Once I got past yesterday's urge for the melodramatic, as captured in the previous post, I decided that, since my brain was fried for the day, I would accomplish something else productive: desserts. Working in slow-motion, I turned out a peach cobbler, a cashew-based dessert sauce, and some chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Mmmmm. Then I went to bed early, planning to sleep in till 8am. Of course, I had also scheduled the grocery delivery for 7:30am, so that part didn't work as well as it could have. Still, I'm sure lots of delivery men are greeted at the door in the mornings by wild-haired women, barefoot and bathrobed, their faces still covered by pillow imprints. Yeah, yeah, it sorta sounds like a set-up for one of those "I never thought it would happen to me" letters, until you remember that I also hadn't brushed my teeth yet. Anyway, I tried not to breathe too hard on the poor man. And it was, for the record, the fastest delivery they've ever made.

And now, on with they day!

Child ill. Slept almost not at all. Suspended night-weaning attempts, to help him get better faster. Oh. Oh oh oh. Ow. Cannot work today. Husband has taken wee one (thankfully much improved this morning) out and away, and I find myself wishing I were the kind of person who could nap. But napping makes me sick to my stomach and badly disoriented.

Two years of sleep deprivation. More, if you count the last few months of my pregnancy. What will the ultimate cost be? My cognition, speech, and memory are all impaired now, some days terribly so. The course I taught over the summer? I cringe when I remember some of my errors. But--on the positive?--my memory is so damaged, I can hardly recall the course now, anyway. One of my fears is that there will be lasting damage, even once the child finally learns to sleep longer than two hours at a time.

I do not dare have another child. I know my son is a high-needs kid, and that they are not all like that, but what if kid number two was the same? I cannot go through this again. I just don't have the strength, physical, mental, or psychological. I adore my little sweet pea, but I cannot lose another two years.

My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it.

May: Much writing. Gave talk. Rested for a few days; worn out.

June: Cleaned and reorganized entire apartment (OK, except for the big bedroom). Hosted many wonderful visitors. Began teaching intensive summer class.

July: Taught all month. More wonderful visitors. Son and husband had birthday (they share date and name, too--let the credit report confusions begin!) Health issues arise in last week of month.

August: Health issues resolved to my satisfaction (yay, it no longer feels like something is in my eye!), but not to that of my doctors (no no no, there must be something really, REALLY wrong with me). Tests are ordered. Then another test. Then more tests. Am currently looking at the fourth round of tests, which I expect will once again reveal that, although I have some physiological unusualness, I am in good health. Spirits not as good, what with all the worrying and aggravation, but have recently decided to cease caring about the doctorly wringing of hands and recommence normal life.

Today: research. Am working up prospectus for my dissertation proposal, and if I can ignore the woeful sounds emanating from two doctors and, soon, a third (especially since I have already decided I will refuse the lumbar puncture that I predict will shortly be demanded by third doc), I hope to have proposal done by late summer or early fall.

I heart my writing class. I frickin' heart it, you know? (Yes, I'm taking a writing class.) Suddenly, outlining makes sense again. I had reached a point where the complexity of my thoughts and arguments overwhelmed the dinky little outlining strategies I'd learned in high school. Now it's as though I've been issued outlining version 2.0--an update long overdue.

So, anyway, I'm going to sit here drinking my bowl of coffee--accidental excess of coffee brewed today--and contemplate my satisfaction with my current writing projects and, y'know, life in general.

Smug. It tastes great!

Sleepy today after another long night with toddler son. Kid just wants to nurse, nurse, nurse. The more I put my foot down and try to nurse him less at night, the more time he wants to spend nursing by day. If I put my foot down there, too, I wind up with a kid who spends a huge amount of his time, day and night, whining and crying and clinging. And lately, as I continue to steamroll him with my desire to move towards weaning, his cries have started to sound less loud and annoyed (as had been typical for him), and more soft and oh-so-sad.

I spent some time over lunch (cornmeal-breaded tofu, roasted sweet-potato wedges, kale, garlicy barbeque sauce, then frosted banana cake) researching the matter. I am relieved to find he is really quite normal. He simply isn't ready to wean, and I am making things harder not only on him but on myself by trying to force him to wean early. His sleeping pattern (waking about every 3 hours to nurse) is also completely normal for a breastfeeding, co-sleeping toddler (which is to say, most of the toddlers on planet earth).

The problem really isn't him. It isn't even feeling tired--honestly, most of my missed sleep at night comes when I argue with the kid over nursing and periodically send him to timeout for yelling too much. The problem is the normal one of comparison and fear of failure. No one else that I am personally acquainted with has a kid who behaves like this. And when the differences would come up in conversation, other people reacted in horror to my situation ("you still sleep with him? you still nurse him every few hours at night?"), thereby causing it to become an Issue in my own mind.

The rest has followed from that.

So tonight I am going to go back to following my own instincts, and cuddle and nurse the kid freely throughout the night, whenever he wants. I'm not going to argue with him over how long or how often. I'm not going to scold him for fussing. I want that soft, whimpery, forlorn cry to stop. And I'll bet I find myself a lot more rested and productive, too.

Full disclosure: I was pretty much ready to give in anyway, before I did the research that validated the normality of his behavior. Last night, after a huge blow-out over nursing ("no more till morning. night is for sleeping, not nursing or tantrums."), complete with timeouts and everything, the little one settled down in silence, only demanding that I rub his belly. After a little bit, I thought he was asleep and withdrew my hand. He reached out and pulled my hand back to his little belly. This repeated a time or two, until he lay still and quiet and didn't try to take my hand back again. I lifted myself a little to look at him (I love to watch him sleep), only to discover him lying there with his eyes wide open, a very stoic expression on his little face. Of course, I melted, wrapped my arms around him, nestled him against my body and nursed him. He was fast asleep, for really and truly, a few minutes later. Poor, sweet little guy.

Parenting far and away trumps dissertation-writing in difficulty and high stakes.

Not dead! One conference paper down, two to go. Very busy. Busy-ness compounded by (1) tutoring gig and (2) training for intern job next year. My dissertation is not getting much attention just now. But we are all well and healthy and not dead. Score!

Success! No, not on the computer-battery front, not yet. We couldn't get an appointment during times when we were free. But I have traction on my conference paper--at last!

