Geeky Mom

Lately, I’ve noticed that I bring up my juggling act in meetings quite often. It’s as if I’m forcing the issue on people, reminding them that it’s sometimes a struggle to parent and work at the same time. And reminding them that even in our flexible workplace, parents are often asked “just to deal with it.”

Recently, while at a search committee meeting, we were trying to schedule the next meeting. I suddenly realized that the meeting we were trying to arrange landed smack in the middle of my kids’ spring break.

“Uh oh,” I said. “That’s spring break. I’m not sure what’s going on that week.”

“Well,” said one person, “Can you give us an idea?”

“Not really,” I said. “I don’t have my husband’s schedule in front of me. That’s what this will depend on.”

She looked at me and frowned. Now we’d spent the last 10 minutes planning interviews to coincide with her schedule around conferences, festivals, meetings and whatnot, but now that we were dealing with *gasp* the care of children, she didn’t want to be accomodating in return. I ended up saying that I’d work something out, not to worry. What was interesting to me about the interchange was that I brought it up at all. Usually parents are asked to be silent about such matters. After the schedule is made, we rush to our phones, call spouses and babysitters and “work something out.” For whatever reason, I wanted to remind the people at the table that the raising of and caring for children was important, worthy of noting on my calendar and worthy of accomodating, just like any other obligation.

Another time, we were discussing the possibility of leaves for staff, for a year of research or a few months or something.

I asked, “What about those of us with children? It’s pretty complicated, with two working parents, to make these arrangements.”

“Faculty do it all the time.”

I squirmed in my seat. Yes, faculty with stay at home spouses. I know all about those arrangements. Faculty with children not yet in school.

“Yes, but, let’s use me as an example. I’d have to coordinate it with [Mr. Geeky]. If he just took a leave, then he can’t just take another one. And I’d have to arrange school for the kids. Or I’d just have to go alone. I don’t know if I could do that–for a year anyway.”

“Well, not everyone has those issues.”

“Well, I just want to make you aware of the practical considerations that some people might have to make. You don’t want to exclude people because of that.”

And that’s the issue. Many parents opt out of more work or different kinds of arrangements, i.e. going on a leave for a year, because the accomodations that would have to be made are so complicated. What if Mr. Geeky were not a faculty member, but instead the CEO of a large corporation? I can’t imagine he’d be able to leave his job for a year. And what about school for that year? It’s hard to transfer schools. You have to get shot records and school records and all kinds of stuff. And the kids have to leave their friends behind for a year. And, that’s not a huge deal, but still something to consider. The risks are not just about you anymore. And that’s something some nonparents don’t quite get.

I reported this a while back, but have now seen it in a MSM outlet. NOW is officially backing Alan Sandals. And I say good for them. I wish I had a boatload of money to give them. Here’s the thing I was thinking about when I read that article. Here we are with Rick Santorum, who is not necessarily the most popular Senator on the planet. Moderates are a little sickened by some of his extreme views. Rather than take advantage of that, and run someone who is truly the opposite of Santorum, the democrats go and run Bob Casey. As Sandals himself said, the Democratic Party’s embrace of Mr. Casey was based on the “foolish belief that Democrats could win only if they began to impersonate Republicans.”

I imagined myself arguing with my neighbor, who supports Casey. And I would tell her, look, abortion rights are too important to me to support Casey. What happens if a bill like the one in South Dakota comes up before the Senate? Does Casey support it? I think he does. And then I think, my daughter’s life is in danger. Hell, my life might be in danger. And what happens if another Teri Schiavo thing happens? Unfortunately, I think he’s in there with Bill Frist and the lot. I’m sorry, but that’s Republican stuff, not Democrats. You can’t give up your principles for politics. At least I can’t.

Last night, I was listening to Beijing by Melissa Ferrick

The refrain goes:

if you can get it
grab as much as you can
and hide it in your basement
for the next disaster

It made me think of Phantom and her snack foods for the apocolypse. It’s a great song, Phantom. I think you’d like it.

