zygote daddy

Still alive!

Ok, so that wasn't so bad after all. Five days and 30 pages later, I'm still standing. At least until the oral exam, when my committee gets to tear into all my perceived weaknesses. Should be fun. Then I only have two years of research, a dissertation to write, and a final oral defense before I finish. I'm almost halfway there!

Wow, that's totally exciting and totally depressing all at the same time.

they just might make a doctor out of me yet

Posts have been scarce recently because my preliminary written exams are coming up this week. 5 days. 5 exams, one from each member of my dissertation committee. 40 mind-abusing hours racing the clock to answer questions meant to stump and humiliate test my knowledge of ecology.

And this is only the written component. The oral exam comes in two short weeks: an afternoon of me, a chalkboard, and my committee asking me whatever the feel like asking. There is no time limit. I have to stand there being peppered by questions until a) they get bored of me or b) I collapse into a twitching mass at the front of the classroom.

It's one part comprehensive academic assessment, one part rite of passage, and one part petty hazing ritual.

I get my first exam at 6am tomorrow. I won't know which committee member wrote it until I receive it. It could be on just about anything.

But at least it's only my entire professional future hanging in the balance.

[Cue complete mental breakdown]

flirting with fortune cookie agnosticism

YOU ARE HEADING FOR A LAND OF SUNSHINE AND RELAXATION

Thus the fortune cookie's utter cruelty was laid bare. It had shown such promise, an unassuming pod of sweetened dough, gently cradling words of wisdom passed down through the ages. And winning lottery numbers, natch.

I gingerly snapped it in half, eagerly anticipating what the wisest of mass-produced sweets had divined for me.

A land of sunshine? And relaxation?

How could you, fortune cookie?

Did I do something to offend your candied conviviality?

Do you not realize it is January in Iowa, thousands of miles from the verdant California winters of my youth? Do you find perverse pleasure in my torture because my preliminary exams are this semester, relaxation remaining an impossible dream for months?

You have crushed my very soul, fortune cookie, but somehow I must try to persevere.

grad school brings out the bad parent in all of us

Oh, I SO know how that feels. That has been my life for months now.

The end of the semester is upon us. I am finally finishing up my dissertation proposal, I have a class presentation on Wednesday I've almost started thinking about, d.w. is trying to salvage a term paper group-written with some appallingly underachieving undergrads, and she's about to put in some very long hours in the studio finishing a mixed-media work for another class.

Oh wait, don't we have a baby at home or something?

Yes, yes we do. And thankfully he plays well by himself. But sometimes the pull of Tivo is simply too much, and we have to put on Sesame Street or March of the Penguins so we can get just a little more work done. And he just loves those damn penguins.

I'm afraid we're bad people. No, I'm confident we're bad people. Next thing you know it'll be Ritalin and behavior modification.

I'll be a good dad when the semester ends. I promise.

[By the way, you might want to check out the latest addition to A Compendium of All Knowledge Related to the Rearing of Offspring. At least if you like reading about diapers.]

the life of a sahd poser

Sorry to be gone so long (my brain having taken a vacation from all creativity, inspiration, and wit), especially because Chins and I have been having some serious adventures together recently on days d.w. is in class. They are adventures for me anyway, dipping my toes into the world of stay-at-home parents a couple of days a week.

I must say it is a welcome change from the stress and constant pressure of grad school...did I mention my prelim's are next semester and I know nothing at all about science? That the past 22 years of schooling (dear god...) have stewed my brain to a gelatinous grey mass? That my major professor and all my committee members are going to discover that I'm a fraud? A giant phony destined to be run out of town in shame?

But that's another post. Sorry.

As I was saying, I've been venturing into a world heretofore known only to those brave souls strong enough to make a career of raising their children. It's a world at once both comfortable and intimidating, where you must simultaneously trust your instincts yet learn to overcome them when necessary. It's enough to drive an evolutionary biologist crazy.

We've been hitting up library story time as often as we can, which for a sahd noob like me is the crucible to end all crucibles. We arrive early so Chins can crawl around and play with the other kids (i.e., slobber on their toys and try to yank out their hair). This leaves me standing with the other parents in a ring around our children, like so many gambling addicts ringing a cockfight. It is then that I feel it most strongly: the ridiculous judgments of small, small people.

"Well, he certainly is a chubby one, isn't he?"

"Oh, you let him come here without shoes on?"

"Is he chewing on that toy? I would never let my Aiden/Caiden/Brayden/Jayden/Hayden/Zayden do something like that."

