I've got the SAHM blues

Am I like the last person on the planet to figure out that being a stay-at-home mom freaking sucks?

And now that I said that, I have to disavow it, or apologize for it, or declare my love for my children because seriously-- who says that? Who does not wake up each day grateful for the 12-ish hours she gets to spend alone with her offspring before help arrives? Who does not treasure each nose and ass wipe? Who does not get down on her hands and knees and thank the powers that be for the opportunity to spend her day moving the sofa to dispose of the huge pile of snacks that fell behind it?

Back when I was a perfect mom-- you know, before I had kids-- I didn't think I would have any problem splitting the childcare and housework 50/50 with my perfect partner, dropping my lovely, non-snot-encrusted offspring at their super cool Montessori-based daycare center, and swinging through the drive-thru Starbucks on my way to work.

Did I forget about the woman I nannied for in college who worked her ass off to provide her girls with things like oh, I don't know HEALTH INSURANCE while her husband slept one off downstairs? How could I forget her and how beautiful she was, all held together with coffee and lip gloss and a weekly nail appointment that might have been the only 45 minutes she sat down or took a deep breath ever. How could I forget how fast she would come home if her baby had a fever? Or how late she was on the days she'd try to swing by baby gymnastics? Or how hard she worked to find the perfect show-and-tell object for her older daughter? The thing about this woman was, she didn't make it look easy-- she let me see how hard it was to be a juggling mom. But I was so self involved, so focused on squeezing in one last cigarette, a Frapuccino, and a pack of gas-station cinnamon rolls on my way to work that I didn't realize the juggling was hard for everyone. I didn't realize that when I called in hungover, this woman was SOL, had to answer to her younger, childless, male boss, had to work from her cluttered basement office with a toddler there to help. The cleaning lady used to leave pages and pages of handwritten notes detailing what she cleaned while the baby and I sat around and made new messes, and the mom would read these reports with a frown and some sighs and would sometimes re-clean something, muttering all the while. I thought she was nuts, and if my life were a movie, I would have been instantly transported from this uncharitable assessment to myself a couple months after jack was born stomping around my own house and calling Ben to yell at him so he could call and yell at the cleaning lady (who came to my house twice a week, not once every two). Because nothing was ever clean enough, because maybe I could control just this one tiny delegated task while everything else, my work, my body, my two-year-old's behavior spiraled out of my control-- but I even delegated the yelling.

The thing is-- I studied mothering ideologies and the work of mothering through history. I should have known what I was in for. I should have known that the work is never 50/50 because one person's job is worth more money, and one person has boobs that make milk. But the minute I first held tiny pink Harry, thoughts of tenure track jobs and daycare centers, and lugging my breast pump to campus flew out of my head. He was a baby-- my baby-- and how could I be away from him even for a minute? So I just wasn't-- not really. Same with Jack, even though I stupidly imagined myself teaching days after his birth.

The thing about these tiny pink people is that they grow up. Form opinions. Talk back to you. Make messes. Refuse to listen to what you say-- but actually store every single word, every syllable, every breath. They depend on us completely, and what if we let them down?


The part that pisses me off the most is that I am supposed to be grateful that I get to be there for them. Wait-- no, that's not it-- the part that pisses me off the most is that I AM grateful to be home with them. But I still think it sucks. No offense, guys, if you're reading this.

What? You don't let your kids roll around in the dirt in their pajamas?

I always thought that my dissertation was keeping me from enjoying my kids.

You know, because I was always thinking about it, worrying about it, feeling guilty for not spending time with it when I was with them.

If I just had more time to spend with them without the pressures of deadlines and revisions, I always thought, I would be the most awesomest stay-at-home-mom EVER.

I know it's only been one day that I have stayed at home without the shadow my dissertation, but so far, I am not the June Cleaver I thought I'd be. More like Peg Bundy. Or Roseanne.

Tomorrow, though. I have high hopes for tomorrow.

Harry asked if we could bake a pie, and I said sure. The only problem?

I don't know how to make a pie.

