That's A Wrap!

What a whirlwind semester.

I am still burning the midnight oil to get everything done that I have been delinquent on delivering.

As my final semester of coursework for my Master's degree, I think I couldn't have asked for a more dramatic, climactic exodus.

I've learned far more about myself--what I can achieve, what my limits are--than about literature and compositon this semester.

I've learned that you can't do it all. Something has to give sometimes. I have always had success anxieties to some extent. I know that I have to temper these anxieties with a good healthy dose of reality, a reality in which no one is superman/woman, no one can shoulder all responsibilities, no one can be clever and articulate all the time, no one can be inspired all the time.

Sometimes a bitter pill to swallow, but a necessary medicine nonetheless.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days....

of tortuous hell. Aka, the last weeks of the semester.

I'd like to say that, due to the new baby, I have put everything off until the last minute, that the work has piled up in an unusual way, that this just isn't like me to be so overwhelmed. The truth is:
The baby certainly doesn't help; but, no matter what the circumstances, I find myself in a similar predicament at the end of every semester. The work is just piled up and I am typing like a woman with a gun to her head, intermittently crying, sweating, hysterically laughing, absently staring, and then (of course) more typing, typing, typing.
I always have good intensions at the beginning of the semester. "I'll make a plan", "I'll read ahead every weekend", "I'll never procrastinate this semester".

Yeah
Yeah
yeah

I've told myself this so many times that now that I actually have a solid, legitimate instance of chaos induced procrastination, I can't help but be sick of my own stress-filled sentiment.
I am the girl who cried stress.

Spring in my Step

What is it about the changing of the season that stimulates a corresponding change within me?

When things either warm up or cool down, I can feel my whole psyche alter. I get excited. I feel as though I've been given the proverbial clean slate by the weather gods.

I wonder if others share this experience.

If so, I think there should be a national changing-of-the-seasons holiday. It would be difficult, because it would be different every year. Because, I am not suggesting that we have a day off on the official first day of spring according to the almanac. Rather, I am referring to that day when everybody knows that different weather is on the way. That first day that you either need to bust out the tank tops or the jeans jacket. You know it when you walk out the door and feel it. And, I think it is an absolute travesty that everyone is not off work on these days. These days are refreshing to the mind and spirit, and it should be an inalienable right that all people have these days to frolic and enjoy the feelings that come in such temperate bliss.

The Fleshy Ball of Want and Need

I had my baby on March 15th, right in time for a bitchin' spring break. And, when I say "bitchin'", I mean sleepless, pain med-hazed, euphoric wonderment extravaganza.

My little Ella Merle, though a good baby--calm, easily-pacified, good-eater, regular pooper, etc.--is still an amazement of time deletion. That is, with a newborn, time at once stands still and speeds ahead. The last two weeks have been the longest and the shortest of my life. Every moment is a conflict between 1) opportunity to sleep 2) opportunity to stare at or accommodate my new baby. Notice there is no do school work option listed.

I naively thought that I would bounce right back after a week. I thought spring break would be enough recovery time. Nope. That was foolish.

I have been in pain for the past two weeks as my nether region recovers and as my hormones resituate themselves. The only thing that can overcome the pain stimuli is the desires/necessities of my infant.

Luckily, I have a dreamy husband who is very good with babies and is very willing to help/accommodate with anything. He has been running a marathon between me and baby Ella on one end of the house and our nine year-old on the other. She is adapting well, happy to have a little sister, but also dealing with her own anxieties. She's been the main attraction for nine years and it is certainly a change to share the lime light. But, I am proud of her resilience and excitement. She is also a big help.

I am feeling better every day and enjoying every moment of the quick/slow time with my baby.
Hopefully, I can keep up with my school work.

Note to self-- Have next baby in June.

For those of you who are continuing on to Advanced Comp. from Blogs: An Independent Media, this is old hat by now. We're all old friends who know each other's business.

For those of you who are joining the fray, welcome to my blog.

