MidwesternTA

C'est La Fin

To my dearest readers,

So today was my 30th birthday.  I cannot think of a more fitting end of this blog--other than the fact that I'm no longer a MidwesternTA.

Should the department administrative assistant ever get done reading my dissertation for "departmental formatting," I can deposit and be done with CornU.

That is something I've been wanting for a while.

I do love CornU, but my life has moved on, including most of my friends and Midwestern Advisor. 

In one week I start my new job as an adjunct instructor at not one, but thanks to a somewhat desperate phone call today, two, community colleges. 

I also have something like 8 hours a week set aside to being a community literacy volunteer, and start my ESL and adult education training shortly.

All and all being a MidwesternTA was a good run of it.  I kind of feel like the Vegas saying applies--what happens in grad school stays in grad school, and shit, a lot of stuff happened.

In a somewhat rare convo with my former BFF today (via IM), she asked if I was flipping out about 30.  In truth, I'm not. 

I'm happy.  I'm in love.  I'm a doctor.  And I'm ready to give something back. 

I'd like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for taking the journey that has been grad school with me.  Really.  Each and everyone of you contributed in some way to my sanity, if not success (grad school has taught me the two are not necessarily linked).

I hope you'll all take the next step with me as well, but first you'll have to find me:)  

Much love,

Khouray Hamad 

The Great Outdoors

We're home from a week at Discord's uncle's cabin in Michigan.  Most people in Chicago who claim to have a cabin in Michigan actually mean they have a lake house and it is nice. 

This was a cabin.  One room.  No running water.  It was, however, lovely. 

Minus the outhouse.  Nothing lovely there. 

We spent a lot of time paddling around the lake in a canoe screaming "Oh my God!  It's a (fill in the blank of the wrong animal  name)!"  Fortunately there was a field guide to birds in the cabin and a welcome center with a children's display about local wildlife that came in handy.

I can now say we saw a Great Blue Heron, formerly identified as a stork.

A Belted Kingfisher, formerly identified as a woodpecker.

 

A Common Loon with a baby--Discord knew this one.  I would have gone with duck.

 

Many Deer.

 

An Great Bald Eagle--the camera batteries died.

A couple hundred Dragon Flies.

 

Something I think was a fossil.  Of what I have no idea.

 

And best of all, a Mink.  Sadly, I got too excited to get a good picture and those little guys are fast.  If you look closely, you'll see Mr. Mink's front left shoulder as he turned away to run from the two assholes in the canoe yelling, "Oh my God!  It's a weasel!"

 

The view from the cabin was fabulous.

 

And though I've never been a Monet fan, I kind of get the waterlily thing now.

 

And then there was Cat and the great mouse challenge.

 

Upon discovering a slight mouse infestation (Cat's food disappeared and was replaced with mouse poo, I saw scurrying when the lights were off) that led to me walking on the furniture most of the time, Discord challenged Cat to a mouse-off.  Final score: Discord 4, Cat 0.

At one point a mouse hit the trap Discord had set behind the counter and made it into the middle of the room still flopping.  Cat looked at it for a second and jumped back into bed.  She was also unmoved by the Red Squirrels (possibly the most obnoxious creatures ever) who taunted her.  Discord declared her the "most useless cat ever."  I tried to explain she's a companion animal.  She looks cute and gets petted and that is it.

I was reminded of my Ex-Wifey telling me that what I had done to my Cat--keeping her inside, which has resulted in a fear of grass on her part, and basically eradicating all her cat instincts--was perverse.  My Ex-Wifey also commented that the Cat and I are basically the same creature.  Nowhere to me was this more clear than in the Great North Woods:)

Free at Last!

CrotchetyOldProfessor signed off on my dissertation today.  Not without a parting shot about comma use, but signed off all the same:)

I'm sure one day I'll miss him.  But not any day soon.

Vacay Reading

In two weeks Discord and I will be trekking off into the great blue yonder to spend a week at Discord's uncle's cabin in Michigan.  Most people who live in Chicago that claim to have a "cabin" in Michigan actually have some kind of sprawling lake house a few hours outside of the city.

This is a cabin not a lake house.  It is eight hours away and pretty much in Wisconsin.  It is one room.  There is no running water.  There is no cell tower for miles.  There is an outhouse.  I have been told there is electricity.  I may have been lied to.

While Discord's father and uncles were there last week, they saw a bear.  Yes, a bear.  While I hate the idea of having a gun in our house, I'm fine with there being one at the cabin.

So Discord and I are going to the cabin for a whole week following Lollapalooza.  There are a couple boats.  I think there is some hiking.  If I decide I need a hot shower, there is a state park about a thirty minutes away.  Essentially we will have to find a way to entertain ourselves.  This is going to be particularly hard for me given I cannot take quiet and always have the radio or TV on.

To the end of not going crazy in the woods, I'm asking for book recommendations again.  Robin recently recommended The Help and though I'm only half way through it, it is rivaling The Time Traveler's Wife for my favorite book ever (not written by F. Scott Fitzgerald).  I'll likely take Fool on Katie's recommendation.  Any other suggestions?  My rule of frivolity only applies to the beach, so anything is fair game.

Oh, I did I mention we're taking Cat.  We thought she'd like it.  Or that if I'm going to be miserable, she should be too:)

Feet

A few days ago Discord mentioned that his foot really itched.  I don't think I said, "That's nice honey," but that is the level of concern I showed.

