lessons from the conference

actual conversation:

Paul (a graduate student): We went out last night for a few drinks, well maybe more than a few, and had a really good time. What did you do?

Me: I went back to my room and worked on my grant proposal.

Lesson #1: I am old. Officially, now.

Lesson #2 can not be demonstrated so easily....but i have spent 2 days listening to talks relevant to the research that i do and realizing that i hate it now. Not that this is news either, i have known this for some time. I thought things were different though, but they aren't. If i am old, i am old, but i do not need to grow ancient doing THIS -- attempting to write papers on something obscure and useless that nobody cares about, and that i don't care about either. No wonder my career is going nowhere, i hate my research and i am doing a bad job of faking it anymore. So we need to make some changes around here.

Don't worry, nobody is quitting any jobs or going back to school or anything exciting like that. I just need to figure out how to change my specialization to something i actually care about. Without, of course, torpedoing whatever i have going now -- because learning something new takes time.

ummmm...okay

So, i am at this conference, and my advisor I. is here. Okay, i don't have an advisor NOW, she was my advisor in graduate school. I am now an independent entity ha ha. But your advisor is always your advisor -- though now she functions as a 'mentor' rather than an 'advisor', she doesn't tell me what to do. Well, usually.

Anyway, i was chatting with her and with one of her current students, L., who is also submitting a proposal for funding soon. In fact she is applying for a program i had successfully applied to when i was a graduate student. So L. says to me, 'i will have to ask you how you did it'. And i said, 'i just did what I. told me to do' or some such stupid comment. Because this was true, i spent a tremendous amount of time on that proposal and I. totally cut what i had done to shreds and essentially rewrote it. But that was, of course, because i did not know how to write these kinds of proposals at the time, and i had structured the thing all wrong.

But then I. said to me (and i paraphrase), 'oh i remember that, after you came back from France, i don't know what was with you but it was like, you contacted me on friday & we needed to have the proposal in on monday or something.'

Ummm....what was with me? I was completely depressed because it was 6 months after my BABY DIED? Do you remember THAT?

I said, teeth clenched, 'it was a difficult time'. Mostly because L. was there and i have no desire to make scenes in front of the graduate students.

The thing is, I. is wonderful to me, as she is to all her students. She saved my career that time, after Nicolas died, by essentially writing that other proposal FOR me. I mean, it was not like the other that L. was originally talking about, which i worked on but did badly. For this one 3 years ago i had nothing -- i gave her like 2 pages of chickenscratch & shit, and over a few days she returned to me a completed proposal and saved my butt. It was an act of extreme kindness to me in a terrible time in my life, and one i will never forget.

Ok, but i assumed she did that for me because she cared...so why would she forget WHY i was so depressed that i was unable to do anything?

Am i wrong to be hurt by that? That she forgot? I mean, how can someone forget?

I guess i just need to let it roll off my back, like so many other things.

I hate conferences sometimes.

roses

They're so beautiful, you would think they were fake -- except you can see that the outside petals are crinkly and old. So they're real. I think this is 'Tropicana' but i am not sure, i can't really remember for some reason.

The rose bushes look skanky and have few leaves left, but some of them are still putting out flowers and those flowers are really big. I have one bud on 'Chrysler Imperial' which is astonishingly huge. I think it must be some artifiact of the cold weather, it is like they are being grown in the fridge or something. I wonder if i will see that bud open, if so i will take a picture. I am leaving on Thursday morning for a conference so i will probably miss the whole show....story of my life!

bad neighbors

We are, of course, still living on the third floor of our house, and it happens that our dumpster is on the side of the house right under the third-floor walkup. Which makes it very easy to throw out the trash, you just walk out the kitchen door and drop it down.

When it is cold and rainy, it is much easier just to stand in the kitchen door opening and kind of toss it over the rails. Which is what i did today, but rather than the usual *splat* noise as the trash bag hits the lumber pile in the dumpster, there was an odd sort of *squish-bump* sound.

