We Arrived 16 Years Ago Today...

... and it looks like we're here in the U.S. to stay, after all!

We landed on the old Terminal 4 in JFK -- one that has been completely torn down and rebuilt.* The airline we flew on, VASP (São Paulo Airlines) no longer exists... wow. Those things make me feel old and dated!

We traveled with our choir, who was doing a tour here in the U.S. and, foolishly, wasted about 600 dollars to travel around with them in which was to be the most badly planned trip I ever took in my life. Utterly catastrophic!

It all started when we were picked up by an old bus, owned and operated by a man from Frederick, VA who dropped our group off in central Massachusetts and took off to drive another group to Illinois or something over the weekend. He made sure to collect his payment in full before departing and leaving us behind. He did come back, but that was just the beginning of our troubles! (the worst was spending all day stranded outside of a Ramada hotel in Mishawaka in hot June because the bus had broken).

That trip doesn't matter, though, unforgettable as it is for K and I, perhaps much more than for all our friends who went back to Brazil and their lives after that. We were fulfilling our dream to "move on" and perhaps away. For us, staying meant stagnation and we wanted adventure and a dynamic life.

After 14 pretty adventurous years and lots of ups and downs, we finally seemed to have settled down back in 2010, but I don't think our adventures are over yet... maybe there will be more changes and surprises in our future. I'm pretty sure none will be so radical as the one we started on June 20, 1996!

* I just wasted 20 minutes of my life looking for a photo of the old "International Arrivals Building," but was unsuccessful. :(

Mindless Entertainment...

I just finished a two-day Downton Abbey marathon... I hope I can watch season 3 a little bit more leisurely! (sigh)

Not bad for mindless entertainment, that's for sure, but that's about it, I guess. I think I liked season one better (I saw it back in January, in another marathon, when everyone was talking about this show non-stop). Cheesy ending for this season and I'm sorry we won't be seeing any of Newport (RI) in the next season, but excited to see Shirley MacLaine joining as Maggie Smith's (the best character, for sure) counterpart.

Some quick comments...
Matthew's mom was just so incredibly annoying and O'Brien wasn't that evil this time around, though Thomas continues down the path of villain-hood, but I suppose O'Brien will make a comeback next season, as will the burned Patrick who will certainly marry Edith and become the rightful heir, leaving Mary & Matt with nothing... or... anything could happen, after all, it's television. ;)

I wish I could go back and read everyone's tweets or facebook comments from back when the episodes aired (I don't even know when it was, we don't have cable)... but if you still remember your impressions, I'd love to hear what you thought of the second season versus the first or any comment about Downton you'd like to share!

The Very First One

In Brazil, where I grew up, children of middle-class families generally don't start working until after they graduate from college, sometimes during college.

My very first source of income started when I was 19 and in college -- I tutored two very rich middle schoolers in English. They went to one of the most prestigious private schools in the city of São Paulo and were struggling with their English classes. A family friend who happened to know their family and me made the contact and the family hired me as a tutor (I was majoring in English at the University of São Paulo -- which is probably the largest university in Latin America and the most prestigious in Brazil). I took a bus for about an hour, then walked for 10 minutes to their house. A mansion in a sprawling property adjacent to this large man-made lake in the outskirts of São Paulo. I did that for about a semester and the pay was pretty good.

The following year, the elementary school I had atttended hired me to teach a few English classes for 2nd-4th graders, then, the institution's "Language Center" allowed me to take over their English for children's classes. I worked there, teaching a few more classes in my senior year and after I graduated until 1996 when we moved to the U.S. It was always a part-time, hourly wage gig (with retirement/unemployment contributions, though)-- as opposed to my husband's salaried job at the high school (after we got married). We left Brazil and were able to rescind our contracts in a way that allowed us to collected all our unemployment contributions.

When we came to the U.S. I had an F2 visa (dependent on a student on F1) for 2 years, so I couldn't officially work. Klebert worked a few hours as a tutor at the community college where he studied ESL for a year and I cleaned houses to help out with expenses. All our savings of six long years (16K) were wiped out in one year. That was hard. The institution we worked for in Brazil decided to sponsor our graduate studies (MA), so they re-hired my husband and started paying for our studies and giving us a small stipend. K was able to enter his graduate program, but I was a non-degree student for one year. I still cleaned some houses to help some with our family's finances (but thankfully we were out of the woods from our depressing money-draining year of 1994-5).

