Florida or Bust!

Today we're headed to Florida (well, by way of Louisiana for the weekend) for a week. Andrew has a conference to attend, and since my family lives over there, me & the babies are going with. We haven't done a long trip in several months. So this should be fun. :) We'll see!!! But we're almost all packed; the babies even have their own blue & pink luggage. (Too cute, I know, but it was the cheapest best value at Target).

So I may not do much blogging for a week ish. Nowadays, it wouldn't surprise ya'll anyway, but this time there's a good reason.

In the meantime, guess what? I have officially finished a first draft of my entire dissertation. I wrote the last "original" part of my conclusion yesterday. Now I have revising and editing to do, but the whole thing is basically composed more or less as it will be when I finally turn it in come September/October. Sweeeeet. I knew I could get the darned thing done by late April with a little help from some good friends. (My babysitter, being the main one).

Anyway. That's the news... and we'll post some pix of the Florida trip when we get back. If you're one of the people we hope to see there; see you soon!!!

Babies in Black

Here are the pix of the babies in their black stuff this weekend. Maia is displaying the proper "alternative" attitude. Check out all those teeth! She's ready for some really good snacks now.
Sean's is a little blurry, but that's mom's user error, not his. The cute pictures of him where he is not blurry didn't really show off his cute outfit. Sean used to always get big owl eyes when we'd take pictures of him, but nowadays, he smiles like an old pro.


And the third picture is them plotting their escape via the network of interconnected air conditioner ducts we always see on TV. But they're foiled by mommy's nefarious lack of understanding when she pulls them away from the grate.

I said NO SALT! No Salt!!!

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Dissertation Procrastination Naps and Stuff

I'm not procrastinating, but I remember, now, why I had such a hard time with it when I was struggling to make headway on this dissertation.

I get sleepy nappy at about 11:00. That's about when I start really writing my dissertation. Writing apparently makes me sleepy. I just had two double-shot lattes, but I still need a nap. If I were doing anything else (playing with babies, writing a blog entry, reading other blog entries) I'd be perfectly alert. But writing and editing the dissertation makes me sooooo sleeeeeepy. I'm sure it's an avoidance thing. At this point, I hate the document so much (not really, but hate writing it) that I just have brain shutdown. Maybe it's just that I don't like the chapter I'm working on... I dunno. The Buffy chapter was the easiest, and it's currently out for comments, so I can't work on it.

So that's why I have taken so long, and used to make so much progress on this blog writing thing. Instead of going ahead and surrendering to the nap, because that feels too slacker-y, I blog or something. And the logic is that if I'm writing, it looks like and feels like work. It is sort of in a writing teacher way, but it isn't really productive writing.

So now I want to go into the living room, instead of working on this four or five pages of editing I have to do, and take a nap. Is that so wrong?

On the twin front: the babies are still adorable. Last week I bought them black onesies. Sean's is a Johnny Cash one, and Maia has a The Cure t-shirt. I will post pictures soonish. They look adorable. But for some reason, them wearing the black onesies makes people think Maia is a boy. They usually don't do that, but they kept saying "look at the cute little boys" yesterday. Weird. People. Girls are allowed (no, required sometimes) to wear black too. How else will she be mommy's little goth if she doesn't have black outfits? And they're getting tons of teeth. They are superteethers, apparently. Maia is getting, like, four at once. But maybe this means they'll get all that teething out of the way and we'll have months of uninterrupted sleep.

Last night, they slept from about 7:30 till this morning (with breaks for eating, but it counts as sleep since they are adept at "sleep eating.") They missed bathtime and everything! I think it's the dreaded allergens that are clogging up my sinuses too-- they just don't feel great and want to sleep. But lordy, it was weird to have them go to sleep that early. I actually didn't like it; it messed up all my normal routine and I just didn't know what to do with myself.!

Now, back to work.

The Sublime

When I took a Romantic lit class (that's Romantic with a capital R, thank you. It makes a difference) we leared about the concept of the Sublime. It's pretty cool, actually. It's like sunrise over the Grand Canyon, or a hundred hot air balloons lit up by their fires in the early morning, before it gets truly light, and taking off into a blue, blue sky. Something so overwhelmingly beautiful that it takes your breath away, or makes your chest feel as though it will explode.

