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Keep It Like a Secret - LiveJournal.com
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annoyed
Last week, I had a tonsil infection and was sick most of the week with a sore throat.
This week, I have a cold and am so very, very stuffy.
I want to feel well for, like, two days in a row. Come on, body! You can do it!
So, I had a baby yesterday!
I am too exhausted and overwhelmed to go into details. (I will later because I need to process my birth experience a little). But! Keith and I now have a beautiful, tiny daughter named Hannah. She is doing well despite being early (I would be 34 weeks today and 37-40 is full-term) and I'm recovering from my emergency c-section. Keith has been amazing. More details later!
Surprise!
Guess which is more expensive: one year of daycare or one year of graduate school tuition at a top-20 university?
The answer might surprise you, however, it is mostly depressing me.
My neighbor to the north
I was raised mostly in Wisconsin (ages 4-18) and went to college in Madison (18-23). I am sure that I'll move back there someday. My grandmother, one of my aunts, and one of my cousins are all members of the teachers' union there. They are all dedicated, hardworking women who have a passion for what they do. All of them are solidly middle class by what I consider a traditional definition ($30-$40K a year), not the Sarah Palin one, where middle class means that you have $2 million in liquid assets.
My grandmother spends half her year in Florida and half her year in Wisconsin (she has to live in the latter at least six months a year to keep her health insurance from the teacher's union). She lives off a fixed income, mostly the pension that she and my grandfather earned as members of one of Wisconsin's teacher's unions. In 2007, the year she turned 80, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and then, a few months later, b****t cancer. She had fully paid treatment in an outstanding cancer hospital near her home in Florida (and not far from my parents) and then, when her b****t cancer was discovered, entered radiation in Wisconsin. She lives in a cottage on a lake in a rural part of northern Wisconsin where the nearest hospital is a solid 30 minutes away, and so she was able to have her chemo and radiation completed at one of the better hospitals in the state, located near my uncle, so she could have someone take care of her between sessions. She's going to be 84 in September.
She would not be as healthy as she is today if it were not for Wisconsin Education Association Council. Hell, not to engage in hyperbole, but she may not even be alive if it weren't for WEAC.
This bill isn't about asking public and state workers to pay their fair share; if it were, the Republicans in the state senate would have accepted the contract that 16 of the 19 public unions ratified back in December 2010, which included $107 million in concessions on pension and health benefits. It's about destroying WEAC and its brethren, piece by piece. This bill makes it impossible for them to bargain for anything but a limited amount of wages (under this proposal, 1.4 percent for the next biennium) and makes it difficult for a union to stay a union -- yearly votes to stay in existence, the inability to collect dues via payroll, and much more. Those proposals do nothing for taxpayers and save the state nothing. And yeah, sometimes unions act in bad faith or protect employees they shouldn't. But you know what? That doesn't mean you take away their rights to negotiate and represent their members.
When Scott Walker and Ron Johnson got elected, I started thinking about how the Dixie Chicks felt when W. became president. But this week, I am really, really proud to be a Badger. I wish I could be there, but I can't. And I am so grateful to the tens of thousands of peaceful protesters who have filled the Capitol and the Square every day this week to stand up for these rights.
Super Bowl Sunday
I have been watching football since before I can remember. My grandfather is in the Wisconsin High School Coaches Hall of Fame, for both football and basketball, and I am sure that I was attending his football games before I could walk. My father's family have been Packers fans for generations, like any other typical Wisconsin family, and I'm really sad I can't be in Florida with all of them today to watch the game. Every Sunday, after church, my parents have a "Packer party," where they lay out cheese cubes and summer sausage, and we all watch the game. When I was in college and even beyond, I'd call at halftime so we could compare notes (and if I called a moment before or after, they wouldn't answer the phone).
Most of my friends, being intellectuals, don't care about sports and find the NFL distasteful, a manifestation of machismo and rape culture, and I can't always blame them for that idea (as a football fan, I am horrified that Roethlisberger is even allowed to put on a uniform, much less be at a game, but I digress).
Being raised in Wisconsin, being a Packers fan is different that just rooting for a team. It's as much a part of our culture as knowing that cheese curds are fresh because they squeak or that vacations are spent in the North Woods or Door County. Being a Packers fan is weaved into our state identity, and I'm proud of the team's setup. There's no owner; technically there are 125,000 of them, all of whom bought stock (which is sold in limited shares) in the late '90s. The Packers are a publicly owned, nonprofit organization, the only sports team in the U.S. owned under such terms, and 60 percent of each game's concessions goes directly to local charities (there's a great New Yorker article about the setup). If the team ever goes under, whatever profits are left go the Green Bay VFW.