In 1998 I was accepted as an MA student at K's graduate institution, but... I was not offered a teaching assistanship, because, after all, I had a private sponsorship from Brazil to fund my studies, like K, who also started working as an R.A. his second year.  However, a few weeks before the semester started, the department found itself short on TAs and they hired me to be a TA!! That was my job from September 1998 to May 2004. In some semesters I "double taught" a continuing education class and I taught summers and winter sessions. I felt rich, really, making 18K a year once.

We still had a stipend from Brazil -- my husband remained a full-fledged employee at the college there -- not me, though. Even after we switched to PhD programs (with full-tuition waiver the whole time) and argued with the Brazilian employees that they should officially hire me too, because when we went back to Brazil I was going to be more needed by them than K because they had (have) a language and translation program in English and Portuguese. This religious institution is very "male-oriented" though, to say the least, and they didn't hire me, just kept giving us (K!) the stipend -- until in 2003 they decided to release us from the obligation to go back because thy no longer would have a job for K (their engineering major was flailing -- ironically today it's back up again and running). It was great for us that they "released" us because by this time, K already wanted to go on for a post-doc and we were thinking of perhaps staying in the U.S. (we consider ourselves "accidental immigrants," BTW).

We left Massachusetts for Pennsylvania in 2004 and by this time we had two sons, one was a newborn. I was still on an F1 visa (I was on F2 and then F1 that for TWELVE YEARS), which allows the student to work only at the graduate institution, so... I couldn't work anymore. As longtime readers know, my dissertation defense and being granted the PhD in 2008 coincided with our residency and a newly acquired ability to work. Which work, though? Greater Philly area had many schools, but I couldn't just "beg" to work somewhere! My neighbor taught at night at the local community college (he was an ABD in English who ended up in the county's school board system, from which he'd just retired, but he enjoyed adjuncting on the side), and he offered to help me, but I would have to say a white lie about having experience teaching composition and rethoric classes and "hide" my experience mostly in world lit classes. I didn't like that very much and I decided not to pursue it. Beside, I'd have to teach at night and be away from the boys.

That's why in 2008-2009 when we were just starting the most difficult year of our lives financially and emotionally, I offered to "help out" at my son's tiny church school and ended up working there, 12 dollars an hour, a few days a week. But in practice I stayed each day I went until 5 pm, preparing (I didn't get paid after 3 pm, obviously). I was close to my boys and that was important for me, and I "helped" the school too. 2009-2010 saw the end of that and was full year of cyber-schooling the boys (it was so intense on all levels that I couldn't bring myself to blog about it even though I started a blog specifically to do so). Oh, and I also cleaned our whole church each week (6-8 hour job) for 100+ dollars because our financial situation was just dire. (oh, and I almost forgot to mention about the miserable U of Phoenix/Axia College almost job that I tried that year and that was the worst thing I've ever experienced regarding teaching).

In 2010 K finally got his tenure track job and... coincidentally, they had an opening for one language class which... a few weeks before the semester started, turned into two language classes (there's a pattern here, I suppose -- this last minute hiring!). This year, after I started to teach 40 students to double my income in my culture and literature class, I was going to have the most income I've ever had in my entire life, 23K. I was happy and proud, even knowing I was being exploited.

I had an interview at the MLA back in 2006 that was, until last month, my only job interview ever. All other previous hirings had been informal, part-time ones. I know that the "last minute" element is still there (they opened this position extremely late and that's the main reason why I got it to begin with) -- definitely a pattern in my life, but I'm OK with it.

Guys, this whole long-winded story is to let you know that the job that I just accepted will be my very first relatively adequately* compensated full time job with full benefits, including retirement** that I will have in my entire near 41 years of life.

