Welcome. Please look around, enjoy yourself, and let me know what you think.
Although this blog will most likely center on women in science and engineering, academia, and new motherhood, it is not limited to these topics.
I may occasionally raise some opinion regarding politics, products, people, news, scientific findings, or a host of other subjects sure to promote controversy.
Open discourse, I believe, is one of the fundamental goods in a free society. Still, I ask you to always keep in mind while perusing my website that all you read here is entirely
my point of view. It is as a scoffing scientist might say, purely anecdotal...
admin October 2nd, 2008
I know I’m not supposed to post twice in a day, but it feels wrong to have up a political post without a mention of the science debate. If you care anything at all about science, the way things work, politics, energy, or the world in general, you should read over this website.
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=42
admin October 2nd, 2008
I’d feel sorry for her, if I wasn’t so completely opposed to pretty much everything she supports politically. I just don’t get how she can think the way she does, but then people have a right to form ideas as they choose. I’m also a bit worried about the Intelligence Quotient banging around in there. Why doesn’t she just admit that they has no foreign relations experience, that it is McCain with that experience and that was not why she was chosen? Why can’t she just make up some news source when asked what she was reading? Seriously, has she never heard of Fox News, CNN, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR….?
I actually find it offensive that McCain chose such a weak female candidate. I can only hope it is because he had such a hard time finding a woman who so strongly supported limitation of women’s rights and destroying our natural environment. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a female VP with kids,who was at least mostly qualified and able to hold her own when asked questions without prepared answers? The fact that she was the one chosen makes it appear as though she is the best to be had. Humph.
Anyway, this LA times article pretty much sums up my ideas.
“This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie. Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7541303.story
I have a friend who chided me that the focus on Palin’s inexperience is hypocritical when supporting a Presidential candidate with so little. True, Obama is a young candidate and lack of experience is a sticking point. I think he has plenty for the office, but that’s another discussion. The fact is that no one is perfectly prepared for the Presidency. People with lots of experience are chided as “Career Politicians.” The thing is that when presented with obstacles that he has not yet faced, he has the mental acuity to find a satisfactory answer. He has thought about the issues. He knows what the President does and he has been in Washington. I agree that #1 should be more important than #2, but when Palin provides such great material to Tina Fey, how can McCain compete?
I’ll be watching the debate during comedy hour with a bowl of popcorn since I’m sure that Palin will generate her share of laughs. Poor woman.
admin September 30th, 2008
I need to update my blog roll. Some links I know don’t work so well any more, and I have discovered some great blogs that i read regularly, yet aren’t up.
At any rate, if you popped over here looking for a good read, let me recommend the bean-mom, a molecular biologist PhD who just got a cool new science writing job (http://beangirls.blogspot.com) and ScienceMama (http://motherofallscientists.blogspot.com) a biologist Mom who sure could use some cheering up at the moment. There are several more great blogs I’ll link to as soon as I can muster a few good naptime minutes.
Please don’t think that if I didn’t include you I don’t like your blog or don’t read it. Most likely I do, but I really need to get the dishes finished before the huz returns from his walk with the pup and the kid. Incidentally, I am not going because I managed to break my little toe.
Non-science blogs I check almost daily are http://mihow.com/, http://mikeadamick.com/, www.sweet-juniper.com, and of course, dooce. Plenty more where these came from too.
Thank you to all of you who take the time to write and post about the minutiae of your lives, and to read and comment on others who do as well. I get so much wonderful information from your blogs. Just so you know, lovely internet science moms and other bloggers, I am reading you.
admin September 27th, 2008
Next week I go to interview for a postdoc position. The position fits well with what I have already done, but leaves plenty of room for further growth and learning. It would be with a large and very highly respected lab with plenty of funding, working for a rather famous professor who is apparently a great guy. Furthermore, this position would allow me to stay where I am for the next two years, certainly a good thing, and it would pay me double what I was making previously, meaning that the pay would effectively allow me to contribute the same amount I did prior to funding childcare.
The thing is I’m not sure I want it.
I sometimes wonder if highly educated people fall into the trap of too much delayed gratification. All our lives we are told that if we work hard, if we study, if we stay the course now, we will be rewarded in the future. What no one tells us is exactly what day “the future” is. When do we stop preparing for our lives and realize that that life we had been preparing for? It’s right now. We’re living it.
