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.

Mama PhD

I know I should be using my time at work to prepare for my defense, but I am not sure exactly what I should be doing. My advisor mentioned that I might want to be prepared to answer questions about one particular area of research that I know absolutely nothing about. So, yeah. That’s reassuring. I have been spending some time reading current literature and trying to bring myself up to speed, but then I start thinking it is silly to try to master an area in the less than two weeks (holy crap) before my defense, so I just sit at my desk and twitch.

Today I worried about swine flu and then ate 2 lunches.

Time well spent.

I have been reading for pleasure for the first time since Jack was born, and when I saw Becca mention Mama, PhD, I rushed to the library to get a copy. It’s a collection of essays written by women academics who have kids/have contemplated kids while getting their degrees and trying to land tenure-track jobs and secure tenure.

At first, it really was a pleasure-read. I started it at the gym on the elliptical, and I worked out for over an hour because I was so engrossed in the essays because I could have written them. Being too unwieldy to sit in desks or slip between shelves in the library! Yes and yes! Feeling joyous that the baby I carried was a little boy because I was swept away on a tide of joy and affection emanating from my rowdy male undergraduates who suggested I name my son after them? Yes—that was so sweet! Wasting precious dissertating time daydreaming about being a mom and letting myself become consumed with household projects? Oh my gosh—that one was so fun I did it TWICE! Killing myself scheduling night classes, writing in coffee shops, and scraping together snatches of childcare so the baby could stay at home and stay with me as much as possible? Oh yeah.

But there the similarities and warm fuzzies started to fade. A lot of the authors are now divorced, and in veiled (and not so veiled) ways, they laid blame for the fate of their marriages at the base of the ivory tower—its sexism, its obstinate imagining of the ideal worker as an unattached man, its ability to painstakingly theorize the body while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge real bodies, real people, real women struggling to juggle research, writing, babies, husbands, the simultaneous ticking of the tenure clock and the biological clock. Many of the authors carried resentment toward departments who turned their backs on pregnancy, wrote off women with families, and just generally made pregnant women feel like interlopers. Some women left academia all together for jobs in the private sector, or freelancing work, or staying home and raising more children. None of them was happy, really, in the way I always thought all academics were happy—fun job, flexible hours, supportive colleagues, fascinating work, outpourings of professional respect, you know THE LIFE OF THE MIND.

After reading the book, the first thing I wanted to do was quit my job and get a new one at the mall because I have always liked retail and those women understand the realities of work and childcare in practice and never in theory (because nothing could be more removed, more ridiculous, more asinine than theory at the mall) and that’s just the way I like it because I am a critic after all.

The second thing I wanted to do was hug everyone in my department—and that’s saying a lot because if you know me, you know that I am so not a hugger. My professors and fellow graduate students have never written me off because I have babies, and they have been nothing but welcoming, understanding, and helpful. Need to bring your baby to a staff meeting? Awesome, let me push the stroller. Need to nurse your infant in a staff meeting? Creepy, but whatev. Coasty sitter crapped out and your kid needs to come to our conference panel practice? Rock on—oh watch out, he’s got some scissors in his mouth. My office wall is literally papered with kid pics, and the credenza in my office is full of teething rings, baby wipes, and diapers in a too-small size, and that’s okay with everyone. When I bring Harry and Jack to campus, everyone’s arms are outstretched, and everyone beams. When Harry and Jack are not with me, my colleagues just talk to me like a grown up, not like that girl in our department who is a mommy. But it’s not like they’re purposefully avoiding family talk or that entrance into the scholar club demands that you check your family commitments at the door, as some of the authors in Mama, PhD lamented.

Until I read the book, I thought this supportive climate was the norm. After I read the book, I realize I am so lucky. Or, maybe I am just oblivious, and the baby-wearing and breastfeeding freaked everyone the freak out but they didn’t want to get sued?

When I wrote my graduation speech, I was shocked to discover that it was a speech about love. I came here for school, but I found love everywhere. I fell in love, too, with this place, its people, its ideas. With my building and its audiovisual classroom equipment that was cutting edge in 1986. With the graduate library and its echoing stairwells, dusty stacks, and seriously effed up call number system. With the Starbucks by the parking garage that I’ve been going to for 6 years and still can’t remember to avoid immediately before and after undergraduate lectures and where Maegan and I used to occasionally split a cigarette, back when we were young and stupid and could smoke indoors.

I’m not sure how I will juggle scholarship and childcare as my career progresses. Someday, I might want to have another child, and I’ m not sure how that will fit in. Because I am married and my husband has a career outside the academy, I am not sure if I’ll ever go balls-out on the job market because I might not ever be able to move just anywhere. I do know that I love my life—maybe not everyday, but definitely today. And not just because I am not home with the kids today—although those stay-at-home days get on my last nerve. Yesterday, I told Harry if he didn’t stop ramming the chaise into the wall, I was going to be really mad. He said, “No you won’t. You’ll be sad and call Dada.” Touché, little man, touché.

