Sweating the Small Stuff

So I finally gave in and hired someone to clean for us. It's made a huge difference in my stress level . . . with work and caring for AC and keeping the household running, I'm always thinking about what I need to do next. You know, where you walk into a room and think, "Oh, that windowsill needs to be dusted" and then "I should put AC's folded laundry away now that she's awake, and then fill the basket with our dirty clothes and take it downstairs" and then "Man, I've been meaning forever to find a place to put those desk copies" and then "Oh, I need to remember to thaw some more frozen sweet potatoes for AC when I go back to the kitchen" and soon "What did I come up here for?"

It had gotten to the point that I was constantly feeling overwhelmed and scrambling to keep on top of things, and I felt like I needed to outsource teaching, caring for AC, or cleaning--and of that list, cleaning was the obvious thing to go. The woman we hired is friendly and cleans hard and fast--there's a lot of banging around--and she's thorough in some ways that I rarely get to, like polishing the sink each time, and so it's way better than I would have expected from a student or someone. On the other hand, of course, she is somewhat less uptight about things than I am (no surprise there), like cleaning the floors--I wash the floors thoroughly and always refill the bucket continually as the water starts looking dingy; she more just dampens the mop to get the dust and keeps going. But it's still a huge help in keeping things under control, and it's resulted in my just checking off a whole list of things under the category of "L will do that when she comes." So in that sense, it's great.

The one issue that has arisen is that we agreed she would come for three hours, and for the past two times, she's shown up over half an hour late. I don't want to be all Nanny Diaries, but it does seem like a big difference, considering that we didn't ask her to clean the basement bedroom and bathroom because we didn't want to ask her to do too much for the timeframe we had agreed on. I still would feel weird about saying, "Hey could you do this too" since I hadn't originally described it as part of the job, but I also feel a little annoyed if I do find things that she didn't do very well--and I definitely wouldn't feel that way if I felt like she had given us the full amount of time. Then I'd just figure, well, she did what she could. I mean, part of me feels like I should just be really grateful that she's cleaning my house, which I am, but which also makes it uncomfortable to complain. I don't think I am very comfortable with having staff (tee-hee).

The Sleep Diaries

Wouldn't it be nice if a post titled this way could just be blank because all that had happened was, well, sleeping?

Alas, Allison Clare's sleep has become a bit of a problem lately. We enjoyed a nice period when she first began sleeping through the night from 9:00 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. or so.  But gradually she started going to bed earlier and waking up for one night feeding.  We hung out there for a long while, with her sleeping from 6:30 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., with one quick night feeding around 3:30 a.m. Overall, her extended night sleep made this schedule pretty humane.

After she went onto a regular diet of solid foods, however, her sleep deteriorated from there--the opposite of what we'd been told to expect. She still went to sleep at 6:30 p.m., but her night feeding moved earlier and earlier . . . and then there were two.

A few nights ago, I thought perhaps I should try not feeding her and just soothing her to sleep and/or letting her cry a little, in case she was what they call a "trained night feeder" (one who is eating due to habit, not hunger, since at her age she shouldn't be waking twice to eat).  No dice.  She cried off and on from 4:30 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., stopping only when I'd pick her up and soothe her, but building to hysteria if I laid her down. I finally just decided to feed her, and she practically lunged for it. 

I was really puzzled; she had generally been a good sleeper and quite capable of putting herself to sleep, but we were now (at eight months) back to where we had been when she was about two months old.

So I called the pediatrician and spoke with their very helpful advice nurse. She thinks our poor little Munchkin is just not getting enough to eat during the daytime.  This theory makes sense when considering that her sleep has gotten worse with the introduction of more solid foods--while she's eating two solid "meals" per day, it's all fruits and vegetables so far, and as she's begun nursing less, there's less milk for her at each feeding I think.

So, our new plan is to stop starving our baby so that she has to awaken crying from hunger at night (my poor, poor babe--what she has tolerated from her newbie parents!). I've bought some oat cereal to mix with her fruits and vegetables, and we've reorganized her feeding schedule to fit in an extra meal.  She was thriving according to the growth scales, but perhaps she just needed "a little something" more.  We'll see tonight!

