Dear YY,
It’s so good to hear how you are doing! I remember getting ever bigger – and when people say that you have no idea how big you’re going to get, they are 100% right. By the end of it, I was huge! Forty-two pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight, but that describes nothing of the giant midsection to carry around. I have some maternity clothes in the basement that you should use – I will tell them to bring them up for you – and you will see that some of them are just so much bigger than you ever imagined yourself being. I remember that it was fun sometimes, not fun sometimes, but looking back it is nothing but amazing that my body did that.
So much to say…where to start…and I should be reading right now in the first place. Since I disappeared temporarily I had Spring Break: two weeks of hanging out with B, sleeping in, and just living a relaxed life. The first week, B was a mess and would not let go of me for one minute (including all night long) for fear of me going off to work again the next morning. The second week, after a day of being sick (it always hits me once I start relaxing), B settled in and it was just a great week. Nothing I had to do but go to the playground and hang out with him and his friends and other parents – oh the wonder of talking to other people who understand the highs and lows of having a toddler! It was wonderful.
And then work began again. My reading is even worse this quarter, I would estimate around 1,500 pages a week. And that’s not fun reading – I mean, I like it, but it’s not beach reading. I’ve been sort of dreading April for awhile now, because there are lots of “extra things” going on this month. By that I mean, just taking care of my five classes (ok, only two really demanding ones, but still) is enough work for a week. But this week I had the department social and a workshop. This weekend my in-laws are in town for a wedding (to which I was supposed to go but R is going without me because there is just no time). Next week I head to a conference in Texas. (The first time EVER away from B overnight! I’m sort of excited for some personal space and also terrified and worried and fighting all my “bad-mommy-abandoning-your-child” emotions.) The week after that is his second birthday. I guess this is exactly it, right? Academic life? All this stuff you love to do and then all the other extra stuff – some good, some bad – that gets in your way. It’s good to get used to it now. But it’s hard when we are also worried about money (savings nearly depleted), trying to find a preschool for B, trying to find a pediatrician for B, one of our cats isn’t happy right now and we don’t know why, R knocked the driver’s side mirror off of the car, my iPhone randomly decided to kick the bucket, and oh God the laundry… And that’s life as a mother, a wife, and a Ph.D. student, in a nutshell. Ninety-five percent of the time, I love it, most of it anyway. And then sometimes you hit that five percent where you think, wtf am I doing?!?
This morning, I was about to head out the door and noticed R taking the sheets off of our bed. I usually do the laundry but I had mentioned (likely multiple times because I am a stressball) that they were really dirty (the cats like to nap on our bed, as cats do). Now, here is my thought process: “OMG, but my in-laws are coming over and then there won’t be sheets on the bed. That’s messy. Well, they probably won’t care. But then maybe they’ll go out and then the sheets won’t go into the dryer until later. Then they won’t be done when I get home after work and that’s annoying because then I end up having to deal with them. If I’m going to deal with sheets and all that, I should just save it until tomorrow and we’ll ignore the dirty sheets tonight. But shit there is a lot of laundry to do and maybe I can’t do it all tomorrow. But I am home by myself tomorrow afternoon so B can help me, he likes that. But maybe R will be able to finish them in time and then the sheets will be clean and that would be great. It’s nice of him to think of dealing with them. But shit, I really hate it when I get home and everything is upside-down and the sheets are somewhere in the dryer not quite dry yet…no, I can’t handle that today. I can do it tomorrow.” Well, that’s a pared-down version of about one minute in my head. What actually happened was that I said, “Oh no! Don’t do that now because then they won’t be done and then I’ll have to deal with them when I get home and aarrrrrgggghhhh.” To which R said, “I was going to get them done before that but FINE.” To which I said, “but then you don’t get them done in time and then I have to deal with them.” (This is true I would say about 60% of the time.) And then he goes, “FINE.”
And that is how it all plays out when I’m stressed out, which is why Life Generally just works a LOT better when I’m not stressed out. Because I weigh every. single. tiny. decision in my head as if it’s a Big Giant decision, and I’m just better at parsing out my answers when I’m more coherent, that’s all. Sometimes I wish I could live a less parsed-out life, and then I realize that is exactly what my work is: weighing every single tiny decision and not ignoring any possible option or detail. What makes me good at my work is what makes me terrible at, you know, everything else. My work comes naturally to me; the rest of life is what I have to work hard at in order to not alienate everyone.
Love,
US