I urge you to rifle through my past posts to get to know me. If there is no time for rifling, please look at my very first post at least. Here, you will learn about the precariousness of this semester for me.

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night.

This is the last post I will make for the Blogging course.

Though I will continue with this blog for the remainder of the semester since Doc Hoc's Advanced Comp class also requires the maintenance of a blog, I won't be surprised if I continue on after this as well.

As a young girl through my teenage years, I was a devout diarist. It made me feel important and wise to collect my thoughts in a small, pretty journal. But, in my early twenties, I stopped keeping a diary. Life got too busy, my attention too divided. Ironically, it was at this very time that I truly started experiencing noteworthy milestones emotionally and event-wise. I lament that I do not have any epistolary time capsule of this segment of my life. I am now almost thrity and I find myself resurging into the sphere of the diarist, thanks to this blog assignment.

There are certainly things that I want to record that I would prefer not share with the blogosphere, but there are also things that are only thrilling when you know someone out there might read it. To share life in this open and pratically anonymous venue is enriching. I look forward to maintaining this blog in the future, if not weekly, then quarterly. But, I will definately be taking things a little 'old school' and bring back my journaling.

Semester Stamina--On.

Middle of the semester blues are a regularity for me.

I have been in college for nine years now and every semester, I lose my interest at this half way point. Happily, my interest always rebounds and I reassert myself with the kind of academic rigor that most find commendable, if not a little freaky and nerdy.

This semester, of course, is different as I wrangle with the added stress of "Am I going to have a baby today?". It is hard to get too involved in anything when one is in this state of mind. Brushing one's teeth seems too lengthy of a distraction, much less focusing on a research project.

I know that when baby Ella arrives, my tiredness will soar to new levels. But, somehow, I feel that my life will return to some type of normalcy when she gets here. That is, the waiting, the not-knowing, the anticipation, is way more time-consuming and distracting than caring for an infant.

I like to know what to expect everyday, and the last month has been hell in this regard.

Perhaps, though, we'll all have a good, hearty laugh at this sentiment in a few weeks when I am literally getting no sleep, trying to type away on papers with a wee babe wedged between my breast and the keyboard.
The grass is always greener, right?

So Far, So Eeehhhh.....

This conference trip was not a good idea.

I've tried to be stoic and professional, but things aren't panning out.

Wednesday--
I've recieved orders from OBGYN to take medical records and pay attention to contractions.

That's right. I've started having Braxton-Hicks contractions. These are decoy contractions that can begin anywhere from one month to one day before delivery. Bottomline: Whether false alarms or not--they HURT.

Thursday--
My Mom is driving me to the conference. I've read the itenerary wrong and we will be late to the early panels.
Though the drive should only take an hour and a half, we take a considerably longer path to accommodate my pee breaks, my anxiety about other drivers, and what turns out to be, faulty MapQuest directions. When we arrive to Tulsa, I have only the wherewithal to climb into the back seat to lay on my side for an hour.
Conference time attended: 0 hours, 0 minutes

Friday--
After worrying about the frequent contractions throughout the preceeding night, I rise and head to the conference. Due to traffic, I arrive 15 miutes late to the panel and the panel ends 30 minutes early. However, I am still unbelievably uncomfortable and cannot manage to absorb any of the information that I am hearing. I decide to skip the next panel at 10:30 and go take a long lunch. Unhappily, lunch becomes an emotional and physical torment as my contractions become so intense that I and my mother contemplate calling the hospital. She starts timing the contractions while I place a call to my husband. He is heading to Tulsa when he gets off work today. I tell him, "Better bring the car seat, the breast pump, and a baby outfit with you". I am too freaked to go back to the conference.
Conference time attended: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Tommorrow--
Who knows? I'll keep you posted.

Conferences and Recitals: An Exercise in ....What?