My work the past few days has mostly consisted of tweaking my outline, jotting (and deleting) a few lines of text, and doing way more research than is called for. This is a normal loss of nerve that I get when the deadline starts to loom, and I plan my schedule accordingly. Yesterday, I took a pad of paper to a cafe--just a pad of paper and a pen, no outline, no computer, and no access to endless research materials. And there, with nothing else to distract me, I blazed through about a third of the paper. Huzzah!

Today there are plans afoot to go shopping, as my wardrobe is woefully lacking in clothes that are both conference-worthy and which fit me. I continue to lose pregnancy weight at a, well, snail's pace, requiring me to buy all new clothes every few months. It is annoying. I even tried to eat lots of really rich things this month, in the hopes of bumping my weight back up into my previous set of dressy clothes, but no luck. Fats signal the body to feel full, and I would uit eating after smaller portions, so it didn't help raise my total calorie intake enough (the only thing that really matters in weight loss or gain, contrary to all the crap dieting products on the market--seriously, want to lose weight? don't eat any pasta, white rice, potatoes, white bread, or other things made with white flour; these are the most common calorie-dense foods--not to mention, they have very little nutritional value, unlike their unrefined counterparts.) (Fun at parties? Oh, ho, this Snail is just a blast!) I think all I did was slow my weight loss enough to stick me between sizes, which isn't the most convenient outcome.

However, none of that might matter anyway, since the weather is today of the Wrath of the Gods variety. Maybe I can quickly craft something fashion-forward out of, let's see, some sheets, towels, and my son's outgrown baby clothes? Yeah, I'll let you know how that turns out.

Dear Universe,

Thank you for the ____FOOD_PICKINESS_&_TANTRUMS______ you have recently chosen to send to ___OUR_TODDLER____. However, at this time we find we have no need for your kind offering(s), due to ____WANTING_TO_STAY_SANE____. Therefore, we respectfully request that you stop by on ____TODAY!_____ at ____NOW!___ o'clock to pick up the unwanted item(s). Please don't hesitate to think of us again in the future, especially should you have any ____SLEEP____ available.

Yours truly,
SNAIL FAMILY

Gosh, that was angry.

But then, I am pretty darned angry at myself. That bears repeating: at myself. It isn't the responsibility of my friends or family to keep me on the straight and narrow regarding my dissertation. It's mine. And I've been shirking, and I'm angry.

Tomorrow I stay home (husband works; babysitter's out of town). Thursday I get back on track: out the door by 9:30 or 10am, my ass in a chair at the library, the work flowing.

It's that time again. The time when, once again, my academic work has been equated to playtime in everyone's mind. The time when, however many times I state the minute I need to walk out the door, no one pays the slightest attention. The time when my leaving for the library may be freely and endlessly delayed because my husband wants to sleep in or read the paper, or my son wants to explore the pantry or read The Snowy Day for the fifth time in a row. Yes, it's once more the time when I have to assert the value and importance of my work.

There's only so much blame I can lay on other people. Really, I'm quite complicit. I want my husband to get plenty of rest and relaxation. I want to spend time with my son, watch him discover, help him learn. Asserting that my work really is work and that my working hours really must be honored by everyone is my job, and no one else's. Sure, it's tedious that every few months, I have to put my foot down, firm and loud, and announce that This Is It, We May No Longer Disrespect Snail's Worktime, but that is simply how it is.

I need about 4 hours per day, six days a week, at the library. Lately that time has shrunk to 1, maybe 2 hours per day, maybe four days a week. But I had to stay home and let my husband rest, right? Sure, except...well, the only way I can justify not going to work is if I stop considering it really work. If I had a job at a corporation, would it be OK for me to flitter off for a day here and there, because my husband sprained his ankle or my kid is teething? I mean, maybe, just a little, right when things are most acute, but not habitually.

It is one of the things the best books on dissertation-writing tell you: treat your academic work like a job. It isn't something to put off because you don't feel like it, or your family wishes you wouldn't go, or your friends want to chat. To finish graduate school, one simply has to give up a lot of socializing time. That's how it is.

Yesterday I accidentally left the ringer off on the phone. I turned it off while I was putting my son down for a nap, and forgot to turn it back on. My best friend, I learned this morning, was exceedingly worried when she couldn't reach me. She phoned over and over all evening, at home and on our cell phones (dunno why we didn't hear those, but we didn't), and sent me emails. Her concern was very kind, even admirable. But it is exactly the kind of pressure that I have to steel myself against once more. Not being able to contact me or play with me or rely on me for some extra sleeping or relaxing time is NOT an emergency. It is a simple, normal part of a reality in which Snail is a grownup with her own grownup concerns that do not always include the gratification of other people's needs and desires before her own.

And now I need to take my 80 remaining minutes and try to get something done. (Herein lies the other problem: I am so disheartened, when I arrive at the library with less than two hours to work, I often can't get anything done anyway.) (And sometimes, rather than being too disheartened, I am too pissed off. Like today.)

Snail Out.

If anyone's been wondering where I am: my laptop's battery is very, very dead now. Thing only works when plugged in; otherwise it shuts itself off. And husband and I only have one working power adapter between us, so basically, I've only been using my machine at work, for work. For the rest, I'm trying not to break my machine any worse or hog my husband's too long. Tomorrow we're going to see about getting mine fixed.

Everything else is fine, though. My work is coming along, more or less, and husband's ankle is much improved, although he relapses every time he works it too hard. I wish I could take over all the chores and childcare and let him lie on the couch for a solid week, but I have to write this paper (and the one after that and the one after that), and I have to sleep to write it. Not to mention, husband has his own work that can't be ignored.

I'll be back. Never doubt it.

There is a difference of opinion in our household over the matter of night-nursing. One of us feels that it ought to be phasing out now, allowing--nay, encouraging--both parties to have deeper, more sustained sleep, leading to a more rested and less cranky toddler and to a mom better able to tackle each day's work, refreshed and without backaches. The other of us feels that WAH WAH BOOBIES WAH! And the third party in our household is remarkably patient about listening to this particular disagreement over and over in the wee hours of the morning.

The child is getting his two-year molars, and I sympathize. But I am getting my umpteen-year degree, and I need my rest. People talk about beauty sleep, but brainy sleep, or at least vague-coherence sleep, now that's the real thing. I can't say I've ever got up looking like a pretty pretty princess (or, really, like anything other than a wad of something the night spat out), but I do, after a good night's sleep, come out of it ready to write shit down on paper. Reasonable, sense-making shit.