Gradgyation

I trotted into the official party robing room behind the graduation stage about ten minutes late, a little breathless, on hot pink satin stiletto heels. In the official party robing room, I found a crowd of serious big whigs. A nobel prize winning chemist. A scientist who founded mycology. THE preeminent gender historian. The chancellor. A whole bunch of deans. And some heavy-hitting professors picked to escort these super smarties. None of the people in the room seemed too keen on my "oh my gosh I am so silly and dizzy and kind of a flighty little mess" routine, but that's my default holy-shit-I'm-nervous-and-feel-very-self-conscious-and-out-of-place coping mechanism, so eff them, you know?

I might actually be getting a bit too old to pull this act off, now that I think about it. Compared to the REAL doctors (MDs), all of the PhDs looked ancient. When the med school students began to file across the stage, the dean sitting next to me said "Would you let any of these kiddos operate on you?" I cracked up because I had just been thinking about how creepy it would be to see one of their babyfaces peering at me between the stirrups, you know?

The secretary of the faculty was super annoyed that I was late-ish (I had to leap from the moving car and scamper into the Kohl Center waving my letter that told me where to go and asking anyone who looked official where the hell the platform party was assembling), but he found the time to squeeze in some quick onstage directions.

I measured my head with a downloaded paper tape measurer from the bookstore's website, but the measurement was (surprise, surprise) not accurate, so I couldn't wear my mortar board and instead had to wear a poofy hat. It was silly looking and a bit tight. Also, it smelled.

I was pretty nervous, but I felt so ridiculously out of place on the platform with all the important people that I just sort of leaned up against the dean of the College of Letters and Sciences and the fabulous historian who was escorting Joan Scott (the two people I was wedged between) and enjoyed the show. I was so excited to meet Joan Scott, by the way. I gushed, and I am not a gusher. As the ceremony progressed, several women crossing the stage stopped in front of Scott and said things like, "Thank you," and "You made my work possible," and she didn't even know them-- it was super cool.

Then the chancellor introduced me, and my stomach lurched.

Ben got some fantastically bad pictures of me on the jumbotron


But this one is really cool-- my speech was captioned on the jumbotron, too.

Another of me speaking-- this time with a few less chins.

The speech was fine-- I was a little wigged out because the mic sounded so echoey to me and I was afraid that I got the angle wrong or something, but when no one scurried up to fix it, I figured I was okay, but by that time the speech was almost over, and I was already to the dramatic part, so I kind of missed it.

When I got back to my awkward seat, I noticed that in a typically classy move, I knocked a stack of super lame doctoral candidate business cards all over the stage as I gathered my notebook on my way to the podium. When I got back from walking through the march line and getting my (empty) diploma folder, I noticed that either the nice dean or the famous historians had stacked them up for me.

Looking super pissy about something

My parents

Yayyyy!!! Finally off the stage!!!! (Although, I did have an excellent view of some odd and unsettling shoe/pant/maxidress choices as people filed past me across the stage).



My dear friend Maegan, who entered the program with me, came back from Seattle where she lives with her awesome husband Dave, for graduation. I love that we got to share graduation, since we shared a wonderful advisor, life as broke grad students for a few years, and all the ups and downs of dissertating.



I am not sure if these pictures show how HAPPY we all were, but oh my gosh-- bliss! I have been a bitch on wheels for weeks, and as soon as my speech was over, I felt so much nicer and calmer.


We went to a charming French restaurant and had a phenomenal dinner complete with personalized menus and a ton of liquor and just like college, my dad drove us home.




Ben put this huge sign on the living room wall-- he's the best.

Which is an understatement. He has been unbelievable this week. He got me a sweet mothers day gift, an absolutely fantastic birthday present (two actually-- one for each ear), and the most gorgeous graduation flowers. He took the whole week off so I could get my dissertation deposited, and he did all the house and kid work perfectly. He threw a party for Maegan and me at our advisor's house today, and he ordered my favorite cake (chocolate with buttercream icing that calls me a doctor).