How could I have refused myself the dignity of such a thing? I'm just soooo happy to have made a decision that I'm fully satisfied with -- yesterday I was positively blissful! Of course today I've already been playing many scenarios in my head. Thankfully, I'm still not freaking out about the commute -- I want to cross that bridge when I get to it. I know it will be hard, and costly (we estimate 1.8-2K a year, less if I sleep there a day or two), but I think this job will be a very good thing for me. I need to value myself. I deserve to be wanted, valued, pursued, offered a pretty decent job. For the very first time in my life.

* That's "adverb girl" (me!!!) for you. sorry about that... it's ridiculous, I know, but I just can't resist it.

** I had that in Brazil, but I was part time and on a student visa I could waive saving for retirement -- since if I left the country I would never see that money anyway. K and I still contribute for retirement in Brazil and we'll be eligible for a small pension if we keep paying until we're 65. We may decide to stop at some point.

Perspective

I wrote last night's post while still disappointed and angry about the chair's email -- which I read after a long day and a long drive. (and tone is the first thing that can be misinterpreted in email)

Impulsive, as usual... (I have to be more careful now that I know for sure that I have ADD).

In any case, I don't think my comments here have been balanced at all (either trashing current institution or belittling possible one). The pros and cons list I typed this evening is pretty balanced, actually -- 5 pros and 5 cons for each place. I think I need to put things into perspective, both here and in my head. and I think that this lack of perspective is what leading you to lean towards telling me I shouldn't accept.

Today I was told by my friend who works there that the chair is a very "dry" (we were speaking Spanish, so "seca") kind of person, so that explains her language in the email.

My other friend (the one who sent me the link to the posting to begin with and who has been working for 6 years in current dept and is now going back to Mexico) continues to encourage me to accept and be more challenged and grow professionally.

I emailed my chair to tell her I hadn't made a decision and she said she'd already been communicating with people from the other schools that have that tele-teaching thingy because the course I was going to teach may fall through. She wants to try to pressure possible new employer to let me still teach that class. I don't know if they will want to accommodate her/current school.

OK, still haven't made a decision, but have been leaning towards maybe accepting. I'm pretty calm right now...

My biggest worry: regret after the decision. K is joking with me that I will regret the decision no matter what. Is that really so? :(

P.S. my mom and dad are really against it now. Sigh...

Indecision R Us

You know, I'm just going crazy with my stupid "indecision" here and then I remembered!! I'm the QUEEN, the "Goddess" of Indecision!! How had I forgotten that? So... instead of writing another stupid and boring angst-ridden post, I'll just go humorous and link to this, very old 2008?? (wow, has it been 4 years since I finished my stupid useless phd?)

I have new readers now who won't have read that... my very first "Issues or cheap therapy" post (I was supposed to have posted tons of them, but I think there are only 13 of them (14 with this one) -- I thought there were less).

In any case, I'll go and re-read it now. I need some comic relief. Not that the post is comic in itself, I wish I could be a funnier, wittier person, but my indecisiveness is truly ridiculous, that's for sure!

the lesser "evil"

Thanks feMOMhist and Anastasia, for your feedback (and Spanish prof too) -- sorry for lack of links!

I think that at this point it boils down to which of two adjuncting positions is the "less bad" -- for lack of a better term. (right now for me the fact that current u pays for conference travel, is happy with me doing scholarship and allows me to design new classes is a BIG thing).

Oh, and I forgot to add the "not answered" questions from the last post -- I emailed the dept. secretary to know what the Spring schedule is like and she didn't give me the schedule -- knowing that is really important in my decision too, because if I have to go every day again... nah, I don't think it's worth it at all.

OK, more later, gotta go.

answers (and no answers) to my questions... not a good vibe

On Sunday night K & I literally spent hours drafting and carefully writing and email to the "other university's" department chair (who is away). I sent it first thing Monday morning. Than, last night I sent a copy to the dean (who had said I could get in touch in the offer letter).

This morning I got an email from the dean saying that s/he would get in touch tomorrow and the dept. chair said s/he's answer my concerns soon.

The email from the chair arrived this evening and it was a disappointment for both K & I. no good vibes... in the last line the chair argues that the main reason I should go teach for them is that the students are really enthusiastic. wow, that is the best you can come up with? seriously? the "congenial department" wasn't featured there this time -- was that because she had just informed me that lecturers don't get funding to go to conferences? And that all lecturers are paid the same (a flat rate per course), regardless of the contact hours of each course. And regardless whether they have an ma or a phd.