So. What is my experience of the sublime today? I got both babies to sleep at the same time! They are snoozing on their floor pallet, happily sawing zzzzzzzzs while I took my shower and puttered around the house.

I know this might not compare with the sublime examples above to most people, but parents of twins especially will know how incredible it is to get both babies to nap at the same time. And Maia even crawled over to ask me to put her to sleep. Sean was ready, I was rocking him, and she seemed to be happily playing. But she saw me, and crawled over to the rocker and held up her arms.

Ooops. It's all over... she's awake.
But it was cool while it lasted......

Crabby? Oh Yeah.

A Long Time Ago we had a rental property that we contracted a Realty company to secure tenants for us for. The tenants turned out to be total delinquents, so we lost money. We had to sell the property cause we realized it was too hard to manage a property 2.5 hours away if you couldn't trust the people you hired to find you good tenants to do their freakin' job. So Andrew decided to sue them for the amount of money we lost. It's not that much; it's a small claims court thing.

This thing has taken forever. Small claims court is supposed to be quick & easy. This has NOT been. The realtor has a lawyer. So figure how annoying it has been. It's sort of the principle of the thing more than it is money. But it is not really my deal, and it's something Andrew is supposed to handle.

Today, I am supposed to either get an extention on a deadline that, since Andrew has been away 12 or more of the past 30 days on Reserve duty and I am otherwise occupied busy, we cannot possibly make, or fill out some ridiculous forms for information that we have already given the stupidheads anyway. I've got the forms filled out. But the one person in the judge's office who can answer my question is apparently having a freakin' spa day and won't be in till 1:30. (I'm sarcastic about the spa day. I don't know that's what it is but I assume that she's having a better day than I am.) This is a total waste of my day, waiting to talk to the woman and/or filling out forms and making endless copies of things we have, as I said already, ALREADY SENT THEM COPIES OF. I hate them. They suck.

I have a headache and tummy woozies. Some other stupidhead booger face just called and made fax noises in my ear. I hate telemarketers. Now they're calling again and the fax machine is not on because I was not expecting a fax.

I am really really crabby. Due to the law of mommies & babies, so are the twins.

Tell my husband that he really owes me big time on this one.

Two Things

The first: the reason why fast food is so successful, I think, is drive-ups. When you have kids, and you're driving around town, and you see them sound asleep after they've been grumpy all day, the last thing you want to do is drag them out of the car into someplace to buy dinner. So if you can drive up and have someone pass it to you through your window, that is worth its weight in gold. Seriously. If more places had drive ups, I am sure I would use them. Drive up grocery stores, where you put in your order online & you can pick it up... drive up fancy food. I wish.

The other: if you have twins on the way, the first and most important piece of advice I would give to you is this: If there is any way you can afford it, hire someone to come in a few hours a day to help you. Even if you have a mom or sister or best friend who says they'll help out, it's better to have someone whose job it is to come in and watch your babies for you while you take a shower, or fold laundry, or take a long nap. Especially in the first few crazy months when you might not get any sleep at night. Because your mom, or sister, or whoever else does it for free, will want to go home. And will want to stop after a couple of weeks.

Get someone who has similar parenting skills to you if you can. An older college student who would otherwise have to work at a crappy minimum wage job would be really good. You'll be there for the really crazy times, but you can rest and have a little bit of time for yourself.

