Well, it's been so long since I posted

that I really doubt anyone will ever read this post but me. But that's all right. Frankly, I am feeling pretty down in the dumps. Or in the "Humpy Dumpy," as Daisy would say.

Husband and I are absolutely at the end of our clever ideas for how to get the child to sleep through the night. Her going-to-bed ritual is the most brilliant thing ever. It takes five minutes, swear to God. She sometimes even asks for "bed." She nurses very briefly, she drinks a bottle briefly, she gives us each a goodnight hug, she snuggles on to her monkey, and then she cheerfully accepts going into her crib.

Then midnight arrives. Or 1:30, as it was last night. And the inconsolable crying starts. We were up between 1:30 and 4:45 trying to get her back to sleep. Here's what does not work: rocking her, giving her a bottle, or nursing. We've tried a sort of variation on "cry it out," going in at intervals, but it is so terribly painful and doesn't seem to work, either. She can easily stay up all night doing it, and last time we tried it seriously, she barfed voluminously.

Last night I managed to get her to go to sleep at 4:30 AM by lying down next to her crib. Every now and then she said, "Mamas?" (I am "da Mamas" and Mark is "Da Dadas"). And I said, "I'm here!" And she finally went to sleep. This kind of convinces me that what we're dealing with here is separation anxiety.

But I don't know. I feel pretty sure I don't know anything. Hardcore crying it out seems the only option left, and I don't think we can do it, nor do we feel confident it would work.

Oh, but we are trying something else now; I am going to go in and lie down next to the crib when she gets upset. I am not sure this will work, either, but since it was the only thing that eventually worked last time, it's worth trying.

Things are hard

I am tired. I am frustrated. Daze had another screaming fit when we put her to bed tonight, though she did go to sleep after awhile. But... I don't know. Things don't feel right. I don't feel confident about my mothering. I want to wean, but instead, she seems to be nursing more than ever. Today I know I nursed once in the morning, three times during the day, and once at night--because she demanded it and then started throwing a tantrum when I resisted. I want to wean her, at this point. But it just isn't happening "organically," the way I know it's happened for other people. It's a problem, because I can't get her to sleep anymore with nursing, and she won't accept a bottle from me. She screams, "Nurse! Nurse!" and writhes till she can get into the nursing position. So other people can get her to sleep more easily than I can, because she'll accept a bottle from them (from Mark or from my mother). Oh yes--and I'm supposed to be weaning her from the bottle, too. Ha.

This is not a good time of my life.

Daisy at 16 months

Daisy had a doctor's checkup yesterday. She weighs 20 pounds, 9 oz (up to the 10th percentile) and is 30.5 inches tall (37th percentile). I had to say she was not yet walking very steadily, but the funny thing is that after the appointment (whilst waiting to get called back for her shots) she started tearing around the waiting room, walking more than I've ever seen her do and getting farther away from me than she's ever gone out in a public place. So--she is close. Very close.

The funny thing was that the Kaiser pamphlet said that our child "may be ready to say 3-10 words" and "express desires by grunting." I told the doctor that she speaks at least 300 words (and it may be more), puts together phrases and sentences of 2-3 words, and counts (to nine, although she usually leaves a few numbers out). I forgot to mention that she can say a few words of three syllables, such as "animals." And she doesn't do too much grunting to express her desires. She says, "Read, help, snack, nurse, baba, bath, nap," and a whole bunch of other words that let us know what she wants, including an emphatic "No!" which is very charming. Our doctor, who is very nice, said that was very impressive but I'm not sure she believed me. She seemed to think this would be very unusual if it were true. But it is true. And it's a good thing, since she's been so late in developing gross motor skills! The doctor asked if she knew any body parts and I said she knows all of them. I felt like a smart-ass student kissing up to the teacher by pretending to know all the answers. Oh well.

Her sleeping has been all altered terribly since our Thanksgiving trip. She woke up twice last night screaming and just now had a nap of the glorious duration of 30 minutes. I am tired. Now I have to go prevent her from re-programming my cell phone. Bye!

No!!!!