The answers were pretty laconic and out of character with the strong commitment in convincing me to take the position that seemed to motivate the other people that talked to me on Friday.

well... it was just a slightly more "sweetened" adjunct position which doesn't really pay double of what I'm paid here (because of more contact hours and more intensive teaching). The main difference is that because I have a contract & a salary, they have, as per state law, to take a pre-tax retirement contribution from my salary towards my retirement.

that's it.

now the balance is leaning towards my current institution again. OK, I have to go to bed. I drove almost 4h today (round trip) to take my sons to spend a few days with his cousins in a camp-meeting. We'll join them on Friday.

I can't wait to be 100% at peace again... sigh.

why exactly should I do this?

I'm sorry to keep bothering you with this possible new job stuff... blogging about it is good for me, not only because it helps me with the decision process, but also because several of my readers are academics who can give me good feedback (and you already have, thank you so much!).

so, maybe this is the key question: why exactly should I take this job? what would I gain?

K's reasoning, from day one (the day I heard about the position) is that it's good for me professionally because this is a unique opportunity to join (even if "in the margins") an outstanding department.

Everyone in our acquaintance who's familiar with the institutions we're dealing with agrees (if you're really curious, email me and I'll tell you more about that). This agreement is even stronger among K's department colleagues at the university (some of whom we've sought advice from as soon as we heard about the position and who resoundingly encouraged me to apply and go there). People in K's department think that my current department is really bad (and it is an incredible machine of exploitation, that's for sure).

so... what exactly would I gain?

1) More experience teaching language because I'd be teaching higher levels and much more sophisticated and motivated students. It would look very good in my CV (both the classes and the school).

2) Excellent collegiality at a department that everyone I've talked to has described as "congenial."

3) Retirement benefits.*

I am waiting to hear from the dept. chair whether they would support scholarship (though it's not required) and other important concerns I have.

Detrimental points:

1) Still an adjunct position, maybe more unstable than my current one (which can basically be considered "permanent" -- as in permanently exploited who knows for how many years more ;)

2) Teaching language only, not culture & literature (though teaching a GenEd class is not that great anyway and I will probably still teach it in the summer);

3) Long commute and lots of contact hours in the Fall (it gets better in Spring) (I will probably sleep a couple of nights there at the house of a friend who has just accepted a similar lecturer position. Her husband teaches at our current institution. I want to pay, but it probably wouldn't be much, and I could cook with her to keep my costs down);

The driving can probably be turned into a good thing if I use it to listen to books, which would be an excellent use for my time.

What say you, my dear readers?

* and an additional half-joking benefit -- there are more stores there than where we are now. I don't want to get into specifics, but I'm happy about that too.

WASPs and Academia

remember I told you they had a failed search for the tt position? Well, I think that yesterday I found out who the person that they'd really loved and had wanted to hire was (he got what he wanted somewhere else, BTW, I'm just waiting for the confirmation in the new school's dept. website come fall).

I was a little bit angry to find out he was a WASP male (aren't wasps always male? I thought so somehow). I really find it ironic that he was to be the sole representative of my country and culture in this institution of higher learning. I guess that's why they need a minority person in a subordinate position to compensate.

yeah... right.

now, wasps are highly valued in academia, that's for sure.

OK, this is a pointless rant, as the professor emeritus this guy was going to be replacing was also a wasp and he wrote good stuff about my country. but... more often than not, it's wasps that they want for senior positions in academia. minorities and women can even become dept. chairs (as is and was the case), but still... they want to hire a wasp. They may hire another one next Spring, but maybe not. Maybe it'll be a man from my country. ;)

Facing Fears... Home Alone! :(

This who I am... a "realist" or... as some like to call it "pessimistic realist"... my husband can't stand this trait of mine and I know that he'll have no patience whatsoever for me if I say anything at all about the surgery. Especially considering we're going to be paying money that we don't have for it. Sigh... 

So please indulge me in this hopefully short and pathetic "fear fest" while my three boys are away having fun at a water park (surgery precluded me from going. I am slightly happy for saving the money, but... my situation is not ideal for being alone right now).

