Again, the problem is that most people feel that way and move to the 'burbs, or at least to Queens. I still want my kids to grow up in the city, but not with a shitty education and without their own bedrooms. Hmmm.

From the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant

2007-03-08T10:10:00.000-05:00

I read the headlines in the Dutch newspaper every morning. Today, there is a fantastically interesting article about the medical vs. career trade-offs for women having children before or after they are 30. They mention an advertising campaign in 1991 that basically translates to, "A smart girl has a baby when the time is right." Essentially, the article shows that the government characterizes motherhood as currently being in competition with having a career, living a "free" life, etc.

I find this a great "outing" of the Mixed Message Spectacular that women face every day. The medical community is clear: a healthy pregnancy happens 85-90% of the time before you're 30 and only 65% of the time after 35. However, with regard to careers, it turns out that women don't usually hit their strides until they are in the mid-thirties. This makes sense, since getting to the point of seniority in a company or just in a sector (if you're free-lance or whatever) take awhile; getting an advanced degree takes time as well.

Anyway, I wish this was a discussion in the US right now. I mean, in these exact terms, not in a muddled, are-you-a-feminist? sense. I think that one of the reasons that this article struck is the same reason Dutch articles often strike me: they're not trying to pin blame on some entity like US journalism often does. They're not blaming doctors for giving women this message, they're just saying that those are the facts. They're not blaming companies for structuring careers as they do, they're just reporting that it takes awhile to move up the corporate ladder. They're not blaming universities for organizing their degrees in several years' worth of learning, they're just saying that it puts women in a tough position of having to choose one or the other. It's a breath of fresh air for me.

(Article below, for those who can read Dutch.)

*****

Jong moederschap hindert carrière
Van onze verslaggeefster Margreet Vermeulen

Amsterdam - De slogan ‘Een slimme meid krijgt haar kind op tijd’ stamt uit 1991, maar nog altijd is Nederland koploper oude moeders. Van de Nederlandse vrouwen krijgt 45 procent een kind op of na haar dertigste. Bijna 13 procent is zelfs ouder dan 35. Is dat erg? En moet de overheid ingrijpen?

De Raad voor de Volksgezondheid & Zorg (RVZ) komt er niet goed uit. Het woensdag gepubliceerde rapport Uitstel van ouderschap bevat een dubbele boodschap. Medisch gezien luidt het advies: als je kinderen wilt, krijg ze dan voor je dertigste. Maar maatschappelijk gezien is de boodschap: vroege moeders zijn een dief van hun eigen portemonnee.

Vrouwen tot 30 jaar hebben 85 tot 90 procent kans op een succesvolle zwangerschap binnen een jaar. Op hun 35ste is die kans gezakt naar 65 procent. De cijfers zijn bekend, maar volgens gynaecoloog Didi Braat, lid van de van de RVZ, zien de moeders in spe het te weinig als een probleem.

Men is zich te weinig bewust van het risico dat uitstel kan leiden tot noodgedwongen afstel. En men vertrouwt ten onrechte op technieken als ivf om de natuur een handje te helpen. Maar ivf is geen wondermiddel, schrijft de RVZ. De helft van de paren die eraan beginnen, krijgt een kind. De andere helft dus niet.

In maatschappelijk opzicht is het uitstel van het moederschap volstrekt logisch. Het opleidingspeil stijgt. Dus vrouwen volgen langer onderwijs. Daarna willen ze genieten van hun vrijheid. Tenminste, dat zegt 55 procent van de vrouwen die met 30 jaar nog geen kinderen hebben. Ze zoeken eerst een stabiele partner (25 procent), en willen werkervaring opdoen (28 procent). ‘Allemaal rationele afwegingen’, vindt Joop Schippers, hoogleraar arbeids- en emancipatie-economie en een van de auteurs van het rapport. Schippers: ‘Vrouwen die laat kinderen krijgen, ontvangen gedurende hun hele leven 20 tot 40 procent meer loon en pensioen dan vrouwen die op jonge leeftijd hun carrière onderbreken. De werkgever investeert minder in jonge moeders dan in vrouwen die eerst hun ziel en zaligheid in het bedrijf hebben gelegd.’

Volgens Schippers dienen we de keuze van vrouwen serieus te nemen. ‘Het moederschap moet tegenwoordig concurreren met heel veel andere leuke dingen in het leven.’