I did not do this at first. My mother-in-law came in for the first week or so, but she wasn't the kind of help I get from my friend who comes in now. And I still felt obligated to entertain her for some reason, so it didn't seem right to take a nap or shower while she was here. And the reason someone comes in now is that I'm supposed to work every day on my dissertation, which I do. But I usually take at least an hour in the morning to get showered, and dressed, and make myself a cup of coffee. It's really really incredible how regenerating it is to have her in the living room, so I know I can take a little longer to shave my legs or just stand under the heat of the massaging shower head. Even when Andrew is here I don't usually get that, because I feel I have to hurry out to help him. And P., my baby nanny, is great. The babies both light up when she comes in, and she's a great friend. And it happens to help her out with money while she's in college, and she doesn't have to work a crappy commission sales job. Sometimes she feels guilty cause both babies will be asleep & she can sit on the couch and watch TV (I've gotten her hooked on Buffy!) or play with her laptop. But the simple fact that she is here so that I can write, and I have written lots since we hired her about three months ago, is incredible. And the gift of long morning showers. I cannot even begin to tell you if you haven't had it happen how much a shower becomes a luxury after you have two babies. I assume it's similar with one-- there's a period when naps don't last long enough to get everything done. But with two? It's absolutely essential.

This is the best advice I have. I tried hiring a maid to clean my house, but having a person watch the babies while I clean is so much better because I hated the way the maid cleaned, and I was paying her, and yet she wouldn't listen to my requests on how to clean something. So the money is so much more worth it to hire a nanny/babysitter/friend for a few hours a day.

Anyway. I thought about this today as I drove to Whole Foods to get some stuff they didn't have anymore... and I have more, but I need to pay attention to my sweet babies who have been tolerantly cruising around in their walkers and eating their new maple teether biscuits.

Unfinished

When I was young, I never titled my poems. It just didn't seem right to add a title to them, and I preferred to not sculpt the poems much past what I wrote in the first mad rush of inspiration. I also (quite wrongly) believed myself the natural heir to ee cummings who rarely titled a poem. So. I took a poetry class in college & the professor, Jim Bertolino* said something about a poem without a title being like a person without a head. Hell. I think it was him who said that. Maybe it was someone else? But most likely it was him. That's who I remember it being.

After that, I got better at titles. I learned to encapsulate the soul of the poem with its name. I'm also pretty good at titling academic papers. I have the art of the colon down-- something academics need to learn. The funny, punchy part of the title, then the serious part. Something like a paper I wrote years ago: "Feminists for the NRA: Sci Fi Chicks with Guns".... My Buffy chapter in the dissertation is titled "The "Girl Power Bit": Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Witches and a Feminist Mission". The "girl power bit" comes from a quote by Spike the vampire and the rest is a synopsis of the chapter's main point. So that's it for titles of the academic sort.

I still don't have a title for the overall dissertation yet. Mostly it's been because it's not finished. But it's really close to being that way now. I'm writing my conclusion. I recently scanned one of the three advised-by-my-director dissertations listed in the database of dissertations, and his conclusion chapter was ONE (count them fellas) ONE page long. So what I had been viewing as a much longer project is actually not so long. And I have about 11 pages right now. That's not including the annotations to the bibliography I'm working on right now, which will swell the ranks considerably, should I choose to annotate the whole thing (haven't decided yet).

I searched the internet today for names of books to include in the genre I'm creating as part of my dissertation. I mean, I don't create it, but I name it as existing. Like if I discovered a new species of Moth. I didn't create it but I named something that already existed and cataloged it, giving it ether and pinning it to a board. Or, as my mother-in-law likes to do to catch her butterflies, putting it in the freezer first to get it to slowly go dormant with the cold and not rip its wings.

But I didn't finish finding books to add to my list. And I'm not sure how long my list needs to be. And/or whether to include any books on the list that I haven't read, but which I'm pretty sure fit the genre. And then there are some which I'm not sure of, have to think about, and will keep there for now. (Like the TV series Charmed. Is it really feminist? I'm not sure. But I think it fits with my third wave, feminism with complexities position)..... So generally, today is about being un-done. Not-finished. In-flux (not in-flight. That's the movie with the germ-laden headphones...)