Boycott

I am so completely disgusted with our bookstore right now. They send us very urgent messages pleading with us to submit our book orders for spring classes (which start at the beginning of February or end of January) before Halloween. In an effort to be a good citizen, I tried submitting my form, but kept getting an error message. Hence the following exchange, which reveals how incredibly little they care about making it possible for us to do what they so badly want us to do:

----------------
From: Me
To: Bookbuyer
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 1:49 PM
Subject: Book adoption form

Hi Bookbuyer,

I've tried several times (8? 10?) to add books to my adoption form for next spring, but after I enter all of the information and try to submit it, I get an error message. The message says that the page has a programming error. Just wanted to let you know there may be some kind of problem with the page . . .

Best,
Me

------------------
From: Bookbuyer
To: Me
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 2:22 PM

It is probably a problem on your end as I have received numerous book orders on the online form. You should call IT and let them know so that they can fix the problem on your end and you can submit your orders online.

Thank you,
Bookbuyer

-----------------
From: Me
To: Bookbuyer
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 2:31 PM

Bookbuyer, the problem isn't with sending the form in--that I could do fine if I had entered all of the books at once, or if I had only one book. But I can't continue adding books to the form by clicking on the "add book" button. It's definitely not on my end--the error message says that it is a programming error on the page itself.

Me

-------
From: Bookbuyer
To: Me
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 2:31 PM

OK, but you still need to call IT. The bookstore has nothing to do with the actual web page that you use to submit them. I can only retrieve them on my end so I don't know what could be wrong.

--------

So I get that Bookbuyer is not a web developer, but doesn't she even care? Is it really true that the bookstore has "nothing to do" with the website they tell us to use (that is, do they have less to do with it than I do)? I'm so disgusted that I'm considering joining my husband on his bookstore boycott and just having my students order all their books online. The prices are better, as is apparently the service.

Facebook "Friends"

In those boring days just before AC was born (waiting and waiting, with too many false labor epiosdes to go anywhere, and too much belly to do anything), I got hooked on Facebook. Mainly, it has been fun to keep in touch with people I already know--it's an easy way to hear what's up with friends from college and grad school, and to see pictures of my new little nephew, for example.

I'm somewhat incognito to people from the distant past because I've only used my married name, and I wasn't looking for a networking angle, so I don't feel obligated to accept friend requests from people whose motives I suspect, such as a friend's ex-girlfriend whom I only met once, years ago and awkwardly, who requested friend status but blocked me from seeing her own information. Real life has enough social obligations, so I'm willing to let myself be more brutally realistic on Facebook: I was never going to be friends with her.

The sole exception is students. As a rule, I accept friend requests from students, but block them from seeing my status updates. I figure there is no need for them to know that it is Party of Five reruns that are keeping me from answering their emails at 11 pm on Wednesday night when they've skipped my office hours and the essay's due.

Many students, however, have no similar compunctions about their own Internet privacy, and I now know far more than I meant to know about one of my first-year students, a dear fellow whose recent status updates have told me:

Saturday afternoon: P is listed as in a relationship.
Sunday morning: P had a glorious night/evening.
Monday morning: P is listed as single.
Monday afternoon: P is going through some things and needs some time.
Monday evening: P is listed as in a relationship and it's complicated.
Wednesday morning: P went from "it's complicated" to "single."

Poor guy!

Taking a Stand

Shut-Eye's Over

Allison Clare awoke at 4:30 the other morning and only slept off and on afterward.  Given this fitful night's sleep, we were both pretty tired by the time her morning nap rolled around, so I decided to let her sleep on our bed and have a rare nap of my own, stretched out next to her.  After about 35 minutes, I was sleeping hard, but apparently, she had decided naptime was over; I was awakened by tiny fingers prying my eyelids open.  

Definitely the cutest alarm clock I have ever had, even if it does go off totally unpredictably.

They Call It Loss Because You Have to Grieve It . . . Right?

Okay, so this is totally embarrassing, but what else are blogs for if not gratuitous revelations?