This is going to make me look bad, but I don't care. It's my blog and I'll look bad on it. I just found out that all part-time faculty have to complete the same "sexual harassment training" that full-time faculty do. I am so annoyed I can barely stand it. I know what all the arguments are for why we should have to do it; I know, I know, I know. And I have personally experienced sexual harassment, so I know it's a serious issue and that it sucks to have it happen to you. But I am STILL annoyed. More than annoyed. I am not going to sexually harass anyone. And I am BUSY. I don't want to do this. I want to do other things with my time. I don't need sexual harassment training. I don't need to be talked down to and "educated" in sensitivity by authority figures who don't know any more about this subject than I do and very likely know less. I went to the many hours long diversity training day a few years ago and really didn't learn a thing (except that, apparently, almost everything you do can potentially count as sexual harassment if you are unfortunate enough to get a student who really doesn't like you). I probably would never have written a post like this ten years ago, when I was more fully in the flush of moral outrage at the things that had happened to me, but, well, times have changed. MY times have changed. And-- my time is limited!

I guess I am just venting.

Crazy parenthood thing? (I'm so articulate today)

I was just reading the Kahlil Gibran poem "On Children" that Haddayr posted on her blog, http://haddayr.livejournal.com/352990.html, and it brought tears to my eyes. But it made me think of how differently everyone experiences this crazy parenthood thing. Some people I know wonder where in the world their child's disposition came from, and find the personality and interests of their child a fascinating mystery. For me, so far, it has been just the other way around. Everything about Daisy seems familiar, and sometimes in a way that makes me sad. Yesterday I was watching her scope out a plastic house in the waiting room of Pediatrics, clearly wanting to go over and play with it (she loves opening and shutting doors these days). But other, more assertive children were playing in it, and I couldn't get her to go over. Even when I went with her, she stopped short a few feet away from it and I couldn't get her to budge another inch, even though her eyes were fixed on it with desire. It brought back memories of me in kindergarten, desperate to play with a dollhouse that was always surrounded by other girls, never working up the courage to go over to it. The teacher though I was snotty or something, always sitting in a corner reading my book, but I was just painfully shy and unable to act.

But I think it would be a mistake to assume she's going to be just like us, and I'm glad that the Gibran poem reminds me of that. She is not going to be me. Or Mark. I can't wait to see her start going off in her own directions, or doing things that genuinely seem surprising to me.

So far... that's not happened. She reminds me of my real self, or sometimes the things I fear are lurking underneath my surface. I know it took me a long time to figure out how to get along in the world, to relate to people (I always wanted to relate to them, but for the longest time was trapped by shyness and insecurity). Now I tell myself it all comes naturally to me, but when I see Daisy, it brings back the fact that this was actually a long process. I hope she has connections with other people and that it's not as much of a struggle for her as it was for me. I hope she doesn't always retreat to a book because it's safer or easier. And at the same time, I love it that she loves books and gets extremely attached to them (she gives her favorite books hugs, as though they are characters in her life). And I like it that she's into words, and music, and sits and listens for hours sometimes to her favorite songs without getting bored. All those things resonate with me and remind me of our mother-daughter connection.

But it's good to be reminded that she is not me. I honestly forget sometimes. Now I am starting to see, from the other side finally, why mothers can have such a hard time distinguishing... why they get themselves all mixed up with their daughters. It must be painful to lose the symbiosis. I've already lost some of it, I know-- she is more independent, certainly, than she was during the first year of her life. But because she's still nursing, and because she's been so late to crawl and walk, it doesn't strike me all the time that she is not me, that she's trying to get away from me, that she WILL get away from me. I hope I can accept it and respect her as a separate person when the time comes to fully realize it.

Daisy as Icarus

Today, Daisy tried to fly too close to the sun on waxen wings. She came up to me with her incredibly annoying "Wheels on the Bus" book clutched in her hand, extending it and saying, "Read!" as we've taught her to do (she used to push books at me while making a loud whiny sound, so I find the "Read!" command infinitely more bearable). I took the book, getting ready to oblige her, and lifted her onto my lap. She said, "Nurse!" Ohhhh-kay, I thought, and went to put the book down. She clung to it tenaciously. "Read!" she commanded. I noticed she was trying to get into the nursing position.

That little devil! She had had the thought that there was no reason why she couldn't have her two greatest pleasures in life at the same time: reading and nursing. I swear to God, her plan was to nurse while having me read (sing) that book to her. As Mark pointed out, she was pulling a George Costanza, from the "Seinfeld" episode where he tries to combine eating a pastrami sandwich with having intercourse.