This blog post will therefore remain point-free. Unfinished. Just rambling about, just ready to make a final claim, and then

*************************************
Who, aside from his poems, I admire for his storytelling ability in class most of all-- he had us all roaring one day with a story about being a poet who "represented his people...." who his "people" were is the joke and I won't tell you lest it ruin the punchline for anyone else ever hearing his story in class.... I will tell you that he did, however, create the phrase "lawn dolphins" as a new name for slugs. Which I think is very, very cool. As he said, slugs just needed some good PR for an image change. I feel sorry now that I once waylaid him with a pile full of my poetry wanting him to read them on the spot and tell me how wonderful they were.... I've had students do stuff like that to me since then (not to mention the AWFUL stuff I sometimes get on my womenwriters website) and I know how awkward it was for him. But he did like my parody/spoof of William Carlos Williams... which I never did submit anywhere. Yet.)

Yeah, but can you eat it?

It's amazing how many things I've already had to pull out of Sean's mouth. He sticks cat furballs, cardboard, leaves, whatever he finds on the floor, into his mouth. Maia is a little more selective so far. I'll spot him chewing, like a cow with her cud, and examine his little cheeks and there it is-- a wad of old cat fur. Blech! And he seems so unhappy when I pull it out. Double Blech.

My neck is better today but still not all healed. Still sucks. Andrew is gone still till tomorrow at about 5 pm-ish.

Last night (or should I say this morning) at 2 am both babies woke up. They usually take turns and it works okay. But last night I spent an hour and a half trying to get them back to sleep. I'd put them, sleeping, into their crib and then they'd wake up. Finally I had to let them sleep with me. Fun. fun and funner.

This really sucks

I have sensitive neck muscles from an accident I had when I was a kid. Sometimes, when I am simply moving my head in a normal fashion, I can wrench it and be in pain for days, weeks even.

Guess what I did this morning while taking my shower? OW OW OW OW OW!!!!! My neck hurts and now I don't want to do anything productive but lie on the couch and whine. And now that I'm mommy, and have other dissertation writing duties, I can't.

WAH!!!!!!

Happy International Women's Day

Today is, as the title says, International Women's Day.

It is a special day to learn about women's status throughout the world. This google link, provided to me by a blog friend, (Foxy-- whose blog isn't public so I won't give a link) sends you to news stories. In the U.S., we're remarkably fortunate and even though some of our privleges feel shaky sometimes, we have it great compared to other places.

Anyhoo... I need to pay attention to my little woman, and her brother who will be a feminist. They're watching Blue's Clues and climbing on stuff.

And another thing...

Babies "of a certain age" (the age being 8 months and under) haven't a lot of choice where it comes to clothes. At least where I shop (Target anyone?) most baby clothes are either blue or pink. So Maia & Sean are often dressed in Blue and Pink. (And usually, it's Maia in the pink & vice versa... ha!)

So when people say "Oh, are they both boys?" or another version of that stupid thing, and they're wearing PINK AND BLUE I want to say:

"Yes, actually, we really wanted one boy & one girl so we decided to raise the smaller one as a girl & dress him in pink and dresses. Do you think that's wrong of us?"

People. While I don't mind answering questions, and tend to view the celebrity status as a cute little bonus, I'd like them to be intelligent questions.

The next person who says something stupid is going to get kicked in the shin. I'll pretend it's an accident. Maybe tourette's. :)

Happiness Is....

we got our espresso machine!! We had one before, and the hard, hard water here in San Antonio ruined it. It's been several months-- at first, to try to clean it and fix the old one, then to wait for the backordered one when the first one proved to be unfixable.

This weekend, the new machine came, shiny and all ready to go. I've had dozens of lovely lattes since then. It makes me very very happy. It's a Rancilio Sivlia, in case you wonder. It's not a commercial grade machine, but you probably could use it in a small-volume place (a cafe or something). Now, to wait till Andrew gets back so he can roast us some more espresso. MMMMM. (yes, he roasts green coffee beans... it's quite easy actually, and much tastier than the bitter stuff you get at the store.)

Smell Your Life

With apologies to friends & family who worked there, I am not a big fan of McDonald's. Watch Supersize Me and you'll see why, and never want to eat fast food again. (I warned you; it is entertaining, but freakishly scary).

But I really like that new commercial that they have for McD's, where the woman of about my age suddenly "wakes up" and realizes she has three kids. She says to herself "I'm a soccer mom!" and her kids correct her (they're teens.)