Fears:

- the long drive, being too exhausted, the danger inherent in driving which will be basically tripled (every day when I drive back home I think about how dangerous it is to drive a car, but we often don't think about the risk);

- having permanent damage to my eyes, like some astigmatism (I know, I should have given more thoughts to the risks before the surgery, not after);

- losing this new job after one year and not having the old one anymore;

- continuing problems using the computer/looking at screens or the slight glare and that I'm experiencing now (this one makes me despair because I generally use the computer a lot, both for work and for leisure);

- the challenges of the new job and the feeling of intimidation of being at a more prestigious place (this is actually not a bad thing at all, right?);

yeah... I'm sure there are more, but so far, this is a pretty short fear-fast, aren't you glad?

Now I'm going to try and watch a film or two... even though the subtitles (which I don't completely need, since I know French, but which I read anyway) are slightly out of focus/ "glare-y."

Headache(s)

I don't know if it's because I spent too much time in the sun this afternoon (my son had a birthday party at a pond -- I wore sunglasses the whole time) or if the glare from the computer screen is bothering my eyes (I have it dimmed as much as possible and I'm wearing sunglasses right now!), but I had an uncomfortable headache this evening. I'm feeling better and I'm hoping that my eyes will adjust soon and that I won't have trouble using the computer.

Then, of course there's the continuing headache of this position I've been offered. I literally spent the day either actively "working" on it... calling my dept. chair in Europe, calling a friend who has taught a class at the university, writing emails to friends and drafting the all-important email to the other department head... or talking about this headache with my friends and with K. I'm getting sick and tired of this and will be glad once it's all over...

[I'll add links later] I just wanted to make a quick correction to Friday's email (because of Spanish Professor's comment -- thank you so much, BTW, and thanks to everyone else that took the time to comment, or email me): it was my department's secretary (not my chair) who had an enthusiastic reaction. I didn't talk to my chair until this morning and she was, understandably, pretty upset -- but she immediately said that the university cannot offer me a full-time position, as I imagined she would say. I hope I can help her find a suitable replacement. In fact, we spent a lot of time today brainstorming who -- among the people we know -- could come and teach these classes. We even called a couple of people!

OK, I have to try and finish the (new) chair's email and send it. K is reading my draft now... I have a lot of questions for her, I hope I can find the right kind of language to ask them!

I'm exhausted and headache-y, so I have to go, but I'll keep you guys posted.

Sticky...

edited in 10/23/13 to remove links at the request of medical equipment vendor Allegro Medical (I hope I can mention them, this is no link!) I'd linked to them myself, they weren't paid links, but they're having trouble with Google so I removed the links.
 
I have to wear shields like these for sleeping:

And I secure them to my face with surgical tape (3M's Transpore)...

The tape just won't come off my face, though and I've been pretty sticky in the last few days. Yesterday I tried soap, moisturizer and vaseline, but it didn't work. Today I googled how to remove surgical adhesive and one link told me to use either oil or rubbing alcohol (which would dissolve the tape). I went straight for the isopropyl alcohol, and rubbed and rubbed my face with a cotton pad. It helped some, but I was still mostly sticky.

That's when I went to 3M's website and found out that this particular tape (which is used for keeping tubing in face after surgeries other medical procedures) does NOT dissolve in alcohol!

One thing this Q & A document suggested was using a medical grade adhesive remover or moisturizer (I tried the moisturizer already!) to remove the tape.

I don't want to spend 26+ dollars on an adhesive remover like this one
{this link & the next ones were removed at the request of the online vendor}, but maybe I'll need to! :(

HEY!! There are wipes that don't cost too much -- the problem is that it's a box of 50, if sold individually, they'd be 1.02 each...  I wonder if I can find these wipes in a pharmacy, since I can't really wait several days to get rid of the stickiness in my face. Sigh...

You know... I will email/call my LASIK provider and tell them that if they always use the 3M Transpore (they give us a small roll), they should include a few pouches of the adhesive remover for us patients -- that would make their care even greater. Maybe they'll listen to me and future patients can have an easier, less sticky post-operative week.

job offer: i'ts getting REALLY complicated, I'm almost anguished!