Bovendien is er grote scepsis over de invloed van overheidsmaatregelen op de keuze voor het moederschap en het kindertal. In Duitsland is de kinderbijslag tussen 1990 en 2002 verzesvoudigd. Het geboortecijfer bleef even laag als het was.

Er is zelfs twijfel aan het succes van het Zweedse model om de combinatie moederschap en carrière te vergemakkelijken. ‘Iedereen ging er altijd gemakshalve van uit dat Zweden een relatief hoog geboortecijfer heeft dankzij het kindvriendelijke beleid. Maar misschien is het wel andersom en heeft Zweden gewoon een kindvriendelijke cultuur’, aldus Schipper.

Tot slot worden Nederlandse vrouwen weliswaar op late leeftijd moeder, maar qua kindertal (1,7 kind per vrouw) zijn we weer een middenmoter in Europa, waardoor de bevolkingsaanwas niet snel een politiek thema zal worden. Het krijgen van kinderen en het moment waarop, blijft de keuze van de individuele vrouw.

Something I omitted...

2007-03-08T08:30:00.000-05:00

I prefer not to bring this up in general, but I believe that it's relevant at this point: I was tested to be in a gifted program when I was 12 years old. I fell 3.7 Standard Deviations above the mean (IQ: 150-160) in reading and 3.5 SDs above the mean (IQ: 145-160) in math. I fell 1.0 SDs above the mean (IQ: 110-120) in writing, which was unsurprising since I was tested two months after moving to the US - English was still a distant and rudimentary second language to me.

People like to believe in and sympathize with those things that make you "weaker" or "less" than others, but they see an increase in IQ as necessarily being a positive thing which doesn't lend well to such support. The medical community has "disorder"-ed and "syndrome"-ed everything they possibly can, but notice that they are all shortcomings. No one realizes that having a high IQ can actually be a very confusing place to be in the world as well - you are just as far removed from the mean as someone who is considered to be mentally disabled. In Louisiana, being gifted actually made you fall under the Special Education provisions, which to me makes perfect sense. As most people know, I find the whole "hey, let's call it a disorder" phase of society a sign of the apocalypse. The last thing I want is another bullshit disorder. But people should know it's not all roses, either.

I think that lots of people misinterpret high IQ. To me, it means that my brain moves quickly. Very quickly. It processes what I'm reading, what I'm seeing, what I'm learning much faster than the average person. It can move that quickly while interpreting or just absorbing several things at once, depending on the individual bits of knowledge. It does not mean that I am mistake-less. It does not equate to perfect scores on quizzes, tests, etc. It does not mean that I always know the answer to all questions. A high IQ does not make me a storage bin for random facts, it makes me better able to process new information or use my old information to solve/deal with other thoughts than the average person. A high IQ does not make me able to "know everything". In fact, the one thing I absolutely can't do is memorize, which is a very common trait of gifted children and adults. I have to understand the information, and then it will be in my brain, but if it's just disconnected facts, definitions, or formulas, without context or derivation, there is absolutely no way it will stick in my brain. Not a chance.

I guess one of my points here is to rail on people who gain immense satisfaction from finding any fault at all with those who have high IQs - or worse, those who went to "better" schools than they did. I feel nervous even typing this, mostly because I feel like, geez, I'll mistype, and someone will go, "If you're so freaking smart, why'd you misspell 'monkey'? Huh?" Trust me, there are lots and lots of people out there with inferiority complexes, and someone who went to an Ivy League school, or someone who claims a high IQ is a great target for their anger and frustration.

So, what does this have to do with the price of rice? Good question. Well, being gifted comes with a few other characteristics, such as:
- A very strong sense of fairness and unfairness. There were moments in my life where something unfair was decided, whether an argument between my sisters or a rift in global politics, and those moments remain branded in my memory. When I think of them, my stomach still curdles, even though some moments happened when I was four years old. It should also be mentioned that I am a super-logical person when it comes to decision-making, so the act of choosing the option that is logically unfair to me is offensive. A great illustration here is that quintessential problem of, "Do I let them blow up a town of 20,000 or 2,000?" There are people who can never get over this, thinking they have to blow up anyone. To me the answer is blatantly obvious: of course you take the town of 2,000, less victims is much more logical. I think that this is also why life decisions are so damn difficult for me, since there is rarely a logically "right answer". There are a few dumb moves, but there are lots of decent paths to choose as well. That confuses me and makes me want to maximize my decision, which necessarily forces me to focus on concrete outcomes rather than picking the best option for me at the time, which requires just a gut feeling and emotions. In other words, I realized that I'm looking at my current decisions in money, practicality, and future pay-off, rather than considering what it is that I truly want to do.

