Tuesday Thoughts…

In, When it comes to kids, embrace the average, the author (a doctor) argues for allowing to kids to be normal. Not “normal” like, the opposite of “serial killer,” but as in “in the middle 50% of the population. Right along the curve of the growth chart.

I have fallen into the trap of celebrating my own kids’ early achievements. I’m, absurdly, slightly proud that both topped 8 lbs at birth. Why? I have no idea. Overall, though, I like to think that I’m a pretty relaxed parent. Probably because I also think that both my kids are GENIUSES who will no doubt excel in everything they do. And bring about world peace while they’re at it. Doesn’t every parent feel that way? (Sadly, I know that NOT every parent feels that way about their kids…)

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As the kids get older, they are funnier and funnier, and daily I hear them say things that I think, “gosh, I need to write that down!” Naturally, as they get older I am getting older as well, and more prone to forgetting their gems before getting to a computer. What is up with THAT?! Sigh. Must try harder. Perhaps should send myself text messages when they say something particularly cute?

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A new site I’m really liking: http://www.hungry-girl.com/. I like that she takes a popular, full-fat, high-calorie dish and does a lower-cal version. It’s nice to have a not-so-guilty guilty pleasure mixed in with the “eat food. not too much. mostly plants.” mindset.

 

Where are you, Summer?

It’s only July 2nd, and yet I already feel the summer slipping away. Perhaps that’s too melodramatic; what I really feel is the summer weekends filling up with activities. All fun activities, all things I’d like to do, but still. When you’re working and in school, weekends are about the only time you have to do all those fun chores like cleaning the bathroom. Attempting to make food for the week. Or, much more likely in my case, playing with the kids. I have pretty much given up on cleaning the bathrooms in any way which cannot be satisfied with one of those clorox wipes (in my defense, I do try to at least wipe-down the bathroom regularly) in favor of rolling around on the floor with the babies. I also have discovered a new solution to clutter: don’t put it away. Give it away! In fact, we have gotten so good at this that Fast Turtle regularly finds a too-small teeshirt or a baby toy and brings it to me, saying, “Mama, this is for a baby. Let’s sell it!” or “Let’s give it to Baby Cousin!” And we do.

 

Sleeping

In the end-of-term, off-to-Turkey busyness of earlier this spring, I wrote about my need for more sleep. Well, as it turns out, I did some major catching-up in Turkey. To wit, I fell asleep whenever and wherever I could. I regularly–like, every single time–fell asleep in the car. How could I not? We were invariably going somewhere with a longer-than-20-minute ride, after having eaten a big meal, sitting in the warm sun, with an almost-always sleepy baby on my lap. How could anyone not fall asleep under those conditions? Especially given my already sleep-deprived state?

Now that we are all back on East Coast time, we’ve settled into a much better sleep pattern. Fast Turtle is no longer waking us up at 5:30/6am. Now he sleeps until 6:30 or even 7:30am. Yay! Hurrah! The downside is that Baby Bug is regularly sleeping late enough that she’s not even awake before I leave for work. Boo!

Of course, new challenges in the form of an office move (mine) to a location 12 miles further away from home (but it’s a reverse commute! reverse commute, hah!) will doubtless throw a kink into our newly-organized routine. Isn’t that the way it always is? Particularly with little kids, a new pattern only lasts long enough for you to think tentatively, hmm, maybe THIS is the new normal, and then all the balls go flying in the air and you have to try to catch them all over again.

 

A (Different) Good Argument for Universal Health Care

One of the smartest (education-related) reasons for supporting universal health care coverage came from Dean Dad’s recent post:

My proposal for long-term prosperity: combine an educated population with national health insurance (since going without health insurance is a colossal barrier to starting a new business) and a focus on providing the kinds of public goods that lead to all manner of positive externalities – basic research, mass transit, that sort of thing. If that sounds a bit Scandinavian, well, Norway and Sweden aren’t doing too badly these days. Iceland followed our model instead, and effectively collapsed. In places with plenty of smart people running around, where the cost of failure isn’t so awful, it’s not shocking that Nokias and Ericssons pop up. Here, we get Wal-Mart. We can train people to work at Wal-Mart, and there may be times when that’s the least-bad short-term option. But it’s not the same thing.

I thought this was interesting; I hadn’t thought about the implications of universal access to health care for people who stay in their jobs because of the benefits, such as health insurance, who might prefer to go out on their own and do something different. As the bringing-home-the-benefits spouse, I personally would love to have health care for my family that wasn’t tied to my job. Then maybe grad students like me wouldn’t need to work full-time on top of going to school full-time; or at least we’d have the option of taking a GRAship and maybe a little teaching on the side to make it through school.

 

Haughty Intellectual, me?

Inspired by The Nuthouse…

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Your result for The Personality Defect Test …

Haughty Intellectual

You are 71% Rational, 43% Extroverted, 14% Brutal, and 86% Arrogant.

