A Thought on Birth; or, Wow, that must hurt like hell

No, I'm not talking about giving birth - though don't doubt for one second I'll be shouting at the top of everyone's lungs for an epidural (or 18) if I ever get pregnant. I'm talking about being birthed. 

While laying (or is it lying? I know, Pepe, I should know this) in bed last night, the beginning of the snore-a-thon starting up beside me (okay, Brad's not that bad, but he does snore off and on), I started to ponder how a baby must feel during the whole process. This is most likely on my mind b/c my cousin's wife had their first child yesterday - a little boy, as-yet unnamed, 4 weeks early (he's totally fine!), 5 lbs. 15 oz., 18" long - and of course one of my first questions to my mother was, "Was she in terrible pain?" 

But what about the poor little person who squeezed through an impossibly small space, his head doubtlessly being smashed on the way? Ow. And if his arm or leg got stuck here or there? That must hurt like a mother. I don't know much about the process of birth (read:  really anything at all about it) except that it's gooey, intense, and painful for the mom-to-be. I'm guessing, as well, that it's not super pleasant for the little one either. 

I posed this to my mother this morning. Her response:  "Well, we don't remember the pain, so . . . . " My response:  "Yeah, and when a two year old falls and hits her head, she doesn't remember it either. But she cries b/c it hurts pretty bad." There Mom had to agree. 

Another thing I don't know about is the whole why-babies-cry-when-they're-born thing. A few ideas come to mind: 
     - crying is what babies do 
     - the world is awfully cold/loud/bright (can they even see when they're first born?) 
     - they're hungry 
     - they miss their warm, snug womb 
     - they're already lamenting the fact that you can't pick your family 
I could go on and on, as I am wont to do. BUT, I'd like to suggest that maybe they're crying b/c they hurt! 

I'm sure countless people out there who are more informed than I on this topic (this is likely about 89% of the population) can explain to me all the ways in which I am wrong. That's par for the course. But since no one can prove my hypothesis wrong (I believe my theory professor called this nondisconfirmability), I'm sticking with it. 

And I just have to say, it's a sucky thought that we enter the world in pain. But - and to think that Brad calls me a pessimist! - if things start out that lousy, at least there's a good chance they're going to improve.

Decorating the Weird Spaces

If yesterday was Thrift Shopping Saturday (I just made that name up), then I guess the day before was JoAnn Fabrics Friday. (How very alliterative of me, I know, I know.) While the former hurt the wallet less, the latter proved more successful. Regardless, both helped us get a little closer to "completing" what I'll call the "weird spaces" of our house. 

First, the dining room cabinets/counter. Our little dining room has some really cool cabinets - top and bottom, with a counter in b/t - but the space from the counter to the top set is about 20-24 inches and really hard to decorate. I think, however, that I'm getting there. This pretty lady from JoAnn’s set me back about $11 (on sale from $19.99 to $13.99 plus a 20% off coupon), but she's worth every penny: 



We found a sister (well, this might be a brother - ?) for the vase (is it a vase?) at the thrift store. She/he cost $10, which is a ton for the thrift store (everything was half-off except white tags; guess what color everything I wanted was), but I saw jugs that looked exactly the same at the antique store last weekend, and they cost $18-$35+. 

Now look at the fun way one side of the counter is shaping up (please ignore the color-less walls – everything in its time, everything in its time): 



The makings of a dining room counter 

Next, the living room window/windowseat. This puppy is smack up against a not-actually-built-in-built-in. So close, in fact, that we had to place the curtain rod holders in such a way that we couldn't actually make curtains work with the rod if we tried. (It is, as you'll see, gone.) As for the windowseat - which P.J. the girl kitty loves - it still wears the cover the former owners made/had made for it. That's all well and good, except it doesn't match our furniture. At all. (And it's gross.)  

The sweet beasts pretending to be friends . . . 
(P.J. on the left; her brother Fuzzy on the right) 

I've searched and searched for drapes for this window (the back living room windows are curtain-less by our design), planning to buy an extra one to turn into a cover for the windowseat. The problem, however, is that not a whole lot coordinates with our plaid chair/ottoman and the green couch and loveseat and the goldy-toned walls. Let's just say it ain't been easy. And then . . . 

I found this amazing Ralph Lauren fabric at JoAnn's: 

Eleanor Floral - Khaki, Lauren Ralph Lauren 

I think it's love!  

Or at least adoration. The fabric's pricey - $34.99 in store, $39.99 online – but, like most fabrics at JoAnn’s, it’s 50% off this weekend for President’s Day; add that to another 20% off coupon, and we’re talking $14 a yard for some lovely, high-quality upholstery fabric! Now that's a good deal and a price I can live with. 

Next task: convincing my mom that she can sew drapes (b/c I sure can’t). 