Anyway, if you want to be short-sighted and make money off of the apocolypse, Susie suggests investing in biotech, especially those that might be making vaccines.

I happened to spend all evening reading about audience. I’ll be posting research-related thoughts on the other blog, but all that reading got me to thinking about how I conceive of audience. Plus, I ran into New Kid’s post and this really struck me:

when I started blogging, I thought that this blog would be a place where I could vent all my anxieties and concerns and so on. But now I feel a certain (self-imposed) pressure to Say Only Smart Things here, not lame whiny things (though I realize that hasn’t stopped me before), or else I worry that I’m boring you readers out there, or blogging for sympathy – sucking for nice comments from you people who have no responsibility to be nice to me. No matter that I’m pseudonymous here – I still feel a certain pressure to maintain a certain kind of image, even if none of you may ever be able to connect New Kid with the “real” me. (I know some of you do know the real me, but I don’t think that’s what creates this pressure; I feel like New Kid has a kind of persona now that I need to stay consistent to. With. Whatever.)

Eh. Lest I be accused of self-importance, I realize there are far worse things to worry about than what people I’ve (largely) never met think of my imaginary identity. But sometimes it’s hard to know what to post here. I want to look smart, and insightful, and admirable. I don’t want anyone out here in the interweb to see my weaknesses any more than I want the people in my face-to-face life to. But it feels pretty dishonest not to talk about the times when I feel miserable, and anything but smart, or insightful, or admirable.

I actually don’t always feel this kind of pressure. And what’s even weirder is I’m not really pseudonymous here. Lots of people I know in real life, mostly people I work with in some way, read this blog. And I think they often get a different picture of me here than they have of me in real life. To be expected, I suppose since I don’t blog everything. I told someone on the phone the other day that Geeky Mom was like another person and sometimes I forget what she’s up to.

The standard ways of conceiving an audience are to address one, to think about who you’re writing to, or to invoke one, to conjure up in your mind an imaginary audience. Walter Ong famously said that every audience is a fiction while Aristotle insisted the best way to succeed in speaking is to know the details of your audience. In reality, I think we do a little bit of both. I’m imagining right now that I’m mainly writing to New Kid and to others, perhaps Bitch, Ph.D. and Dr. Crazy, who have written about the tensions they have with their blogging which is often related to their relationship with their audience. So I’m addressing an audience, but I also imagine an audience of smart people interested in this particular topic. And that leads, I think, to the kind of thing New Kid mentioned, wanting to look intelligent and coherent and not disapppoint that imaginary audience. And that can be a good thing, but it can also be detrimental. It can keep you from writing.

Honestly, my desire to “look good” to my audience here has helped a little in that I try to actually do the things I say I’m going to do on the blog. Think about how many people post their to-do lists to “keep me honest.” There’s something about public accountibility that is motivating. Another way having an audience has helped is kind of the opposite of wanting to look good. In writing my dissertation, I have always considered my audience my advisor and perhaps, the committee. In many ways, that can be problematic because I don’t want to disappoint them and I’m aware of the power they have over me (same for our students). I’m always thinking about how they might criticize my work. Now, I think about what my blog audience would say and since, through comments, I kind of know what they might say, I feel much more comfortable writing. My blog audience, which I’ve borrowed for my dissertation, is much more sympathetic and understanding even while they might give constructive criticism. I find that extremely helpful.

I know where New Kid is coming from. I feel inadequate when I write about political stuff, mainly because there’s so many good political bloggers out there already. I’m trying to live up to their standards. What I’m doing here most of the time is just being me, in front of a live studio audience. Scary, for sure. But mostly fun.

I got a lot accomplished today both at work and at home. March has been kind of a hellish month at the Geeky household. At the beginning of the month, I had just returned from my trip to Grad School Town, then the kids got strep, then Mr. Geeky left for a conference, then I left for a conference (sxsw). Then a little recovery last week. This week, Mr. Geeky has had visitors from out of town for whom he’s doing a big presentation. So last night he was preparing, tonight he took them out to dinner and tomorrow will be more presentation stuff. And I feel bad because I’ve been so busy catching up with my work and dealing with the IRB and trying to make sure the house doesn’t fall apart that I haven’t been able to support Mr. Geeky properly (and vice versa, really). He leaves again on Monday and offered to return immediately on Tuesday, but I told him to take his time. I leave next Friday for a workshop I’m participating in, taking 4 students with me.