Academia is one of the worst examples of delayed gratification. Most people see a college degree as a real accomplishment. To rise in academia you have to receive your undergrad degree from a good school, usually as one of the top in your class, then be admitted and excel in graduate school, spend a year or two (minimum) working as a post-doc, then get lucky enough to be hired as an assistant professor where you must work hard to prove yourself worthy of tenure. And the sad thing is, after all of that, some realize that it isn’t what they really want to do. All that hard work, that keeping their head down, that playing the rules just right, was just preventing them from discovering what it was they really enjoyed. And sometimes, it is too late.
I don’t want to be one of those people.
If somehow I was independently wealthy I would paint, sculpt, and write. I would write about science, mostly, and maybe later a novel. I would travel and take photographs that would then be showcased in small galleries, along with my other work. I would design interiors and children’s clothes. I would host and attend scientific conferences, schedule political debates, and spend my free time helping out at the Humane Society, and Habitat for Humanity. This would be during normal working ours since of course after work and on weekends would be reserved for my husband, my son, and our adopted dogs. For vacation we would head either to the sea for alternatively, relaxation and adventure, or to a farm so that I could nourish things, feed them, and watch them grow. Oh, and ride the horses. Every day I would ride the horses.
I know that this utopian life is fantasy, but I feel that my vision demonstrates some things about me that I should not ignore. I want to create, I want to lead, and I want to contribute. I want to explore difficult problems and see concrete results.
The problem with lab work is that it is mostly not creative. Progress is gradual. Even huge breakthroughs come about only after all the menial obstacles have been overcome. Results are not concrete, nor immediate. I don’t like lab work. I like thinking about complex problems. I like learning new things. I don’t like tinkering.
Here I am, rambling away. It is just that now I think it is the time for me to sit back and be rewarded. My life should I think start now, before 30. If I must leave my son, it should be for a good reason. And this interview does not represent this idea. I am excited only about the prospect of money. I feel shackled. What it is I want to do I cannot claim to be fully qualified. I would love to be a science writer or editor, but there are plenty more who look better on paper because I have dutifully followed a path I no longer care to take. Do I stay the path, or do I risk the forest? Perhaps just a little way down the path there is a clearing; perhaps the path just takes me deeper.
I want to love my job. I want to get paid for my good work. Why does that have to be so difficult?
admin September 25th, 2008
As an only child I’d always wondered why people had multiple children. Everything that you could experience with two or three you could more easily do with one. The egg hunts, the fairs, the forts, the apple picking, the cupcakes, competitions, childhood exploration, developmental milestones, and I love yous are all just as open to parents of singles as multiples. Admission to children’s events, as far as I know, don’t discriminate. Likewise I had seen how tired the parents of multiple children seemed. Always doing something for one or another, they never seemed to have any time for themselves. I had watched parents who had easily integrated one child into their family take on a look of chaos and fear with the addition of another. Why? I thought, why do it?
I still think that logically, one is a good number. I like still being able to believe that my husband and I will be able to do many of the things we enjoyed sans child as well as all those wonderful things that I am so looking forward to experiencing with my son. But I think I’m beginning to understand those parents. I’m beginning to imagine what kind of mix another genetic roulette spin might produce. Our son is so cute. What would his brother look like? What would our little girl look like? How would another child’s personality mirror his? What does he share with us and what is really, distinctly, his?
And there’s another thing people don’t tell you. They don’t warn you that you will have to fall in love with your child over and over again because the baby you hold in your arms this week is not the same one you fell in love with last week. “Take pictures!” they say “They grow so fast.” Great advice, yes, but incomplete. They don’t tell you that the baby in those pictures is a different person, one you will want to remember, one in a blink you will never see again, one that yes, you will mourn. Sure every morning your baby is lying in the place where you left him, but he is different, every time you wake him. Every morning, he is new.
So I think some people have another child to get to meet a baby like that again. They want to hold their child 1 week, 1 month, 1 year old again. They want to fall in love again with their baby, knowing now that as soon as they do they will have to mourn him and replace that love with what he has become.
Goodbye my newborn. Goodbye my one month old son. Goodbye my tiny scrawny little baby.
I loved you.
admin August 22nd, 2008
I made a wonderful dinner. I had a drink. I watched a movie with my husband. I danced with my son. We had a wonderful time. The three of us. Three.