Lest I sound too selfish, it should be said that I am willing to nurse him for ten or fifteen minutes every three or four hours during the night, which seems ample. My son, however, is lately fighting for twenty minute stretches every two hours. To which, quoth I: beloved child, perhaps thou hast failed to note it, yet though art, no more a mewling infant, but a strapping, toddling young lad, well-provendered in daylight hours. Nay, look, here is a sip of water and a kiss. Be thou quiet now and rest thee. Hush, hush.

To which the child: WAH BOOBIES WAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Shakespeare it ain't.

In other news: I should be ready to begin writing a proper draft of my conference paper today or maybe tomorrow. I do wish I had planned, when drawing up my schedule, for more teething. I don't know why I didn't. Son has spent his entire second year thus far in the throes of teething. Effing A.

And in other other news: I got that job for next year! I am very excited. There is a lengthy training period to be got through first--we are not simply unleashed on unsuspecting freshmen--but I expect I will find it interesting. Now I just need to line up some work for the summer, too, and maybe find an extra class to teach or TA during next year, and I will have the lineaments of an income. (My stipend is about to give out. Does it show?) I will have to give in and borrow some money, too, but the less the better, especially given the state of the economy right now.

And now I'd better do some food chores (shopping lists, food prep). Make mashed potatoes while the son sleeps, that's what I always say!

Dear Past Self,

Mwah, mwah! I LOVE you! The way you wrote ten single-spaced pages of notes for a three-page conference paper? The way you outlined and discussed the major literature on the topic? The way you jotted down what was left to be done? You, Past Self, are the best past self any current academic self could hope to have. Especially a totally overtired, scatter-witted current academic self, whose husband is mostly better now, thanks, but still needs a little help. Thank you so much, and I promise I will always try to be as good a past self to all my future selves.

Love,
Current Self

PS: Should Future Self ever get a chance to read this: dude, the Veganomicon's recipe for sauteed seitan with mushrooms and spinach is damned good! Go cook more of it right now!

Make that a stone's progress, lately. And not a rolling stone, either. My husband has sprained his ankle, so he hasn't been able to do as much housework or childcare. I have had to stay home extra, looking after the sonling so husband can keep his ankle elevated and iced. Not to mention, I've been up late every night cleaning, sweeping, and washing and drying the dishes--this in addition to my own usual share of the chores, which includes all the cooking and--at the son's own LOUD insistence--all of the nighttime and early morning childcare.

People, I am dead tired. My whole body hurts. I crave sleep like a man in the desert craves water, or like a writer craves original similes.

Tomorrow the babysitter comes. My husband will rest in the bedroom and maybe get a little writing done there, and I will go to the library and, let's be honest, most likely stare at my computer in the daze of utter exhaustion. This weekend I was supposed to wrap up the writing on my diss chapter for a while and send my pages to my advisors. Tomorrow I was supposed to get started on the first of two conference papers. Goddess alone knows what I might actually manage to accomplish tomorrow.

For now, I need to gulp down some tea, wake up, and finish getting dinner ready. My husband is watching the little one, and he can only do that for so long. Gotta go. No more time to rest.

I'm stuck in an exhaustion spiral. My non-dissertation chores all seem to have caught up to me in the past few days. They eat into my writing hours and into my sleeping hours. I cook and bake and clean, I make travel and lodging arrangements for various conferences, I track our finances to the penny, I apply for jobs, I tutor. I don't write much or sleep much. This takes its toll: I get more withdrawn, when I don't get to write. And lack of sleep leads to illness. I currently seem to be battling a case of thrush, and let me tell you: NOT FUN.

But what can I do? These other tasks simply must get done--and it isn't as if my husband isn't also dipping into his own sleep and research time to get a bunch of other tasks done--or to help me with mine. We'll get past this.

And, hey, I did get some writing done today. Let's see...206 words. Not much, but I had to spend some time researching some related historical details.

Also, I tried out some anti-fungal cream on the thrush. Pro: it has greatly improved the symptoms. Con: it gave me a rash. I'm still in no hurry to visit the student health offices on campus, though. Their job seems to be providing substandard care at a pace that even a snail gets impatient with. I do not have three hours to wait around in their offices, only to be given treatments or tests that are ineffective/inconclusive, expensive, or both. Their special trick is to order tests which require one to wait upwards of five hours for some technician to become available, which don't reveal anything pertinent, and which, although partially covered by my (crappy) student insurance, invariably results in a bill of a couple hundred dollars. (And I get anxious at having to spend an unexpected $10, right now.)

They also specialize in wrong diagnoses and protracted insurance feuds. My husband caught both in one go, when some incompetent practitioner diagnosed him with asthma and sent him home with an inhaler. He returned a few days later to express that the inhaler did nothing for his symptoms. She proceeded to discourse on how "people with his type of asthma" ought to care for themselves. He demanded at this point that she actually send him to be tested for asthma, which she vigorously refused for some time to do. (Oh, yes! Pointless tests are always OK, as when they insisted I have my gall bladder ultrasounded after I showed up for treatment for a flare-up of my bursitis, a known and pre-existing condition. That was an all-day affair, too. People, I have had bursitis for damned near ten years! I know what it feels like when my bursa gets inflammed! Oh, but gods forbid you want any of their off-the-cuff diagnoses to be backed up by evidence.) The test, which she eventually and huffily agreed my husband could have--oh, you know where this is going--revealed not a trace of asthma. The real kicker? A few months later my husband was billed for the full cost of the asthma test, and had to go several rounds with the insurance company and the health center to get them to admit that one of their doctors had, in fact, ordered the test, albeit at the patient's insistence. (Insistence that should never have been necessary in the first place.)

No, I don't run right over to those people when I get ill. I wait and see, rest and hydrate and try out a home remedy or two first. Seriously, can you blame me?

But here I am bitching, when I really and truly sat down with something positive to say today. You see, recently someone asked me what the worst piece of advice about writing was that I had ever received. I wasn't really sure what to say, because it seems to me that just about every piece of writing advice has been useful at one time or another. As one of my advisors puts it, sometimes more really is more. In no particular order, here is some advice about writing:

Write! Write something, anything. But write!

Don't write. Take a break from writing for a set period of time, maybe a day or week.

Try writing a few pages of your draft on paper, instead of on a computer.

