is it just me?

but it includes a free trip around the sun.

that was the subject message of my crazy friends of inner child suicide fame. they sent me another that said "ever stop to think, and forget to start again?" I'm telling you, those are some wacky viagara sellers.

as you know, I ride the bus. in order to make busses more accessible to elderly and disabled folks, they have something called a kneeling bus. basically the driver can push a button and the front corner of the bus where you board lowers closer to the ground. it makes quite a lot of commotion, as it involves beeping, hissing, etc. Unfortunately, my afternoon bus driver has decided that I need the bus to kneel. granted, I am seven months pregnant, and certainly not as agile as I used to be, but I can still get on the bus. And as someone who really, really hates to have attention drawn to them having the bus kneel for me is totally humiliating and awful. As if walking around with a giant basketball stuffed under your shirt didn't draw enough attention to me. Perhaps I will have to start walking to work. (Just kidding. It's much too far for somene in my delicate condition.)

I only have one friend here at work - she's the only young, female, non-crazy faculty or staff member in this whole building. And she's moving. This is terrible news. I go hide in her office and bitch and gossip at least once a day, and now she's leaving me here with all these academic crazies all by myself. I may not ever forgive her. However, in her honor I am having a wine party at my house tonight. This will be the first time my boss has ever been to my house. I find that I am vaguely terrified. He has us over for dinner occasionally and serves us delicious food and expensive wine so I have always been afraid to have him over because usually I cook things like tacos and drink beer. but anyway, he's coming. And he's terrified of dogs. I have a nice little dog, but he's kind of a nut. if my dog scares my boss I will never ever hear the end of it. yikes! wish me luck.

In my last post I forgot to mention that my sister who lives in New York (she moved to Brookly from Manhattan a couple of years ago) came to visit. It hink anyone who lives in NYC thinks anyone who lives in Wisconsin is at least partly out of their mind. And while I think she found the fine city of Madison perhaps nicer than she had imagined, kind of cute even, she still thinks we're crazy for living her. NOw, I am not sure she'd ever admit it, but it's true. People from New York just can't imagine how we could live in a place like this. It's small, it's midwestern, it's cold a lot, the shopping is terrible, and it's really close to Iowa. This is probably why this was her first visit in the five years I have lived here. I somehow imagine it could also be her last. She's seen it now, so really - why come back? There is no real compelling issue to see it again, and I, for one, won't force the issue. I know better.

This has gotten ridiculous. I will not tell you any sad tales of why I have not posted, but work has been a nightmare (which is now over thank goodness) and I'm busy and pregnant and lazy and whatever else. So, now I am back.

I really, really wanted to post a while back when I received a spam email with the subject line "My inner child just killed itself" but alas I did not find the time. I think they are selling sexual performance enhancements or something, but apparently the people writing the subjects have a sense of humor.

Then I wanted to post last week when I received this email:

"The weekend of June 10, Dick basically had a run-in with a heifer resulting
in a very bad ankle break (his right ankle). He had surgery and went home
early last week -- he is under strict doctors orders at this time to take
it easy and recuperate. He got a cast put on Monday. Our understanding is
that he will have an 8-10 week recovery period (very possibly through the
first of the year before he is fully recovered). He hopes to be able to
come in to the office over the next few weeks, put we expect that to be
irregular and limited for a while."

Um...that guy is a dean here. And no one seemed to think it was the least bit unusual that he was out of the office due ot a "run-in with a heifer". This place is too much.

So, what else has happened since I last posted? Well, I was just about to go camping in Iowa which really wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds. We got to sleep in cabins and the park was pretty. For some reason my stepmother-in-law who brought all the supplies brought fewer than eight forks, although there were eight people. So, every meal two people had to eat with spoons. And every meal my father-in-law, if he didn't get the fork he wanted, would ask someone to trade for a big fork, while the rest of us ate prison break style with our spoons. She also brought a bunch of washcloths and no blankets. But minor snafus aside it was pretty fun.

