Online Shopping Spree

Last Sunday I should have spent the whole day grading, but I didn't.

This is what I did instead...

... I spent a really long time deciding which Metropolitan Vera Bradley bag on sale to order (this particular bag was recommended by a friend because it fits a laptop, is roomy and I think that it looks a bit more professional than my colorful backpack. Besides they are not going to be made anymore). I picked the "Rhythm & Blues" one:

Then, the site began to display their "Cyber Monday" discounts (on Sunday afternoon) and went ahead and got this matching clutch to carry my iphone (I also needed one more item to be able to use a coupon for 20 dollars off -- I know, it's an old trick to get you to spend more):

For some really random reason, while browsing, I remembered Painted Birds shoes and clicked on the site. These lovely hand-crocheted shoes (made by women in India that I hope are paid a fair wage for their work) cost a lot, but they were having a 50% sale, so I couldn't resist and ordered this:

 

... but only after I'd spend a long time (again) deciding between this and another green, blue and yellow pair. I even tried to figure out if the colors matched those of the bag above (and they kind of do! ;)

Then on Monday I remembered this gorgeous dress that I'd seen on Target (feMOMhist got me started on Target dresses with this post -- my comment proves it -- and this other one!) and it was also on sale for 18 bucks, so I went ahead and ordered it.

The worst (?!) part it that I don't feel ANY guilt whatsoever, quite the opposite. I had wanted or needed these things for a long time and now I decided to get them. I know that this whole "discount" thing is relative because it's impossible to know the "real value" of anything. And I think I deserve some pretty things, don't I?

What do you think of my purchases?

P.S. I'm staying at other-university town tonight and while on the phone with my husband I learned that the shoes and the bags arrived. He thought that the shoes were too pricey. :(  (I hope there's no receipt with the bags!! [I don't think there is]

P.S.2 I'll be a good girl and grade now. I feel only a tiny bit bad for having gotten my "reward" before doing the work I should have been doing. ;)

2.65% Fixed-Rate 15 Year Loan!!

You may remember that our house did not appraise at the value that we needed it to for the refinancing (we'd have to come up with 19 thousand dollars).

However, there are several more options and some of them involve a promotional fixed rate of 2.65% for a 15 year loan!!! I think we cannot let this opportunity pass, even though it means we'll have to borrow 9K from somewhere (if we pay everything with credit card in the next month we'll be very close to that amount by saving all our earnings and then we can borrow a bit more on one of our ccs).

I hate to be in debt, but this type of debt is "good debt" that will save us over 100,000 in interest!!

I am just so happy this will work out in the end! Too bad this will mean that we can't afford to travel over the holidays anymore so we can save as much as possible. :(

We need to close by Dec. 26, so the refinance will be our "Christmas present." ;)

First Birthday!!

Today is my youngest nephew's first birthday! Isn't he the most adorable thing ever? I just wish I knew how old he'll be when I will finally get to meet him. :(

I have four other nephews and one niece, but they belong to my husband's side of the family, so this is the only nephew to whom I'm related by blood (and there's also a sibling for him on the way, that's so wonderful!). I just wish I could afford to travel to Brazil where they are now (or to New Zealand where they live) to meet him and spend time to my brother and his wife. My dream for this December is not coming true, unfortunately. :( It's all good, though, I'm glad my parents are enjoying this special time with their grandson (my brother & his wife are staying in Brazil for several months, but they go back to NZ in January).

I've got a poll for you!!! -->

Dear blog readers, I put a poll up on my side bar which will be there for a week (until 12/03).

Could you let me know if you think I should only use only "L" as my blog name/pseudonym or "LitMama"?

I just had this idea that maybe I'll feel better about using only my initial as some of my anonymous blogging friends do even though "LitMama" also describes me pretty well.

I think I'm just getting tired of the "Mama" part of me now that I'm working full time for the very first time in my life!!!

So I'm leaning towards L, but I'd love to hear your opinion, which is just a click (or two, if you have to open the blog from a reader) away.

Thanks! Obrigada!

What's in a Name...

I couldn't think of not blogging with first my name, but I decided to change that now.

And since my blog's name is way too long, I'm going with LitMama. I feel a little sad, but I think it's going to make me feel a bit better about sharing so much about my life here in this space. I'm glad that those who have been reading for a while know my name, I just ask you not to use it anymore.

I also realize that my blog is still connected to my first name in comments I've left in the past all over the blogosphere and I'm OK with that. If you have a link to my blog at your own blog (blogroll, for example) and by any chance you've used my first name, you can change that if you have a minute.