How to be Happy in Grad School

That title is misleading. It suggests I'm about to offer advice, words of wisdom, a mantra, something. But I'm not. (Coincidentally, I first typed "Grade School"; I probably could offer a bit of advice about being happy in grade school, since that time was, all things considered, a reasonably happy period in my life.) 

More appropriate titles and/or responses might be: 
1.  Can someone tell me how to be happy in grad school? 
2.  Is it possible to be happy in grad school? 
3.  How do you define "happy"? 
4.  When you say "happy in grad school," do you mean during the moments you are physically in the physical buildings in which your graduate education occurs? or while you are in the ontological state of "in grad school," as opposed to "in the workforce"? 
5.  And then of course there's the epistemological issue of "Would you even know if you were happy? How?" 

(Impt. note:  such terms as "ontological" and "epistemological" are used purely for mockery of grad school. I don't actually talk like this. Ever.) 

Joking aside, I'd sure like to know if anyone's got a winner of an answer. I'm not, by any means, saying I'm unhappy. But I don't think I can say I've met one person (myself included) in a long time who, when asked about grad school, would respond, "Yeah, I'm happy." And it's not just people in English departments; history, French, and philosophy grad students aren't any different. For my part, I've had a headache for three days straight.

If sh*t pops off, who's the bigger threat: Zombies or Vampires?

To translate:  if the world starts going to hell in a handbasket, which form of the undead is more likely to be the culprit? 



Smokin' hot vampire Kate Beckinsale 



Some zombie guy 

I feel like the answer to this question is obvious. So does Brad. ZOMBIES. 

But, somehow, Shannon has managed to argue that werewolves are "just as likely as vampires" (and by this she means "not likely"). And while I've shot this down with a semi-logical argument (that she thinks is bunk), she has caught my attention with, "What about robots?" Her attempt to introduce aliens into the conversation, however, has been vetoed. As Butcher so eloquently put it, Aliens are a trump card. Therefore, they don't even count. More specifically, the rules for fighting aliens are simply too uncertain and preparation for an alien invasion is nearly impossible. (Though I'm open to hearing arguments on this.) 

My claim for zombies as opposed to vampires (and yes, I am actually having this conversation with people in an English department over the course of several days) goes like this. If vampires exist, they have - according to vampire lore - existed for hundreds of years. There's nothing to suggest that they would all of a sudden show an interest in taking over the world when, by my estimation, the forces/weapons/technology that are available to fight them grow daily. Basically, if they were gonna kick some hiney, I believe they'd have already done so. Probably a long time ago. 

Zombies, on the other hand, are a modern invention. They'd be coming about now and spreading like a plague now b/c they just started existing whenever things went wrong in the lab. Or whatever. (I confess I am not a zombie buff, nor am I a vampire buff. But we did watch two of the Underworld movies again the other day. That served as a nice refresher.) 

This is not a new question for me - Brad and I began discussing this during the summer when, on our walks around the neighborhood, we noticed quite a few squirrel and bird carcasses. The work of zombies? Who can say. But this is obviously a legit question (and funny as hell to argue about). And we're not the only people who are interested; there's even a book about surviving run-ins with zombies. 

Perhaps the best addition to this ongoing conversation was contributed by a professor in my dept. I asked her, "So, if stuff starts popping off, do you think it will be vampires or zombies?" Her response: "Well, vampires don't disintegrate. Their body parts don't really come off." No, that's not what we meant by "popping off" . . . .

Random Memory: Not being asked out on a first date

We met:  during the second week of classes my second semester at college; he was a junior, tall, charismatic, and (looking back, I realize) moderately full of himself (haha); we'd been smiling at each other for a few days across the room; I wore a tight shirt and a skirt, black clunky heels and tights; it was an upper level lit. course on James Joyce; our professor had just played the film version of "The Dead," and, as class let out, I wiggled quickly past people to be leaving the room at the same time as him: 

     Me:  "That movie was terrible." 
     Brad:  "I thought it was pretty good." 
     Me:  "Oh." 

I'm nothing if not sauve. 

He asks me out:  After class now, standing outside in the mid-January cold; laughing and leaning into each other; he offers to read my fiction some time, I decline vehemently due to embarrassment; then, 

     Brad:  "There's a reading tonight, in Bloomfield, some poets, a bunch of us are going." 
     Me:  "Oh, that sounds awesome, but I'm going home tonight - I have an appt. for a haircut." 

A month later:  Now we've been dating for, well, a month; we're cuddling at his apt., fully absorbed in beginning-relationship-bliss, that amazing species of feelings; we're trading compliments, probably of the "I loved it when you" variety: 

     Brad:  "I loved that you didn't change your plans that day we met, like, that you didn't cancel your hair appt. just to hang out with me." 
     Me:  "I guess it didn't even occur to me - it's not like I was being all kick-butt independent or something. I obviously would've really loved to go with you though." 
     Brad:  "Go with me?" 
     Me:  "To the reading. You know, like to go on the date with you." 
     Brad (laughing, shocked):  "I wasn't asking you to go with me! I was telling you about it so you could like, take the bus over, and then I would see you there. I wouldn't have wanted to get stuck being there with you the whole night if I didn't like you." 