You are the Haughty Intellectual. You are a very rational person, emphasizing logic over emotion, and you are also rather arrogant and self-aggrandizing. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual, and you would like everyone to know it. Not only that, but you also tend to look down on others, thinking yourself better than them. You could possibly have an unhealthy obsession with yourself as well, thus causing everyone to hate you for being such an elitist twat. On top of all that, you are also introverted and gentle. This means that you are just a quiet thinker who wants fame and recognition, in all likelihood. Like so many countless pseudo-intellectuals swarming around vacuous internet forums to discuss worthless political issues, your kind is a scourge upon humanity, blathering and blathering on and on about all kinds of boring crap. If your personality could be sculpted, the resulting piece would be Rodin’s “The Thinker”–although I am absolutely positive that you are not nearly as muscular or naked as that statue. Rather lacking in emotion, introspective, gentle, and arrogant, you are most certainly a Haughty Intellectual! And, most likely, you will never achieve the recognition or fame you so desire! But no worries!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compared to other takers

• You scored 71% on Rationality, higher than 65% of your peers.
• You scored 43% on Extroversion, higher than 41% of your peers.
• You scored 14% on Brutality, higher than 13% of your peers.
• You scored 86% on Arrogance, higher than 95% of your peers.

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I have to admit, as far as personality tests goes, I think this one’s pretty hilariously spot-on. Obviously, it’s about seeing your personality in a negative light (see, that’s what makes it funny…moron.) and I don’t *really* think I’m an elitist twat. At least not always.

 

Back!

It’s been such a busy month since we left for Turkey that I hardly know where to begin…hopefully it goes without saying that we had a wonderful, fabulous time, and were all sad to have come back. I’d like, at some point, to do some more in-depth posts on Turkey, and perhaps later this summer after my summer class is finished and we’re not sick with the killer flu and I have time to breathe more time for reflection, I’ll be able to do that. For now, it will have to suffice to say that the trip was amazing and I fell in love with everything about Turkey.

Did I say killer flu? Ahh, yes, I did. Although not the non-swine swine flu (although, really, how do they know? none of our doctors asked to do a culture, or whatever it is they can do to identify viruses…) it nonetheless was an un-welcome home gift that I did not need after just being out for three weeks. So, if any of you are suddenly struck with a high fever, go straight to bed and be prepared to injest more fever reducers and ice pops than you ever thought you could. For at least the next week. Good times!

 

Off to Turkey!

Well, we are off to Turkey tomorrow…I almost can’t believe it! The semester is done, all papers turned in, work today is wrapping up 500 loose threads so that everything doesn’t unravel while I’m gone. Okay, perhaps that’s a little overstating my importance here. Just a little.

I am a little worried about the no-sleeping thing. And I don’t mean the kids. See, I’m one of those needs eight hours of sleep people. I’m not a late-night person by nature. But, when you have a full courseload and kids and a job, well, the 8pm-1am time is prime work time. Or, really, the ONLY time to get anything done, full stop. Since I’ve been staying up late and getting up early pretty much every day for the past couple weeks, my body seems to think this is the new normal. This morning, when I could actually “sleep in,” I was WIDE AWAKE at 5:45am. After going to bed at 1am (which, now that I think about it, is perhaps the problem). Maybe I should try going to bed really early tonight to catch up on sleep? (Ignoring for the moment the little problem of finishing packing for the 4 of us for 3 weeks away.) Or, just hope we can all sleep on the plane? (Note to self: pack benadryl).

I don’t have a good feeling about the sleep prognosis, y’all…

But, Turkey? That will be fun! See you all in June…

 

A True Life Case of Synchrondipity…

So, last night was the last class of the semester for one of my courses. We were capping off the course by discussing our final papers–which I undoubtedly should be writing right now, rather than chatting here. But I digress–and the prof. asked me to talk about mine. Which, okay, I had already talked about mine last week, but I’m going to take it as a compliment that he wants to hear more about it. So I’m talking about how I’m writing about the “borderlands” concept as being not only a geo-political space but also a psycho-social space, and why this is important (if you want to know, I’m happy to share the paper. You know, once it’s done!), blah blah blah…and then, out of nowhere, he asks, “So it the overlap of cultures, languages, peoples, etc. a type of synchronicity?” The whole class waited with bated (or, more likely, yawning) breath while I tried to come up with a good, scholarly answer. While trying hard not to blurt out, “Hey! That’s my blog!” Which probably would not have earned me any points, but perhaps a few snickers.

Now I’m thinking, though…what if he was on to something? There’s something teasing at me…ah, probably just my un-written paper with its siren call: Come wriiiiiite me! I’m due Moooondaaaay! WRIIIITE MEEEEE!

 

TGIF!

Once again, inspiration is coming from Brene Brown’s wonderful website. I feel like every Friday I stop and think, Where on earth did the week go? And then the weekend zips by, I dive into a new week, and before I know it, Friday’s back. Realizing last night that there’s really only a little over a week left in the term was a shock. Luckily, I have made major headway on all three of my final papers, so I’m actually feeling fairly confident. <Knocking on wood>

So, this Friday…

I’m trusting my own voice and the knowledge that “academic writing” doesn’t have to mean impersonal writing; that there is room for the “I” as well.

I’m grateful for an upcoming beautiful weekend with my kids where we have nothing planned except playing outside.

I’m inspired by all the strong, smart, insightful women that I’ve met in my program thus far. [Not that there aren't men in the program too, I just have classes with almost all women.] They’ve challenged me to look at things in new ways, introduced me to new ideas, and have been a pleasure to get to know.

Perhaps I should have called this post “TGI-cheesy-F!”

 

Shame & Learning

90% of the adults I’ve interviewed can recall a specific incident in school that was so shaming that it forever changed how they thought of themselves as learners.

Brené Brown, “I Thought It Was Just Me” read-along, pocast #1, around the 20 minute mark.