Home Crap Home

Two years ago, our townhouse did not feel like the upside-down albatross it does today. Two years ago, we only had one child-- a 9-month-old baby, and we were so darn proud of ourselves for joining the ranks of homeowners. We were shocked, really, that we could buy this place, and we had so much fun painting the walls and picking out floors.

When we moved to this town, we were b-r-o-k-e. The week before we moved, Ben won $900 on the gambling boat in Peoria, thereby tripling the amount of money he had to his name. I was pulling in 4 figures as a first-year doctoral student, and Ben was armed with an MA degree so new the ink hadn't yet dried on his diploma. We moved into an apartment complex that in retrospect was really scummy but that charmed us at the time. (We really dug the two skeezy pools and the stagnant swamp in the middle of the grounds that masqueraded as a pond. We were stoked about the goose-crap covered tennis courts, too.) The day before Ben was to start a job as a suit salesman at a department store, he got hired as a marketing assistant to a local insurance salesman. The day before THAT job started, he got his first real job-job as an admissions counselor at an online college (that has since become an online university and still employs Ben as an assistant professor in his spare time) and left the insurance guy high and dry. (I will never forget the snarky email he sent scolding Ben for his unprofessional conduct. A real people person, that guy).

Slowly, things got better for us financially. Ben traded up jobs a few times, and I began to collect a salary in the mid-teens (LOL). We moved to a less scummy apartment complex for awhile, and then we took advantage of the ridiculous mortgage programs that eventually broke our country and bought our first house, erm, condo.

And there, or here, we sit. How long we'll sit here is uncertain. Until the walls bulge out from the pressure of all the freaking toys we have crammed inside? Maybe. Until we say screw it and take a hit on the sale of our very first house? Hope not. Until the market rebounds and we can maybe break even? Who knows when that's gonna be.

I really do feel bad complaining because I know our situation could be a billion times worse. But ever since we got the bad news postcard from the tax assessor's office last week, I have sort of hated my house. Which is unfair, I know. It's not my house's fault that there are too many people and not enough bedrooms and too much crap and not enough storage. And knowing us, the amount of people and crap we sustain would just grow to fit the confines of a new house. Then we'd have to buy a bigger house and amass more people and things. We're like goldfish, growing to fit the size of our tank.

Except these guys. They're like monkeys.

Chalk-hoarding monkeys

Pointless (now there's a title that makes you want to read more)

Oh this kid.

On the one hand? Awesome and hilarious. The other "morning" he woke up at 3:30 and trotted downstairs (where yes, we were still sleeping in our living room). Ben was like, "Dude, Harry. You can't come out of your room until the sun comes up." Harry looked at Ben, put his fat little hand on his hip, and said, "Dada. I don't think the sun is accurate."

On the other hand? Total pain in the ass. Constant bullying of his roly poly brother. Constantly querying "Where's my milk?" or "Can I have some more black bears on the couch?" (his name for Teddy Grahams). Constant demands to "watch tee-ee downstairs on the big tee-ee." And the tantrums. Oh, the tantrums. He also uses his Buzz Lightyear laser all the time (Note: this is not a real laser. He crooks his arm like Buzz in the Toy Story movies and pushes an invisible button while screaming "Dooodododododoooooo." It's more annoying than I can articulate.) At Little Gym last week, I said, "Harry, we don't laser our friends." Then I felt like a ginormous douche bag for saying something like that out loud.

Then there's this guy.

He has a mad crush on phones these days and clamors to talk whenever one rings. He is also talking more, and he has a really deep voice for a baby. He says Harry, Jack, Dada, no, yeah, baba, night night, ball, book, down-- but NOT MAMA. He is also still sleeping in the master bedroom. All by himself.

He hates to have his diaper changed but loves a good poop, and he is a voracious reader (Seriously. He tears books UP).

It's funny because all of our friends keep asking us if we're going to have another baby soon, which is not an odd question considering I got pregnant with Jack right around Harry's first birthday. But, um. NO FREAKING WAY. Maybe in like 3 or 4 years. But that's a huge maybe.

You may be asking yourself Sarah, what the hell? Does your post have a point? The short answer: No. The long answer: No. No it sure doesn't.

Oh! I finally bought a graduation dress. It's nothing special, but it does have my two favorite characteristics: it fits me in a stupid small size, and it was on sale. What it looks like is totally immaterial.

OH MY GOSH! My little brother Jon just called me, and he is speaking at his law school commencement!! How cool is that?? Yay Jon!