Huh, i thought, as i tiptoed outside onto the wet porch to look.

Indeed, the trash bag had overshot the dumpster and become impaled on the fence between our houses. At which point, of course, it broke open and strewed trash all over the neighbor's back yard. Naturally none of it landed on our side. And naturally, the trash in question was... a full bag of dirty diapers. Naturally.

So, i share this with you so that you will remember it. And the next time your neighbors do something particularly annoying, like...for example....not cut the lawn for weeks, or leave the back porch halfway-painted for two years, or park a bus-sized RV in the shared driveway because of a major sporting event....you can say to yourself, "well, at least they are not throwing dirty diapers at me...."

balance, and volunteering

Anam asked how i 'do it all'. Heh heh heh. The eternal question for the modern woman.

When i was in graduate school i attended a lecture given by Kathryn Thornton, one of the most impressive women i have ever had the honor of meeting. I mean, seriously, when she was talking about all the stuff that they had to do to fix the Hubble telescope and training for the spacewalking and everything...it was just jaw-dropping. Of course, this lecture was a total geek chick event, sponsored by the 'Women in Science and Engineering' group...so the first question she got was "How do you balance work & family so well?" She stopped, chuckled a minute, and said, "I don't do it well!"

If she can't do it well, i sure as hell can't. In fact i think it's impossible to do it 'well'. Something always slides. For me, frequently, it is my career. That, or the house...but never the blog!! For my advisor, who is a famous mathematician in our circles, the slide was on the family side. So it can go either way. There is alot of guilt associated with every unfortunate slide.

I think there is a great disservice done to women with this notion that we can 'do it all'. I don't know where this started -- i think usually women are very tough on themselves personally and have high expectations of what should be. I don't think that the early feminists meant THIS, this mess that we have now, when they spoke about equal opportunity in the workplace. I think they just wanted women to have options, to set their own goals and be allowed to reach them, to be able to self-actualize. Not to be superwomen who take care of everything at home and at work and still bake cookies for the school trip, which is what it seems to have become.

Anyway, i'm babbling. If i had more energy, i would do more, then maybe i WOULD be able to manage to balance it all...

But the other thing was volunteering. I never volunteered before Nicolas died, but now i volunteer a little bit and when C is bigger i will do more. I wanted to say that if you have not done it you would be surprised how little time it can take. Of course, it can take ALOT of time, but at the pregnancy center i do 1 or 2 evenings a month -- including transportation time that is a maximum of 5 hours. Five hours a month is nothing for me, overall -- but it can make a big difference. Most organizations have small things that you can do to help -- just a few hours a month, or on your own time, or whatever. Volunteering doesn't have to be a full-day thing, and it always makes you feel good to help others. So i would encourage anyone to find a cause or organization that you are interested in, and just call and see what you can do to.

the threads of our lives

I was at the grocery store today with the kids, and while waiting in the checkout line C wanted a balloon. It is a nice grocery store where the balloons are both free and bio-degradable; so i sent A with her to go get one. I guess she couldn't decide what color she wanted (a common problem for her) because i had paid and was loading my bags into the cart by the time they walked back -- A keeping an eye on C, who was proud of the blue balloon that he had finally tied to her arm (seeing as she had already let it go twice).

As i put the final box in the cart, i looked around and realized that the woman behind me in line was looking at C. Not just looking, *watching*, with a look i know only too well. I don't know how my face looks when i am watching that way, but i know how my heart feels. And i saw it immediately in her -- she was watching them, with half a smile and half a tear, and doing it quietly and surreptitiously, hiding behind her checkbook. Yep.

The thing is, she was an older lady -- late 50's, i would say. So she didn't just lose a baby. Who knows who it was that they reminded her of -- herself and an older brother perhaps, or a child of her own, or a grandchild...but obviously someone who was gone. What could i say? There was nothing to say. I bundled them out of there and into the car ASAP.