Hmmmmm. I have to say this is where I draw the line.

I finally parted her from the book, though she did much carrying on. She was very much in need of a nap, anyway. I took her into her bedroom for nursing. Then, I had her most of the way asleep when the phone rang. Her eyes popped open and she immediately said, "Phone! Ho? [holding her hand to her ear like a phone]. Dada! Dada!"

I was about to despair, but she went to sleep about five minutes later. I just love this new thing where she holds up a pretend phone and says, "Ho?"

Game-playing strategy

I have become hooked on "Scrabulous" on Facebook. It is a really fun game, and I love playing it. It is a nice distraction during the day. Having said that, it is a little disturbing to me what I've discovered to be the winning strategy at this game. I like forming beautiful, or interesting, or unexpected words; I just want to take the letters and form the best word possible. This is what I was doing when I first started playing, not paying much if any attention to whether the point-laden letters fell on triple-letter scores. I soon noticed, though, that this is not the way to win (duhhhhh). I guess this is why Scrabble has never been my favorite game. It bothers me that you can get 40 points for a dumb little word like "hub" if you land it on the right squares, and make sure it's forming other dumb little words next to adjacent words, like "uh" and "be," whereas you can form a lovely word like "pixie" and get 7 points.

Even more disturbing, you get rewarded for coming up with totally bizarre words that you probably never even heard of, which for some reason the Scrabulous dictionary recognizes as legitimate, like "kane" and "vaw"-- both of which I played recently. Now if this were REGULAR Scrabble, you couldn't pull it off, because you'd have to take a chance playing the word, and if someone checked you with the dictionary after you played the word and didn't find it, you'd lose your turn. But with Scrabulous, you just type "vaw" into the Scrabulous dictionary and see if it, for some bizarre reason, comes back a "valid" word. If it's judged "invalid," no harm done--you can just keep typing in other random assemblages of letters till you strike the jackpot.

It is just so ridiculous. I mean, what is "vaw"? What it makes me think of, as I told my Scrabulous partner Deb, is a hideous combination of "maw" and "vagina," which immediately makes me think of Grendel's mother or that huge evil spider in _Lord of the Rings_ or some other terrible misogynistic she-beast creation in literature, "opening her giant vaw and devouring our hero."

I just shouldn't have been able to score with "vaw." It makes me sad, but I have sold out my Scrabble purity. Ah well, I'll always have Boggle.

My boss is a genius!

Okay, so I really didn't think this could be done, but my boss has, I think, done it. The situation is this: some of my colleagues have been wanting to call it to another colleague's attention that he has a body odor problem. Now, before you say this is too heartless and cruel, I have to say that it really is true and it's a bit of an issue, because there are 21 or so of us assigned to one office (not that we'd all be in there at one time, but sometimes there's a crowd in there), and it gets pretty close and muggy. Although I wasn't thinking of saying anything myself, there have certainly been times when I've been uncomfortable with the odor, and also embarrassed when conferencing with students for fear they might think the odor was coming from me.

Anyway, when I heard that someone might say something to him, my first thought was that there was no way it could be done. What could you possibly say to someone? It was just too horrific a task for words. I took an informal poll and nobody's answer impressed me. Mark said he would approach the colleague and frame the whole thing as if it were happening to him-- "You know, people have sometimes told me I need to wear deodorant," something along those lines--hoping the person would then internalize the lesson and apply it to himself. I know this is meant to be kind and cushion the blow, but I think one of two results would ensue: either the person wouldn't connect the anecdote with himself, or, if he did, when he figured out what the other person had been doing, he'd be more mortified than if it had been done directly. My mom's response was that such horrible tasks should be the responsibility of highly paid, important people at the college (she actually said the university president should have to do it. Should have to tell an adjunct he has B.O.).

Well, just now my boss (and friend) at work told me how she would have handled it if the task had been left to her. It's not perfect, of course, but I really think it's by far the best idea I've heard so far. She said she would begin by telling him how difficult this was for her, and then say something like, "A couple people have commented to me that it sometimes seems to them as if you've come to the office straight from the gym." Now again, I know--not perfect. But we have to start from the premise that there is not going to be any completely ideal way to tell another person he has B.O. But if you have to perform such an odious (haha) task, isn't this just the most ingenious way to do it? I mean, a COMPLIMENT is embedded in the insult-- that people have perceived him to be a gym-goer, possibly connoting that he is in good shape or has almost a muskily attractive scent, albeit one that needs to be masked by deodorant while at a place of work.