Then the following weekend I went to see my family in VA for a baby shower. I hate baby showers. I thought maybe it would be better to be the one actually opening the gifts, but now I think maybe that's worse. Becuase then you know that you are the one responsible for making everyone sit there and pretend that they care about that pack of onesies. So, we got some nice gifts but the experience was kind of awful.

Since then it's just been working, etc. I went to DC for a conference, which was relatively uneventful. I had planned the conference and we had it at this fancy government building. They give you one of those Nextel walkie talkie phone things so you can call your "event coordinator" if you have any problems. I felt very official. Even more official than the people who get to wear headsets at retail stores. I was kind of inclined to abuse it and say things like "Come in Alex. Yeah. We need some cokes here in the Horizon Ballroom." But actually the thing made me kind of nervous so I only used it once. You were actually supposed to say "Come in Alex." And then he would respond. Ha ha. Just like on tv.

So recently I have been taking a prenatal yoga class. I kind of hate all of these pregnancy related classes because on the one hand you have somehting kind of important in common with these people but really that's just coincidence and its also temporary. And you have to have a really boring conversation about when you're due, whether you know what you're having, how you're feeling, etc. It gets old really quickly. And it is also strange to be in a room full of people with the same deformity that you have. I mean, imagine you dye your hair pink and you get a lot of comments about your pink hair and you think it's kind of cool and then all of a sudden you go to pink hair yoga and everyone has pink hair. It's weird. And then they say why did you dye your hair pink? what brand of dye did you use? and all this other stuff about your pink hair. and pretty soon you think "I am so over pink hair" and the good news is you could just dye it back but when you're pregnant even if you're over it you still just have to wait. and now I am to the part where pregnancy isn't actually that much fun, but it doesn't really help me to sit around and discuss my many ailments. It doesn't make them (or me) feel better. So I just say I feel good which is sort of true and then they want to tell you all about their issues which gets old. Anyway, this paragraph is also getting old so I will move on.

I feel like there must be some other events worth of sharing, but I can't come up with much. I received quite a few unusual comments and questions after the launch of the baby pool (you know, guess the gender and birthday and win the money) but now I ahve forgotten what they are exactly.

Oh, I have a graduate student working with me now. She's a real whiner. She had been working for me for about three days when she comes to my office and says "Can I ask you a question?" and comes in and closes the door. I thought she was going to ask about my boss who is her advisor. But then she says "Do you like your job? Because it seems really annoying." Okay, so she didn't say it quite like that but she did say it didn't seem like I needed my master's degree to do my job and this was the stuff she was doing straight out of college and blah blah blah. Basically I was having her do all the shit work for the conference because I had neither the time nor the inclination, and I wanted to say "no, my job means I get to make lesser beings such as yourself do all the things that are beneath me" but fortunately for her pregnancy agrees with me and has made me nicer so I was nice. Though I think she's a spoiled brat. She's supposed to do my job while I am out on maternity leave. I think I might kindly suggest she adjust her attitude for the sake of my boss because he does not respond well to whining. She has to pass this exam in order to be in the ph.d. program. If she doesn't pass it she'll have to get a master's, the same degree I have (I never tried to pass the test and get a ph.d). Somehow she finds this to be a great injustice since she believes that somehow she is a lot better than me or something. So part of me sort of hopes she doesn't pass it just to get her ego in check but I feel bad about that so I hope she passes and and still gets her ego in check. Then I realized that she's just judgemental in general. She asks if you like your job when what she's really saying is your job sucks. ANd then she asks about being pregnant but what she's relaly saying is I don't know why anyone would ever get pregnant. So I probably shouldn't take it too personally because she's probably like that with everyone about everything. But it still kind of makes me want to smack her.

So, that's about all. I will try to post a little more regularly, but the truth is I'm due in six weeks and after that all bets are off. I can't imagine I will have very many interesting things to write about when I am sitting at home with a tiny crying infant trying to figure out how to keep my entire house from smelling like baby poop. I mean, I know it sounds glamorous and everything but I am not sure it makes for very good reading. we'll see.