This is probably useless since I don't have a big readership, but I just wanted to add a bit more privacy to this really open blog. I am not deleting photos that have my face in them yet, but maybe I'll do it at some point. I hope it's not necessary. I will probably change the blog description as well so the subject I teach becomes more obscure.

This feels really weird and I don't know exactly why I'm doing it, I guess I just thought it was about time. I hope you don't mind!! :)

Sigh...

Edited to add: I'm editing the blog mast description as well (and will change the profile soon), so I just wanted to register here ("buried" in a post) what the description looked like in the past year: "2 sons, 2 languages, 2 countries (Brazil and the U.S.), 2 "worlds" (academic/ home-front), 2 PhDs (mine & my husband's). Where translation and & "in-between-ness" have become a way of life. Now with 2 cats!"

I'm Most Thankful...

... that all my "black Friday" shopping was done by 12:20 pm tonight!!

I even had K (who hates stores and shopping) accompany me to the stores that were opening at 8 and 9 pm (WM & Target). My ten year old really wanted to go as well, so he went with us and experience his very first "Black Friday" on Thursday night, before his bedtime!! And then I went quickly to a store that opened at midnight, but I got out of there in less than 20 minutes!

We bought almost everything in our list (things we actually needed):

• memory foam mattress toppers for the boys;
• Fire-pit for our brick patio;
• pajama for K & robe for my uncle;
• big plush throws for our living room (we already have two, but our guests truly love them, so I got two more);
• Cuddl'Duds (great brand!)fleece underwear top (I wanted another pair of their fleece leggings, but the store didn't have them).

And I few things we didn't exactly need, but which were cheap and will also be useful:

• memory foam bathroom mats;  

We couldn't get the table tennis (I prefer) ping-pong table we wanted because the store must have had only one, but that's OK.

The food today was AMAZING! (as always). And I'm glad we have tons of leftover for tomorrow. I hope to blog more about that later!

I feel a bit sorry for my in-laws because they decided to go to a store that opened at midnight and they are still out, but I'm delighted that I'm going to bed now!

How was your Thanksgiving?

Eight Years!!! (a week ago)

I missed my blog-anniversary again this year (like in years 4, 5, and 6, I think, according to last year's post)! :(

The blogiversary, as some people like to call it, was precisely a week ago, so I suppose it's OK to blog about it today.

No more photos of of me as in previous years, though... I don't think I'm going to delete the ones I've posted in the past, but I am seriously considering removing my first name from the blog so I can feel safer as I continue to navigate almost having an academic life! ;) I don't know if you noticed, but I made my location less specific as well.

Eight years... so much happened!! And this past year, as I'll say again in again in end-of-the-year posts to come, was the best of all so far, which has always been the norm in mine and K's life, with the exception of 2008-09.

I still enjoy blogging way more than all the other "social media" out there. Twitter is fine, though I don't tweet, just follow people; and facebook is ok for following, but not posting, at least for me. With nearly 700 friends spanning my whole lifetime and the globe, basically, I feel really exposed there. Is that strange?

I mean... here I am, opening my heart and our lives to anonymous, random people in the internets, but I don't feel exposed, quite the contrary! Whereas on facebook I feel afraid of saying something that I don't want people who only know me from way back or as an acquaintance to know.

Besides, I just have so much to say that 140 characters or short status updates can't simply convey! I guess I'm just prolix by nature and I need room to write lots!

Well, continue to be a very happy blogger and I hope this medium doesn't ever die! :)

Lovely Longwood

Family day at our favorite place since 2004 when my youngest boy was only 3 months old.
(Photos taken by my 10 year old).

Lancaster County,PA is Overrated!

And horribly, unbearably crowded!

But we want to see the Jonah musical on sight & sound before it's gone at the end of the year. So we're paying through the nose and braving the crowds (15+people line at panera) to do it...

why I hate fashion

quick rant and just ONE of many reasons why fashion bothers me
(and... don't get me wrong, I really love clothes and shoes [unfortunately], so it's not about the stuff necessarily)

my question/rant:
when something is ugly. really, really, ugly, like huge black rimmed eyeglasses (my current fashion pet peeve), why, oh, why, is it that people wear it just because it's in fashion?

I just hate hate hate that!
(when ugly or weird stuff is "in" and people wear it "just because")

Why is this type of "peer pressure" so pervasive?

(And sometimes it's happened that I don't have the courage to wear something because I know it's totally "out" of fashion. That makes me mad too.)

Are humans hard wired to simply want to look like each other and brainlessly imitate those who are prestigious and famous?

Why? This disgusts me (and always has).

the final push...

... to finish writing and submitting my application is NOW!

