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.