Freewrite. Put down whatever comes into your head, for 15 or 20 minutes, to help you loosen up.

Keep a blog. You can track your progress!

Don't keep a blog. It will sap your writing energy!

Never delete anything you write.

Have a great purge and delete stuff that just isn't working.

Keep one eye on the main points of your current passage and your chapter/paper over all. Even write them down on a notecard you keep next to you.

Outline carefully and thoroughly in advance.

Begin right in with your writing, and only outline a little as you go, if you need to.

Write first thing in the morning, when you are at your freshest and most creative.

If you get stuck, use the time to work on other, related tasks, like research and bibliography-building.

Don't let your work on related tasks turn into a means of indefinite procrastination!

Carry a notebook with you at all times, to jot down your ideas. Otherwise you may forget them.

Talk aloud while you write, to keep yourself focused and lively.

Write in a private, quiet place, to avoid distraction.

Write where other people are writing. That way, if you are tempted to procrastinate, you'll know other people will see it. Harness the power of shame!

Write in a noisy place, like a cafe. With so much background buzz, you will not notice your neighbor with the stuffy nose or the sound of other people tapping on their keyboards.

Listen to music. Let its rhythms push you forward or move you to deeper contemplation.

Don't listen to music. It will distract and unfocus you.

Don't try to sound smart; that will result in you sounding weird, instead. Just focus on the concrete details of your argument.

Prize clarity above any other rhetorical value.

Drink lots of tea.

Avoid caffeine; it will make you jittery.

Write! Write first and write last. Always be writing. Write!

The weekend, in numbers:

2 hours tutoring
1 clean bathroom
2 big bags of trash
1 loaf of bread
12 muffins that taste like donuts
12 biscuits
16 snickerdoodles
1 pan of chocolate chip blondies
1 big bunch of kale
1 big pot of soup
12 cups of veg stock
3 big rounds of seitan
4 cups of tomato-cilantro hummus
2 plane tickets
1 conference registration
1 pair of little sneakers soaked from splashing in puddles

AND, after 1,767 words of outlining and 1 meeting with my advisor...

1 diss-writing mojo recovered

Bring on Monday morning.

Yesterday's meeting with one of my advisors went well, and I now have greater confidence in my ideas and my approach. However, he did find several intriguing, new ideas to add into the mix. I am drowning in ideas here, folks!

My greatest struggle as an academic has always been that I have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. That is, I can readily lose sight of the broad outlines, the big picture, under a welter of details. Happily, this has also become my greatest strength. My method of working is to take all the details into my awareness, bit by bit, until my mental image of the material expands enough that the big picture emerges from it. To put it another way, I come to know the forest by first learning every tree. The patterns that I am able to perceive, using this method, are rich, complex, and nuanced. To boast a little (just a little): this is a valuable ability.

But it has its downsides. I can flail for a long time at the threshold between whole-lotta-trees and gosh-look-a-forest. I do not like models that only work if one ignores a pesky counter-example here and there. And I am drawn to elegant solutions as much as anybody else, so even when I begin to first see patterns, it may still take a fair bit of work to perceive the best one, the right one. This method is not quick or easy, and it lends itself all too readily to perfectionism.

That's where I'm stuck right now: sifting through the details, finding and testing and discarding patterns, writing in circles as I search for the One True Interpretation.

I have only a little over a week left before I must put aside my work on this chapter and attend to writing a couple of papers for talks. And once the second talk is over, I only have another two weeks to convert my work on this chapter into another talk. I need to move quickly, and to do that, I need to find a sense of certainty in my analysis, perhaps even a sense of finality.

My hope is to get back underway with my writing today. The past two weeks haven't been very productive, and it is time for that to end. My working day is short today, to allow my husband to get a turn at his own work. The bright side: I get to go home to my sweet little son all the sooner! But I had better get down to work now.

I am continuing to work through my outline, pushing myself to deal here, now, upfront, with the peskier problems and confusions that keep tripping me up when I set to actually write. I have also scheduled a meeting with one of my advisors for tomorrow, to go over my outline and make sure it is sound. Well...the main point of having this meeting is perhaps nothing more than to force me to finish this outline. I am so sick of this section of my chapter, I would like to stay home for a week and do nothing but bake cookies. (Something I probably shouldn't say on my blog, as my husband reads my blog sometimes, and I am not sure he wouldn't encourage Project Cookies-Out-the-Wazoo.)

In other news:

* Financial crisis in the Snail household! Wait, family to the rescue and we are temporarily saved! Or are we??? Snails busy themselves locating financial documents and setting up meetings and such. Eventual outcome? Still unknown.

* Computer equipment failure! But wait, new equipment purchased! But wait again, new equipment might still not be working right! Will Snail have to suck it up and finally buy a new battery for her poor little machine?

* I have a new tutoring gig, which I am enjoying. Also, I got past the first round of eliminations for a certain job next year. Next week I will have to pass an interview. In the meantime, I no longer have any interview-worthy clothes that fit me. (Somewhere between nursing and switching to a near-vegan diet I have dropped a couple clothes sizes.) Fret fret fret.

* Hey, if I do get this job, it could readily turn into a really nifty teaching position by the end of next year! Except not! Because I would have to be ABD by the end of the spring quarter, and, uh, yeah, NO, I don't think that will happen. By the end of the summer? Sure. Easily. Not by the end of the spring.

* At the end of next week, I must stop working on this diss chapter and instead turn my attention to writing two conference papers. Can I get past this nasty section of my chapter before then? Can I get close? Can I relocate my dissertation mojo?

OK, time to pack up and return to the House of the Whining Son. It's been the ruin of many a poor mom, and believe me, I know. I'm one.

In case it wasn't clear from my last post: I'm stuck in endless rewriting hell. Again. How do I keep winding up here? How???

Two reasons leap to mind: first, this is just the toughest, densest, most complex part of my chapter. It is hard. Second, I have all these little bits of stuff--ideas, observations, claims, counter-claims, etc.--and not only is it hard to organize them in a sensible fashion, but it is hard to keep them all in my head at once, to make sure they are coherent and do not contradict one another.

In response to the latter issue, I have decided to pause in my writing and to work through a detailed outline before I go back. Usually my outlines are rather rough-and-ready affairs, but this one needs to be more ramified. Son is napping now, so I'm going to dig right in, I guess.