I'm going to a conference in a few weeks. It's one of those things that one does in academia--go to conferences.
I'm anxious to see what I think, because the whole process seems a bit odd to me. I know it is supposed to be a forum in which different scholars can share information about shared fields of interest; but, I bet it is also a little bit like kids' recitals.
Everyone knows that they are supposed to enjoy the entire experience of many children collectively involved in an arts-enriched event/exploration/journey. Each child has contributed to a unique aspect of the whole. Your child's exposure to others' efforts in the same project should further engage his/her learning experience.
BUT
What I have found is that most parents just want to see their kid, and only their kid perform. The other kids' performances are just stumbling blocks and obstacles in the labrynthian eternity that is the recital. The goal is to get the best photo and video footage of little Johnnie or Susie so that all of the grandparents can recieve audio/visual evidence of their sweet munchkin's fulfilling childhood experience. (Notice no one ever sends Grannie the entire three hour video of the recital--just the three minutes of her munchkin in a pilgrim costume.)

I wonder how like this scenario is the academic conference proper. Is everyone simply out to tout his/her own, or department's own, research? Does everyone bear through the other panels just to be polite? Or is there a real discourse happening?

Is it empty ritual or meaningful exchange?

Bottomline:
My reflections will be circumspect as I will be two weeks from my due date at that point and cannot bear through sitting anywhere for stretches of 90 minutes. I am currently having trouble sitting through my 75 minute class because my inutero daughter seems to want to kick her way out of me. I find that I have to stand up and move around every 30 minutes or so. (Yep. Even at night. Not getting much sleep.)

This could turn out to be the grand adventure, the sparkling centerpiece of this blog:
Will she or will she not give birth at the Eighteenth-Century Studies conference?
Dum. Dum. DUM.

Tune in for upcoming scandals including, (but not limited to):

*the gathering of the medical records in the case of surprise conference delivery
*the seating situation: will she be able to get that covetted seat by the door for mid-panel pee breaks?
*hey! there's also a birthday coming up: my 8yr-old is soon to be a 9yr-old! THE SAME WEEKEND AS THE CONFERENCE Yippeee

Thanks for listening.

My baby shower was on Saturday.

While it is always lovely to see friends and family again, let's face it:
This kind of event is about the stuff.

It is amazing how much stuff one gets at baby showers and wedding showers. It is such a godsend to know that that shower is out there as you are strolling through the aisles of Babies R Us, choking back the vomit because the stuff you need to get is endless. You think: 'my god, I need a second job just to get the stuff!'
But, you know that the baby shower is coming; it's out there; and it is going to save your butt. So you do a little routine called registering. It's essentially a primal scream to the stuff gods.

So once you've registered, all of the elders gather together to get you the stuff that your young, "still-makin'-yer-way-in-the-world" self needs.

It is definitely a generational phenomenon. It is at the shower that we know that we really should respect our elders. Sure, your friends may come to the shower. Sure, you are invited to showers from time to time. But, we all know that you and your friends cannot afford any of the big ticket items on the registery, nor do you have the wherewithal to organize a group gift--our young, busy, crazy lives are too young, crazy, and busy to orchestrate such a thing. So it is mom, grandma, and aunt Sue that get the crib, the car seat, the breast pump, etc. And your friends bring a cute baby bib and a rattle, a bag of diapers here, a receiving blanket there.

Ultimately, when the shower was over, I felt that immense sense of relief. Ahhhhhh.
My infant won't sleep naked in a box next to her 8 year-old sister's bed.

I think this shower ritual is great....

and, it made me think:

why don't we start a "Going Into My Fourth Year of College" shower?

Eeeh. What do you think?

I am losing my steam.

I went in with guns blazing (well...rather, I went in with a fabulous organizational system, good intentions, and a dream).

Now, as the semester moves into month two of four, I feel my interest waning.

I'm finding many things to do that seem way more important than doing my school work (or, at least it seems so at the time).

For instance:
I need to finish a paper for my Restoration Literature class. But, I want to watch Dr. Phil. And, I actually end up watching my belly for an hour as it twitches and moves around. I am almost able to make out little feet and elbows as they protrude from my gut sporadically (It's very sci-fi....much better than Dr. Phil).