I am just so wowed right now by her finesse. What a boss!

Rectifying the past

Today, I again passed my mom at the same intersection on her way back to Healdsburg, but this time, she was not eating a sandwich, and she DID see me, and we waved enthusiastically at each other! We both commented on the slim odds that this would happen. We both had to be taking the same street, for one thing, and she always takes Lake (I learned after the fact) but I usually take California. Also, if I had been one second later, I would have missed her, because she was just about to make the turn that takes her to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the same intersection I saw her at before, the same one where she was eating the sandwich and didn't see me. It is just so RIGHT and so fateful that we would get another chance and see each other and get to wave so lovingly and enthusiastically! The past was remedied, entirely.

Also, I walked to a playground with Dena, and on the way there, Daisy's handmade pumpkin hat fell off. It was a windy day, and I thought it was lost forever. We spent several hours at the playground, so the chances seemed slim, but for the sake of it, I walked back the same way with Dena, retracing our steps to see if the hat would still be there. And we FOUND it! Some kind person had hung it from a post so the person who lost it could see it easily if she looked.

Oh yes, and for a third thing: I had to do a desperation parking job today at a meter, even though I only had enough money for half an hour and I knew I'd be there for an hour. When I got back to my car, no ticket.

Some days are not my days, and I guess others are. Already I'm dreading the bad luck day that will surely follow this one... three crappy things to happen to me, to make it all even?

Oh well. I will enjoy the end of my good luck day for now.

Sunday

This morning the Nike Women's Marathon is running past our living room window. I had no idea this was such a big race. The waves just keep coming and coming. There are groups stationed on the corner, cheering them on as they make the turn; as they pass our house, they turn right and head down the Great Highway, I assume past the Cliff House and then along Ocean Beach. I took Daisy outside to watch a few minutes ago and she stood there and shouted, "Walk! Walk!" Inspiring words for the runners to hear. I tried to get her to say "Run," a word she also knows, but for some reason she wasn't into saying it very much. We stood for awhile with a father and three little girls who had signs for their mother; one said "My mom rocks." They never saw their wife and mother run by, though, and finally they left. It made me feel sad. I hope she's okay, whoever she might be. The loudest yelling and carrying on is coming from a contingency from Brooklyn, NY.

A talent for stress

I had a massage yesterday that I desperately needed. My neck was hurting so badly that I couldn't turn my head to the left. My usual levels of stress and tension had been exacerbated by several nights of Daisy sleeping in our bed, forcing me into increasingly uncomfortable positions curled in the little area of the bed that was still left for me. Anyway, I think I impressed my masseuse with my level of stress. She told me I was a "more-than-one-massage" case and that I should return within a week so she could get more of the stress out of me. She worked on the knots of tension so hard that it was all I could do not to cry out in pain, and I kept moving involuntarily (I was doing my Lamaze breathing from when I was in labor). But it was GOOD pain, because I knew she was getting rid of the knots. She is the greatest masseuse. She thought I would be sore today, and kept warning me what to do, but I was so greatly relieved to have some of the stress out that I don't at all mind a little soreness today. I feel so much better.

And now I need to work on not clenching my jaw all day long. I know it's wearing on my teeth, as well as giving me terrible headaches and stress in my neck. I am kind of a mess. I think I need to work on being less cerebral and more in tune with what's going on in my body (but see how I began this sentence-- "I think." That's all I do). I have a hard time with any part of my body that is not my brain. I need to work on this somehow.

Mundane poignancy

The other day, I had such a mundanely poignant experience. The background of it is that my mother, whatwouldIdowithouther, comes for a couple nights, usually, each week to stay with us and help with Daisy so I can get things done that tend to fall by the wayside (like, uh, grading papers). She always leaves Thursday morning. This last Thursday morning, as I was driving home from a morning appointment, I saw her car passing me in the other direction--leaving me. I always have such a strong feeling of sadness and abandonment (unfair, I know) when she leaves, and for some reason it was especially hard to see her this way, her car passing mine, and no ability to communicate and say goodbye. I turned, waving frantically, and shouting (futilely), "Mama, mama!" --as if she could hear me. Of course, she couldn't hear me. But what made it worse was that she didn't see me, either, and she was in the process of taking a big bite out of a sandwich.