Yes, I could have teens; well, a teen. Without even being that young when it happened.

And I totally know how it would happen to suddenly just wake up and have a family & a minivan.

Now, I've gone into minivan-ness with full choice and awareness. I adore my minivan, for many reasons.

But I can see how one would just suddenly realize that you weren't the hip young chick you once were. It makes me laugh. I like it, lots.

Oh yes. And I'm still hip. Young... well. Is 36 still young?

I should Make up a T-shirt (or perhaps a handy dandy flyer) that says:

Oh yes, they are "Double Trouble".
Yes, my hands ARE full.
And yes, we were very excited to get two.
Yes, we are "done."
Yes, twins sort of run in my family.
No, there are no more babies at home.
Yes, they are one boy, one girl; No, they're not identical (duh!) Please review science of how twins happen.
Yes, he's a lot bigger than she is. But they're still twins. (Really. He might be bigger, but do the math. How could he be a full nine months bigger? And if one wasn't mine, why in the world would I have forked over 230 bucks for a twin stroller??)

And NO to the chick at TJ Maxx (who was no skinny minnie herself)-- there is not another one ON THE WAY!!!!! How in the world would you ask that question, ever, unless you were really sure?!! I mean, I'm no Kate Moss, but I'm not THAT fat! I just had twins FOR CHRISSAKES!!

It made me need to eat some ice cream.

And then, at the bottom of the flyer, just for kicks and giggles, I will add "I'll be done with the dissertation this Fall." "Yes, it did take a while."

Being Bad Today

I've been really good so far since my babysitter has been coming in to watch the twins while I work on my dissertation. I have the darn thing almost done now. I need to do my conclusion chapter, which I have a start on, and do the edits I have already. I'm supposed to try to send the edited Buffy chapter back to my chair sometime this week (although she won't get to it till next week.)

But Andrew is out of town, and will be till this Friday. That makes 8 days alone with the twins. Yes, sometimes other people are here. But mostly it's just me, and the babies. And I'm feeling a little crabby about no "me" time in a while. So this morning I'm just not getting motivated to work on anything but blog, comments, looking at my favorite cartoon strips. There's a new angry alien, with Brokeback Mountain, which I think is all I'll probably watch of the movie. Now I know basically what happens, thanks to the bunnies.

I should try to get some work done. I will, I promise.

And congrats to my best friend J who passed her dissertation defense last week!! Do you get to be called Doctor now or does it stay candidate till you actually graduate?

I've been looking for this

Long ago and far away, liz made me these cool pixel Kims. I kept looking for the one she made me after knowing I was having twins, adding Andrew to the back, and I forgot where on my computer I put it. Since I'm being bad today and haven't worked on my dissertation yet, I looked for it and found it. So now it goes over in my sidebar. And thank you, liz for making it; I hadn't forgotten, I just needed to spend a few minutes searching on the computer for where I saved it.

Bo-Tox

I noticed last night on the Oscars that Keanu Reeves & Sandra Bullock looked kind of alike. I think it was cause they both had these flat expressions.

Today on E they have a rerun show. And I noticed that I think the similarity is because of bo-tox. They both look like they can't smile, and their foreheads are sooooo flat. They must have gone to the same clinic.

I always think she's so cute-- the botoxed look just looks terrible.

hedonism

Lately I have become a seeker of previously unheard of pleasures.

You didn't know, did you, how much sheer joy one can take at putting away groceries while two babies sleep happily in their cribs, taken "out" by the car ride home.

Or the pleasure at heating up lunch in the microwave while said babies slumber to the sounds of the ocean, provided by their "sleep sheep".

Or even the thrill of contentment that comes while two babies sleep on their floor pallet, having exhausted themselves with play and a slippery, slidery bath and a warm bottle of formula, watching a movie you've seen before and sitting in a rocking chair in the dark, the light of the TV providing the kind of happiness you only got in the past from candlelight dinners.

Hedonism means something entirely different when you're the parent of babies.

*And by you, I mean, anyone who hasn't joined the secret society of tired parents....