So many emotions in one day and everything still very much up in the air. This is very unnerving. I wish I could just sit in peace after my surgery and didn't have to strain my eyes reading, writing, etc...

note: throughout this post "here" refers to my current institution, "there" to the one offering me a job.

After my doctor's visit, I visited the university and one of the professors came to meet with me since the chair is away and the dean had a prior commitment. He was extremely effective "selling" me the university and, most importantly, the department and the students (most excellent quality, according to him). K met him too and we talked for a while.

The secretary helped me figure out the schedule and I was quite discouraged when I found out that two of the classes do meet every single day of the week. This basically makes it impossible for me to try to conciliate the two jobs as I was hoping to do (unless they agreed to change their schedule, which is not very likely) -- which would be a huge sacrifice, but with a good monetary payoff in the end. And because they're all language classes I was thinking I could pull it off.

On the drive back to our current university we discussed various scenarios. Background story: this position that I've been offered appeared because their lecturer decided -- at the very end of the semester -- to go teach at Harvard which is closer to his graduate institution (he's ABD at the moment) and... that's the hardest part, they also had a failed search for a tenure track position in my area (K says it's good that I didn't even know about that position because I am/was not in a position to even apply for a TT job at this point).

Anyway... half-way through our drive I called my department and discovered that my department chair is away in Europe for the whole summer, so there's no use talking to her and seeing "what she can do" for me. We didn't talk much the rest of the way.

I decided I needed to email both chairs right away and went to K's office, where I found an email from the other university's former department chair, wife of the professor I talked to, encouraging me to accept and giving me her phone numbers in case I had any questions.

A few minutes later my phone rang and it was her. We talked for about 20 minutes, I asked questions, shared my concerns, explained that I didn't want to stop teaching here, discussed my teaching load, etc. It was a productive conversation in which she was able to tell me the textbooks they use there and some of the things the former lecturer did. Just for you to have an idea, in their elementary intensive class which meets 5 days a week they cover in one semester the same textbook we teach in here in FOUR semesters.

After we got off the phone, I got the cell phone number for my department's chair in Europe from my department secretary who effusively congratulated me on my job offer (I thought that was very strange -- shouldn't she be sad that they were losing me? I was taken aback! She did know I was applying for something because I'd previously asked for copies of my transcript & teaching evals).

I also learned via email that a friend and former colleague here is also going to be a lecturer there too and another friend/colleague I called (the one who urged me to apply) was very happy for me too.

We drove home and while still divided, I felt slightly more inclined to accept. We reasoned that if I sleep there two nights, I only have to drive 3 times a week there and back. And I can try to work a way with the students not to have classes on Friday.

When we got home and I was already writing this post, K and I decided to calculate pay versus contact hours. And... guess what?! Considering that I have more contact hours there, I'm paid nearly the same per contact hour even though the annual pay is a bit higher. Of course in number of students I make a measly 185 per student per semester here and about 720 per student there (if the enrollment for my classes stays where it is, pretty low now, in full capacity for the beginner classes, it drops to 400 - still more).

I don't know if we should be doing the math or what, but still. Another thing, we're wondering if they pay more for people with phd or not (here they do, 500 per class).

In any case, there are tons of issues to consider, but the bottom line is that it's still "work in the margins" and I begin to regret past choices and think that maybe I should have done things differently. oh well... but that's stuff for another boring post on my ongoing struggles with this complex beast: academia.

Sigh... sorry to bore you to tears with my wonderings, it's just that it would be nice to have more feedback. It's such a difficult decision to make!

Not to mention I feel bad for my students... and for me if I have to drive so much (I know, there's always audible and listening to books would be a good way to use the time)... sigh again.

20/15 Vision

That means I see better than 20/20 (which is a weird way to describe vision for me to begin with. According to this, it's 20/20 because the normal length of a vision testing room is 20 ft. long).

I really can see absolutely perfectly and that's awesome! More about the surgery later (the most annoying thing is having to put drops in my eyes all the time, particularly the lubricating ones, which I need to feel comfortable)... now I have to blog about something else.

(sigh)...

Incredible: Modern Miracle

I can see!!