If only I knew just where to grab this whole mess first, though! And that obnoxious Do-Re-Mi song keeps playing in my head like a taunt: "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."

Someone shoot me in the head now. Thanks.

The suck. Oh, the suck. Son is mostly over his new tooth, and that is something. (Yay sleep.) But this part of my chapter continues to be slow going. I go wandering into the forest every day, and if I'm not careful, I'm liable to get lost. I have to keep remembering just where it is I am trying to get to, or I stop and stare at all the local points of interest, instead.

I am not obsessively rewriting this section over and over again. (Not yet, anyway!) But I do keep moving bits around, roughing out new paragraphs in the middle of a page that I had thought was finished, and pouring out endless notes onto the page about where to go next, no here, no there, no, what about that neat little thing over yonder?

So I am writing a lot and working hard, but it is hard to get a word count. I guess, for the past two days, my polished word count total is a rather unimpressive 354--and one large chunk of that has gone adrift. That's right: I have an absolutely solid, necessary paragraph that I cannot for the life of me figure out where to put.

Sigh.

Hard to gauge today's work, seeing as I yanked out a bunch of stuff, then wrote new stuff, then pasted some of the old stuff back in. Overall my total word count increased only by 49 words, but I wrote 327 new words. Wait...73 of those I salvaged from my old draft, so does that mean I wrote only 254 words? Ugh, this accounting is getting complicated. And what about the extra 50 or so words I have in notes for finishing my current paragraph?

Never mind. Let's just say that the day went OK, and that I am starting to feel more certain of what I want to say in this very difficult section and how I want to say it.

For now.

But, oh, if I get into the same cycle of writing and rewriting as in my previous draft, someone will hit me with a tranquilizer dart and drag my slack body away from my keyboard, right? Please?

PS: I estimate I will need another seven working days to finish this section of my chapter and move on to some less agonizing material. Let the countdown begin!

PPS: Yesterday? Zero words. Felt like crap. Got nothing done.

PPPS: Except baking a very tasty banana cake! So, hey, there's that.

Where have I been? Saturday I decided to work from home, as per the usual, but I got nothing done beyond looking over my work and jotting down a few notes. I remember now why I had such a hard time on my first draft: it deals with some of the most difficult material of the chapter. And now I am up against it again, struggling both to get a good grasp on it and to not be overcome by my fears that I cannot do it justice.

Sunday my husband and son went out for several hours with my sister-in-law, and I spent up all the time in cleaning. I had planned to clean a little and bake a little and write a little, but the cleaning swamped everything. Our apartment had become quite cluttered and dirty over the winter; it is hard to do a really good cleaning if my son is underfoot, and it has been too cold for my husband to take the child out to the park for a few hours. So I took the chance while I had it and gave the place a good shake down. And let's face it: my son is a toddler, my husband is a packrat, and I am an anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive neat freak. When I settle down to a really thorough cleaning, it takes a looooooong time. There was no writing. But the apartment is much more pleasant now.

Yesterday I had to stay home, as the babysitter was out of the country. Honestly, it was a delight to be able to stay home and play with my son all day. We had some great romps, and then he crashed for his nap--and then, rather than write, I curled up with a book. I figured I deserved it after all my work on Sunday, and I figured I'd be up and out early on Tuesday (today). What I did not figure on was a new molar growing in in my son's mouth, poor pea.

Last night he woke about once every 60 or 90 minutes--well, I say "woke" but really, he only became sort of half awake, writhing around and mewling in pain, his hair all damp with sweat. I should have got up and got him some painkillers, but I was so tired myself I just kept rolling over and nursing him some more, which he finds the nicest treatment for teething, in any case. By morning I was totally exhausted and my back was stiff and sore from all the time I'd spent nursing in a side-lie position.

For the one I've been drinking coffee, and for the other my husband gave me a good backrub, but I am still so uncomfortable I just cannot face carrying my heavy backpack out to the library to work. I'm out of Tylenol, but then, it wouldn't help much with this sort of muscle pain, anyway. I can't take NSAIDs, due to allergy concerns, and I can't have steroid, either, while I'm still breastfeeding. Our campus health center does employ a massage therapist, though, and maybe I will see if I can get a session or two, if my back isn't better tomorrow. For the meanwhile, I am trying to rest and write a little from home. And tonight I will dose the child up with painkillers prophylactically, before he goes to bed.

I spent a little time lying down, and on the up side, I had some good ideas about dealing with the next section of this chapter. Now I just need to wake up a little more and maybe stretch out some, and then I will see if I can't write at least 250 words. Time to get back to it!

As expected, yesterday stank: 162 words in the draft proper, and 99% of those a lengthy quote. However, I did write a bunch of notes and plans for how to proceed through the next, well, however many pages. And today I got grimly back up on the mule and wrote 415 words. It's moving, it's coming. Another day or so and my joy in my project will come back, too, but for now I am still suffering a sense of defeat over my lost pages. Really, I'm going to feel much better once I let the old draft just go and stop searching through the wreck for salvage. When I reread those pages, I am infected with something of the miserable, airless coasting of the original, and the fear seizes me that I will not be able to do any better my later drafts. I've got to stop rereading--heck, if for no other reason than because crap like that doesn't deserve a long mourning! Onward.

I'm having a bitch of a time today. Partly, I'm still reeling from yesterday's sucker-punch. I mean, seriously? Several thousand words down the shitter? I am Not Happy.

My other trouble is exhaustion, pure and simple. Last night the son woke me a bit after midnight, with ear pain. Now, I've taken him to the ped, and been sent home again with the diagnosis of "nope, nothing's wrong." And to be fair, he has no fever, no runny nose, mostly no symptoms at all. But he tugs and tugs and scratches and twists his poor right ear, and sometimes he is in obvious pain when he tries to sleep on it. I'm going to have to try the ped again, I think, but I expect the same reaction. Our ped is very chill, very wait-and-see, and mostly I like that, but dude something really and truly is wrong when my kid is crying from pain or scratching his ear open, and hey, why don't you take a more thorough look and figure out what it is, okay?

Anyway.

