Many different things, really

What a day. It's been raining and raining and raining, and all the kids in the Faculty of Arts day camp have been in my building at work, and making a hell of a racket which would account for why I visited so many of your blogs today. I'm trying to get an article finished, one I've been working on all summer, and I want to send it away for review by the end of the summer. It's currently 40 pages long, but it needs to be about 25--while nevertheless requiring the addition of new material.

If yer innerested, here's a sample of my deathless academic prose:

"As When Harry Met Sally progresses, the characters drop out of history, from carefully marked coeds of the 70s, with big hair, blue eyeshadow, and cynicism to match, through the go-go yuppie early 80s (“Five years later”), all power-suited, shoulder-padded, and briefcase-toding, before beginning their own coursthip story yet another “five years later” in a curiously unmarked and un-named 1987—we would expect, for example, more stirrup pants and asymmetrical haircuts, giant Sony Walkmans, and such. We move from an explicitly referenced problematic period in the history of romantic comedy into … achronicity, the blessed timelessness of fated love. The whole troubled period of the nervous romance is visually ridiculed, its promiscuity and individualism a tacky fad, as outdated and irrelevant as knee-socks and high-waisted shorts. Unshackled from historical referent, the characters are as free as if their story took place a long time ago in a galaxy far away, as Star Wars would have it. History as social and political context disappears as this movie progresses at the same time as history as musical and filmic reference gains narrative traction via the deliberately nostalgic and old-school jazz soundtrack (or its simulation, by launched-to-stardom newcomer Harry Connick, Jr.)."

Just to be clear, my merit pay this year will be based, largely, on whether I can say that this article is 'accepted for publication', or 'forthcoming', or 'published'. For that to happen, it needs to be reviewed, and this can take several months at a minimum. And for that to happen, I need to send it away. Which means it needs to be finished. Which I can't do when there are 20 eight- to ten-year-olds screeching up and down the halls. When it turned out they were all taking over the classroom that's 1.5 paces from my office door, and that they had indeed pre-booked this room, I freaked out. My department just fought a protracted battle with the bookings people to declare that room offlimits for anything other than teaching during office hours.

Anyhow, I was so frustrated and worried, I got mad. I called the woman in charge of the camp and freaked out on her voice mail. I believe I may even have said "I pay a lot of money to put my own child into proper day care centre so that I may come to the office and get my job done." I believe I may also have said, "Please call me back so that we can discuss this. Don't call me on my office phone because obviously I can't stay here and my workday is ruined."

Frustrated and worried. And now a little ashamed of myself.

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Speaking of frustrated and worried, I imagine I'm not the only one to have a scare about the big Fisher-Price / Mattel toy recall? In particular, the words 'Elmo Tub Sub' struck fear into my heart, as Munchkin has an item we might (and do) describe in just such terms. Here, in fact, is the toy in question, along with its owner. Notice the little wake created by its possibly toxic, possibly lead-painted little propeller.


However, this is the tub sub being recalled:

Not the one we have. Pynchon has declared we will buy no more toys from China. I defy him to locate one currently in the house that is not, actually, made in China. Worried.

Speaking, once more, of frustrated and worried, did you, oh observant reader, notice that Munchkin seems to be holding onto ... doudou? In the tub? Yes, that's right, she brought her security blanket into the tub with her, because that's just the kind of day she's been having lately. The kind of day where she sits in the tub pointing and wailing and pointing and wailing until she is provided with both doudou and sucksuck, and right now, dammit.

That's just one more reason why we've got three doudous.

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Omaha Mama tagged me for the '10 things that silence my inner critic' meme. That's a doozy, because you have to say nice things about yourself ... I have to say nice things about myself. Nice things that will interest you, hopefully, and not show me to be too too puffed with pride.

Errr.

1. I'm clever. This I know for sure, and have always known, and it's the one thing about myself I can honestly say I've never doubted for one minute. Sometimes I think I'm pretty, but often I don't. My fitness level alternately impresses and depresses me. I vacillate wildly in most areas of self-regard. But not about my brains.

2. I'm an excellent brunch-maker. You should come to my house. I can do fluffy pancakes, with raspberries or blueberries in them, with butter and real maple syrup. Crispy browned veggie sausages. Fluffy scrambled eggs, with a little bit of parmesan and some fresh basil cooked in. Fruit salad with perfect little melon balls. Coffee or tea, latte or espresso. Everything ready at the same time, everything hot, the table nicely set. I'm an excellent brunch maker.

3. I am becoming manifestly more politically radical as I age. I like this about me. I used to say stuff like "It's illegal to do crack. Why would anyone even start that? Everyone who does bad drugs should go to jail. How hard is it to just get a job and not do drugs." [pauses while you all collect yourselves.] Really, as I get older, I become aware much more of nuance in the world, and I temper my tendency to rush to judgement accordingly. Most of the world gets more conservative and judgmental as it ages. Not me.

4. My mom used to say that I have feet only a mother could love--this was not very nice of her, but she was probably referring to my lopsided club foot, and my uneven calves, and well, I've a tendency to cellulite on my quite bootylicious self. Loathing and ambivalence! But: I have beautiful big blue eyes, a long neck, square and delicate shoulders, and a tiny ribcage blessed with good boobs. Go, upper body, go! (We won't talk about my nose ...)

5. I am a good wife. I love Pynchon the best I know how, and learn more and more what it means to be in a partnership every day. I like that. It makes me humble.

6. I'm a pretty good writer of academic prose. Fellow grad students, and my dissertation committee, and my professors ... now my colleagues, blind reviewers, and audiences, uniformly note that I make complicated things understandable, and have a clear and even entertaining scholarly voice. Which you might not imagine from how I write here ...

7. I'm an awesome talker. I'm not afraid of public speaking, of giving talks, or teaching, or leading workshops, or whatever. People can always hear me, I don't hem and haw, I get to the point.

8. I have a strong sense of fairness. Reciprocity and probity (in addition, apparently, to pedantry) are my watchwords.

9. Ageing. I'm pretty good at it. I'm enjoying each year as it goes by, and while I'm sometimes surprised--and not pleasantly--that I seem to have wrinkles, I really don't mind getting older. Wrinklier, a little hairier, a little slower, not terribly interested in popular music. There are rewards to age, and I'm enjoying them (ask me again when I pass this obviously very advanced age of 34. I'm a good talker now ...)

10. I know most of my own faults, can call them out by name, and am actively working to rehabilitate most of them. I don't imagine it would be easy for you to surprise me by calling me on a fault: I have probably already accused myself of worse.

I'm going to tag some new friends I made at BlogHer: Moosh in Indy, and Assertagirl. You're on, ladies.