Unoccupied

You may recall my having written a few weeks ago about how I would be doing part-time from-home work. The thing I am doing has a deadline of early July, at which time I am going to Europe anyway so it needs to be done in the next few weeks. It is is getting closer and closer and I am starting to get freaked out about it as I haven’t done any work at all. None.

Through no fault of mine, mind you. No, it seems that the IT people where I work (or at any rate plan to work) are actively protesting my employment or something.

* First it took them weeks to decide they would/could not give me a type of account that would make it so I can use the work servers remotely through my own laptop. Part of the hold-up was that an important lady there was on vacation leaving the staff frozen with indecision.
* Then it took them a while to ship me a laptop.
* Then they did not give me the password I needed to operate the laptop so I had to wait on that.
* Then they did not give me the cable I needed to run the laptop so I had to dig one up myself (which I opted to do rather than wait for them to ship me one.) They also didn’t install all the necessary drivers on the computer making the touchpad not work right. Call me picky, but I sometimes like to use a laptop on my lap rather than have to rely on an external mouse.
* Then they didn’t give me access to the server I needed so I had to wait on that. Somehow they didn’t think that, like the password, I might need to have that when the computer arrived (which, kind of hilariously, they had shipped overnight).
* Then it turns out that the files I need to access are too large for the type of connection they gave me. They have no practical solution for that; instead I have to do obnoxious, tricky, and time-consuming work-arounds.
* Then it turns out they didn’t install the software I need to do my work anyway so I had to go hunt it down, along with the other things that need to be downloaded to make it work.
* Then it turns out they didn’t give me appropriate rights on this new computer so I can’t install that software I need and spent so much time downloading.
* Then they decide to give me some kind of “remote access” (isn’t that what I needed back in the beginning?) to access that software instead of letting me download it. Except that the connection doesn’t work.

I do not have high hopes of this being resolved by the weekend.

GRRR. I already only have a few hours a day to do this since I can’t work when Baby is awake, which they knew when they asked me to do this (still, they have me slotted as working 20-29 hours a week, which is impossible). I really don’t know if I’ll be able to get this work done in time, but as things are now there’s clearly nothing I can do about it so I’m trying not to stress out. The VP who asked me to do this work knows about these problems and is “disgusted” though that hardly helps me get my job done.

Names

This is the person I refer to here as Baby:

But it’s clear that she’s just not a baby anymore. She’s a toddler, sometimes even a little girl. Look at her, comfortable in her chair, eating an apple all by herself, saying “cheese” for the camera. That’s just not very infantile.

In Real Life she goes by “Baby N__a.” New acquaintances try to call her just “N__a” but they soon see that they are in the minority there and cave to the peer pressure. For her first six months or so she just went by “Baby” and sometimes we still call her that. Calling her “Baby N__a” was a conscious move towards using her given name, and I would like to call her just by her first name, perhaps even by her first and middle names, as that’s a nice Southern tradition, at some point.

In this space, however, the name “Baby” feels right still since that is part of what we call her, but then to those of you outside looking in, it might seem too stylized or self-consciously anonymous (I’m just guessing–maybe not). And when I see pictures like that one, well, “Baby” just doesn’t fit.

So what to call her here? Here are some prospects:

Cutie McCuterson (too hard to type, but oh so true)
Princess (bad connotations, but I do call her that)
N (her initial; maybe, but boring)
Toddler (to continue with the theme)
Daughter (goes with Husband, but I still get freaked out saying I have a daughter–that just seems so grown up)
Her actual name (but I just don’t feel totally comfortable with that)
Naomi (the name I wanted to name her but apparently it’s difficult to pronounce in Swedish; also I think if I used it here I would feel bad that we never named her that, since I picked that name out when I was 13 and I’m still a little unhappy we didn’t use it, and maybe that’s why I’ve had all this ambivalence in Real Life about using Baby’s real name)

Or something else? What do you think? How have you handled this?

Beached out

Sooo…back from the beach. You know, a vacation with a small child is quite a bit different from one without. For example, there is no sleeping in. There is a lot less sex. There are scheduling requirements that are not flexible.