I gave son some tylenol drops, then cuddled him on the couch in front of a kid video, until the pain killer could take effect and leave him able to lie down comfortably again. Which was all well and good, except I just never seem to learn this cardinal rule of nighttime parenting: don't take them out of their bed, don't interact excessively with them, and for heaven's sake, don't let them watch any TV! Of course (of course!!!) once the little one was feeling a bit better, he wanted nothing to do with going back to bed. Mom was up, he was up--it must be time to be up! There commenced, until sometime after 3am, when he finally dropped back off again, an escalating series of battles between son and parents. Son wanted to run around the apartment, bounce on the bed, sing songs, and climb all over Mom. Parents wanted to sleep. Oh, sweet, precious sleep. Toddler had to be shown to his tantrum spot multiple times, and Mom had to storm out of the bedroom and stomp up and down the hall counting to ten at least once. By 2:30am, parents were sniping at each other (score 100 points for toddler!) Eventually, son did pass out, although Mom had to relax her "just lie down and go to sleep, already" policy a little and stroke his back to achieve this end.

I slept in till 8am, and son and husband till nearly 9am. The rest of the morning mainly involved sitting around, drinking tea in a vain attempt to wake up (not to mention feeling bloated, which is what happens when a mostly-vegan indulges in a giant cheese plate for dinner the previous night--my cheese goddess sister-in-law's treat, and my lands, was it ever good). Then I decided to do the cooking early (some banana-date bread and a pasta-and-TVP dish for dinner that came out quite well--and I'm not a big TVP lover), before heading to the library. Except there was still the tiredness, and did I mention it is fricking cold outside? No? Hey, it's seriously fricking COLD outside.

So I have set up shop in the kitchen. (Yes, the kitchen. That's where I write when I write at home. Don't judge me. My other major job in life is to cook for my family, so the kitchen is my natural workstation.) Only...I'm not getting much done. Because of the discouragement over tossing my first draft, and because of the unshakable tiredness. And now we are back to where we came in.

OK, this post is really just a time-waster, let's be honest. I will now drag myself back to work by the scruff of my own neck. But don't look for a good word count today. Just sayin'.

Today's word count: 343. The total thus far in my draft: 5,181. Not bad. I wish I had accurate stats for the past week, though. I'm still trying to figure out how much I write in a day.

I guess I'll know in another week or so.

Now off to set the bread dough for its second rising, fix myself a cup of tea, and make some phone calls.

Well, crap. Two nice things started my day, and then it came to a crashing, screeching, shards-of-plastic-on-the-pavement halt. First of all: I discovered that Word had been set to disregard my footnotes during word counts. I've been writing more than I thought! Isn't that nice? I am actually at over 5,000 words. At day's end today, I will provide a count that includes the day's footnotes, and also gives the corrected current total.

Second, I blazed out another 267 words (including footnotes) this morning and made it to the point where I was ready to revise and add all the pages and pages of material I'd written in my first attempt at a draft.

And this was where I hit the wall, because, upon re-reading those pages, I realized that they would have to be not so much revised as completely rewritten. Why? Because not only did I write that draft without establishing a bunch of needed background, but I also, apparently, wrote it without any structure, goal, or, y'know, point. I looked for a cogent thesis or several and a set of arguments and evidence backing it/them up, but all for naught.

Oh, ye gods above.

So I sat and thought and came up with a new plan for handling the material around which my previous draft had aimlessly drifted, and it is a good plan and all, but seriously, I am now faced with a whole new mountain to scale, just when I thought I'd made it to a nice, grassy meadow with a glass-clear lake and nodding blue flowers and wild ponies and all that idyllic shit. Argh.

I'm going to finish my lunch (black bean chili, cornbread, and some blanched kale with a crunchy sprinkle of kosher salt on top), then do my best to get started on this next task. What I want to do, however, is crawl up into the blogosphere and spend my remaining half hour at the library reading cute stories about cats and kids and vegan baking.

Damnation.

Today's net: 365 words. And before you ask, NO, I still haven't quite finished my "intro-y" stuff and moved on to the previous draft stuff yet. It looks like it will take an extra paragraph.

I am so close to done with this section, I can just about taste it. There is even a part of me (the insane part) that wants to sit and write it now. The sane part reminds the insane part that I have been up since before 6am, and should take my sleepy ass to bed now.

An average day in the life of a snail:

Up by 6am (and on really crazy days, before 5am). Read blogs, do food-related chores (plan meals, make shopping lists, do prep for dinner, bake, pack lunches, etc.), drink some tea, whatever.

Son wakes up around 7am, so then it's time to snuggle him, change him, feed him, romp with him.

Eventually, we go in to wake up husband. We take turns showering and dressing, and then I try to get out the door by 10am at the very latest, leaving son with his dad or the babysitter.

Library! Work! Typity type type pause think think type type no all wrong ALL WRONG delete delete delete pace pace type type type consult reference work delete delete type... Sometimes I break for lunch. Sometimes I skip it and get a little hungry in the interests of capturing a thought right now right while it's on the tip of my tongue or brain or brain's tongue. Sometimes I listen to music and boogie along while I work, or sometimes I must have absolute silence sssshhh!

Then it is time to close up shop and go home, often with an errand or two first. I get back in the mid-afternoon and have a little time to play with my son and chat with my husband.

By late afternoon, I have to hit the kitchen and get dinner started. (Or sometimes there are departmental functions I have to attend, and those nights we eat shit from a box, instead. I can only take my eat-healthy, eat-homemade, eat-budget philosophy so far.) The idea is to get dinner on the table no later than 6pm, but somedays it gets to be 6:30 and the toddler is cranky and then everybody gets cranky, oh joy.

Dinner is followed by extensive clean up. Did I mention I have a toddler? He has to be wiped down and often bathed, his high chair has to be wiped up, and the floor has to be vacuumed. Said toddler usually insists on naked time in the evening, too, so there are sometimes, ahem, puddles to wipe up, too. (Although, bonus: toddler seems to be figuring out potty training right quick, thanks to naked time.)

Finally, around 7:30, the toddler is captured, diapered, dressed in jammies and in protest, and hustled along to the bedroom. There it is time to bounce on the bed, play tickle games, read a stack of books, nurse, insist on song after song after song, and finally pass out sometime around 8:30 (or on late days, more like 9pm).

My plan is always to put the boy to sleep, then rejoin my husband to finish the chores and have some grownup time. Most nights, I pass out when my son does, instead. But two or three nights a week, I do manage to stay up until the late, late hour of 10pm. (Or 11pm, but then I sleep in until 7am the next morning and don't have any early-morning me-time and am grumpy.) (Why do I need so much sleep, you would ask, if anyone were reading this and I had comments enabled, which ain't never gonna to happen, because then I would have to give a crap about this blog, and that is too much energy for a diss-writing gal like myself? Because aforementioned toddler son still wakes up every three hours or so all night long to nurse. Fun! Not!)