In so many ways, I’m energized by all of this and every day, every week, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually, I get to go to sleep or watch bad tv or take a bath and I really appreciate those moments even more now since they come after hard work.

Next month doesn’t look nearly as hellish. And hopefully the trees and the flowers will really start to bloom and the balm of spring will relax and refresh.

Down the hall is an air filtration machine, so loud, even with headphones on, I could hear it. So the door is closed. They’ve ripped up all our sidewalks and replaced them with gravel surrounded by those orange mesh fences. FSM forbid you want to wear heels. The stairwell smells like varnish (thus the air filtration system). Just now, I went to get tea and found a plumber with the entire sink torn apart. He says it will be a day or two. So I trekked across campus with a colleague to purchase tea from the campus cafe. Now I have stacks of applications to read through. I’m on two search committees, one of which I chair. Ugh.

I’m not sure what to think of this story about a Philadelphia-based religion and science think tank that have given ASU 1/2 mil. for a project to “connect” religion and science. Maybe PZ can cut through the doublespeak.

And then there’s this story about the corporatization of Universities and the presidents who love it.

Actual content coming soon.

Elizabeth is keeping a record of how much time they spend on housework for a week. I’m just going to give you my day, from 4:45 on.

4:45 Arrive home to meet bus post band practice.
4:45-5:00 Check in with blogs and email.
5:00-5:30 Round trip to pick up Geeky Girl at after school care
5:30-6:00 Make dinner–ravioli for me; peanut butter and banana sandwiches for the kids.
6:00-6:30 Eat dinner while watching news and helping Geeky Girl do homework.
6:30-7:15 Can’t find homework sheet, so go searching on the homework table; also decide to go through mail; unclog glue; go through magazines looking for symmetrical shapes that occur in nature. This last task proves difficult because we have such “natural” titles as Wired, PC World, MacWorld, and Linux World. There’s a world for everything.
7:15 Put Geeky Girl in bathtub, run a load of laundry downstairs; ask Geeky Boy to load dishwasher
7:30 Begin blogging

Later, like after the kids are in bed, I have IRB forms to fill out, articles to read, etc. before I completely crash. If I wanted to have a neat house, I’d do at least another 2-3 hours of housework. But I can’t have a neat house, a full-time job, decently behaved children, and work towards a Ph.D. So there it is. In the mail, I found a two-week old birthday invitation. We are treading water here.

It’s the first day of spring, but completely freezing. I think they’re calling for snow later this week. I had an exhilerating day at work today. A day in which I watched my boss be the best boss I’ve ever seen her be. Seriously, it was kind of cool. I also got to work on lots of different things–video, podcasting, screencasting, and some web conferencing. Kind of cool.

I also went to a professor’s house to help them with a computer thing. Don’t let that get out. (Ha!) It’s a long story but believe me, it made sense. On the way to her house, my phone rang. It was my dad, but I ignored it and then when I called him back, it turned out he had a technical question. I was unsuccessful at helping either the professor or my dad. Both were hardware issues. Things were broken.

So anyway, I got home, and I was a little wound up and had my head in these technical things and was thinking, man it’s cold outside; I don’t want to go to the coffee shop and work and besides it’s just going to make me think about the irb issues I’m having. So I decided I’d take a bath and read at least one article and then try to get through two more in addition to doing a search for some more to read tomorrow. I decided I would work until 10:00 or through the 3rd article, whichever came first. I swear I was like a kid, telling myself I just had a few more minutes or a few more pages or whatever. And it wasn’t like I wasn’t interested in what I was reading. I was. It’s just that there were so many other things that seemed so appealing–tv or hanging with the kids or eating more chocolate.

How do you all trick yourself into working when you just don’t feel like it? Does it work?