Then, if the child in question is also on a special elimination diet, has recently suffered emotional trauma due to having been separated from her mama making her phenomenally clingy and grouchy, has developed a phobia of travel cribs having had to sleep in one at the babysitter’s, and caps things off with a mysterious 103-degree fever, well, it’s really almost not like a vacation at all.

Still, there was sand, buckets, and shovels, which always cheer everyone up, walks on the beach, trips to playgrounds and various non-Western-style restaurants which more easily accommodated Baby’s diet, and eventually she did sleep in her crib, and one morning she even slept in past 6 AM! We did have a nice time overall, even if I did lose that game of Life. But I’m not anxious for our next pseudo-vacation to Europe next month. Sometimes it’s nice to be home.

The best little toddler around

Caregivers

I can definitely say that this working full-time thing isn’t for us. I will continue doing a little bit of work in the evenings and weekends, but neither Baby nor I have enjoyed this week especially and I plan never to repeat it.

According to the report from the babysitter today, Baby was “pretty sad and she did cry a lot, but there were periods when she was quiet as long as I didn’t put her down.” Just what you want to hear, right? And a buddy of mine who dropped her kid off at the babysitter’s when Baby was there today reported that, when Baby heard her come in, she cried out, “Mama?” hoping I was there to get her, and when she saw I was not, went back dejectedly to picking at her lunch. When I did arrive, she immediately, tearily, once in my arms, started frantically saying and waving “bye bye” to the sitter, ready to get the hell out of there. Awesome. Then I got to take my clingy little angel home, and she smelled of another house, another woman’s arms.

We have one day left of this (for what it’s worth, I am really enjoying the work I am doing. So that’s something at least). Baby won’t be with my mom tomorrow after all as it seems my grandfather has pneumonia and my mom can’t leave him. His health is quite fragile, and my grandmother has Alzheimer’s, so my mother has quit her job to take care of them full-time. I think we will cut our beach trip short so we can go visit my grandparents and try to cheer my mom up a bit. She always feels as though my grandparents’ health setbacks are somehow her fault. Last weekend she and my stepfather went on a short trip away together, and my grandfather didn’t manage to make sure he and my grandmother took all their medications, and though that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with his current illness, my mother is nonetheless blaming herself for it, along with various other factors not under her control.

I, at least, don’t tend to have a similar problem with regards to Baby’s care. Sometimes she gets injured, a few times she’s been sick–not really my fault. These things happen. But these long days of sadness, of separation from her mommy, well, that’s all on me.

Report and scale

I am 25% done with full-time work and Baby is 33% done with so much childcare for this week (my mom is coming to watch her on Thursday). And then this weekend we have a wonderful trip to the beach planned, just the three of us, for four days, which I am just thrilled about. I do continue feeling uneasy about being so long away from Baby this week, and she didn’t have the best day of her life today (it seems she ended up passing out on a couch after spending most of the morning insisting on being held) but I guess in the grand scheme of things this issue is a small one. We’ll survive. There are worse things.

Today I learned my sister-in-law’s pregnancy was molar and she will have to undergo a D & C under general anesthesia, of which she has a phobia (one I understand, having awoken during general anesthesia myself, unable to communicate with the doctor operating) and may have to wait up to a year to try again in the best case scenario, the worst one being a hysterectomy. I sent a note but I wasn’t sure what to say; they themselves are insisting that since there was no actual “baby” involved, it wasn’t so much of a loss. But I know they had a dream of a baby nonetheless. And there’s the risk to the mother’s health, not inconsiderable.

Misery and guilt

I have an intellectual post just about all ready to go on working/staying home, but right now it just doesn’t seem like this topic is totally in the realm of the rational. Long story short I am working full-time for four days next week. Baby will be at the sitter’s from 7:15 AM until 3:30 PM (at the earliest). This is a really fucking long time. It’ll be the longest she’s ever been away from me and it just sucks sucks sucks. I am so upset I said yes to working this week. Why can’t I ever say no? In preparation, I’ve been obsessing about Baby’s food and packed her several fancy little dishes for tomorrow, and have checked and rechecked the diaper bag. I hate the thought of leaving her so long.