- Mastering something = torturous boredom. I love new projects. But once I feel like I've "mastered" that, meaning I've hit a certain level of knowledge, I get insta-bored. From then on, I really, really can't do anything in that arena anymore. This is obviously a huge occupational hazard, since employers really just want to train you and then have to use that knowledge to do your damn job. That's a hard formula for me to swallow. I thought that academia might be a good place for me because of this, but yesterday one of my friends said, "How do you know you won't get sick of being a professor after a year?" And I had no answer. Sure, my projects would change. My schedule would be flexible, so at least I won't start hurting just from the monotony of getting to work at 9am and leaving at 6pm/7pm/8pm every day. But the point hit home: what if it's still too monotonous? Funny, the thought never occurred to me, but it's an awfully good one. In that case, I'd be much better off picking whatever job has the bigger career ladder to climb, so that I can aim that restless, "I'm bored" energy at mastering the next rung of the ladder instead of leaving and starting at entry-level somewhere else.

- Being told things I already know kills me. I can't stand sitting in a class in which the teacher goes over material I already know. Before I was in the gifted program, I refused to go to school, mostly because of this. I just couldn't sit there and watch them teach concepts and formulas that I had already learned. This makes me a lame candidate for corporate life - I feel like most business lingo is common sense wrapped in a new vocabulary package and then sold to a whole lot of morons who don't realize it's common sense. However, I'm trying to fix this (I've been trying for a long time) - for example, I know how to twiddle my pencil to distract myself when the teacher does launch into a topic I already know.

(Side bar: Anyone who wants to call this ADD or ADHD, bite me. I am of the strong, strong opinion that ADD/ADHD is a behavioral description, but one that fits into other psychological problems, and therefore should never be mentioned by itself. So, it's often a part of being gifted, a part of being traumatized, a part of being a crack-baby. But it should maintain a characteristic of that of which it is a part, not a "disorder" or "syndrome" in itself. If you don't want to die, I recommend that you don't ever argue this with me.)

Anyway, so that's another piece of the puzzle that comes in while I mull over the shiny UW folder, the nervous hope for more interviews, the sleepless anticipation of my currently scheduled interview, and the beautiful 2-bedroom apartment we saw last weekend. That, and my nagging hope for a baby before I turn 35, or even before I turn 30. Somehow, I can't help but feel like someone tossed the pieces from three different puzzles in a box together and then said, hey, do this puzzle. As if all three are suddenly supposed to create one perfectly rectangular logical image together. I need another dimension.

Babies

2007-03-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

"Pregnant" is a dirty word in Ivy League schools. It's easier to get a year's supply of the Pill at Brown than it is to get pot at Berkeley. As much as twenty-something magazines leave you in a constant state of alarm about cancer, and thirty-something magazines target your insecurities with infertility, the Ivy undergrad college experience makes you fear pregnancy even more. (Side bar: I'm sure there are many more colleges with the same atmosphere, but I'm speaking from my experiences so I'm limiting my language a bit. Everyone should be entertained here by my attempt to not make gross over-generalizations and piss off a large contingent of people in one fell swoop - or blog entry, as the case may be.)

Then, one day, you're thrown off campus with a lovely piece of cardstock with some Latin written on it in fancy gold symbols, and people begin to ask when you're going to get married. OK, check, though not without putting up a fight and hating the idea for a few years. And thus begin the baby questions. Wait...I could have sworn I was supposed to avoid pregnancy like the proverbial plague...?

I left Providence with my collection of Ani DiFranco albums, utter confusion, and a stinging hatred for the Man but desperately wanting to be exploited by Him for a signing bonus. And I hated babies. They were in my way physically and emotionally, they were the devils that would derail all my best-laid plans. I strove for a loft-like space with disgustingly modern furniture that wouldn't be able to handle five seconds of little children for fear of getting it dirty or killing them in its height, electrical connections, or small swallow-able parts. I wanted a designer suit and the ever-coveted Manolos. Sure, I entertained the Sex and the City fantasy, though without the single part, since I had already stayed in the same relationship for a year.