I shouldn't be writing, I need to go down for my 3h nap, but I couldn't resist blogging. I'll describe the whole thing in more detail later, in case someone is interested.

Off We Go...

... I'm not nervous at all and I hope everything will go smoothly (and quickly).

I hope to be able to blog again by the end of the day, we'll see!

Last night I felt slightly panicky for a few moments and also guilty for spending all this money on an elective procedure, but the feelings passed quickly.

Now I just hope that my adhd forgetfulness will not interfere with putting drops in my eyes every two hours and then 4 times a day for a week. I've been told by other LASIK patients that the lubricating drops are particularly important. I've already been using them for a week, but less than faithfully at times.

All right, gotta go now!

Good-Bye Netflix

I don't know why I stayed with it for so long. Once back in 2008 when I was dissertating I think we kept a DVD for 3 months... I suppose that's how netflix made their money.

we had the cheapest plan, one that didn't even exist anymore 5 dollars, 2 dvds per month, 5h of streaming. Their DVD collection is great, with tons of international films (something important to me), but the availability of stuff for streaming is very weak, I suspect that Amazon Prime is better.

I saved my super long queue in a word document, but I know I don't have time and wish to watch films anyway, so... I think I won't miss netflix at all. Too bad the last DVD I just saw was a really bad Brazilian film. :(

offer letter... still adjunct... 36 vs. 23

(follow up to previous post if you haven't seen it)

The email contained an offer letter.

Still adjunct, obviously no guarantees of continuing employment, one year position, but "lecturer" with benefits.

13K more than what I make -- not even that much, though it would help -- & less students (I currently teach a class of 40 to be able to make double on that class).

not really the best bargaining tool, especially considering that my own dept. is not in a position to offer me anything like that.

still very much working in the margins, but a little better.

classes are every day of the week. 3h commute. edited to add: round trip

If I were to continue working there (which might happen), we'd probably have to move in a few years. But I LOVE our house, where we live, the kids' school. I know I'll love the job, but I don't want to have to move again, I want to stay here! :(

I can't stand all the psychological upheaval that these thoughts bring.

Sigh... and, most importantly, I can't handle all that driving. I need to be here for my sons after school (I would make it most days, but I'd be dead!). Those are some of the main reasons why I almost regretted applying.

:(

Ideally? I wish I could teach three days there (two in the future if possible) and 2 at the current place. It would be crazy, but... I could always go back to current school if they offered me something better.

NO!! ?? !!

I can hardly breathe (I had originally written "brief" -- I suppose I can hardly think or type as well, blah).

After days and days of checking my university email to find whether there was by any chance a "rejection note" from that job I'd applied to and interviewed for, I quickly check my personal account a minute ago and find an email about my "appointment" to the position, requesting I sign something for my background check.

WHA?????

I can't even go back and read the email. What to do?? I have to teach at least two classes here in the Fall because I don't want to lose my position here -- what if the other one doesn't work out in the end (even though it's a full time lectureship). How to approach my department chair? WHEN to talk to her, given that I have surgery tomorrow and an appointment the next day?

Well, I'll hit publish and call K, it's all I can do.

And I will HAVE to go talk to these people (this department) on Friday after my appointment, that's for sure. I might as well, since my doctor is there.

Sigh.

What will I do? Lack of peace AGAIN. :(

Pillow Fight, or... buy and return, buy and return...

(extra title "Saved by Target")

I wanted to update the looks of our couch & living room for Spring/Summer, so I went out and bought countless decorative pillows in April and May. OK, I guess they can actually be counted, but it did feel like the buying and the returning of pillows would never end!

I wanted "aqua" colored pillows, but they were nearly impossible to find. First, I got these green/brown pillows at Ross (they were so cheap! I couldn't resist), but they were too bland & blah...

...So I returned them and thought that these inexpensive and nicely colored outdoor pillows from Costco (including one to sit on the ground) were nice, but changed my mind in a few days (rougher fabric, definitely looks like it's for outdoors):

I returned them and stopped by Tuesday Morning, where I thought that the color of these was just the perfect aqua green that I wanted. They were pricey, though, 15-20 each! 

