I think we’re moving next week?

It’s hot in Baltimore right now. If you’re on the East Coast at all, I don’t have to tell you. It’s miserable. Our new apartment has central air. The new apartment we’re supposed to be moving into next week. Here? Well, sheeeet. I can’t hear anything but fans!

And thank God/Jesus/Allah/The Donale for peppermint soap. Oh, peppermint soap. Dude, get some. Get some, and tell them I sent you. Tell them I said HI.

But we haven’t packed a thing. Boxes are on their way. I’m a pretty stellar packer, though. Maybe I’m wired to be nomadic? I have a feeling our distaste for home ownership might be masking a growing desire to move around some more, maybe just travel a bit. Maybe just, I don’t know, change things up?

And we need to measure rooms and furniture and the massive volume of books that we own, go to Ikea (though that part’s fun, and Charlotte likes the colors and the toys she gets when we go there), actually think about what’s going where.

And we need to not melt before then.

This is all cause for stress, but I don’t feel particularly stressed about it. Rather, I’m looking forward to receiving the wood-handled umbrellas we ordered yesterday, in time for a rainy weekend. I spent like two hours researching umbrellas. (I shit you not.) I couldn’t get the color I wanted, and I’m hoping that “khaki” is not code for “off-white.”

Also, all this sitting around sans shirt has me wishing I could lose weight. That I would, rather. That I would.

Would if I could, and all that.

My job is over after Monday.


When Charlotte was one week old, I found out that the office in which I work did not have the funding to keep me after my second year in AmeriCorps VISTA. This after it was nearly guaranteed that, if I did a second year of 40-50 hours a week of work for $11,000 a year, I could have “any job” I wanted, even the one my immediate boss (a high-ranking university administrator no less) designed for me, working in faculty development and community engagement. You know, actually using my fancy degrees and experience and talents.

So. A week after becoming a father, I found out that four months later I would be cut loose. Stressed.  Angry.  Hurt.  Scared.

Mrs. P. suggested that I just not go back to work after that, until Charlotte goes to school. Such a suggestion shook us both up. But we decided to go for it.  It never would have occurred to me.

I spent the summer coming to terms with the fact that I had a PhD and would not be working for a few years, that I had more-or-less wasted two years of my life (at least one) on an institution that, well, didn’t give a shit. I am not going to claim that I worked very hard this summer or that I didn’t take an extra day or two of paternity leave. I felt like they owed me. Plus, working more than 40 hours a week was pretty regular, especially during my first year as a VISTA.

Then, a week or two before the date that my contract with AmeriCorps VISTA was up, my boss scored me a part-time gig working on faculty development and even policy development (I’m spending my last day drafting a policy on part-time tenure-track faculty members). Two days in the office, and a few hours from home. Not a bad deal, but it required a great deal of mental shuffling. All the things I had put off until after VISTA was up were on hold again. Most are still on hold.

Our unit moved from our little suite, but I was left behind. I share the suite with two (sometimes three) quiet men. It’s weird. I’ve taken to working with my door closed regularly.  I’m pretty quiet and self-contained.  But I miss the people I used to work with.  It’s strange being in the same office, with different people down the hall and with your desk moved to be ADA compliant. It’s especially worker-bee-esque to be chained to a desk two blocks away, with getting that work done being the only value I give to the university.

My contract was technically supposed to be over two weeks ago, but the funding runs out Monday, and there was something no one wanted to do that they could ask me to do (and which I didn’t mind doing, really).  So.  Monday, that’s it.

It’s strange.  I feel like I’ve spend all of Charlotte’s 10 1/2 months waiting for something and that I’ve missed a lot, at least mentally.  I feel guilty that I get to be with Charlotte daily, while my wife works hard to make money to feed us all, at a job that’s not in her field and for which she’s underpaid.  I feel like I’ve given every professor that’s ever looked out for me the finger twice: once when I didn’t go out for teaching jobs; again when I’m going to put my “credentials” on the shelf for 3-4 years altogether.  I’m waiting for it to bother me, that I have a freakin PhD in philosophy and that I “stay home.”