Six days a week, that is my schedule. Sunday is my day off, but lately it has collected extra chores: goodie baking and mopping and such like. I am thinking about spreading more of the chores out into my mornings, so I can enjoy a really and truly day off once a week, to just hang around with my son and husband and be unproductive.

Well, anyway, I have to go throw some dough in a bowl for tomorrow's bread, then hie me to bed. It's after 9pm, and in my hectic, non-stop party world, that is time to get my beauty sleep.

124 words on the diss; several hundred more on my application, which I finally finished today. I am wrung out. The final step in the application was an hour-long test, which seemed ample enough time at first, but in fact passed in a few eyeblinks, leaving my pencil nearly out of lead and my hand cramped. I have mixed feelings about how I did on it, too. Well, we'll see.

I am now a mere summing-up paragraph away from beginning to revise and glue in the 5,000 words of my earlier attempt at a draft. An exciting thought, except I am too tired to care. My son will wake up from his nap soon, and frankly, I'm just going to sip some green tea and read one of my science fiction pulps until he does.

My brain is done for the day. Fork, anyone?

268 words, written at home instead of the library--a treat I sometimes take on Saturdays. Within the next week, I believe I will settle on a minimum target word count per day. Probably 250 will make for a nice, reasonable goal. Of course, more will always be welcome! Perhaps I will start at 250, then raise it by 25 or 50 words per week until I reach, oh, I don't know, 400 or 500. All this will be complicated, however, by the need to sometimes leave off writing this chapter to work on my prospectus or bibliography, or to write the two talks I am scheduled to give this spring. Well, one worry at a time.

For now, my son has awakened from his nap, and I feel the intense need to give him a huge hug.

Sunday is my day off (where "off" means "to do much of the week's baking, not to mention give the apartment an extra bit of cleaning"), so I'll be back on Monday. (Someday I will take a real break. Where "someday" means "after I have tenure or am dead, whichever comes first.")

380 words. Also the realization: my dissertation writing should come before any other writing that day. Smooches, blog, but no, you may not bleed off my writing energy.

Lunch before work. Roasted green beans, brown rice with flaked arctic char and a walnut-cilantro pesto. Not bad. I'm here late, though, and lunch will delay me a little longer. I am trying not to care too much, though. I am trying to escape the cycle of guilt and anger that often threatens to engulf me, and through me, those around me.

It works like this: I feel guilty about being a bad wife or mother or friend or cook or writer or professional or whatever, then I deflect those bad feelings about myself into bad feelings towards others ("I'm a bad _________ because so-and-so is forever messing me up," etc.), then I get angry and either snipe in little mean ways, or, if anger has been festering in me for a while, I snap and lash out in big mean ways. It doesn't matter that my perception of being a bad whatever is distorted, and it doesn't matter that other people are not really to blame. I have come far enough now in dealing with my guilt/anger complex to recognize both truths. The knowledge is helpful, but no magic bullet. Anger still gets hold of me. Right now my spine feels crumpled up, bent unnaturally, with all the anger twisted around it. It hurts, and I don't want it, but that is still not enough to exorcise it.

As with many other problems I've faced in life, thinking through the ethical ramifications is useful. When I snipe or snap or sigh or scold, here is what it says to my target: You are an object that is failing to conform to my desires and to my self-centric view of the world. You are an object that must not, cannot presume to be a person. My wrath is a righteous response to an ill-behaved object. For those who have the confidence of self to know my view is wrong, that they are people, not objects, this treatment will tend to poison whatever trust exists between me and them. And for those whose self-ideation is weak--children, for instance--or who fall under my authority and therefore give special weight to my judgments, this treatment is even more toxic, as they may indeed try to adopt my viewpoint and accept that they are nothing more than objects, deserving of my casual cruelty and disregard. Anger is destructive, and I do not want it in my relationships, whether private or professional.

Remembering this, I can sometimes put aside my anger. It helps to remember, too, that I am not an evil person because I feel anger. Balancing a child and an academic career is hard, sometimes crushingly hard. After I have apologized, I must let the past be the past. And that is the other talisman I hold against this cycle: that as toxic words and actions destroy people and relationships, so kind, respectful, modest words revive them, preserve them, and help them to flourish. The past is the over, but the choice and the power to do good to others is always here. Right here.

Today's total? 100 words. Nor did I manage to attend to that other matter I needed to deal with: an application for work for next year. So some of tomorrow is already shot. What did I do today instead? Cook and bake. Hey, there just wasn't much left around the apartment to eat, and keeping us all fed is my prime household responsibility. One I'd have fulfilled without the extra cooking today, too, except for a massive failure of a slow-cooker dish earlier this week, which had been intended to feed us for several meals. Nope, not one of my more stellar days.

On the bright side, it only took me 20 minutes to pound those 100 words out. Nice momentum I've got going; now I just need not to lose it by dithering around tomorrow.

Off to perform another food chore: planning next week's meals and baking. (Tidbit: every week I usually bake a loaf or two of bread, a dozen biscuits, two dozen muffins, and often a cake or cobbler or other sweet. All that baking ensures we have mostly-healthy treats around to snack on, and helps us stay on budget--no bleeding a buck here and two bucks there to fund daily candy bars, big cookies, donuts, etc. You'd be amazed how fast those kinds of snack purchases add up, both in terms of money and in terms of junk calories!) (Don't I sound like the life of the party?)

3175 doesn't sound like a lot, does it? In fact, it has bothered me all day, thinking of such a low number, and thinking of all the months and months I have worked on this chapter. So I went and counted up ALL of my work, and was relieved at the total result: 22,882 words. Here's how it breaks down:

First pass, my initial work considering the problem: 7241 words

Second pass, compiling my ideas into something like an outline or plan of attack: 7123 words

Third pass, my first stab at a draft, bogged down by having chosen the wrong starting place, but destined for eventual inclusion in my current draft, after revision: 5023 words

Fourth pass, my current draft, going as smoothly and merrily as can be: 3495 words

That figure I gave yesterday of 3175 words was from my fourth pass and current draft, minus 320 words which are a rough mock-up of my next few paragraphs. And now you understand, too, why I was hesitant to use a simple word count to measure my progress. Thus far, in pursuit of one chapter, I have written (at approx. 250 words per page) roughly 90 pages. And of those, about 60 are just "thinking on paper": rough ideas, errors, blind alleys, insights, confusion, clarity, round and round--the foundation for my chapter, but words which will never be included directly in my chapter.