It's hard to imagine a better week!


When I handed in my dissertation on Thursday, in between calling the graduate school in the early stages of hysteria and demanding to talk to the dean because I was concerned about my page numbers being off by a quarter of an inch, I had to put finishing touches on my document like a list of acknowledgments and the dedication page. Here's what I decided on for a dedication:
To Ben, without whom I'd have nothing to dedicate and to whom I will always be dedicated.

I thought I'd tell all of you since the chances of anyone ever opening my dissertation and reading the first page are pretty slim. Ah, the glamour of the academy.

Speaking of glamour, here I am ringing in my 31st by blowing out the candles on my breakfast cake.

Not that kind of doctor

I had the WORST hair today. It was seriously ridiculous-- flat generally, but my bangs stuck straight up no matter what I did or how many time I squeezed them between the plates of my Chi, so I had to scrape them back with bobby pins and all these little fly-aways escaped and poked out at ridiculous angles. Bad news bears.

My department likes to really ramp up the tension at defenses. I walked into the conference room to find five of my committee members waiting for me. We made awkward small talk and sat around an oblong table. Then my advisor entered the conference room from her super-secret department chair's special door and made us all switch our seats-- Robs on one side, Judies on the other and people whose names began with the letter S on the ends. Weird, but pleasingly symmetrical.

Immediately after convening the meeting, my advisor sent me out of the room, so all the professors could talk about the best possible way to freak me the hell out with their questions. I sat outside the department office for half an hour and got lots of pity pep talks from passing faculty and grad students. When I finally got to re-enter the hell room, I had to give a 5-7 minute talk about the past, present, and future of my project. I figured I could totally wing it (since this project has been dominating my every waking-- and many of my sleeping-- moment(s) for 6 years), but I drank about 4 too many iced coffees and totally lost my shit and rambled excitedly until I said something stupid that sent the whole room frantically thumbing through their marked copies of my work.

After explaining that the questions would just flow organically from the conversation, my advisor asked the first question, which was supposed to be a real softball-- what's the thesis of your project? I totally biffed it. The thesis? I had no effing clue. From the sound of my answer, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept. I even said something out of left field like, "Or that's what I would say on my blog anyway," and not only did nobody laugh, they were all looking at me with such sympathy that I blushed. What's totally ridiculous is that one of the Judies had JUST said to my advisor while I was nervously hunkered in the hallway that I totally nailed the thesis.

I valiantly wrested my head from my ass and managed to speak in complete sentences that made some kind of sense the rest of the time. There was even LAUGHTER and GAIETY, which I was so not expecting. I have to format it correctly and write some acknowledgements, and fix a few sections in the fifth chapter and the conclusion and go through the rigmarole associated with actually turning it into the grad school, but otherwise, I am done with my dissertation.

I think I might have post traumatic stress syndrome or something because I feel very nonplused.

I cannot even imagine a life without dissertation guilt. I think it might look something like this:

**Nervous laughter** **Twitching** **Increasingly frantic primping**

Hi there. It's me. Sarah. Freaking out about my dissertation defense. Which happens at 1:30. Today. Gulp.

Poor Ben. I have been a freak show and a half all weekend long. To explain my erratic behavior to Harry, I told him I had a big meeting at work, and it was a little scary. He asked if there would be ghosts, witches, strangers, or bad guys. When I told him that none of those things would be in attendance, he told me I should not worry.

But here I sit. Worried.

It's finally ice cream season here, and Jack is a big fan. Of whatever I am eating-- the cute little kiddie cone we ordered for him? Not so much.

Jack also experimented with a little pudding

He looooooves bagels, too.


Hmm-- that's it for newish phone pictures. Katie just called and distracted me by talking about normal, non-dissertationy things, so that was awesome. I keep posting really pathetic, attention whoring status updates on Facebook and am enjoying all the nice comments I was fishing for. I think I'll clomp down to the bathroom and futz with my hair for awhile.

This is thrilling stuff-- my navel looks great from this angle, by the way.