But I can take it. It's a funny thing; I used to get really hung up on what other people thought of me. I suppose I still do about some things. But when it comes to Chins, I don't give a rat's ass what anyone else thinks. I just breathe, listen to my instincts, and when I look into those big green eyes I know I'm doing OK.

a pariah in my own home

I have grown accustomed to being liked by people. I'm not talking about people basking in my radiant glory or anything (although were that the case no one would be turned away). I just mean that I like to think I'm a generally agreeable person, and I'm used to having my efforts reciprocated by others. And when people are dicks to me, I feel sufficiently justified in, you know, cursing the names of their ancestors and stuff.

Passive aggressive? Sure. Pathologically averse to confrontation? I'll give you that. But I must say I've been served well enough for most of my nearly 27 years.

Until now.

You see, Chins just doesn't seem to like me all that much. Sure, he tolerates me well enough, especially when I'm wiping yellow poop from his feet, elbows, back of the head, and wherever else babies manage to get it. And yeah, he smiles at me when I put him under his favorite mobile.

But to paraphrase the old song: anything I can do, Mama can do better.

I don't mean to say it's a competition for Chins' affection; that one was over before it started. All I mean is that when d.w. is at class for a couple of hours every evening, I'm left to tend to a baby who gets crankier every minute his mom isn't around, trying desperately to tread water until she returns.

I rock him. I bounce him. I sing to him. I even sit him in front of the mobile, under his little activity gym thing, and in front of the window to the street. No dice.

Then, just as his wails become ear-splitting, d.w. waltzes in through the front door, scoops up her now-cooing little boy in her arms and sits down to nurse him, milk flowing freely out the corners of his grinning mouth.

And off in a corner there I am, dazed, hair slightly askew, grateful for the newfound quiet but admittedly a little hurt seeing my wife and son cuddled together, gazing into each other's eyes and smiling sweetly.

Actually, now that I think about it, who could possibly think ill of that?

pregnancy among the oversexed and fearful

Two days to d.w.'s due date, and no baby yet. I thought last weekend's full moon might do it, but no dice. Today it's off to the midwife, followed by Indian food, as hot as d.w. can stand...we'll see what happens.

Anyway.

It's a funny thing being around a pregnant woman in a college town. Wherever d.w. goes, students openly stare, horrified, their remaining years of binge drinking and casual sex flashing before their eyes. At first it was amusing, the two of us a walking pro-abstinence education exhibit. I could almost hear the tragically repressed narrator: "See, all ye harlots and sinners? This will happen to you if you engage in the evils of fornication! Repent!"

But now it's just kind of irritating. Then again, just wait until we're walking around with a baby. That'll really make them shit in their pants.

And by then we'll both be far too tired to be irritated.

the halloween post

Not much in the way of Halloween festivities this year. During the last day or so d.w. has started having a few contractions, which have been strong enough to be irritating and distracting, but sporatic enough that we know there's a long way to go yet.

Not that Halloween is all that great a holiday between the onset of puberty and when one has children. Our only real Halloween-y option for this year was to get really trashed partying with a bunch of other 20- and 30-something grad students at somebody's house. No thanks. I mean really, isn't that the kind of thing you get over by the time you're, I don't know, 19? Oh well. Maybe I was just born a curmudgeon.

Anyway.

I recently came across a mostly-exposed roll of film (film? What is this thing called "film"?) in d.w.'s old (but really fantastic) SLR. It's always so exciting finding old rolls of film and getting them developed. The days spent speculating and wondering, waiting for the lab to finish it, make the anticipation unbearable by the time you actually see the photos, reliving forgotten memories (or else seeing 36 shots of your garage door, from that time you finally got around to calibrating the light meter several years ago).

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, the negatives I got back contained a few pictures d.w. and I took before leaving for a costume party last year (See? Costumes? Halloween? Get it?). I could lie to you and say that it was a Halloween party, but I won't, and it wasn't. It was better: it was the Friends of Science.

Every year we ecology grad students get together for a night nurturing our inner scientific superhero (or supervillain). Last year d.w. and I partook in the festivities (and I must say I was a little, but only a little, better than d.w. at keeping the camera still...):

   

Meet first the Arboriculture Avenger, leading the charge against bad pruning and other horticultural crimes. Her nemesis is of course Sprawlo ("Paving the planet for Jesus!"). Not sure exactly what our respective superpowers were supposed to be. Maybe we didn't get that far. Most people didn't. I mean, it's hard enough just trying to come up with ideas like the Lepidopterrorist, the Decominatrix, and Semivario-man ("Minimizing nugget variance!"). Trying to figure out logical superpowers is another story entirely. Besides, for a bunch of science nerds this pretty much amounts to our total creative output for the entire year.

d.w. is, of course, the exception. Those art students always are...

the diaper dilemma...solved!