I’m steeling myself for the shit I’ve been getting and will probably get.  A good friend of mine joked that he told someone about having a friend who’s “a doctor” but “all he does is stay home.”  A lot of people at work react strangely and treat me like some basket case who gave up.  If I were a bolder man, I’d respond, “Oh, yeah?  What are YOU doing with YOUR PhD?  Right, you don’t have one!”  There are some very supportive people, though.  My family and most of my friends are being awesome.  A lady I work with responded, last week when I told her what I’ll be doing, “Good.  Good for you.  That’s great.  The best thing you can do.”  I wanted to hug her.

Having done both, I can easily say that parenting is harder than getting a PhD.  More rewarding, too.  DAD is a much better title than Dr.

OMG, it’s only Tuesday.

What a week already!  Yesterday, we saw the OB early in the morning.  She said the same thing as two weeks ago: things look stable; maybe in two weeks, Mama can come off bedrest a little.  Good news.

Then we went to the bloodlab, where we spent about four hours.  It was hot, close, and you could feel the frustration from people over the waiting.  The nurses didn’t think Mama looked good.  So we got to wait behind a curtain after the first hour.  Before that, I finished Into the Wild.

We had lunch, which was heaven after we’d been fasting for the testing (I fasted, too, for sympathy).

Came home, did laundry, got an email from my dissertation directory asking for my bibliography.  Scrambled to get that put together and was up late going through all of my footnotes to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

Meetings and “official” stuff already all day today.

My blood sugar is all over the place from fighting the urge to give in to stress.  I’m so tired that I feel like throwing up, but I’m having trouble sleeping also.  I have something huge going on tomorrow (if all goes as planned) that I don’t want to jinx too much by talking about.

But soon, none of this will matter.  Baby will be here.

Dissertation stress makes work stress not so bad.

I haven’t been blogging much on  here lately because I haven’t had the energy and will.  I hate when people say, “I didn’t X because I’m just soooooooo busy [with the inflection that no one, and they mean no one, is as busy as they are].”  So I won’t give you that bullshit.

I’ve been busy with work and planning the memorial ride for the gentleman who was killed in August.  That accounts for a lot of my time.

I’ve also been pulling my hair out about getting my dissertation director to schedule my defense before my wife’s too preggers to travel.  On one hand, I really like the guy and probably have a close philosophical kin in him.  On the other, it’s frustrating to be at the mercy of other people’s schedules and thereby tempted to push them — hard.  I mean, I’m certainly willing to piss people off if I have to, but not until I have to.  Especially not people that I like.  That accounts for much of my sanity.

We’ve also learned that the pregnancy is not without events.  On the ten week ultrasound, there was some bleeding under the placenta that only showed up on the U.S. but shouldn’t have been there.  Our doctor scheduled another for early last week, and it is still there.  The ultrasound technician said it’s something to monitor but not necessary worry about unless the bleeding gets larger.  We haven’t spoken to our doctor since she got the report, however, and it’s worrisome.  It’s also worrisome, to be blunt, when people who you’d think would be concerned are not, or, at least, don’t show it.  Mrs. P. is also on some medication, and that’s never fun.  That accounts for being emotionally dissinterested in blogging.

Excuses, excuses, I know.

Post grant application vacuum.

Finished a big grant application Friday.  Worked Saturday.  Took off yesterday.  Back to work today, and I feel like I should be stressed out about something.

Back on my bike, too, after six days off, taking transit and walking.  Knee was bothering me, and it didn’t go away after a lot of time off the bike, reinforcing my belief that it’s more from sitting than cycling.  It’s not really a sharp pain, and I think I’m making it worse by holding my leg funny.

It’s very very cold, and I’m looking forward to cycling at any rate.  My ride into work is almost entirely downhill, so I don’t think I can really hurt my knee any more (?).

This list is over.