Heartbreak, doggy style

I really didn't want to blog about this because it is really just too sad. But since the whole craziness will only last 72 hours, I thought I'd jot it down so I don't forget or do something that stupid ever again.

On Monday night, we got a puppy. A 4.875-pound, fawn-colored beagle/pug mix (I called her a puggle on a pet message board and got flamed to hell and back for promoting a designer brand that causes people to hate regular old mutts and leads to the senseless deaths of thousands of abandoned dogs every year) that we inadvertently bought too young from a backyard breeder. We were too ignorant to realize that you should not buy a puppy advertised in the paper, that dogs should be 8 weeks before you bring them home (not 6), and that people touting "puggles" were irresponsible breeders in general.

Harry named her Sweetie Pie, and you can see why.

We all fell in love with her


Except Jack, who looked like he wished he had a crate of his own to escape to.

Ben and I didn't even mind getting up every two hours with her while our babies slept through the night-- that's how freaking sweet she is. But we did notice she was having some stool issues. Tuesday afternoon, we took her to the vet to find that she has worms of every kind-- 2 kinds that the kids could catch. The vet told us that given the ages of our kids, the dog's worms and probable future indoor poop accidents, and her extreme youth, we might be better off calling the backyard breeder to see if our Sweetie Pie could go home to her mommy.

Ben takes her home today at 4. I am going to take the babies to Build a Bear and bribe them with stuffed dogs.

Harry is heartbroken, which makes US heartbroken. But I am an owner, he said when we told him she had to go home. But she is so cute, he told us. But I love Sweetie Pie. We told him it was a doggy play date and that Sweetie Pie is sick and needs her mommy and that he'll get a new dog-- which is true. We are on a waiting list for a border terrier breeder in our area who might have puppies ready in October-- we're going out to meet her dogs sometime soon.

Harry thinks it might be okay that he'll get a different dog, but he hopes it has a cape like Bolt this time around. I am glad I don;t have any video of the puppy nipping at his Crocs while Harry proudly leads her around the sidewalk on her red leash.

Surprise your 2 year old with the puppy he's been clamoring for and then take that beloved doggy away two days later? Sounds like top candidate for Mother of the Year.

Relaxing in my post-Little Gym glow while one naps and the other hangs out with dada

I was just sitting on my teeny little deck having an idyllic cup of coffee when a crow the size of a microwave landed on the chair next to me. I screamed so loud I may have woken Jack from his nap, and then I tried to run through the screen door to get back inside.

Pretty.

Harry and Jack were not actually out there with me, as Jack is sleeping and Ben and Harry are on a mission to buy teeny little tiny soccer gear because Harry starts playing his first team sport next month. This is their picnic from a couple days ago-- I love feeding them outside, but if I cleaned it up better, maybe freakishly sized birds would leave me alone, huh? They had strawberries and mixed veggies on their plates, but they ate them first because they are awesome.


So. We had a lovely realtor come over the other night and give us her big marketing presentation. We were totally on board until she got to the part about how much houses in our development are selling for. I looked at her spreadsheet and jabbed at the two most recently sold townhouses and gulped, "Shouldn't there be another zero?" Then I looked at the third most recent sale. "Oh," I said. "This one sold for a ton of money!" Ben told me gently that that was OUR condo when WE bought it. Over 2 years ago. Then I almost cried because I have no poker face. So. Let's never speak of moving again. Really, since our HOA rules say only 4 people per unit, I guess living here makes all future fertility decisions pretty easy. Silver lining.

I have always judged people whose older babies drink from bottles. Serves me right that my Jack-Jack is still attached, huh?


I took Harry graduation dress shopping last weekend. He brought along some Silly Putty. And stepped in it.


Yesterday, I tried to cover my grays with a box of color-- a box of color that I snagged at Target with a cartful of screamers demanding we hit the toy aisle and that I thought was demi-permanent but promises to stick around a lot longer and is red, not brown. Oops. NO pictures of that escapade. Also, I am suddenly really glad that I get to wear a silly hat at graduation.