When I was in fourth grade, the Packers played the Bears in November and had a touchdown call given in their favor, owing to instant replay. That week, in art class, we had open drawing. I was not a very good artist, but I remember my art teacher began illustrating that scene, of the quarterback, Don "Magic" Majikowski (he was not) and some unremembered Bears player, two refs in the background with their arms raised for a touchdown. At the end of class, Mr. Austin gave it to me, for reasons I still don't understand, probably because I just sat there and watched him draw it, rapt the whole time. It was titled, "The Bears Still Suck." I was 10 years old. If my parents hadn't lost their house in a fire in 1999, I have zero doubts that the drawing would still be in my possession, somewhere.
When the Packers won the Super Bowl in 1997, I was a freshman in college. I watched the second half of the game with my friends at the dorm and we went out to State Street to celebrate with the rest of Madison afteward. At some point, near the bookstore, I got picked up and my feet didn't hit the ground for a few blocks. I'm sure there was drunken bullshit going on somewhere, but it was one of the most joyous things I've participated in (until I joined a second line in New Orleans last year, after they took the Lombardi Trophy home).
I always figured if the Packers got into the Super Bowl now, I'd throw a big party (because Packer fandom is about sharing with others) but most of my Packer-fan brethren live in other states and our schedule has been such that we opted against it. We've been spending the weekend moving books and bookshelves around, getting our office cleared out to be a guest room so we can turn our guest room into a nursery. It's just going to be me and Keith watching the game. We're having guacamole and buffalo wings. In a way, it's perfect. There's some famous quote from Lombardi about how his priorities were God, family, and the Green Bay Packers. The Packers were always about spending time with family, united, and it feels right that it's just our family, as it is now, for this game.
And next year, if they make it, we'll be having a huge party. For sure.
procrastinating
I really should be catching up on reading for school, but I'm just not feeling it. As you've probably heard from everywhere, Chicago got hit by its third-worst blizzard in modern history (although my grandmother tells me this is worse than '67 because of the wind) so we were sent home from work at 2 p.m. yesterday and told not to come in today. And UW-Madison cancelled classes, which means nothing for distance students, but it's the principle of the thing. I ordered books I need in the next few weeks and will probably just buckle down and try to get through some of it in a little bit.
I am guessing I'll be back at work tomorrow, as it finally quit snowing around noon, but the city is kind of a mess -- mind you, I think they're doing as good of a job as they can, but given that Lake Shore Drive was shut down (and understandably so) and it took hours to rescue everyone from it, I think it's probably going to be a little while before we're all dug out. One of our neighbors just kindly shoveled all of our walks (even though we have a service, I suspect they are running behind so I appreciate his efforts!) so at least we can get out to catch the train in the morning.
At any rate, the storm was a doozy. I took some photos from inside the house last night and this morning. There was thunder and lightning, and our lights flickered a little, but we were inside and for the most part, it was pleasant enough to watch nature rage around us. The city does look very pretty, and it was a good reminder that sometimes the world is a greater force than we are.
wow
You know what doesn't f**k around? N'oreasters. We got into New York late afternoon yesterday and met our friend Rob for a yummy Indian dinner then went to his place in Flatiron. It was slushy and not fun, but not, like, snowpocalypse now. When we left Rob's at 11, it was the absolute most horrible snowstorm I've ever witnessed. I live in Chicago and I grew up in northern Wisconsin, near Minnesota, so I know my snowstorms. This was an entirely different category. I've never seen so few people outside in Manhattan in all the times I've visited.
The city is fairly closed today, but we are venturing out anyway. We've gotta find some breakfast and if all else fails, we're not that far from the Angelika. I might also buy some snow-appropriate boots.
It is weird to be on vacation amongst 19 inches of snow!
So my flight tomorrow, accidentally scheduled for 6:30 p.m., was rescheduled for the 11:10 a.m. I wanted to be on. Apparently there's weather coming to NYC but I am hoping that it waits until late afternoon like it's promising to do. I packed, mostly, but there are a few things I can't throw in until tomorrow morning. I hope everything goes smoothly; wish me luck!
I'm looking forward to our trip -- it's probably our last vacation pre-baby, and I'm excited to see our NYC friends. One of our best friends is in the middle of chemo for a chest tumor (all signs positive, but f**k cancer nonetheless) and we're looking forward to seeing her. And we are eating at Colicchio & Sons, which I am also pretty excited to do.
I need to pack my homework next and find my camera charger. Traveling certainly makes you realize how high maintenance you can be.