My general bliss has been threatened the past couple of days by seeing some video Sam and I took in May of 2007 when we were working on the house, and realizing that I have definitely lost a TON of hair. 

I started losing gobs of hair when I was in college, but I had so much that it really didn't show much for several years.  Then I went to a dermatologist in grad school, who had nothing very interesting to tell me except to try minoxidil, which I did, skeptically but regularly.  I didn't want to use it while pregnant or nursing, so I stopped when I found out I was pregnant, but the state of pregnancy itself kept me from losing much of any hair for a while.  In fact, it wasn't until around four months afterward that I really started losing hair. 

And then, man, did I lose it--both the pregnancy hair and, presumably, my several years' worth of ill-gotten pharmaceutically enhanced hair (if you don't keep using it, you lose all the hair you've gained or maintained while on it).  I lost handful after handful after handful, big clumps, while taking a shower at night or combing it in the morning.  The bathroom floor seriously looked like someone had just had a haircut when I was done brushing it.  At one point, for the sheer freak-show value of it, I took a digital pic while on the phone with JS and emailed it to her, finding some kind of morbid gratification when she gasped. 

So, by now, the hair loss has slowed if only because there's not so much left.  When I look at the pictures, it's a shockingly noticeable difference--my hair gave the impression of being thick before, and it's now quite thinnish, plus receded.  And there's a strange, rather wide fringe around my hairline of short hairs that haven't quite given up the ghost but can't quite manage to grow out anymore, so I imagine the worst is yet to come.  It's ridiculous how dismayed I am--it really says something about my character that this is what evokes feelings of solemnity and moroseness.  Alas.

The Unexamined Life . . .

. . . Socrates said that it wasn't worth living, and thither goeth only one of the many differences between me and Socrates.

Fittingly enough, as soon as I had the above sentence written a while back, Allison Clare started crying--we think her upper teeth are coming in--and that was the end of my ruminations. Subsequent attempts have been similarly foiled.

But anyway, as I was saying:

My life prior to Allison Clare's arrival and my marriage to Sam was marked by its quietude, and my spiritual life had a strongly contemplative component. I remember whole periods dayslong where I did not speak to another person as I painted the various rooms of my old house during school breaks. I was busy--at times much busier than I am now--but I had a lot of privacy. And by that, I don't mean that I had a lot of opportunity for secrets; I mean that I enjoyed during that time a gift of self-determined time and space.

Given how much I enjoyed it, it's been surprising to me that I've missed it so little. Every day, my schedule, energy level, and lists of tasks curve around the schedule, energy level, and needs of this wiggly little person, from being awakened by her cooes or cries in the morning to checking the volume of the baby monitor by the bed before going to sleep. I grade with her on the couch next to me waving a teething ring, write lecture notes with her on my lap reaching for the keyboard, pack her off with me to pick up copies at the office; I plan dinners that can finish cooking by themselves while I put her to bed at 6:30; I coordinate every extra meeting or conference with my husband so that we can hand her off between us.

Maybe it's all a function of those hormones (whose potency I'll never doubt since they reorganized my body to grow an extra set of bones and organs, right down to fingernails and a full head of hair, then decided when it was done and began moving things back to more or less their original state. More in some places, and less in others, to be fair. Not that the whole thing was anything more than billions of women have done. I'm just saying: new one for me personally.). But I feel like I've been on some really great drugs since Allison Clare was born, with a perpetual sense of contentment and wellbeing in spite of the lack of sleep, constancy of work, and new list of cares.

In part, this sense of ease in the world makes me feel, as I started to write, way less contemplative. Which could be good, as I was prone to what JS called "Eeyore-ish" phases in my prior state. In those moods, the lacunae in my faith were laid bare, as if it were a piece of knitting I'd been working on and spread out for the first time to discover, to my dismay and sometimes shame, tons of dropped stitches, with all the world looking on.

I don't miss those times, but feeling wrapped in warmth and oxytocin-induced coziness, I wonder about what faith means, or should mean, now. It used to mean intense contemplation, identifying where things had gone wrong, unraveling and reworking the yarns of my character. Yes, it was self-absorbed, but in the way that physical therapy is self-absorbed.