The whole thing was inordinately heartbreaking: seeing her car, leaving me; having her not see me; and, oddly, the sandwich. I found out later that it was a really good sandwich, too, from Angelina's gourmet deli, where she had stopped on her way out of San Francisco. She totally, totally deserved the sandwich. She works so hard to help us when she's here. But for some reason, I was almost in tears as our cars passed. I scrambled for my cell phone, thinking I'd call her, and then I thought I might accidentally cause her car to crash, since she'd be juggling driving, the sandwich, and her cell phone. Or else she wouldn't answer, which would augment the heartbreak. My hand went back and forth three times, to my purse to grab the phone, then back to the steering wheel, then back to the purse... till I decided not to call.

Was it that I wanted a sandwich, too? I have to admit, I thought maybe she'd made the sandwiches at home before she left, and as a surprise for me, when I got home, there'd be a big yummy mother-made sandwich waiting for me. (That was before I knew she'd stopped at Angelina's on her way out of town.) Or was I jealous of the sandwich, because it was taking my mother's attention away from me? It was bad enough that she was leaving me, after all.

My mother won't be so happy that I shared this anecdote, but it is not meant to reflect poorly on her at all, and I'm sure no one will think that it does. And the only reason to have a new blog is so that I can be more open about things on it. So I hope she forgives me for sharing this woeful little tale.

My baby does not like me to be on the computer

Maybe this belongs on my other blog, but anyway: this post will be short because the second my baby saw me turn on my computer, she crawled over and began hitting the keys. I tried to bribe her with cheese but she spat it out. Oh, wait... she is distracted by something. I'd better make this quick.

Today I accidentally parked in street cleaning, and when I got back to my car there was NO TICKET. Either the gods are making it up to me for some other time I had bad luck, or I am ABOUT to have some streak of bad stuff happen to me. This latter thought is what's been on my mind today. See how I ruin good news?

Yesterday when I came in to class, my students were full of questions about Mark, whom they'd met the other day when he subbed for me. They wanted to know ALL ABOUT our marriage and our life together. I was so amused. Now, I was not born yesterday and I realized that part of what they were doing was trying to take up class time so they wouldn't have to spend it learning. But I think at least partly they were interested in hearing about our relationship. This cracks me up because the only reason someone like me would be of any interest to them is that three times a week I happen to be stationed in front of them for an hour and five minutes. Ordinarily, a person like me would be of less than no interest to them. But by virtue of the fact that I am deposited in front of them in a position of assumed authority, they start getting interested in the minutiae of my life and questioning me about it as though I were a deeply fascinating object of interest. Of course, I also enjoyed hearing little salacious details about my professors when I was a student... but now, I am not quite sure why.

I amused myself by describing our marriage thusly: "It's kind of like when Hollywood celebrities marry each other. Only one Rhetoric and Composition teacher can truly understand what another Rhetoric and Composition teacher is going through."

I also enjoyed this: they told me we had very different teaching styles. When I asked them to be more specific, the answer was, "He used an overhead projector and you always use the chalkboard."

I also note that today's students are a whole lot more... savvy and grown-up, somehow, than I remember being at 18. For example, this part of the conversation: after letting the questioning go on a bit, I teasingly asked them why they were so interested in personal revelations from their teacher. One student said she really liked knowing her teachers and even getting to be friends with them.

Me: That may be, but what happens when your friend the teacher has to give you a grade?
My student: Well, of course, there's a fine line that teachers have to figure out. They definitely need to maintain their boundaries with their students.

That just makes me smile.

Trying to enjoy life

One of the problems with blogs is that every post you create seems to stand for some big, dramatic statement about your life, possibly The Truth about you, instead of just being whatever mood you were in that day. So I feel like I should first say, "Don't worry about me, these are just some thoughts that floated through my brain, not an irrevocable and unchanging comment about my state of mind."