I had two colleagues proof-read my letter and give suggestions this afternoon. One or them is a former T-T professor at an Ivy-League school* who participated of several search committees in the past; the other is a recent Ph.D. recipient who is on the job market and who has been teaching in our current dept. for three years. S/he knows about last year's failed search and had invaluable "insider information" suggestions for my letter!  
*and who was denied tenure two years ago in a highly dysfunctional department.

I can't wait to finish and submit! And then... the anxious waiting will begin. :(

I need to prepare myself for not getting this position and continuing as a lecturer. I think I should be OK. Less work, more time with my family. Less money, more peace of mind.

The usual trade-offs one encounters in life... sigh...

The bottom line? I didn't go looking for this job or my current job, for that matter. These jobs "found" me and I'm happy they did.

It Didn't Appraise... :(

Well, well... our house didn't appraise high enough to make the 2.875% interest (15 year fixed) desired refinance possible.

:(

Last year's appraisal (before we bought it for a bit less than that): 236K, this year's: 207K.
K thinks sounds horribly unreasonable -- did our house really depreciate 12 in only one year%? That feels awful, though I know it's nothing, really, compared to all the people totally "underwater" in their loans and people having to foreclose. We are very lucky, I know that!

The appraiser is not from our immediate area (differently from the guy who appraised it last year) and the three comps he chose weren't favorable, obviously. The problem is that houses are not selling at all in our small town and the one that sold across the street sold for less.

Our realtor just sent us a bunch of comparisons that are much better (however, they have more acreage and are in different zones). We can still write a letter to the underwriter and submit these other comps, but I don't know if that would help.

Oh well... at least we tried!

(I hope that's not a bad omen or beginning of a string of undesired bad news. It doesn't make me feel very good about submitting my job application tonight. Sigh...)

And welcome back to the speedy roller-coaster ride that is our (my) life!

Hitting the Exhaustion Wall: 3 naps in 4 days

I'm hitting the exhaustion wall.

My days are intense:

Before 3:30 pm today I had already driven 152 miles, taught three classes, had lunch with department colleagues, picked up my kids and a neighbor in school and come back home.

But then, I had to take a nap because the last four days (late Thursday last week to today) were CRAZEEE!!

It's not the driving and teaching (and all the grading that I am NOT doing because of all the other stuff), it's the other commitments in our lives

... such as having the house appraised -- it went well, BTW, the appraiser stayed for about half an hour, K had the chance to brag as much as he could about the location of the house, etc and the things we did to it, such as replace the water heater and the roof of the shed. The appraiser even asked what the bank needed it to appraise for. I don't know if he can help us with that or not, though!
... and helping organize a bridal and (co-ed) wedding shower.
... and taking the kids to a 4 hour long Fall festival and going to an hours long practice of the church outdoor Christmas play.

Well, shall I itemize the naps?
- I don't know if the first one counts, but I took a nearly 2 hour nap in the middle of the night from Thursday to Friday (roughly from midnight to 2 am) so I could continue helping K to clean the house and, alternately, try to do some work on the job application or teaching.

- I should have napped on Saturday, but I was unable to because we were planning the activity of that night -- an all-girl spa night for the bride-to-be. I was skeptical (I tend to prefer co-ed activities), but it wasn't bad! We still decorated the wedding shower venue and I came home at 1 am. Well... when I finally went to bed at 2 am, K woke up and we talked until 4:30 am (and got up at 8 the next morning)!! It was a great an exciting conversation (some politics too) that ruined the rest of K's night and that required that I take a nap on Sunday afternoon before trying to write some application materials. I napped while K took the boys to the Fall Festival -- I was really sad to miss it, but I had to so I could go to the rehearsal later.

- And today I needed to nap because I couldn't do anything, really, I had to fight sleepiness on my drive to work AND back... sigh. Obviously part of my nap was spent trying to hear if my sons were doing the right songs on the piano and screaming for them to do their homework and even correcting math problems, but then they settled down with the ipad and I slept in peace for a while.

Wish me luck finishing the application materials. And my students are going to have to be very patient because I'm SUPER behind on the grading!

Sent!!!

Not the application, not yet! (I'm hoping to do that by Sunday night even though you have no idea how busy my schedule is this weekend with wedding showers, Fall festival in the boys' school, rehearsals, the works!)

But I sent out the request for recommendation letters from my referees! It feels good to get that out of the way.

Now I just have to go through the day (and drive 150 miles) after going to bed at 5 am last night. The house looks great, though! Decluttered and clean. It's not perfect or anything, but it just looks clean and inviting and that should help a bit for the appraisal, we're hoping.

Don't miss my previous post, much more positive that that one! :) (understatement)

Just What I Needed!