What I am dealing with here is more than a simple case of laziness.
That isn't it.

I am trying to weed out which moments to relinquish and which to savor. When so many exciting things are happening in one's life, it is challenging to absorb the energy and importance of all of them.

I don't want to relegate this predicament solely to the female sphere. But, we do often here about it in the female paradigm.
It usually sounds like this:
Can women really have it all?

This ubiquitous question rings out into a sea of women who struggle with balancing work and family (not to mention personal interests and hobbies).

But, I watch my husband do it too. I watch him feel guilty when he has to work a lot because he misses time with me and Kaylan. Two weeks ago, he couldn't make one of my doctor's appointments due to work. It was the first one he missed; my feelings weren't hurt. My doctor basically weighs me, measures me, prods me, takes my blood pressure, and tells me I'm good. That's the whole she-bang. But, he was dissappointed to miss it. I also see him fretting when he spends a lot of time doing family things and doesn't plug in enough at work. He worries about not getting ahead in his career. So this phenomenon in which we are constantly forced to divide our attention is very much an American thing--not a woman thing.

What is the answer?

I want to excel in my classes. I want to write a brilliant thesis. I want to pull together a fabulous season of children's theatre camps this summer.

I also want to enjoy this pregnancy. I want to dream about, wonder about what this little baby girl inside of me looks like, what she will be like.

I want to spend more time with my family. I want to take my 8 year-old to the new Napolean exhibit. I want to go out of town for the weekend with my husband. I want to go to the movies with my mom and sister.

I want to watch a bunch of films that I don't have to watch for school, and read books that I don't have to read for school.

I want to play Lady MacBeth this summer on the new waterstage downtown.
I want to train my dogs not to be Cerebus incarnate.
I want to exercise everyday and see how strong I can get.

Ultimately, there is no daytimer/organizer in the world that can help me out on this.

I just have to go on my gut and hope that I am choosing to focus on the right things at the right times.

That's Sick-n-ning!

The past week has been exceptionally crazy.

Everyone is sick!

My husband has this phlemmy nasty chest bug, and one of my dogs, Bridgette, has demodex (a skin problem) flare-up which leave patches of baldness all over her.

Here's the thing:
With "bugs", like my husband has, there is nothing you can really do but ride it out. Sure, he's got an arsenal of cough syrup, mentholated rubs, and pain relievers to ease him through it; but, in the meantime, he is coughing his brains out all over the house.
I am a confessed germ-ophobe; and, as he coughs, I can see (and I mean SEE) the microbes of putressence billowing all about the air in the house.
I am also acutely aware that neither my daughter nor I can afford to get this same bug. She has already missed a bunch of school due to the snow days, and I am too busy, and (even scarier) can't take any of those medications in my husband's arsenal.
Yikes!
Now, my dog is miserable.
She looks like Weazer's dog on Steel Magnolias.
Her problem is normally no big deal, easily remedied with pills for a couple of weeks...UNLESS she is a colley.
Typical...she is part colley.
So now, she must undergo a series of dip treatments. The problem, (besides the obvious one of it being a general pain in the butt to dip a dog): The chemicals in the dip are poisonous to pregnant women. So now, we are taking her to a vet once a week to have them dip her (to the tune of $45/week for the labor and all the medications were $100).
DOUBLE YIKES!

Financially speaking, ....well, you are all students,...you know where I'm going....
YYYYYYIIIIIIIKKKKKKEEEESSSSS!!!!!!!!!

Healthfully speaking--So far I am feeling fine, save for those moments I wake up in the middle of the night and my cough is just a little too hearty. Then I have a minor bout of paranoia. But, I am always fine in the morning.

Wish me luck and sanity. If you need me, I'll be the awkward pregnant woman sporting a hermetically sealed bubble suit.

PREGNANCY BRAIN

Something bizarre happens to one's brain when pregnant. I call it "pregnancy brain".