Ahh, now that information will put a damper on the romantic story you tell your grandchildren about how you and Grandpa met.

On waiting (in the academic world)

In early November (of 2010), I submitted an article to a journal for consideration for publication. And by "article" I mean a completely unrevised paper from a seminar that I took last spring. I did this on a whim (literally, I was bored and Brad was napping on the couch diagonal to me), fully believing the paper would be rejected quite quickly, but maintaing a glimmer of hope that it would be, if nothing else, at least sent by the editor to reviewers and maybe I would get some feedback about how to improve it. 

(You might well ask why I didn't, before sending, use my teacher's feedback to improve, and you would be right to ask this. I could, however, only respond with a very unsatisfactory answer: laziness. That is, if it turned out the paper was too terrible to even be sent to reviewers, I didn't want to bother spending any time at all on it.) 

I guess before coming to my point (which is always a long and digressive task with me), it would help to explain the process of publication (or not-publication) in a peer-reviewed journal. Although journals vary, the basic rigamaroll looks something like this: 
    1.  you submit an unsolicited article (either via an online system, e-mail, or snail mail); 
    2.  an editor of one form or another makes an initial judgement (reject it or send it to reviewer/s); 
    3.  reviewers, who are experts in the particular area of your article, are invited to read and "score" your article; and 
    4.  based on the reviewers/ scores, the editor makes a decision about your article (reject/accept/accept with revisions/revise and resubmit). 

This process can take anywhere from 5 days to maybe 6 months. (The first place I ever submitted an article to took three months to reject it without even having sent it to reviewers. That same article was then accepted by a different journal in five days - of course, I had to stop wallowing and send it out again first, which took me a few weeks to do.) 

The waiting room at a doctor's office:  a fitting metaphor for 
the academic world, ugly decor and all. 

The present article/paper/potential piece of nonsense, is at a journal that has a typical 6-8 week response period, a factoid I got courtesy of the MLA Directory of Periodicals, that dear dear database. For some reason, I was expecting 8-10 weeks. But yesterday marked week 14. And since about week 8, I've been checking the status an unhealthy (obsessive?) 2-3 times a day. 

Currently (and for the last week and a half), my diamond-in-the-potentially-really-rough is in the reviwer's hands (or, rather, his/her inbox) and my online status on the journal's site is "awaiting reviewer scores." And although I probably shouldn't, I'm taking it as an encouraging sign that the editor sent it to a reviewer in the first place. I mean, with the other one, I got rejected at the first journal with as little fanfare as possible. Except for the whole THREE MONTHS thing (yes, I'm still seething just a tad two years later), which in my waiting-to-hear-from-PhD-programs-and-therefore-going-insane-and-hating-the-world mind, was all kinds of fanfare. 

So, basically, waiting sucks. And it sucks even more to wait with your hopes up when at least half of your brain is telling you that your writing stinks, your ideas stink, no one wants to publish your stupid paper, and, oh! by the way, you're never gonna get a job if you don't put out at least one more article before graduation (which, admittedly, is a long arse way off). 

And I've come to the conclusion that working in academia is all about waiting:  waiting to get through coursework to do comprehensive exams; waiting to pass comps to get to writing the dissertation; waiting to get through the diss. to find that ever elusive first job in a super crappy market; waiting to make that first job a sure thing by getting tenure . . . and on and on and on . . . .

Second-hand shopping on Saturday = fun

Yesterday Brad and I scored some yummy goods at the flea market/antique store down the road. Nothing too big - we spent a grand total of $27 - but some fun stuff nonetheless. Since I am super thrifty, both as a function of necessity and personality, finding delicious deals is in my top 10 favorite things. Deals on clothes, deals on shoes, deals on food, and definitely deals on stuff for the house - I love them all. 

And I love working on our house. We've got a hundred imagined projects; 30 or 40 we'll get too eventually; and about 10 in the works (like the half de-wallpapered powder room. Now that's an ugly sight). Adding little things here and there, a picture, a vase, some thrift store dishes is a fun way for us to indulge on a budget and a tight schedule. 

But I would be lying if I said I didn't suffer from what Melissa over at The Inspired Room calls "magazine cover-itis" (http://theinspiredroom.net/my-house/). (Loving her blog, by the way.) Like, I swear if I start drooling over the most recent Pottery Barn bedroom/bathroom catalog one more time . . . But, I'm trying - I'm trying to live in the moment and enjoy what we can do, and even more so, trying just to enjoy the fun of creating a space we love (and, finally, a space with a window in the bathroom!) 

Above:  my favorite find from yesterday, a bluey-green bowl with speckles inside ($11). We're thinking of this color for the dining room table. Like it?