On Wednesday afternoon K picked up his work external hard drive from the person who takes care of computers for his department. It contained all the files and documents from the HD that had died two weeks ago.

I was staying overnight at new job town, but I emailed him to send me the most recent MS Word document of my CV (I only had it in PDF and cutting and pasting from a pdf messes up the WHOLE formatting) and the article I had translated in May.

I took care of the article first, last night (it's the middle of the night, but it's still Thursday for me). I saved it into a PDF and finished the email draft that I had been writing back when the computer had died, when I had started to work on my job application. It was a long email explaining how I had communicated with the author of the works I analyzed and how she liked my article and thought it could be published in Brazil, etc.

This morning (Th) I woke up and... lo and behold! There was a succinct email from the editor in question saying that my article was very good, that they are very proud of the author I wrote about and that they were going to publish it!!! Woo-hooo!!! Just like that! A few hours of wait only.

Some minutes later, he copied me in an email to another person at the journal with my article as an attachment and the number of the journal where it's going to be published. I wrote back thanking him effusively.

Guys, this is a prestigious publication in Brazil because it represents, quite literally, the literary establishment. That means that with a bit more effort and continued publications about this author, I am (or will be) "someone" in Brazil!! I could potentially very easily publish books about her there. It's just a matter of getting the work done, which isn't hard because she's such a great writer and it's a great pleasure to write about her.  (the article I'm publishing was one of those rare pieces of writing that literally "wrote itself")

This small thing totally renewed my confidence in my ability to be a scholar. In fact, I AM a scholar already, yes I am!!

Revising my CV had the same positive effect. 19 conference presentations or participation in 11 years is not negligible by any means! Several of these were huge national conferences, and two international ones. Only a handful of local (one university) conferences.

I know I can totally do this and I have what it takes. I am aware that it will require LOTS of work and effort and, maybe, it's not meant to be. But I'm ready to "fight!" I will go forward with all my might and write a killer cover letter.

I was so confident that I actually sent out a short query for another possible publication, 'cause, you see, I had NOT been actually submitting anything or even looking, for that matter, if there were calls for papers that fit my work and interests. I was just sitting on my behind doing nothing! I know if I just get to work that I can get a lot done in a short period of time.

Of course there's still the writing to be done and that takes time and much effort. And I'm sure that writing a book or two will be a Herculean task for adhd me, but... it's not totally beyond me!

OK, gabfest officially over now! I can't get over how thrilled I was and am about this publication. It's incredible indeed! And I obviously knew it all along because for six years I've had that "Forthcoming" line in my CV and not it's no longer wishful thinking, it's a reality!!!

I <3 my iphone!

Waiting for a doctor's appointment is soooo much easier with Internet access!

Some other great things are the camera, siri, and the maps (in spite of the problems reported).

Speaking of doctor's appointment, I just wasted 1h & 40 bucks from our family health savings' account. But it's my fault, I should have cancelled the appointment after I got better (from my elbow pain).

Stupid me, I keep forgetting that medicine in this country exists to treat symptoms only, dispense drugs (dr. Mentioned cortisone, but NEVER physical therapy, for example), and not, NO way, to look at the whole person.

That's why I HATE going to the doctor in this country... Sigh.

Well, at least I love my phone, right?

It was worth it!

It was totally worth it staying up half the night to see Obama's speech last night...

He was fired up and K (who was sleeping but woke up as the speech progressed) thought that his speech was actually better than 2008's. In 2008 it was a pretty amazing historic moment, but this year might now have felt that "magical," but it was historic too.

I'm super tired now, not too much energy left to blog... I should actually do some grading instead of being here. Let's see if I can do at least a little bit before collapsing on top of the work I'm grading...

I Watched the Concession Speech, but I Should Sleep Now!

Sigh...

I really wanted to see President Obama's speech, but I need to sleep! :(

Sigh...

Well, we'll see. Do I close the laptop or not? (K & I are in bed now after I had been "napping" in front of the computer in the office).

A historic day, but nothing compared to 2008. That night was electrifying!

P.S. and it's all Romney's fault!! Why did he take sooooo long to concede? :(

Can this still turn nightmarish like 2000?

So... what happens if Romney decides not to concede? Will he? (because of Ohio?).

I can't believe the VA is turning blue. Wow!!


I agree with this woman's tweet: Britt Reints ‏@missbritt

I'm not going to bed until Romney concedes. I made that mistake in 2000 and woke up on another planet.

I hope we won't wake up in another planet again.

MM: "I'd say there's a binder full of women going to the U.S. Senate."

I love Michael Moore! :)

His tweets are always great.