I actually don't feel bad not saying anything to her -- when i am there myself, i wouldn't know what to say if someone noticed. I would undoubtedly come out with something lame, like "it's OK". Which, of course, is not true. It is not "OK". But, it IS, and we deal. It is hard to say what sets it off -- for me it is not usually a newborn or a boy of the same age that Nicolas would have been. It is more esoteric -- a child jumping in puddles, peeking 'round the corner, playing with sticks, or running for mama with arms open wide....and there is some sweetness in these moments too -- it is the glimpse into the might-have-beens. So one relishes the sweetness with the pain.

Yet i am sorry that it was my kids that brought on the pain for my compatriot in the grocery line.

spam/poetry

Good day.
look
wire leads, a nerve drawn from a deadly tooth.



(from an email message advertising low prices on viagra and other assorted pharmacuticals. I should read these things more often -- who knows what wisdom might lie hidden there?)

the 'poor outcome'

I was working at the pregnancy center tonight and a client came in to pick up two infant carseats. She is, evidently, pregnant with twins -- 32 weeks. In the course of our conversation she tells me how she is currently on bedrest, and having ultrasounds/NST's twice a week, because one twin is *significantly* larger than the other. Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, sounds like -- though i did not say that and she did not either. I am not a doctor so obviously i will not throw out diagnoses left & right...especially worrisome diagnoses like *that*. From what she told me i can conclude that they are watching her very closely & will deliver if the little boy is safer out than in.

But...but but but. When i went to get the carseats out of the back for her, one was missing a base. You know, those infant carrier/car seat things -- they cannot function, as a carseat, without a base and a locking clip. I looked for the other base, asked our office manager, and then concluded that most likely it had been donated without the base -- and was therefore useless. And then what did i think to myself? 'well, it's quite likely she won't need the second one anyway.'

Ok, what kind of a nasty thing is that to think? On the basis of 5 minutes conversation i have diagnosed her babies with a severe syndrome and consigned the smaller twin to death? WTF is wrong with me??

Most babies live. I see, in my life, that most babies live. Yet, not all do live and there are quite a large percentage that do not. Perhaps i am too mired in the grief world, that i can not assume that things will go well for this woman. Of course i would not tell her something like 'your baby might very well die' -- i tell her 'in case they are born early it is *very advantageous* to breastfeed/pump milk, it helps them grow *so* much when they are very little'. Sidestepping the whole issue of the little boy surviving when talking to her, but not at all sidestepping it in my mind. The assumption of a happy ending is simply not there for me anymore. I don't know if this is bad or if it is just realistic. But i wish that that wasn't the reality.

advice please?

I am currently writing a recommendation for somebody, the school has a form to fill out with exact questions. One of them is 'How would you describe the applicant’s sense of humor?'. I have no idea what to say to this, or what it has to do with being admitted to a degree program anyway. So i wrote:

'I have no sense of humor myself so i am ill-equipped to answer this question.'

Now, granted, i find that response extremely funny, but i do not want to torpedo the girl's application (as she is an exceptional student). I truly don't know much about her sense of humor, though. Maybe i should just leave the question blank? But this could be construed badly...

Remembering all our babies, on this day and on every day.


I finally got that blinkie to work....thanks Sherry!

Anemone 'Honorine Jobert'

Not a bad show for the middle of October, eh? A very pretty plant, and basically the only thing still blooming in Nicolas' garden.

beating the weather?

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Apparently not.

I took this picture this morning -- C was very impressed by the experience of snow, though i was more dismayed than anything. You can see that we did get *somewhere* on the painting. At least the front of the balustrade and the stair railings have one coat. The skirting should not be painted at all this fall, since it is treated wood and needs to wait 6 months to 'dry out' before you can paint it. I was very annoyed by this but in fact, the point is moot because i don't have time to paint it anyway.

So it will look unfinished until spring, when hopefully we will be able to get the decorative columns on and finish painting the skirting. That's okay with me. I am still hoping for one good warm dry day, so that we can do a second coat on the railings, finish the inside of the balustrade and paint the ceiling. Here's hoping...

another interesting article

Annals of Medicine: The Score

This one was in the New Yorker last week -- it took me a week to actually open the magazine, but when i saw an article on obstetrics of course i put off my real work to curl up with it...