Like many people facing parenthood, d.w. and I have spent months mulling over the various financial and environmental costs of diapering, given the estimated 6,000 diaper changes we face over the next couple of years. We immediately dismissed disposable diapers as an option, because the environmental cost is simply too great. While their post-consumer environmental impact isn't as great an issue for us (because garbage goes to our town's power plant for electricity generation — I know, it surprised me to hear that too), I just hate the idea of using petroleum-based plastics unnecessarily. We thought about the happier Seventh Generation ones, but that would probably leave us with the financial choice of paying for either diapers or heat. In an Iowa winter, I have a feeling I'd vote for heat.

And besides, they all (Seventh Generation notably excepted) have those goddamn cutesy TV cartoon characters all over them. I mean really, how early does branding need to begin? I would rather be mauled by a pack of ravenous chipmunks than hear the words, "Hey, look at my Dora the Explorer(R) ultrasound pictures! I'm so excited about my Disney(R) baby, brought to you by Barbie(R)!"

And they reek. We bought a pack of newborn-size diapers (Ohmigod! They're so tiny!) to use during the first week or two, and now the zygote's room smells like some demented chemist's approximation of "baby powder meets formaldehyde, with a touch of Lysol". And you expect me to stick that diaper WHERE?

That said, I feel it necessary to stick in a good word for disposables. After all, my father-in-law spent his career as a chemist in the paper division at Proctor and Gamble. So in a way, Pampers put d.w. through college, and for that I am grateful. Of course, even he used cloth diapers on his kids. Perhaps he was a little too familiar with all the crap they put in diapers during manufacturing. At least, that's the logic behind his not eating mayonnaise anymore...

I haven't asked too many specifics about that one. But I must say I can never look at potato salad the same way again...

So for us it was a choice between cloth and gDiapers. (Well, I suppose we could try the whole infant-potty-training thing like the good people at Green Parenting, but I really haven't the will.)

If you haven't yet learned of the awesomeness of gDiapers (Um...did I just use "awesomeness" and "diapers" in the same sentence? Yikes...), they are an Australian concept employing a washable nylon outer cover and a flushable liner made from sustainably-harvested wood fiber. They're even Cradle to Cradle-certified. Simply brilliant. They've been discussed a lot more thoughtfully at I Hate Snaps, Treehugger, and Daddy Types (and I'm probably missing a few places), so I'll keep the expounding to a minimum.

So it was either that or cloth. And while I won't reproduce the entirety of the debate here, I'll give you the one sticking point to which we kept coming back: the expense. I know, can you believe it wasn't the thought of washing human feces-laden diapers several times a week? The thought of heightened fecal involvement isn't nearly so bothersome as is coming up with many hundreds of dollars' worth of diapers at the same time as, HELLO???, we're also trying to get everything else ready for the little guy. Yes, yes, I know they're less expensive in the long run, but we won't be on food stamps in "the long run." We're on food stamps now. And now is when we also need diapers.

(Just an aside: do you have any idea how fucked up the food stamp system is? You could buy absolutely nothing but Mountain Dew and Twinkies, and that would be just peachy — and believe me I've seen it, more than once. But you can't buy vitamins. Or energy bars. It's mind-blowing, really. And another thing: remind me to NEVER EVER EVER complain about taxes. EVER. Thank you, taxpayers of Iowa. Your generosity will not be forgotten.)

Anyway, here's the deal: in the end we didn't have to make any decision at all. A garage sale and thrift store phenom, d.w found a complete set of all the cloth diapers we will ever need at a garage sale around the corner. For forty bucks.

Now all we need is a baby.

kind of like a canadian sombrero

In our town we have an amazingly excellent little Thai restaurant. It sits on a little side street, in behind the carport of a big apartment building. You would have no idea it was there if you weren't looking for it.

It's run by this retired Thai couple whose son is getting a Ph.D. here, and they decided they might as well follow him and enjoy a few years of their retirement by working 12-hour days six days a week in a restaurant kitchen. What I love about the place (besides their magnificent pad kra pow) is that whenever d.w. and I go, we're the only ones speaking English; needless to say, a rarity in Iowa.

So why do I bring it up? It's because of the chopsticks:

At first I thought it was just kind of funny. Then I thought they were taking a jab at the Chinese. Now I can't help but think they are making fun of us white Americans, who eat Thai food with chopsticks, despite the fact that the Thai themselves rarely do.

Am I over-thinking this one?