Twenty years ago Friday nights were spent with a couple of friends, chasing away the daylight, running, chasing, laughing. Ten years ago my Friday nights were spent with my closest friends, playing pool, driving around, laughing. Five years ago my Friday nights were spent partying with new friends, dancing, meeting new guys, laughing. What memories I have, of these nights.
Tonight I spent at home with my new family. Laughing.
I will have more crazy nights. I’m not ready to give them up. But tonight was plain, and I went nowhere, and and it was perfect.
This is why I did this thing. This night. May you all have nights like these.
admin August 9th, 2008
Dear Kiddo,
Two days ago you turned one month old. I think you should know that though your birthday was not celebrated with cupcakes and candles, the last month has been one long birthday party for you. All of your grandparents have come to see you twice. Friends from other states have driven miles to come to see you. You have had easily over a dozen visitors. The pictures of you we post to friends cause my inbox to fill each morning with exclamations on your cuteness. You have already been the hit of a party. You now have the popularity I would have traded for my soul in middle school.
The one who enjoys you the most, though, is your father. You really should thank me later for picking him out for you. He is working part time so that his afternoons are spent with you sleeping on this shoulder, or with you slung across his arm sucking his thumb like a little monkey. He swoops you around the house like an airplane, holds you high and jiggles you like jelly, and doesn’t complain about changing your diapers. While I think that you are cute simply because you are a baby, he is convinced that you really are the cutest baby ever, most likely because you look exactly like he did when he was a baby. Your hand even perfectly mirrors his palm creases.
This whole month I have had no other real job than to take care of you. You sleep until around 7 AM and despite my efforts to stay in bed a little longer you wake up and are ready to play. So every morning we get up and after you are changed we have playtime together. Sometimes I put a toy on you and let you bat it around. Sometimes I show you around the house and describe everything. Sometimes I just let you gaze into my face. Recently you have started smiling and making this happy squealing noise that is the most incredible thing I have ever heard.
Early on, before I knew how to properly soothe you, back when you were nursing promptly every two hours, I went through several difficult days. Unfortunately I am just not one of those women who falls in love with a baby the instant she sees him, nor did I suddenly realize that mothering was what I had always been meant to do. I was worried that I had made a terrible mistake becoming a mother, one that I knew I could never undo. I worried that I would never enjoy this role, and that it would prevent me from accomplishing all the other incredible things I want to achieve in this life of mine. I worried that I had traded my life for yours, and it was a swindle.
But don’t worry kiddo, because I’m pretty sure I was wrong. I love the little sighing noises you make while you sleep, and how you can gaze at me for hours. I love how you squeal and open your mouth when I kiss you all over. I love your little round belly. I love how soft you feel, and how you stroke me with your hand and toes while you nurse. And now that I am getting more sleep and more confidence, I just can’t wait to discover other wonderful things about you, those moments and memories yet hidden away far from my view, secrets you will keep until it is your time to reveal them.
Happy Birthday!
Momma
admin August 6th, 2008
Dear Woolite Pet Stain Remover People
I am writing you to commend you for a wonderful product. Over the years, your product has kept our carpet and furniture looking and smelling new, pet accident after pet accident, including one involving a lab puppy who mistook a bathroom garbage can for a shiny new dinner plate, and another involving our mutt and, well, let’s just say it was really bad. However, I had no idea that when my weeks old baby shot yellow week old baby poo through the air, over the changing table, and out onto the carpet, that your product would perform so spectacularly. Not only did Woolite Pet Stain Remover completely clean the area after being left to set for several hours (no Virginia, that 1AM poop explosion was not just a bad dream), but I feel confident that as the bottle advertises, the deodorizing effect of your product will dissuade my child from resoiling that spot again in the future. I thought that this new use of Woolite Pet Stain Remover should be brought to your attention in case you would like to utilize this information for marketing purposes in the future.
Sincerely,
WPSR’s biggest fan
admin August 1st, 2008
First of all, thank you so much, Gillian, for your comments. You made me feel so much better, sitting there, holding my hand with your words. I also posted a cry for help in my facebook profile, and was buoyed by many comments left by people I know and love all over the country. You know, I remember some kid’s show from a LONG way back with some truly awful jingle about how great friends are (Sesame Street? Mr. Rogers?) and I remember thinking, “Well duh you dumb people. This is so stupid.” But that was back when a “friend” was that kid you just met at the pool: “What’s your name? What’s your favorite color? Want to be my friend?”
So thank you to all my friends, the ones I know and those I don’t. My favorite color is blue.