And then, about an hour after she went to sleep tonight, Baby woke up. Husband went to her, she was upset, but he got her to lie down again, and she got quiet. But by the time he returned downstairs, she started screaming. I went up there and she was just covered in vomit. She kept on throwing up a bit more. She’s never been sick like this before. I suspect it’s something to do with too much milk and too little pooping and too many grapes and getting overworked, or maybe some reaction to the petting zoo today, or to some spoiled food–I don’t know. It was so horrible. I feel so much like I am failing her because I simply have to work tomorrow. If she seems sick in the morning, Husband will stay home with her, and of course he can pick her up at the babysitter’s at any time if she needs it. But my fragile little girl, my baby, my tiny darling, who’s been clingy lately anyway, might be feeling scared about the vomiting, or at any rate confused about why she’s at the babysitter’s so long (if she has that kind of sense of time–I don’t know–but she goes there about once a week for a couple hours, normally), and she won’t be at home and she won’t be with her mommy and it’ll go on for days and days and it’s all my fault.

I totally stole the idea for this post

from Christy.

When I have post ideas but not the time or inclination to write a whole post, I will jot a note and save it as a draft with some pithy title. Later it is not always entirely clear to me what I was talking about so these potential gems just go, um, I don’t know, uncut? Even if I can guess my point, oftentimes I just don’t care about that topic anymore. In the interest of clearing out my draft folder, here some are:

Title: My favorite chicken
Text:

Title: Antarctica is not one of the states
Text: Also, there are only 50 states. Hawaii, yes, is one of them. No, Alaska is not part of Canada. Mexico is not in the southern hemisphere, sorry. [FYI I guess?]

Title: It sucks to be a penguin [I was really affected by the March of the Penguins movie]

Title: AWWW
Text:

Title: Sick as a cat
[no text, but I am going to assume it was to be about cat vomit]

Title: Snack station
[God, this one is so old. Back when Baby was just starting to walk, she liked to take snacks at a step stool in the kitchen. Well she sometimes still does it. BORING.]

Title: Bad dog
[no text--I think this might have been intended to be about the time one of our dogs kind of snapped in Baby's direction. That sucked.]

Title: Preposition proposition
Text: We have been working on prepositional phrases. Under the basket! In the box! Out of the tunnel! Over your head! [still true]

Title: Veto power
Text: My father [What on earth?]

Title: The language of word verifications [I've seen some dirty things]

Title: Please try not to pass out from jealousy [the backyard???]

Title: I bite my nails for the good of the family
Text: It’s true! [I think because otherwise I injure them? But it's not true now. I stopped biting altogether suddenly with no cause. Still have to keep them cut.]

Title: I wasn’t a virgin pumper
[This was going to be about the time when I was working at a farm and this goat had triplets and the mama goat didn't want to feed one of the kids so I milked other goats and fed that third goat milk in a bottle. Not a bad story but also not all that long.]

Title: Talar du svenska?
Text: Last week in class I taught a lesson in Swedish.
[This is fully a year old. I can't imagine what interesting I could have said about this. Hence the unfinished draft.]

Title: Everything is a pumping metaphor
[Back when I was exclusively pumping, I would relate a lot of things to pumping. Can't get the job you want? It's like not being able to make enough milk. And etcetera.]

Title: Creams for baby
[Since birth: anti-yeast, estrogen, anti-eczema, triple ointment, and many more; wish I'd posted about it so I would remember them all]

Title: It’s like a playdate that I don’t attend
[Baby's in-home day care experience--she plays with other one-year-old girls, runs around, etc.]

There are more but I will spare you. Do you have drafts sitting around?

Therapy

I’ve had a lot of therapy and I don’t think any of it really has anything to do with my current level of happiness, which is high. If there were coping tools it gave me , or realizations that altered my worldview, or subconscious changes that came about as a result, I don’t know what they might be. No, I think it’s all circumstance. These days I have exactly what I want (by this I mostly mean a baby), I am doing what I like (largely whatever I want), and I am getting lots of fresh air, sunlight, exercise, socialization, and healthy food. Simple as that.

I don’t mean to minimize depression; it was very defeating and self-perpetuating for me and I know how debilitating and painful it can be. I am simply not convinced that, for me, living more healthily wouldn’t have been just as good a solution as therapy and medication, if someone could have gotten me to do it at the time.