I've been back in school for one week, and I've already earned a "++" on one of my assignments. Keith joked to one of our friends that I've been too busy overachieving to see any movies, and I'm starting to think he wasn't joking. (Side note: holy crap I have a lot of reading to do this semester. I'm taking Introduction to Organization, which is stealth cataloging, and Young Adult Literature, which is awesome but I have to read at least two books a week plus textbooks & articles. Good thing I like to read/have a decent-sized commute.)
Things here are pretty good. The Packers are in the Super Bowl, which thrills me to no end (esp. because we had to beat the Bears to get there!).
Pregnancy-wise, everything is going great. I am showing a little bit these days (I should be, I'm almost halfway done, for goodness sake!) and at my last appointment, the doctor was happy with my hormone levels and the baby's heartbeat. I have my official ultrasound on Feb. 8, and that's when I'll find out which sex my little feminist is going to be.
For the most part, I'm not too stressed or too babyzilla over the whole thing. I've been trying not to let it get in the way of how I live my life. I'm still working out and lifting weights, and I think that's helped me mentally/physically quite a lot. I am actually wearing a smaller pants size now than I did when I was pregnant (granted, those pants have no zippers or buttons but a giant nylon net at the top BUT LET ME HAVE THIS VICTORY.) I am starting to be better about accepting there are some things I can't or shouldn't do. I've been diligent about walking the dog, but with all the ice lately, Keith has been gallantly insistent that I let him handle that. I mean, that's really nice of him and I appreciate it, but it's just different. Also, on Saturday, I spent a few hours cooking for the week (as I normally do) and was a little breathless after being on my feet for three hours. So I just have limitations I didn't used to, and things I used to find relaxing are now somewhat exhausting, so that's tricky.
I'm starting to get excited about the baby actually being out and thinking about how I can't wait to hold him or her, to let the baby know how much we both love him/her, singing to the baby, all those fun things. Of course, with that is the knowledge that I'm going to have to actually take care of it, but I'm weirdly not as scared about that as I was a couple weeks ago, after I read a chapter in a babycare book about b****tfeeding that made me feel completely inadequate and not up to the task. My mantra has always that dumber people than the two of us have successfully raised delightful children, and repeating that really helped me make it through my doubtful period. Not that there wont' be another one! But I am feeling more confident than I used to.
I am also kind of in awe of my body these days. I really do get the sense that it's up to the task, and it's amazing to see how it's grown and adapted the last 19 weeks. I am sure that's only going to become more obvious as time goes on. Also, I kind of love my figure right now, as maternity clothes are totally designed for someone who looks like me. I'm a little horrified at the money I've spent on clothes I'm not going to wear that long (and I have picked up a few things on consignment) but the fact is, I feel more confident when I look good, and having clothes I like goes a long way to helping with that.
We're working on de-cluttering our house and doing all the things we've meant to do in the eight years we've owned this place. It's been nice getting rid of stuff and shipping some things off to storage. We're clearing out our largely unused office and turning it into a sitting room/guest room (loathe as I am to bring futons back into my life, I think it'll be okay) and slowly getting our kitchen in order. I keep thinking of more things we can do, but our budget can only go so far. Nonetheless, it's been nice to really focus on our home and getting it into nice shape. We're going to be spending a lot more time there, so it's worth investing in. And, before too long, we're going to figure out how to decorate the nursery and start buying furniture for it. And that's just going to make it so much more real.
I keep writing posts in my head about being pregnant and all the attendant anxieties/joys that this development has caused me, but then I get sidetracked by real life. It'll happen someday. In the meantime, here's a list of things that I want pretty much 100% of my waking hours these days:
*a national program for at least a year of paid maternity leave
*to go back to bed
*steak, rare, preferably New York strip, but I'll condescend to a ribeye if I must
*cupcakes
*clementines
*cherries
*sharp cheese
*less crappy kitchen cabinets
*maternity tights in brown, gray, and navy with a belly panel that aren't expensive
*more time to do anything creative
*to never, ever do anything that lands me on STFU Parents
So, I wore jeans to work today, because it's cold and I only own one pair of dress pants (thanks, pregnancy!), and was fretting a little, until I saw one of the other directors is wearing a Blackhawks jersey.
Casual Wednesday!
2011 so far
Last night, we went to dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant in our neighborhood, figuring it was probably the last time we'll go out to a nice dinner on NYE by ourselves for a few years. I had a very nice New York Strip, rare, with a butternut squash souffle. Keith had ahi tuna and a blood orange salad. We split a lemon panna cotta that was light and decadent at the same time. Then went over to our friends Scott and Ali's to ring in the new year. We watched a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation and Party Down, and had some pie and chatted. It was a nice, low-key evening and I even had a little bit of Champagne at midnight (don't judge me!). We came home around 1 and put on our pajamas and watched a couple cartoons on Boomerang and finally fell asleep a bit after 2 a.m.