Now seems like a time decidedly not for that practice of examen; it's a time to be present, to rejoice in the wonder of my little girl's discovery of the world--the scritch of her tiny fingernails on the corduroy of the big chair where her dad once placed a ring on my finger, the little gasp of delight she gives when reintroduced to a favorite book or toy, the triumphant beaming grin when (with a little help) she stands up for the first time each day.

Before we had the baby, I once told Joan and Frank that I was hoping that it wouldn't change everything completely. I guess they enjoyed that remark a lot afterward, between themselves--and they probably still do, as they are good-humored, long-memoried folks. But I think I still have the same desire, in a sense. Not because I don't want the experience of having and loving Allison Clare to transform me utterly, but because I also don't want to lose those many things I loved and worked and prayed for before. Perhaps it's partly just a matter of trusting, or hoping, that all of those old stitches hold.

Resolution

So, my students wrote their responses to the questions. What would they like more of, or what would help them in the class?

• They would like me to tell them what is going to be on the quiz before they do the reading.
• They would like me to tell them what parts of the readings to pay attention to.
• They would like less reading.

I think I am going to take doughnuts or muffins in to my other classes next week, just to thank them for . . . not being like this class.

Actually, to be honest, I like teaching students who are new at college--some groups just seem to have a harder time at realizing they're not in Kansas anymore.

Dispirited but Not Despairing . . .

If I may be permitted to complain a bit: 1) a good student in one of my classes plagiarized an essay, and lied all wide-eyed, innocent, and fake-casual when given the opportunity to admit to it (in conference, I asked, "Were there any sources you consulted that you might not have cited?" Oh, no, of course not.) and 2) another whole class is slowly imploding. I ask them open-ended questions, like "What stood out to you from last night's reading?" and nobody responds. That could be okay--some classes just aren't too talkative in discussion. But then I assign them written work, and they literally sit there and don't work on it. I've tried just about everything I can think of: I give them freedom in what they write about. Or I provide them very specific tasks. I cold-call them. I invite them to check their grades, some of which are hovering at about 45%. I have encouraging conferences with them. But it all ends up back at the same place.

As an indicator of how it's going, here's an example: I've taught maybe 60+ courses, and it's pretty common that classes will respond lamely when I first say, "Good morning." But I have always been able to get them to respond when I cheerfully say, "Hey, you guys can do better than that . . ." or "Wake up, everybody! Good morning." Then they laugh and reply with more energy, and things get off on a better foot. But with this class, they literally refuse to return a friendly greeting even upon a second try. Argh.

The nice thing about it all, though, is that I'm learning to respond somewhat differently to their torpor than I might have in the past. I've been teaching now for 11 years and am in my fourth year as a professor. I had a "successful" intermediate review last year, which means that my department is satisfied with what I'm doing. Maybe for the first time, I don't feel like my students' performance in this situation is going to reflect on me except in ways that are relevant and justified. And I think in some larger psychological sense, my marriage to Sam gives me a level of personal security that means I don't feel quite as unmoored and vulnerable in the world.

So, tomorrow is another day. My students are handing in a big assignment, and it's almost midterm, so I'm going to ask them to write on two questions: 1) What would they like from me to improve their learning experience in the course? And 2) What can they each do themselves?

And if that doesn't work, well, the semester seems to be speeding by . . .

Daddy Fashion

this one is for Brenda . . .

Me: Hi, Munchkin, I'm home! Come here and see your mommy.
Allison Clare: Gurgle, gurgle, coo.
Sam: Why are you laughing? What? What?
Me: Nothing . . . it's nothing.
Sam: I can't see your face when it's buried in her shoulder. What's so funny?
Me: Oh, it's just . . . these snaps down the front of her onesie are supposed to go down the back.
Sam: Oh.
Me: And this embroidery? It's supposed to be on the chest, not the back.
Sam: I wondered why the back of the shoulders was so elaborate. And why, when I was changing her diaper, the crotch on this one snapped so far in back.