It's pretty simple, that fantasy, when you're coming out of a great school with a great degree. I figured, well, I'll get a job that pays a lot of money. Turns out, it's not really that easy, but it's not at all impossible, either. Six years out of college, three jobs and two Master's degrees later, I'm facing exactly that question: do I get that job that pays a lot of money? Not that I've been offered anything like that. But if I wanted to strive for it, I could get there. The trouble is not my qualifications. It's my own will.

The last thing I expected to get in my way was myself. I'm starting to realize that I have two compartments in my brain: the wouldn't-that-look-fantastic part and the that-feels-right part. WTLF likes Chanel suits, Manolos, Jimmy Choos, and loft-like spaces that are furnished entirely in white. TFR likes Banana Republic, the comfort of not-4 1/2" heels, and a nice UWS 2-bedroom apartment. WTLF enjoys sipping martinis at The Hippest Place To Be. TFR enjoys sipping martinis at the neighborhood bar where the bar tenders are closer friends than some of the friends who go to the bar with us.

I own a pair of Manolos which I found on a rack at Off-Fifth for just under $100. I love them almost as much as my cats. Almost. But the idea of paying $500-$600 for a pair of shoes is absurd, though not for the same reason that most people would state. Most people find this ridiculous because of the money they make. Because the idea of making enough money that $600 is just a drop in the bucket is so far removed for them that it's a non-issue. I could aim myself to make that kind of money, and thus be able to afford things like that without thinking twice. That's not the point of life to me. I would feel endlessly guilty leaving people without food, children without educations, and animals without homes if I was wondering about in $600 shoes. I wanted it to be the ultimate meaning of my existence. Oddly enough, I still kind of want that to be my goal. Why? Because it's a hell of a lot easier than what I now realize are my actual life aspirations.

Making a boat load of money is not the hard part, not for someone with an engineering degree from Brown, a degree in quantitative methods from Columbia, five years' work experience, and an analytical brain. I'm not saying that people who make tons of money don't work for it or that it's simple, I'm just saying that for some people it's not at all an option, but for me it is. What much, much harder is creating a balanced and happy life for yourself. As it turns out, that's what I actually want. The only question I have for myself now is, why the hell didn't I figure this out after already making tons of money? It would just be easier that way. You know, those people who wake up one morning and realize that their close-to-seven-figure paycheck is just not that fulfilling and decide to stay home and think about the meaning of life. Lovely, when you have a few million already in your bank account. Not a great realization when your student loans are a good $10K above your savings account balance.

I love having a nice apartment, I love being married, I love having three cats who are collectively almost as needy and spoiled as a toddler. A fun night out is getting a drink or a cappuccino in the neighborhood, not getting dolled up in uncomfortable tops (that don't really fit over my boobs and require sticking things to my nipples that are just plain weird) and drinking until I puke in the gutters of Chelsea. A fun day is going to open houses, musing what walls we'd knock down to create more space in 500 sq.ft. apartments, and sitting together on the couch to watch I've Got a Secret, How I Met Your Mother, or The Daily Show/The Colbert Report.

It's not life without having dinner together at night. It's not "me" to spend $500 on shoes. The trouble is, I'm also not ready to give up certain things. People fulfill this dream of comfortable family life very nicely - in New Jersey. Uh-oh. I think of it this way: I may not want Chanel or Givenchy, but I still want Banana Republic, not Old Navy. I may not want a Soho loft, but I still want to have a family in New York City, and by that I don't mean Queens, the Bronx, or Staten Island (I'll consider parts of Brooklyn - Park Slope is pretty damn nice). I don't want to be an i-banker, with those hours (and, more importantly, those coworkers), but I do want a challenging job that pays well. I don't need the half-million a year I used to covet, but I still want to be making $100K. It seems that this middle-point is much more difficult to achieve than any huge paycheck.

So, back to the choices: grad school, job, and then where do babies fit in any of these options? I need a martini.

Independence? (Part 2)

2007-03-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

So, now that I'm facing the what-the-hell-do-I-do-next decision, I'm really feeling that inability to make any choices without feeling like I'm doing something to society.