I feel better now.

Grr. Today I gently detached a wailing toddler from my legs, slogged through a cold, steady rain to the library, and discovered that I had forgotten my power cable. And my laptop had no charge. And I'd left my memory stick with my diss backup at home. As they say in this here blogosphere, headdesk

So back home I went. Toddler required much snuggling, and I had to change my pants and socks and shoes, then I turned around and headed back out into the rain again. This time I packed yet another pair of socks and shoes into my bag, so I wouldn't have to work in wet feet. What kind of day was it? A three pairs of socks and shoes day. My day was so late, I didn't bother to eat my lunch (after carrying it to the library, then home, then back to the library, since there are some rather strict no-food-in-lockers-we-will-revoke-all-your-privileges-including-oxygen-supply-and-the-card-readers-will-give-you-an-electrical-shock-if-you-come-ever-back policies). There are only so many hours when I have childcare, and I must seize the precious sixth or eighth of a day, y'know?

For all the wetness and the walking to and fro and the hunger, did I mention the hunger? it was still a very productive day. I have not been counting words on this blog, but I feel I should do so, or devise some other metric. The tricky thing is that I write a whole lot of stuff that doesn't necessarily count towards any official draft. For instance, today I added a lot to my draft, but I also roughed out something like the next three paragraphs, in a separate document. And what about quotes? I sometimes add quite extensive quotes to my draft; should those words count? Or how about the fact that my current draft is in two parts, in two different documents, one half polished and the other half in deep need of revision?

Here's the thing: I'm writing a dissertation. That's where my energy, especially my mental energy, goes day by day. I keep this blog to track it, but seriously, if I have to expend much mental energy on this blog, it will transform into a competitor to my dissertation, and shortly thereafter I will delete it. You hear that, blog? (That's why your posts have no names, by the way. Can't be bothered. (Sometimes can't be bothered with subject pronouns, neither.)) Get in the way of the diss, and you are but a fart in the flow of the world's electrons. So you know what? I'm just going to count words in the polished part of my chapter, up to the current spot where I am working. As of today, that is 3175 words. Tomorrow (or more likely Friday, since I have some other distractions I must attend to tomorrow) I will be able to begin counting words-per-day.

This got long. Now I am done.

A fine day, writing-wise, but I left the library feeling as if I had not done enough. This fear always haunts me: that what I do is not, cannot be, enough, unless I am spending every waking moment on my dissertation. Reason responds: you don't have energy to focus and write for more than a few hours in a day. Pride even puts in (hopefully with some justification): you are a fast worker and thorough, too. Still I feel a bit bad when I go to work late and leave a little early, and knowing that my day's page count was respectable is somehow no comfort.

Well, one mistake I made was to take my lunch break right away. (What? I said I got there late!) Instead of letting my energy flow onto the page, I puttered around and expended it on web-surfing. Worse, I lost track of the time and took a much longer lunch than I should have. I suspect this is the ultimate source of my internal nag.

But enough! Guilt and self-recriminations only birth writer's block; this I know. Today is now behind me, and my thoughts may turn to tomorrow.

Lunchtime, after a productive morning. I'm eating leftovers: homemade seitan with agave-mustard sauce, whole-wheat couscous with chopped, toasted pecans, and mashed butternut squash, lightly sweetened with maple syrup. It's a tasty lunch, a nice reward for some work well done. I'm eating it cold, as I do most of my lunches; locating and using a microwave takes to much time from my day. I am also eating in the library stacks, which isn't strictly permitted, but I like how peaceful it is here. I like the smell of the books. I like to sit at one of the desks set into the south wall, with the warm sunshine on the shelves behind me. So I eat in the stacks pretty often, but I eat neatly and quietly and never with any of the library's books on the desk. It's damage to their books that is the issue, right?

My work today has to be cut a little short, as I have errands, plus on Mondays the babysitter needs to leave early, to attend to her own studies. That's OK, though; I miss my little boy dreadfully today. Most mornings I get up between 5 and 6am, while the baby sleeps in an extra hour or two, so I can have a little time by myself, drinking tea, reading, maybe baking, whatever. This morning, though, the little one was restless and fretful and wouldn't leave me be. I snapped at him, and immediately felt awful. He's old enough now that he knows--or thinks he knows--that when Mama speaks angrily, he has been a bad boy. His little eyes flew wide, staring at me and trying to figure out what he had done that earned him a scolding. Of course, I apologized and explained that I was just in a bad mood, that he was a good boy and Mom loves him, etc. Equally of course, the image of his wide eyes has haunted me since I left the house, scrubbing the images of our happy time reading together afterwards over his breakfast or his laughter as he bounced on the bed with his Papa.

Anyway, at least I've no reason for guilty feelings over my dissertation today. It is coming along just fine, slow and steady as a snail likes it.

Aaaaaaand--

--I did get some work done, roughly two pages (although since nearly one of those pages was all quote, does it count?) Got some help from family on the financial issue, too, yay! The diss goes on!

Sunday is my day off. Back to work on Monday.

Already exhausted, and I haven't started work yet today. One of our credit cards withdrew a payment for themselves from our account, despite the fact that we cancelled automatic withdrawals with them over a month ago. The money they took was supposed to pay for the next two weeks of childcare, which now we will have to cancel. This sets me back a lot. Without steady, regular childcare, I cannot keep my momentum going on my dissertation. Oh, how I hate that credit card now! We called our bank, and they said this is a common problem, but the only thing we can do is close our account and open a new one. Yup, well, that's what we're going to do, then. Not only that, we now plan to pay off the rest of that credit card as soon as we can and close our account with them. What a rotten bunch of jerks!

Anyway, I will see what I can get done today. My heart isn't in it, but I must try. Dissertations do not write themselves.

Finished a three-day detour today. I have a conference coming up, and the organizers needed to know some basic details of paper title and topic, and my travel plans and needs. Done! Tomorrow I return to work on my chapter.

And I had the idea today, also, of using a blog to track my (snail-paced) progress. Useful tool or mere distraction? We shall see.