Today my foot really itches and suddenly I am concerned.

I just put a gallon of bleach in the tub to soak and am trying to get past the fumes to go in there and scrub all potential foot-itching-causing microbes to death.

I'm plotting a trip to the drug store for that cold burny spray.

I think our sweaty gym shoes/bike cleats have caught up with us and bitten us in the foot.

Ethics

Would it be wrong to renew all  my professional association memberships right now while I can still claim student status?  The price difference is quite significant.  I am a student until October and when I'm not, I'll actually make less money with no institutional support for conferences and the like. 

There should be an "adjunct" membership for these things.  I'm realizing adjuncts are considerably more put upon than grad students--no conference support, pathetic salary, crappy library resources.  There's really no way to stay in the game given the resources.  I have a feeling this will be a short lived gig for me. 

Things We Have/Are Grow(n)ing

We aren't having a bad go of our first try at gardening:

  

 

I have a feeling that if you divided how much money we've spent by edible items in the garden, those potatoes are running about $20 a pound.  Still, the level of pleasure we've taken at growing our own food is kind of disgusting and definitely marks us as hopeless city kids.

The Nightly Battle with Cat

Discord and I have our nightly routine.  We usually have dinner, pour ourselves two glasses of wine, and settle in on the couch for our nightly hour or so of TV time.

Cat, after being ejected from our bed, claimed the couch.  She is there almost all of the time unless there is a good sunbeam to be had on the floor.

This means every night when we decide to have TV time, we have to wrangle Cat onto one of the three cushions on the couch.  She much prefers to take up two.  When we insist she move over, she usually figures out how to put herself in between us to prevent any cuddling, or she just conforms to my lap in whatever way she can.  Until Cat is comfortable neither or us can be comfortable either with her little kitty-feet digging in and her tail obstructing a clear view of the TV.

Then two nights ago, after writhing on the floor in agony from my dental abscess, I left a throw blanket on the living room floor.  Cat has seen the blanket before.  It's likely been on the couch before. 

But now Cat is in love with the blanket.  I once bought her a kitty bed out of what I would bet was the exact same material and she wouldn't go near it.

She's pretty much unmoving.  I feel oddly abandoned and yet gratefulI'm not being pestered.  And then I feel guilty for being grateful which is the true essence of being a cat owner.

Internet Aided Hypochondria

Khouray's Dentist in response to Khouray's insistence that her abscessed tooth has become a life-threatening systemic infection: "I need you to stop reading things on the internet.  You don't have cancer and you're not going to die."

Khouray: "Cancer?  Who said anything about cancer?  I skipped right to death."

Dentist: "No more internet for you."

My First Memory

I have a lot of memories from when I was young.  I think some of them are from further back than kids are suppose to be able to remember.  Nothing from when I was two or three is real clear--snapshots really.

I wouldn't even know how old I was in most of them except my family moved from a smallish house in "the cotton patch," as my mother now likes to call it when I was four.  "The house in the cotton patch" makes it sound cute and quaint, rather than all they could afford with my father's bankruptcy from student loans, child support, and my mother's distaste for work.

I have a few very clear memories from that house: playing hide and go seek with my Dad and our dog, being outside and having the neighbor's dog sneak up on me from behind this huge hedge and scare the crap out of me, a lizard in my sister's bedroom that her boyfriend broke the tail off while trying to get it out of the house, the holly bush in the yard that I managed to constantly stab myself on and that I called the "polly bush" (I think this had something to do with my brother's name, but I'm not sure what now), that odd space at the top of the stairs to the loft with a space just big enough for me to sit on and dangle my feet over, and picking up a little blue something off the floor that I thought was a sweet-tart, but I now realize was likely a valium.  My sister smacked the shit out of me before I got it in my mouth. 

I don't really remember moving, but I do remember going back to that house to dig up a St. Joseph statue, but I was probably five by then.

Still, my earliest memory from the house in the cotton patch was by far the most traumatic, though only because I didn't understand the valium thing. 

I remember very clearly laying on my back with my big toe stuck in the intake vent for the air-conditioner.  I don't recall why I thought that seemed like a good place to put my toe.  I do remember that it wouldn't come out. 

The memory of the pain and the blood are fairly muted at this point.  What is perfectly clear is the memory that I needed to yell for my mother and the very clear understanding that when I did, I was going to be in trouble.

It is amazing to me that at two I had already come to understand perfectly that I was to be seen and not heard--the motto of child rearing in the South, and for that matter women's role in public.  Okay, maybe I'm being hard on the South, but that's sure as hell how it was in my house.

I knew I was going to be in trouble for inconveniencing my mother.

I'm not sure why this memory has been on my mind so much lately.  I think it has something to do with my reflecting on my failure's on the academic job market, the scheduling of my parents' second ever trip to see me in the Midwest (my Dad's first actually), and the fact that I'm starting to think about the possibility of having kids in a real way.

A huge part of the kid decision, for me anyhow, is that I was miserable for the entirety of my young life.  Hell, I'm still miserable half the time and I blame at least half of my misery directly on the relationship I had and continue to have with my parents.  I have no idea if I could do any better as a parent.  And that is fully terrifying.

I think I could at least be sure that by age two my kids didn't already identify as a totally self-concerned entity.  But really I can't even be sure of that.