- I pick going to graduate school, and I'm dragging my husband 'round the country/world...for what exactly? It's not like this has always been my lifetime dream. To choose graduate school is somewhat of a by-the-seat-of-my-pants, gee-I-hope-this-will-pay-off-somehow decision. It would be tons and tons of fun (yes, I define learning stuff, writing papers, and being tested on it as "fun"), but I'm not sure where it would get me beyond that. And I'd feel guilty about the dragging. It would be a selfish and in-the-moment decision, not a good one to plan for the long run - which would be peachy if I were 23 but I'm not.

- I pick a job, and I'm choosing to be Career Woman. Please, did I ever jump into anything half-assed? The one who can't take care of her household or the kids quite as nicely as the woman who chose to give up her career. The one who puts herself before kids, God forbid, selfish hag. I really don't do things half-way, so if I'm going to start a career, I'm going to build it into an empire. At least in my head. My own personal empire, imaginary CEO Juli.

- I pick having kids, and I've given up my degrees, forfeited all that work on my resume, and the good brain given to me through the dice-rolling lottery of genetics, to bake cookies, sing ridiculous songs, and watch lame TV shows.

These are not necessarily my reactions. But once I realized that these are the reactions of General Society, I realized that I want nothing more than to be free from that, to make my decisions regardless of societal reactions. But I really think that's impossible. The way that I'm supposed to do things right now is exactly in this order:
(1) Finish Master's degree.
(2) Get job, start to build career.
(3) Together with husband's income, buy apartment, take on massive mortgage.
(4) Work on career for about 6 or 7 years, until I'm around 35 years old.
(5) Have babies.
Choose one option:
(6a) Quit career in defiance of feminists, stay home and be a good mother like my mother was for me.
(6b) Continue career, find nanny for babies, be overworked, don't really spend enough time with own children, become the essence of the Modern Woman.

I'm not saying that this path is unattractive. It feels certain, tried and tested. I know the pitfalls, I know the parts that are going to suck (the fact that #5 includes childbirth, choosing 6a or 6b). I know the parts that would be fantastic and empowering (renovating my own apartment, reaching #4). It's just starting to feel bland, like I'm eating pre-cooked low-sodium microwave pasta without meat in it. I live on the Upper West Side, for God's sake - this is the exact same path that 75% of the residents surrounding me are walking. With designer strollers. (OK, I'll admit it. I love the designer strollers.)

It's hard to figure out what should be planned and when you can just be spontaneous. I've planned every freaking detail of my life, packing lunch, making weekly menus, and surrounding myself with endless "To Do" lists. I'm OK with that, but for some reason it doesn't feel OK to have kids be part of that endless planning. Ironic, when financially, children are really the only thing that should be planned meticulously. Why can't I push that need for spontaneity on to doing something appropriate for someone in their twenties? Like, going on a sudden vacation with husband? Going to a bar on a weeknight and dancing and drinking? Buying something totally fashion-forward? But, when I really try to remove all societal norms, none of those things seem really "me".

Independence?

2007-03-06T09:07:00.000-05:00

When you're a woman in today's society, at least in American society, it is nearly impossible to do anything without being mediated by societal norms for women. Any choices I make are immediately (and for most, subconsciously) put up against the norms and judged to be "feminist", "head-strong", "weak-willed", or "giving up". Studying engineering put me in the "you go girl!" category - if any female teenagers feel an ardent need to please their school/parents and if those two entities are at least semi-liberal, I guarantee that mentioning interest in math or science will fulfill this purpose quite nicely. Liberal people love girls in math and science fields like really conservative men love barefoot pregnant women at home cookin' dinner.

Now, it happens to be the case that I do in fact love math. And I'm not saying that girls who hate math and suck at it are lying through their teeth and pretending to love it. I'm just saying that it becomes difficult to tell how much I like anything when it's constantly being filtered through the lens of "you go girl!" - or, when it's not math or science, the lens of "but you have so much potential in areas like math and science".