Pregnancy brain is an awkward state to be in, at best, and a dangerous one, at worst. I find myself hovering close to the worst case scenario as I try to grapple with teaching and grad school in this state of brain dysfunction.

For those of you who've never experienced pregnancy brain, here are a few symptoms:

*transposing letters in words
example: "blightlub"
translation: "lightbulb"
*name switches
example: I've been calling my sister Kaylan and my daughter Kim
problem: My sister is actually Kim and my daughter Kaylan
most disturbing example: Calling my husband "mom" and my mom "honey"
problem: obvious
*a loss of basic vocabulary
example: "Would you hand me the ______ (pointing feverishly at a fork)?"
translation: "Would you hand me the fork?"
*complete, unadulterated, nonsensical brain farts
example: I say, "Do you have the stapler?"
I mean, "Do you know what time it is?"
problem: Not only do I not get what I need, no one believes me when I
re-state my request. I hear something like,
"You meant what? That's not even close. That doesn't
even make sense!"

Whatever the Weather

We've all been chatting about the weather this week: what is it doing? What did Mike Morgan say? Who drives like crap? Which school is cancelled?

Well, I've been stressed out with the fact that UCO is not closed.

I know I cannot drive in this and, most of us agree, no one else can effectively either. So why does UCO put us in a position in which we have these two unpleasant options:

1. Risk my life and others' to drive to campus.

2. Risk my grade due to missed class time.

I think this is a lousy and unfair choice.

Edmond Schools are closed. Why isn't UCO?

To Thesis or Not to Thesis

The theme of week one is the predicament of the thesis.

Since day one of my grad school experience, I've wanted to write a master's thesis. In doing so, I thought I could get a leg up on my doctoral thesis, publish chapters as I go (thereby adding to my c.v.), and look smart and ambitious in general.

thoughtful sidebar:
This is something I took with me from my training in the theatre--if you posture yourself in a certain physical state, the emotional state will most likely follow along. For instance, when I am doing a scene in which I must cry, I will alter my breathing, adjust the focus of my eyes to the background, and clench my abdomen (essentially, enact what happens to my body when I really cry). And, by God, every time the water works get going, I get emotionally invested in the moment, and everything happens naturally from that point.

back to the point:
Therefore, I have to put myself into a challenging situation to force myself to do my best. It's weird, but it's what I do.
My dear husband knows that I have this weirdness, yet he does what he can to push me into a more pragmatic place. He says, "Why don't you just take the comps? You'll fly through it and be done faster." And, finally his ploy, paired with the eminent arrival of one infant, I decided to acquiess and take the comps.
Then, this week, my weirdness rears its ugly, weird head and snarls, "Comps are for wimps! Write the thesis, you pansy-ass!" While I care what my husband thinks, I could deny my impulse to punish myself with more work no longer.

I resolved, at the last minute, to write a thesis.

This will leave me with another semester of school in which to finish the thesis. But all of my course work is done, so I won't have another semester of tuition to pay.

Ultimately, I'm left with the fact that I really am not a glutton for punishment. I just like being a student; I like to read and write; I like to learn new things. Eventually this part of my life will be over, and I know I will be reminiscent. I need to enjoy this experience while I live it and not try too hard to rush it along.

Does this make me a bit on the dorky side of things?
Yes.
Do I care?
No.

mandeeland is a crazy land

This blog has been created for a blog class that I am taking at UCO. In it, I will reflect upon, what will surely become, the craziest semester of my academic career. This semester, I will attempt a series of scholastic, social, and filial acrobatics as I simultaneously try to take a full-time graduate schedule, teach one class, write a thesis, attend a confrence, take part in social functions, orchestrate a children's theatre camp, graduate and apply for jobs, coddle and frolick with my husband, eight year-old, four cats, and two dogs, and...oh yeah, have a baby. That's right: a baby. Some people go to Cancun on spring break; I give birth. I am due March 19. Enjoy the ride.