Because today has been much better. My Mom is here to hold and console the baby, who strangely doesn’t feel the need to cry nearly so much. Our friends arrived early to take care of him, and we got to the graduation site in plenty of time. Graduation actually was nice, and I felt some sense of accomplishment.
I like to rub my velvet stole…
Apparently the baby didn’t cry at all while I was gone, and he is now back to his three hour feeding schedule. And Saturn aligns with the Moon and Pluto in the Southern hemisphere… So things are good, for now. And now I have heard that this is the toughest time, that things will get better, so the bad days will not be for the rest of my life, and OH MY GOD how good does that make me feel.
And now so that this blog isn’t entirely frustrated rants, here’s a bit of trivia about the phrase “T-minus” entirely stolen from that little gem, the urban dictionary.
T minus zero
“T minus zero” means “out of time.”
This comes from a countdown convention used in by both the American military and NASA.
Generally, it is used when counting down to a major event that will happen at a specific time.
Mathematically, T is time, minus whatever amount of time is left until the event happens.
If the News Years ball is dropping in 10 minutes, one could say “The ball is dropping in T minus 10 minutes and counting!”
Therefore, “T minus zero” means that there is no time left.
Interesting, no?
admin July 31st, 2008
So I haven’t written here in a while. Well, as they say, I’ve been busy.
Sometimes I feel guilty for not writing. I feel that slight guilt I feel when I really need to mop the floor, but choose to do something else instead, like it’s something on my to-do list that I ignore, but shouldn’t. And sometimes I feel silly for this guilt. It’s not like anyone needs me to write here. It’s not like I get paid, or someone is inconvenienced. But then again, I will never have more than a handful of readers if I never create something to be consumed. And don’t I know that feeling of disappointment when I visit my favorite blogs day after day to find nothing new?
But today, today, I write because I NEED to. I need to do something creative. I need to reach out. I need to have someone tell me, “me too.” I can’t help feeling that some time in the future I will take this post down. I will feel embarrassed by my weakness, or will be afraid that my son will read it many years from now. But at the moment, this is something I think I need. So here goes.
I graduate tomorrow. I walk across a stage while friends and family cheer for me, celebrate me, and applaud me. I take the final symbolic step to complete this incredibly trying, incredibly difficult, incredibly esteemed thing called the PhD. I do this thing that I have been working to do for the last half-decade. And all I want is to get it over with.
All I want is to get it done because of this other thing I have, this baby. This baby cries off and on all day. This baby forces me to wake several times every night. This baby I must keep alive day after day. This baby keeps me from doing other things. This baby is constantly on my mind.
Because I can’t expose this baby to germs, I am having some friends come by to take care of this baby. I am stressed hoping they get there in time, hoping we get out in time, hoping this baby doesn’t scream the whole time they are there, hoping this baby takes the bottle OK, hoping that I don’t get too engorged while I’m away from this baby, hoping I sleep the night before. This is half of me. The other half just wants to run away.
Really, this baby isn’t all that bad. He sleeps at night except for the hour he takes to eat every three hours that I feed him. (Isn’t an hour feeding a little long?) He doesn’t cry constantly, just off and on most of the time he’s awake during the day.
But still I can’t push out the nagging feeling that I have gone and done something horribly horribly wrong. Because, this, this is not fun. Why do women other seem to enjoy doing this? Can I please just give him back and have my old life back? I want my old life back. I want my husband and my sleep and my LIFE, my LIFE, the life I know how to live. And I want a job – any job that will get me away, and doing and thinking and not having to worry about this baby. Screw the dream job; screw me making a new start, a new career. I just want something that will make me enough money to have someone else take care of the baby for a little while. Someone who can do it better than I can.
And who thinks like this? What the hell kind of mom am I? This thing, this thing can never be undone. Never. What have I done? When does the fun part start? What is wrong with me? Do other moms worry that their lives will never be as good again, that they have made a terrible mistake? What if I’m just not the motherly type? What if it never gets better? Oh please tell me this will get better.
The thing is, I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know if it gets better, or just different. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to relax, to enjoy myself and my husband. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a job I really love, now that I don’t have time to devote to making that happen. I don’t know if this one decision has thoroughly screwed up my life. So please, tell me there is a light, that this gets better, that soon I will love my life again, that it’s worth it. Because right now all I want to do is go hide in a closet, and this graduation thing tomorrow just seems like some cruel joke. Congratulations, your life is over.