Again, I'm not complaining. I'm positing that society makes it much more complex for women to determine their niche, since every choice they make is judged against being "womanly" or not, "lady-like" or not. And I can't say that I don't fall into the trap of liking it, too. I enjoy the double-take I get when people hear that I have a degree in engineering. A repeated recent conversation:
"Oh, you're in school? Where?" Half-paying attention, not really listening, making conversation because the situation calls for it.
"At Columbia." Smile, nod, try hard not to make this statement go up at the end like a question, people hate the "have you heard of it?" insinuation if you went to an Ivy. I learned that after Brown.
"In what?" Continued half-attention. Semi-acknowledgment of Columbia, in a "I know that stop on the 1 train" way.
"Quantitative methods."
"Mmm." Auto-response. Then, wait for it...the response actually sinks in. Eyes widen a little, attention is now as close to 100% as it gets. "What?"
"I'm studying statistics in social sciences, like research methods."
"Oh my God. I totally failed math in high school/college/middle school/..."
And every time, it makes me wonder if the men in my program receive the same response.

I am really easily manipulated.

2007-03-04T10:51:00.002-05:00

On days that I go to my Sociology class, meet with my Sociology professor, or do my Sociology homework, I'm totally going to Seattle.

On days that I go to my Stats classes or work on either of those sets of homework, I decide to screw social sciences and just want to study something 100% math.

Today, I'm reading a book for my Soc class and studying for both Stats midterms. In other words, I'm totally conflicted.

Maybe I'll go to open houses, just to keep my eye on the prize. The prize of getting a job, not going to grad school. This is complicated.

Oh no, the glossy folder arm-twister!

2007-03-04T10:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I received the ultimate arm-twister in the mail: UW's glossy, glossy folder with nicely organized hand-outs and a sweet letter detailing exactly how much cash they want to give me. Their logo is on the outside of the folder in all its gold embossed glory. Inside, they state that I'll get around $1,500/month throughout the school year, $1,300/month for summer months, they'll pay for my tuition and all other fees, and I'll get an extra $3,000 fellowship just 'cause. In Seattle, that's a decent amount of cash, considering a 2-bedroom apartment is like $1,000/month, and I'd be splitting that amount with Russ, anyway. Oh, happy smiling people on UW hand-outs. Why must you play with my emotions?!

I still haven't figured out how it would even be practically possible to move all our stuff and three cats cross-country, since it takes 21 days to get "stuff" cross-country. But that aside, let me continue to contemplate my reflection in the purple folder for a few minutes.

Since option 5 didn't work out...

2007-02-28T13:30:00.000-05:00

...here's option 6: study Computer Science.

OK, I hear the laughter. I hear the "God, Juli, how many !@#$% subjects are you going to consider before you give up already?" I hear the "Juli, isn't it time to have babies or something?" I even hear the "Juli, you're totally nuts."

I'll give you a moment to wipe away the tears of enjoyment. But now seriously.

What I really, really enjoy doing - what I could do all day at a job (funny that I never really thought of it that way) - is solving puzzles. I'm really good at maximizing solutions, whether it's social or practical puzzles. I love the problem sets I get from any math class (Calculus, Linear Algebra, Statistics) - time just flies by when I'm working on one of those. I started using R for my statistical analysis, and programming R is fantastic. Those are the only "projects" where time just disappears.

Does that make me a potential computer scientist? Maybe. It's a big leap (especially at 27), so I'm finding out as much as I can about the field before I delve into yet another new area and then discover that it's not completely right for me. I need the applications to be interesting - I really, really don't want to end up making web pages for a living - and I need the work environment to be right for me - I can't sit in a corner all day and code. I'm starting to get the idea that these things are in fact possible and that I have a very stereotypical image of computer scientists in my mind. Or at least, I picture the programming side of things. The algorithmic side? Very different, from what I gather.

I took a basic C++ programming course at Brown, but I took it second semester senior year, at which point I can't say I really cared enough to master a whole new discipline - especially when I was quite sure that consulting would be my one true career love. I know I need a work environment that can be collaborative, because I love to talk as much as I love to sit in a corner and solve puzzles - though blogging is an excellent substitute (which is a whole 'nother problem, really).

Anyway, I started reading a book called Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing, by David Harel. No really, I did. For fun. And it's fantastic. I makes me miss Applied Math a whole bunch. So, now that everyone is gagging, I'll stop typing. Gag away, my friends, but option 6 remains: find a job and take CS courses on the side. And maybe, just maybe, apply to grad school for CS, instead.

Option 5.

2007-02-27T22:20:00.001-05:00

Win the $216 million jackpot from the New York State Lottery. Yeah! Nothing like deciding your future by odds of 1:175,711,536.

Now.