Anyway, though, I have been thinking today about the fact that I often tell myself (frequently while sitting on the bus, giving myself a little pep talk on the way to work), "Just relax about that! Stop stressing yourself out so much. Just try to enjoy your life." But, if you are trying to enjoy life, how much can you possibly be enjoying it? Then you just start worrying about whether your trying is effective, if you are trying hard enough, should you be trying harder or in some different, more effective way.... It's like lying in bed telling yourself, "Fall asleep! You need rest! You're running out of time! The baby will be awake in four hours, and then you'll be sorry!" Which I also do. Of course.

Sadly, I really do want to enjoy my life. Unlike when I was in my teens and twenties, I now feel fairly sure that I am not immortal and that one day I'll regret not having enjoyed it more, when it's close to being over.

I was thinking today how totally revealing of me and my neuroses the title of the blog is. I couldn't think of a title, so I slapped this one on it, and then started to worry that it sounded show-offy, because obviously it calls to mind "A Star is Born." I didn't want to imply that this blog was a star, so I shoved the word "humble" in to rectify any possible misunderstanding.

I am probably the sort of person who should learn to meditate, since one of the problems with me is that I over-think everything. That was another thing I HATED in my teens and twenties: people who told me I was over-thinking things. I just knew they were soulless, conscience-less twits living an epicurean, grossly physical life, putting their heads down on their pillows every night blissfully free of any awareness of the suffering of others in the world.

Now do think that maybe I think too much-- as Becky Peacock once told me, senior year of college, in her comments on a chapter of my senior thesis. She wrote in her neat, feminine, Becky Peacock-like handwriting: "Sarah has too many ideas. She needs to pick one and go with it." At the time, I was full of contempt for Becky Peacock--perky Becky and her best friend, Lolly, who were among the many reasons why I didn't enjoy going to Scripps very much. I probably thought, deep down, that I was better than they were because I was suffering more (though I have to say that Lolly suffered very greatly one day in our senior seminar when the professor went through her chapter and proved that she had misread and hence misused every single quotation in the whole chapter--every single one. I am not exaggerating. Lolly was quite hurt, and I felt bad for her). But back to Becky: now I'm not so sure that she might not have been on to something.

A first post is born

It's so strange, the titles that kept going through my mind for this blog. I just couldn't think of anything good. I kept thinking, "This blog is your blog, this blog is my blog," and "Blog, Blog, Bloggity Blog" (as in "Spam, spam, spammity spam"), and "Bloggin' in the USA," and "To Blog or not to Blog? That is the question." I am just not meant to put titles on things. It is not my calling. At least I didn't call it "This little blog of mine, I'm gonna let it shine" or "Inna Gadda Da Blogga, Baby." I'm telling you, my brain could come up with nothing, just nothing.

So, I have created another blog. The reason is mostly mundane. When I started teaching again this semester, I realized that my students were going to google me. I don't say that in order to be insanely self-important: I am sure they have many more important and fascinating things to do. It's just, well, it's only natural to google your professors these days. But picturing my students reading my blog put me in a state of complete, paralyzed silence. So I've done everything I can, in my technologically unsavvy way, to have nothing on this blog that will lead to me if someone googles me. I hope I succeeded. I would like to feel somewhat less inhibited about things. I couldn't think of a very good username so I called myself "Lola" after a song my friend Jenny and I wrote when we were girls together... a very, very amazing song, if I do say so myself. I don't know if our musical virtuosity ever reached a greater height, so I settled on that name as the pinnacle of our artistic achievement.

So what can I say for myself today? Well, today I was so tired that I repeatedly said the seventh coordinating conjunction was "since," and my students repeatedly corrected me, howling, "So! So! Not since!" I guess I should be proud of them. Also, a gas station attendant hit on me. I could hardly believe it. It was an unreal situation. I was feeling completely exhausted and unattractive and just wanting to get home. He leaned in my window and told me I had a beautiful complexion, which is certainly not true, especially since the pregnancy. Then he said if I wore more makeup (as it is, I don't wear ANY), he thought I could get close to the point of looking like a model. It went on and on, far too long. I had to ask him several times to run my card through the machine so I could proceed with my business. I thought he was never going to let me get away. I can't believe this sort of thing would happen to me at this point in my life. It was honestly unflattering and just tiresome and dumb, and almost made me want to cry because I was so eager to get home and he was getting in my way and bugging me and bugging me.

Well, I must go for now.