Seattle, Here I Come!

So:  headed to Seattle for big writers conference tomorrow.  Very mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand it means (a) seeing my college roommate, (b) seeing a good friend who moved earlier this year, (c) meeting someone who blurbed my book, (d) lots of books, (e) running into people from grad school, (f) potentially hearing some great writers, (g) probably going to some very bad panels, because sometimes very good writers say very stupid things and it sort of makes me wonder about how panels are actually selected.  Also means (h) sleeping in a hotel room without my son.  But given a three-hour time difference and wicked early flights, I'm not sure how much sleep I'll actually be able to get.  Regardless, bringing the Lunesta..*

Last year I was still nursing, so this conference involved a lot of pumping and general annoyance, not to mention anxiety about being away from Tiny Boy.  I'm still somewhat anxious, now that he's old enough to understand what all this means (potentially, that's good, too).  I also don't entirely trust my mother in terms of her ability to navigate all the night nonsense.  That is, I hope I come home to a boy sleeping better, or at least the same, not worse.  Because if it's worse, I just might die, and I'm only being mildly hyperbolic.  In the past week, he's done everything from sleep all night in his own crib to wake me every two hours, but mostly I've been waking at 4:00 (regardless of his business) and I'm at the point words aren't making much sense anymore. 

Anyhoo.  I'm going to go clean my house and pack some things, because I need to leave the house before 6:00 am...




* I have another post brewing on my reading of Gayle Green's Insomniac and my experimentation with sleep medicines, the upshot of which seems to be that barring valium, to which I have zero access without Dr. Gorgeous and embryo transfer, plain old benadryl might just be the best thing for my sleep.  At least Lunesta didn't keep me AWAKE.  More on that later.

The Winter That Will Not Die

At 8:30 when I dropped off the kids it was nice.
At 10:00 it was snowing like crazy.
By 12:30 it was raining.
And now there's a thunderstorm.

Good times.

Small Good Things

(I actually started this yesterday and I don't remember what happened...)

1. Oh, circa 2009, LG made a very quotable observation (you can probably find it in the archives) that went something like mom, Burger King is good for kids and grownups.  kids can play and grownups can work on their computers, which is what they want.  Well, we took Tiny Boy to Burger King today.  She escorted him through the habitrail thing; he had a blast; I commented on student writing.  We have entered a new era.  French fries were a bonus.
2. I fell back to sleep for an hour at about 6:20 this morning (bringing sleep total to a whopping 6 hrs), which was good, since yesterday was what I have started calling A LOST DAY.  I am thinking entirely too much about sleep.  But I found a memoir--how did I not know about this?--called Insomniac that I just requested from the library.  You know, because there's not enough unread library books on my nightstand.
3. I made this egg-pork-broccoli pseudo-omelette thing with leftovers from dinner.  Yum.

A few more from today:

1. Last night I slept most of 9 hours, minus the three (?) wakings from the boy.  I felt human today.
2. Shoveling with and pulling Tiny Boy on a sled.
3. Game night with LG after her brother went to bed.

The Opposite of Delegating

I'm feeling...overwhelmed.

I know this is a cyclical thing.  It's my week teaching my co-taught class.  I have a lot of setup I need to do for the end of the semester in both classes.  There's a ton of admin stuff that needs doing, largely because I've been putting it off and I can't do that anymore.  I've got a conference coming up*.  The kids are off from school for Pres Day, which involves cobbling together childcare arrangements (not totaling my usual hours).  LG has a gymnastics meet coming up.  It was her birthday this week.  Valentine's Day.  Yadda yadda yadda.

But.

The kids don't pick up after themselves.  One of them is 2, so expected.  The 10-year-old?  Well, she's a pig.  So either I pick up after her or I have to NAG her all the time.  Reward charts don't work.  Natural consequences don't work.  Mostly we're in a vicious cycle of NAG.  And I'm in a similar position of powerlessness in my admin job, where I delegate things to students or other faculty and they don't do it, or they kick it back to me in various ways, or I have to NAG them to do it, all of which is more annoying than just doing the tasks myself.  Or, I get all kinds of email that basically positions me in the middle of the people who want something:  case in point, I had an email exchange that probably took ten minutes of my day because somebody wanted money for something and I had to get the person who actually PAYS for things in my department to do it.  And this is just one small example of a major pattern.  It's a lot of minutiae and keeping track of other people's minutiae.  Which I'm good at.  But I'd like other people to be good at it too.

Now I'm going to make potatoes.  And read for class.  Because I was too busy dealing with the details today to finish reading for class.  (Yes, most of the time I do the big things first, so occasionally all the smaller nonsense needs to be dealt with.  And I don't meet with other humans at 8:30 at night...)

Okay.  I feel better.  Thanks.


* If there are any writer types who read this who will be at AWP and want to meet up, well, I might just be game.  Lemme know.

A Decade

I have been a mother for 10 years (minus 27 minutes).

That blows my mind.

Happy Birthday, LG!

File Under "Dumb Things Students Do"

Dear Student Who Sent Me Random Email With a Poorly Chosen Subject Heading,

You know what I don't like?

Being referred to as "Ms Gwinne" in an email.  I find that DOUBLY offensive.  While you are using "Ms" as an attempt at respect you show NO AWARENESS that such professional respect should come from a reference to my DEGREE not my gender and then you undermine your credibility even further by using my FIRST NAME which is a bad move considering you don't actually know me.  I teach at a university, not at a preschool ballet studio.  Nor did you make clear in the email what you really want from me.  So I wrote (and then deleted) a snarky reply and promptly trashed the email.  I have real work to do, for my real students, most of whom refer to me as Professor Last Name.

A Question for the Internets

Why is it that merely opening an envelope pertaining to embryo storage creates an anxiety level that warrants a trip to the therapist, if not actually Xanax?

I mean, seriously, I don't have a decision to make.  I'm forking over $400 so I don't have to decide anything.  I probably won't decide anything until I'm past an age I would consider having a child (yes, that seems to be a moving target).  And yet, it's crazy-making.

Thwarted

I am caught up (enough) at work.
The dishes are in the dishwasher.
The diapers are in the dryer.
The cat box has been scooped.
LG is in bed.

I had this great plan that I was going to go to sleep by 9:00.

And Tiny Boy, who was tucked in AN HOUR AGO, is still babbling in his crib.  Yes, babbling is better than crying.  But, really, isn't it time to sleep?!