It reminded me of the recent blogsphere 'birth experience' debate and unfortunately i had to revisit that in my mind...trying hard to let it go though. Of course the writer of this article is a doctor, and so one could claim he is all biased by the medical establishment or something. But, he writes regularly and i always enjoy his articles because they are well researched and well-balanced -- i always learn something. Like the whole bit about Virginia Apgar and the influence of her score, i never knew the history of that.

hiatus again

We have to get this porch painted before it gets to cold do so....and i have a big grant proposal that is due in several weeks. So i won't be on much for a bit...i will still try to read though, and maybe put up some pictures, if i have any good pictures to post...

what, AGAIN?

Ok, remember my student with the siezure? Big test today, and yes it happened again. This time we were lucky -- he didn't fall out of his chair or start shaking and i just kind of held his head up and patted his cheek until he came back. I took him out of class and he claimed he had seen a dr and had an EKG (or whatever it is they do) and the dr prescribed him medication because of some spikes on the pictures but he wasn't taking it yet because of some insurance issue. GO BACK TO THE DOCTOR i said, and TAKE THE DAMNED MEDS.

God this makes me nervous!

my sister ate my homework

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Photographic evidence -- very useful when you try to use this excuse.

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I guess it wasn't very good -- heck, it was Earth Science. Not much there that you can sink your teeth into. Next time, she should try a lengthy, convoluted book report....that might be tasty....

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There is the face of a girl who knows she's bad!

too harsh?

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When i came home on Monday, after blogging about how Randy had undoubtedly left because of the rain, gripe gripe gripe...there he was working on the front porch after all! So, yeah, i was unfair. Not that i don't have history behind my unfairness, but that is another story. And you will notice that it is just him working there, no employees or anything anymore -- that is another story. And he is supposed to finish tomorrow, ha ha ha. We will see about that.

Yet, the skirting is nearly done in the pic, as you can see -- and now the top is done (it is not in the pic) and the railings up the stairs are nearly done too. So though i seriously doubt he will be done on time, he won't be *that* far from done. Then we get to paint. Pray for sunshine...

Yum

Pumpkin cheesecake

I would make it all the time, i love it so much. Except i am the only person who loves it SOOO much and i end up eating the whole damned cake by myself. Very bad for the waistline.

It is worth using the good bourbon, though (i have some Wild Turkey around that i use).

'bout time

Ok, i updated my blogroll a bit. It is getting kinda long....and is still in no particular order. I try to be as neat as i can, but some things are beyond me -- like keeping a clean desk or a properly ordered blogroll.

advil and coffee

The breakfast of champions.

It seems that my menstrual cramps just get worse the older i get. Yesterday i was bent double half the day, only human when i was curled up in a ball on the couch. Of course, i could not do too much of the curled-up-in-a-ball stuff seeing as it was a *beautiful* painting day, and we had to paint. (Current project -- front porch)

Since it was Sunday, Randy was taking the day off. Now, i am no whip-wielding maniac or anything, expecting my workers to show up constantly and work constantly. But, Sunday was a beautiful clear day, perfect for painting and porch-building. WE were painting. But noone was porch-building, and he is *supposed* to have the porch done by this friday. Un-HUH. Sure. Today, of course, it is pouring rain, and supposed to pour rain for the next 3 days. So Randy is taking the day off again, no doubt, because it is raining. I am SO GLAD that he spent much of last week on vacation in Colorado. Yeah.

Well, as soon as there is a break in the pouring of the rain, i am going to go home for the lunch of champions -- advil and a vodka tonic. I am serious, it is the only combo which seems to kick these cramps to the curb. I would have had it for breakfast, only i had to teach. Actually i bet my students would have been amused...

You know you've been renovating too long when...

....one of your baby's first phrases is 'Home Depot! Home DEPOT! Home DEEEEPPPOOOO!'