Around 6:15 this morning, the dog jumped on our bed and paw-punched my shoulder in such a way that I knew there was no settling her down. I got up and walked her as dawn broke, then went back to bed.
When I woke up again, I realized that so far this year, I watched cartoons in the middle of the night and then woke up early, after not quite enough sleep, to attend to the bathroom and feeding needs of a creature who cannot do so herself.
Which is probably a pretty good harbinger of things to come this year.
good news overwhelms all else
I was having kind of a crap day at work, and after lunch, I checked my courseware for the 9,000th time in three days to see if my final paper had been graded. It was. I got a 24.5/25 (I was marked down because I didn't include a bibliography after my endnotes, which seems like overkill to me but rereading my syllabus, I think I probably was supposed to, so there's that). My professor declared my introduction "superlative" and used the word wonderful to describe my paper. Twice. She even lamented that I hadn't included a bibliography because she didn't want to mark it down. That half-point is the only half-point I lost in that class this semester.
So it's now official: I got straight As. I've only gotten straight As once before, my last semester of my first round of grad school, and it feels great. I hope I can keep it up.
We went out to dinner tonight because it's Keith's birthday, and it's been nice to feel celebratory about things. The past few years, Keith's birthday hasn't been much fun, usually due to family stresses, and it was just really great to go out and have a nice date and be happy for a change. I hope we'll have a lot of moments like that in the new year.
I just got the grade for my final project in my reference class: 20/20. Assuming I get a 100 on participation (which I think I probably will), my grade will be 99.5 percent.
Even if I get zero points on participation, I have a 92, so someone's getting at least one A this semester. YAY! It is always nice to see your hard work pay off.
The past couple weeks have been a complete blur. I had five big assignments due by Dec. 17 (most due Dec. 15) and my brother and parents came to visit on Thursday for a couple nights, so I kind of had to be finished up before they arrived. I spent seven hours on homework each day of last weekend, and I completed most of my work by Sunday evening. All I had left was my research paper, which I finished on Wednesday night. I gave it one last proofread and uploaded it Thursday morning. I'm pretty pleased with it and feel pretty confident about how my grades will turn out.
My family visit was good; they came in Thursday afternoon and I had a half-day on Friday, so they met me downtown for lunch. Yesterday we all drove to Indiana to see my grandmother, and they will be there the rest of their trip. Keith and I came back and had a quiet night, then today I did some freelance work and we did some laundry and finished off our Christmas shopping (man am I loving Amazon Student and its free two-day shipping!). We went to Scott and Ali's for dinner, and that was nice. It just felt nice to do something that wasn't an obligation for the first time in ages.
I have a three-day week, then we're off to Ohio for four days for the holiday. I have to send the menu and recipes to my mother-in-law and hopefully I can do that tomorrow. It's been insanely busy at work, on top of everything else, so I sometimes feel like I arrive and then suddenly eight hours have magically passed and while I've gone through half my to-do list, it's also somehow doubled.
I'm back at work on the 27th, and then I'm taking a four-day weekend for the end of the year. I'm kind of hording my time off and I've only used four hours of vacation time since Sept. 1. And, if I recall correctly, I used that time to take my dog to the vet when she caused a literal shitstorm in my house. I am, as you may imagine, crazy excited to have four days with no plans and no one I have to see except Keith and the dog.
I had my 14-week prenatal appointment this week, and it went just fine. We heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time. It was a really moving moment. It also sounded like a pony gallopping, which is a little weird. It's starting to feel a lot more real.
yay work week
After a weekend in which I left the house twice, I began my day thusly:
- Leaving the house at 8:42 to discover that my back gate was frozen solid and one of my neighbors broke a key in the side gate and didn't report it, leaving our back entrance vulnerable
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- Heading to the bus, which according to the CTA, would be arriving at 8:47 with a follow up at 8:51. Both busses arrived before those times so...
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- ...I ended up walking to the train in -1 degree temps, arriving at the platform at 9:03, where I proceeded to wait 12 minutes for a train
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- and then I got to work at 9:43, a full hour after I left.
I live six miles from my workplace.
this weekend
I am finishing my bibliographic essay (3/4 done; just need to give it a reread and polish).
I am writing the remaining four pages of my research paper on e-books, comparing them to the emergence of DVRs.
I am doing my last five-point assignment, which is not difficult but is sort of frustrating and feels a bit like busy work.
If I write it on the internets, then it will all come true.
UPDATE: Just for the record, I know I should have brought a bag, but I just forgot. It was stupid. It would have been nice if they'd just offered me a bag rather than screaming at me about someone else's dog.
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