2007-02-27T11:26:00.000-05:00

All the previous posts lead to Now. I went into graduate school this year, thinking that a PhD is my only option. I can't survive in the Business World (hereafter referred to as BW). BW has no vacation days and no mercy for sick employees. BW doesn't let you get up every ten minutes to go do something totally different. BW isn't flexible; it won't let you go home for Christmas. BW doesn't respect lunch time, or dinner time, or any time that is yours and not BW's. Right?
I just don't know anymore. I clearly can't take my grad school acceptance just because they'll let me have lunch. OK, that's an exaggeration. But you get the idea. I have ended up with many options, no answers, and some of those options not really options yet:

Option 1:
U. of Washington, Seattle
Pros: Excellent PhD program, doing the same combo of course work I'm doing right now: methods and sociology. Supposedly a nice place to live. Nice people (grad students and professors). Easy to be employed upon graduation - everyone needs methodologists. They really want me there. I would most likely really enjoy my five years there - I do "being in school" well.
Cons: Not New York City. Need to move husband, three cats, and 450 cubic feet of stuff cross-country. Ease of employment does not mean having a choice of location: I'm not particularly thrilled to have to consider Assistant Professor positions in Tennessee or Iowa.

Option 2:
U. Penn, Philly
Pros: Close to NYC. I know profs there, I know profs who went there, I know a bunch of people who lived there. Great rep, since it's an Ivy. Tempting to have four Ivies on my resume (ok, that's just shallow).
Cons: Not New York City. Not as methodologically focused as UW. Not really an option yet, because I haven't gotten in yet - I'm a little ahead of myself. I'm thinking, let me just prepare in case it becomes an option, so then I'm ready. I know I'm a control freak.

Option 3:
Job (several potential options here)
Pros: Cash money, which will enable a search for real estate investment. Good for resume. Good to see if I can, in fact, potentially survive in the business world or if I actually can only live happily ever after in the sheltered world of academia.
Cons: Shitty hours, for most places in NYC that pay decent money. Shitty vacation days. Fear of quickly going crazy, having to report to the same freaking cubicle every day at the same time and leave at the same time. No more 10:30am Sculpt classes at my gym. Having to most likely deal with people I can't stand.

Option 4:
Laze around for awhile
Pros: TV is entertaining.
Cons: I would go crazy after two days.

OK, so Option 4 is out of the question. But the others are open for debate. Oh, and if anyone dares to say something to this effect of this being an exciting time for me, I will run you over with my imaginary car.

On top of all the options is the reality, too: it's not really a decision of Pros and Cons and weighing them out. It's a decision of what seems important to me. But why do those things seem important to me? I really want to buy an apartment right now. Why? Is that rational? Probably not. If I say that I gave up a fully-funded acceptance to grad school because I wanted to get a job right now so that I could buy an apartment, I would be regarded as, well, totally nuts.
Plus, what does come first? Me? Husband? Cats? Grad school? Money? Having kids? Having a career? Owning an apartment? How am I supposed to make that decision?

And that brings you mostly up to speed.

Gender politics...?

2007-02-27T11:14:00.000-05:00

I was raised with Legos alongside Barbies, with wooden blocks and My Little Ponies, crossword puzzles, chess, and fairy princess dresses. I helped my mom with cooking and my dad with power tools. I learned to sew and I learned how to operate a circular saw. It was arguably an incredibly gender-neutral environment.
I was never explicitly told what to choose by my family, whether to have babies or to become CEO. But as I went through life, especially during six long, draining, painful, and relatively self-destructive years living in the Deep South, I learned what the real deal was: I was expected to go to college, find a great career, be successful in a monetary sense, and have babies, take care of the house, and run my family. Not that this is a new and different claim; I would say that most educated women face this conundrum, the endless dichotomy of your own life.
It never really hit me, the irony of the people who would say, "you go girl! be an engineer!" and then ask "when is it your turn to have a baby shower?" I was always encouraged to have a career: I imagined my life after college as a stone-faced woman in a black powersuit, sitting in a harshly lit conference room eating Chinese take-out at 10pm. I imagined pushing my emotions aside, kicking everyone in my way to the curb, and charging forward, down the long road to a corner office with a view of the park, or the river, or whatever was most coveted.
I am a competitive person. I learned to play boardgames with fervor. I don't want a job, I want to be in charge. I don't want to be an Associate, I want to be CEO. Or do I?
Do I really want to sit in a fluorescently lit office? Do I want to eat Chinese food? Hell, do I even want to eat dinner at 10pm? Do I want to wear a suit every single day? I never really, really thought about these questions until about three months ago. That means it took me 27 years and nearly 19 years of education to realize that I had never truly contemplated what I wanted to do when I grew up.

