Life is good, but I keep missing it somehow.

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.

1) Be careful who you’re nice to.  You never know who’s on a grant committee.  That person you blew off two autumns ago might be the deciding vote on your so-so grant application.

2) There really will be some stickler who judges you for typos, formatting errors (everyone knows by now that Word 2007 does to spacing) and spelling mistakes.

3) The quality of your writing really does matter.  Maybe there is no real connection between the ability to produce serious, quality, formal writing and completing a proposed project.  But there sure is the implicit perception.  “Don’t fun that.  He can’t even use a thesaurus.”  There’s worse, too.

4) It does make a difference if you staple, paperclip, merely stack or use a report cover.  Not connecting  your papers at all makes readers find the beginning and end of your application and might have them annoyed when they start reading it.

5) BE CONCISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6) When asked for a very short statement about your project, don’t just paste your opening two sentences.

7) Don’t call yourself “visionary” in the third person when the application has your signature on it.

8) Don’t list the grant criteria, say that your project fulfills them all, and then not say how or why.

9) Shorthand and abbreviations are unwelcome in an essay that is asking for thousands of dollars.

10) Realize that when you ask for mos of a grant for salary (“consulting”) for yourself when you already work 40 hours a week and will do all the grant work during those 40 hours, that’s called stealing.  You will get rejected, maybe laughed at.  And, you know, people remember you the following year.

Don’t ask me for positive recommendations, or how to actually get a grant.  Sheesh.  If I could do that, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.  I get paid under a grant, but I didn’t apply for it.

Today, I am 31, have a wonderful wife and daughter and really don’t care about my age anymore (remind me I said that if I’m still blogging when I turn 40 in 2019).

And, well, this is kind of funny.  But I’m sleep-deprived enough to actually be hallucinating a little a few times a day.  I see things that aren’t there and hear things that aren’t happening.  This is getting a little scary.

Stranger still, I’m in the same office after the rest of the suite moved.  I’ll be staying on in the Provost’s Office to work on faculty development issues two days a week for six months to earn some cash.  At least the PhD (for which I received three negative comments in two days last week — nice) means something right away.  It was listed as a prerequisite in the job description.

I’m tired of apologizing for it, like I owe it to everyone to live up to three letters or something.  It’s not like being an Eagle Scout, that’s for sure.

We never bother to paint because we move a lot; so our walls are all off-white.  For Baby’s room, I used non-VOC paint to get the space a glossy shade of blue.  There is wonderful light (from soft flower and bug wall lamps, to a medium lamp to a big floor to the nuclear dawn of the ceiling light), a soft rug, cute curtains, soft, wooden furniture (including some that we intend to grow with her), a rocking chair, TOYS and — for now — two bikes!Also , to keep the dragon plant company, a money tree!

It was a task. It felt like my Augean stables, as I cleaned off a storage shelf, the huge closet, computer desk, two full bookshelves, bike parts and tools, pens (PENS!). This took me several weekends.

Then I painted with a brush, so that I wouldn’t have to make a mess. Before and after painting, I had fun with sandpaper, putty and DUST (which had to be vacuumed from everything, mopped up, etc., in case of lead paint, etc.).  This took a week of evenings, with a few mornings and one afternoon.

Then there was a big trip to Ikea, after some careful planning and measuring.  And, you know, putting everything together (which I really enjoy).

And, finally, decorating!  This was the fun part.  I had a nice beer, my headphones and went to town last night.  I think that was the last beer I’ll ever drink in there.

The crib is in our room, closer to me, since I’m a light sleeper.  After that, it will replace the bikes in Baby’s room.  Her window looks out onto trees and, when they don’t have their leaves, North Baltimore.  There are three doors: one to the hallway, one to the closet, one to the bathroom (both bedrooms have doors into the bathroom, which is pretty cool and part of the “charm” of this old place).  The floors are the original (creaky and scarred) hardwood floors.

It’s weird to think that, in a matter of weeks or even days, there will be a tiny baby there.

Also, in the mail today: my new camera and the Baby Bjorn!

More photos here on Flickr!

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.

With Baby this close and so much left to do, I’m finding it difficult to really care about much else. My hair looks terribly.  Seriously.

Aside from getting ready for Baby in practical ways, all I find myself interested in is hanging out with Mama, listening to music for Baby, watching the Olympics, “Gilmore Girls” and movies from Netflix.