I first visited a therapist shortly after my parents divorced, when I was five. I remember it quite well. The woman, who was affiliated with my mother’s church, became excessively concerned when I told her that one of the many fun things I enjoyed doing with my father was playing horsie (you know, he would get on all fours, I would ride on top–I do the exact same thing these days with Baby; it’s all fun and games). A sensitive child, it was clear to me that she was getting the wrong idea, though I couldn’t conceptualize exactly what she was thinking, and I became quite anxious about talking to her. My mother didn’t make me go back.

When I was in college I was quite depressed (I think all it was was my super-dark room and my melodramatic long-distance relationship with my now-husband) and ended up in talk therapy twice a week. What we talked about, beyond my complaints about my mother, I can’t recall at all. Really, I didn’t have a lot going on at the time. I think once when my husband bought the house we live in now we talked about real estate in New England as compared to the Southeast. There was some more serious stuff I certainly could have benefited from airing out, but I never felt comfortable enough, or motivated enough, to do so. My main recollections revolve around the time I saw my therapist at the mall with her two small kids. At our next session, I asked her her children’s ages, just being friendly, really, and she wouldn’t tell me, wanting, instead, to know how her having children made me feel. I quit therapy shortly after that.

Finally, when I was going through my several years of infertility, I entered therapy again. I knew something like nine pregnant people, including many at work, notably two supervisors in succession, and was just miserable at my job and had developed some obsessions about making sure stoves were off and curlers unplugged, things like that (if I couldn’t control my ovulation, then by golly, I was going to control something). I started seeing a very smart woman who turned out to be a lesbian who repeatedly expressed her confusion about why people want children, and kept trying to talk me out of it, telling me about studies that showed how marital satisfaction decreased greatly upon procreation. Still, we had a good rapport, and we spent a huge amount of time talking about my tortured girl-crush on my then-supervisor, and she encouraged me to apply to grad school, which led to all kinds of good things for me. Eventually I visited a psychiatrist who prescribed an anti-anxiety medication which I took, with great results, until I found out I was pregnant a few months into grad school, at which point I quit the medicine and the therapy both.

Once while pregnant, and shortly after Baby’s birth, I did go visit the psychiatrist, who specialized in “women’s issues,” but it wasn’t because I felt like I needed it; I just felt like I should, to be on the safe side. And I visited my anti-baby therapist when Baby was six weeks old, bringing her along, struggling to feed her by various methods during the whole visit, unable to converse really at all. Given my nerve-wracking pregnancy, scary birth, miserable breastfeeding, and agonizing cold-turkey weaning experiences, combined with my history of depression and anxiety, I kept expecting to have some serious post-partum problems in that area, but no. Maybe all that therapy did fix me up, possibly getting treatment for my PCOS helped thus leveling out some crazy-making hormones, or the medication rewired something, or, and this what I think, my life and my psyche are finally in harmony. I think that was my problem all along.

Translations

Last session one of my English as a Second Language students, a skinny 17-year-old full-time dishwasher who moved here a year ago from Mexico, had a habit of memorizing English phrases spoken to him that he didn’t understand and asking me later for translations.

“Wa da ya min no,” he asked, wanting to understand. I figured that out to be, “What do you mean, no?” I could tell him what the words meant, but I needed more context to explain why it was said. It turns out that at work a cook had asked him to do something (he wasn’t sure what), and he, not knowing what she said, had guessed a response and replied, “no.” He apparently answered incorrectly. We talked about why she said that, the power relationships implicated, and sarcasm.

This kid is particularly bright, curious, and motivated. I tried to work with him to consider, once he knows more English, completing the free GED program offered. But his work schedule changed and now he isn’t attending English classes anymore. When I think of him, I see him running along the highway on his way home after classes, no car, no money for the bus. I think of his coming to the US as a teenager and finding work, supporting himself, enrolling in class, buying a picture dictionary I recommended, doing his homework, saving up questions, raising his hand, all alone. I want to mother him. We live a world apart.