A 17-year-old decides

2007-02-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

As a senior in high school, one must decide which path to take. It could have been worse: I could have lived in a country in which you make these sorts of decisions way earlier than age 17. But it wasn't so great this way, either. I set my sights on engineering, and, lo and behold, I got in. Everywhere. All six schools: Brown, Georgia Tech, U. of Wisconsin-Madison, U. of Illinois-U.-C., Wash. U.-St. Louis, and Northwestern. All but Brown gave me ample scholarship money. And, after visiting, I chose Brown.
Of course, I don't regret that choice; I loved being at Brown. The point is more that my major/concentration was an ill-informed decision. I never stepped back and thought about what I was going to do at Brown and what the point of studying engineering was. In my family, it's clearly a given that you go to college. But why? I had no idea, other than that it's just what one does at age 17 or 18.
Engineering is not for me. I love math. I don't understand physics or chemistry, not even the basics. This should have been abundantly obvious to any adult at Brown, but apparently it wasn't. And that could very well be my fault: when I am convinced of something, I can't imagine being put in the place of changing my mind, nor realizing that it seems necessary to do so. I have a strong, strong will.
Plus, everyone was soooo excited that I was a woman studying engineering, it just made feminists jump out of their seats with joy. You don't need a man! Good for you, you go girl! You start your career and work your way to the top!
I managed to convince them to let me write my own concentration, combining art and engineering. It was supposed to be like industrial design, although after studying that exact subject at Delft, I knew that wasn't for me either. I graduated with a fantastic degree and no knowledge of anything vaguely useful to any company. So I began my career in IT.

One of the original ideas

2007-02-24T10:33:00.000-05:00

At one point, I decided that I should become a professional translator. I spoke two languages...I was half-way there (sort of, with lots of incorrect math). Anyway, in Dutch a translator is called a “tolk”. It's pronounced a lot like “dolt”. Perhaps it was just the idea of a business card with “tolk” on it that subconsciously pushed me to drop this brilliant plan for my future as well.

Background Information

2007-02-09T11:06:00.000-05:00

When I was three, I decided I wanted to be a paleontologist. In the throes of boredom, I had read an encyclopedia of dinosaurs and decided that I wanted to study these creatures forever. The idea of something being here and then not here anymore, not at all, was ridiculously fascinating to me. I told my mom, who dashed my hopes for the future by telling me I would have to wear khaki pants and a matching shirt and dig in the desert all day. A whole khaki outfit? No way, I said, and that was the end of my Dinosaur Dream.

Woman with angel wings

2006-03-10T12:35:00.000-05:00

On the 1 train, I heard operatic singing coming from the 72nd St station. I turned to look just in time to see a woman dressed in a white gown wearing silvery angel wings, belting out hymns. The look on my face must have been hilarious, because when I turned back a woman across from me was cracking up. I wasn't sure where to look. I love New York.

V-Day (rated T for Teen)

2006-02-14T20:00:00.000-05:00

Ah, V-Day. The commercial mecca of Hallmark, Whitman's, and flower shops everywhere. In New York, the public-ness of everyone's lives allows a glance into the V-Day experience across ages and socio-economic classes.

The 1 train gave a great overview of people's lives on this beautifully fabricated day. I got on the train and saw a ridiculously large number of couples - generally, commuting at 8 AM is an independent sport. I also saw a larger-than-usual amount of bling; earrings, rings and bracelets, usually covered up with gloves and scarves, were hanging out for all to see.

Then there were the teenagers. I spend all day with teenagers, so I notice them immediately and am very dialed into their "thing" - I also find them an interesting breed in the first place, regardless of my job. Wow. So many nervous, horny guys. So many nervous, giggly girls. So many single roses, sweaty hands, anxious glances... You wonder what plays out when these kids find the object of their affection in the hallways, at the train station, or even in math class. What happens?

At the end of the day, there were many, many guys on the train with flowers or decorative bags that were absolutely not assembled by the bearer. Good for you guys. Go get 'em.