Tuesday, May 29, 2007

found a place to live

We're buying a house. It's a really nice, brand new house. Actually, right now it's a slab, but in a couple of months it will be a house. Sometimes I'm excited and sometimes it makes me so nervous I want to throw up.

On another note, summer school started today and half of my students have already logged in to the course website and started their assignments. Great sign. I like starting a new class--I'm always happy and optimistic. I love that about this career--every few months there's a clean slate and a fresh start.

Friday, May 18, 2007

blogging pseudonyms

Blogging pseudonyms are annoying me right now (mine, not yours). I forget to use them because I think I just quit worrying so much over being "found out." Largely because those who haven't heard about my blog from me have heard it through the grapevine. But there will be the job search one day. And I did a Google test using my name and my girls' names and, guess what it turns up--Mommy, Ph.D. So what do you think? Do I go back and delete all the real names in my posts and start using pseudonyms? I'll need a new one for the baby. I like RB and think it suits her, but AB doesn't work for the baby.

Know why I have three posts today? I'm almost done with my essay and I am avoiding it. And I don't have a lot of procrastination time with a baby at home. Get to work, Sarah!

positive

Okay, I'll stop being so mopey and say something positive. The husband's new city is very nice. It's a "master-planned community" with lots of cool shops and fabulous restaurants and fun stuff for kids because lots of rich people live there. It's a little too close to Extremely Large City for my comfort and a little too rich for our bank account. But the adjacent town where we hope to live is also nice, not quite so "master-planned," and close enough for husband to commute easily. It has stores and restaurants and parks. We live in a tiny little place right now and have to drive twenty miles to College Town for any of those things--seriously, can't even find the food I want at the local grocery store. There are several great preschools to choose from, all of them with openings for three-year-olds. None of them have openings for infants, but that is an entirely different issue and I still haven't decided what to do with Annabelle or when to do it. I'm content with her strapped to my chest for the time being.

Off topic, I've been amused at the names of preschools and daycare centers as I've been researching. Many of them are descriptively titled, "Christian Church Preschool" or "Local City Montessori." Others are more creative, "All God's Little Children" or "Frogs and Fairies." Others emphasize academics, "Academy of Excellence"--seriously! They love to use the words "academy" and "excellence" and "learning center" in various ways. Even the in-home child care providers with a maximum of, like, eight kids give their operations names like "Little Angels Academy" or "Sugar and Spice Child Development Center." Not exaggerating, people.

It makes me want to put a sign on my door: Mommy, Ph.D.'s Center of Excellence for the Nurturing of Girl Geniuses. Maximum capacity: 2.

the husband's job

The husband is moving because he doesn't like his current location and told his boss that he needed to move or he would have to quit. So they found him a new place pretty quickly--same job, different place. The position was vacated by a manager who quit because his wife said she would divorce him if he didn't get a different job. Yep.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

a step in...a direction

Who knows if it's the right one? The husband has a new job location to start in four weeks. The good news is that it's not extremely far from school--it's a long commute but not unthinkable--and it's close enough to home that he can commute for a while if we haven't moved by the time he starts. Now we need to find a place to live and a school for Rebekah. But first I have to finish this darned essay.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

finished semester but no break in sight

Blame the light blogging on too much work, too little sleep, and not enough hands. I finished grading in record time because the papers were very short. I may drop this assignment for the summer because it's the summer and it will give me time to think about whether I want to continue it in the fall. Perhaps the deliberations on the value of this assignment deserve a separate post, but not today. I'm considering dropping it only because it is autobiographical, and those are so hard to grade. How do you give someone a bad grade on a paper about their parents' divorce or their best friend's suicide, no matter how badly written it is? So the question is not if this assignment is valuable--I think it is--but if I can use it responsibly. Good news is that despite some unusually high grades on the last paper, the final grades turned out exactly as I thought they should. It's nice when you get to the end of the semester, look at how it all turned out in the end, and agree with the outcome. It's not fun when you get to the end and wonder, how did this person not get an A? Or how did this guy manage to pass?

So now I have to finish revising my essay that is being published. I have signed a contract for it, but I still have a fear that in the end it will be thrown out. I won't believe it until I see it in print. I think my insecurity about it is based on my current, less-than-ideal working situation--sleep-deprived, hormonal, and stealing bits of time here and there to work on it. But I did a whole year of coursework in that state, and it worked out alright. By the time I finish the article, it will be time to start summer school, and somewhere in the midst of that, I'll be moving somewhere. Still don't know where or when. I'm just teaching one class in the summer, so I won't be too overworked. And so far it looks like a very small class, so maybe I won't have massive amounts of grading to do. I do have some preparation to do for this because even though I'm teaching the same class with the same book, it's in the summer and totally online, so there's some adapting to do.

Enough rambling. This post has bored even me.

Friday, May 04, 2007

moving. again.

So one of the big changes on the horizon is, once again, moving. Yes, we did this a year ago. And it's sort of a surprise this time. We weren't really planning for a move, but as I wrote last summer we pretty much move every year, and it pretty much sucks. So here we go again, and I don't know where we're going. My husband is going to a different job--well, same job, different location (not sure exactly where)--and hopefully he will be less miserable there. He is not happy where he is, and that is why we're moving again. But the nice, affordable rental properties in the places we're looking are...well, they're just not there. So we met with a realtor yesterday and talked about buying. I'm not ready for that, either. And I don't know if we can even get a loan. I cried when we left the office because I'm just overwhelmed. New baby, uncertain financial future, uprooting again, dissertation still looming...and there's other work to do--I won't actually be "off" (as much as I am ever "off") until July.

Annabelle is strapped to my chest right now, happy as she can be, and I have two hands free. I should have done this sooner.