He’s so brave and despite all his hard work, he’s generically maligned as an illegal immigrant, like many of my students. He wants to learn English and improve himself, send money back home, and contribute to his newly chosen society, which is so hard to do while subsisting on below minimum-wage, living on the fringe, underage, undereducated. It’s not such an easy thing for immigrants to “just learn English already.” But he shows great promise, as do others. This nation’s history, a fantasy of opportunity for many, is full of daring and dedicated people like him, and its future will be shaped by them, too (like it or not, truly). Often for the better.

But retitled for a mother

1789
Songs of Innocence
Nurse’s Song
by William Blake

When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
“Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,
Till the morning appears in the skies.”

“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep.”
“Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed,
And all the hills echoed.

Can’t really complain

So we’ve put Baby on an elimination diet to track down her allergies. She’s mostly eating beans, sunflower seeds and butter, fruits, including avocado, veggies, oatmeal, and rice cakes. I’ve already screwed up a few times (like when I guess I forgot that wheat germ is, um, made of wheat). She’s also drinking rice milk mostly instead of formula but I just don’t think that this diet is good for very long in the protein and fat departments (though she’s honestly wolfing down the sunflower butter, so who knows?) It’s kind of tricky figuring out what to feed her with these limitations, and so far no change on the eczema front, but we’ll stick with it.

+++

Now that I’ve accepted a non-teaching job for the summer, the local colleges are starting to call me. But given our upcoming trip to Sweden, I couldn’t have taken summer jobs there, anyway, so I’m interviewing for the fall. I have been thinking a great deal on the working/not working issue, and will post something about that soon.

+++

Went to the local indoor community pool today with my mothers’ group. We took turns watching each others’ little toddlers so we could do the big, tall, fast grown-up water slide, which was wonderful. Baby didn’t want to be held, so we could only stay in the shallow end since I didn’t feel like letting her drown, and she spent most of the time obsessing about trying to go up and down the stairs without holding onto anything. This little girl is exhausting sometimes.

+++

Maybe it’s because he’s from Sweden, I don’t know, but Husband is apparently unaware of the cultural norms surrounding Mother’s Day. Last year he didn’t really do anything (until I got upset, and then he did stuff the following week), and this year I could tell wasn’t going to be too different, so I told him what I wanted (a handprint stepping stone made by Baby) and, well, went out and bought the relevant kit (look, I had a coupon). I’ve already done his Father’s Day present (Baby and I painted a mug at a make-your-own pottery place) and made a clay bunny (at the same place) for my grandmother, and created a photobook online (at Wal-mart, just 18 bucks) that I am extremely happy with for my own mom of Baby’s first year (now that she’s almost two, it seemed fitting). Anyway, I did tell him of my disappointment and he plans to abscond with the baby tonight to come up with something on his own.

+++

I’m getting excited about going to Sweden. It’s so relaxing and beautiful in the summer, and I do enjoy all the hiking and seeing the various relatives. I am going to campaign for a short trip to Paris that probably won’t happen, but it’s worth a shot. Now I thoroughly understand that the flight over will be hell, but it’ll end, and then we’ll have two weeks there.

+++

I got a sub and Husband is taking off so for Memorial Day weekend we’re going to the beach for a nice long time. This is also quite exciting.

+++

We went and saw the newest new baby we know a couple of days ago, and Baby seems mostly to have gotten her fill of newborns and mostly left the adorable, remarkably alert little thing alone, and instead played with his older sister, baby dolls, and the baby’s bouncy seat, swing, etc. This means I got to hold a baby uninterrupted! Yay! A baby that can’t run away from me or tell me “no” or kick me in the glasses during a diaper change, giving me a blood blister on the side of my nose!

+++

So, basically, things are good. My research work hasn’t gotten started yet (the tech people are taking their time getting me set up and I am not complaining) so I’ve had lots of time to do whatever I want. I’ve been sewing buttons onto things, getting stains out (use GOOP for grease stains, even set-in ones!), finishing crafts and sewing projects, reading novels, cleaning shelving, etc. I’ve been working, also, on spending less time on the internet (read this if you think you spend more time online than is strictly necessary–of course by clicking that link you will be furthering that problem) so have completely stopped going to some sites I used to read all the time (not blogs), and it’s actually nice to have less mental clutter.