I went back to Ross and found these other pillows, more blue than green, for half the price of the green (two for 15):

... but the fringe of the cheap blue ones were not as pretty as the green's, with black in there (in addition to the blue, brown and beiges):

K settled my indecision because he couldn't stand the taffeta fabric of both pillows -- he thought it was super scratchy! So I returned all of them, together with this cheap (6.99!), but bland oblong pillow from Ross: 

Finally, Target to the rescue! I was overjoyed to find these true aqua pillows @ Target. The solid ones were 2 for 14, but the striped ones were 14 each (not very cheap), but they were so perfect, so I didn't mind!

So... 16 pillows later (12 of which were returned), I now had the four cheery ones that I wanted for our couch!

P.S. Last week I bought one more of the stripped pillow on the right ($2 off!) and now there are two pillows on the love-seat and three on the couch.

It's The Day Before...

... my LASIK surgery. Bright and early tomorrow at 8:45 (which means we have to leave home at 7 am).

Since I have been posting so little on the blog lately -- and I'm afraid I'll have trouble catching up in the second half of the year -- I want to post a lot today.

I am slightly nervous, but not really. The doctor said they give us a Valium before surgery so we can relax... I've never taken one or anything like it, so I don't know how it will feel and I was thinking of saying I didn't want to take it.

What do you think, Valium or no Valium?*

*I just checked the NIH site on it. I had no idea it was also used to treat IBS (which I have -- my IBS could be bad tomorrow morning from waking up so early, that's for sure).

P.S. it might be good to be drowsy, since I've been told that the best thing to do is just to sleep afterwards since one can't read or do anything else. Sigh...

Salty foods may not be really bad for you!

Today I saw this interesting NYT opinion article about salt, titled "Salt, We Misjudged You" and I was happy to read it because I've always loved salty/savory foods better than sweet ones and I love my food on the salty side (can't stand food without salt). In fact, I think I need to eat more salt because my blood pressure is generally very low.

One of the most interesting features of this article was demonstrating how oftentimes policy decisions (particularly those related to health issues) are NOT at all based on conclusive science, but on hypotheses and "commonly held" beliefs. I find that very troubling, to say the least. The fact that the organs that promote a "less/no salt" point of view  (USDA, NIH, CDC) choose to simply ignore the studies that demonstrate that salt deficiencies can be detrimental to one's health is pretty outrageous...

well... I know this is one small issue, compared to others, but since I crave salt so much, I thought I'd share this link!

Tonight I saw the first firefly

Tonight I saw the first firefly this almost summer
The moon already shining
My vision still clouded from my dilated pupils

If I were a poet, this would be a real poem
I think, instead, of how next week,
I'll see twilight with new eyes

And I hope there will be more fireflies, not just one.

Eight Years Old

Today my youngest turned eight and, embarrassingly, I didn't remember it was his birthday until 11 am! His party was back on Mother's Day and we've been celebrating ever since, so we didn't do anything special today, apart from the small gift (a 5 in 1 Berenstain Bears book) that I had saved for today. Yesterday the boys spent part of Linton's birthday money at Target buying Legos and a Wii game.

I'm so glad to have Linton in my life! I hope to write more about him and his birthday party later, but I wanted to mark the day with a post!

From Sun and Wind to Bed, Bathroom and Drawers

It's much more work than doing regular laundry (with a dryer), but I just love the feeling of bringing armfuls of clean, sweet-smelling line-dried laundry into the house.

Especially the sheets, that go from bed to washer, then to sun and wind and back to the bed. Ah....

Just a small note registering the joys of summer line-drying! ;)

(maybe I'll add a photo later)

The Longest Hosting Long-Weekend Ever!

Between Thursday 5/24 and Monday 5/28 twenty-six people had meals at our house and seven people slept over. The most incredible thing is that with some help from our guests and... I don't know... some magical organizational and cleaning force or something :), our kitchen remained clean nearly the whole time! Here is how it went down:

• Thursday 3/24, 8:30 p.m. - We served dinner to a couple from Brazil who were visiting their daughter in the nearby boarding academy (I had the main dish ready -- pinto beans for a Mexican themed meal -- but we didn't know they were coming for sure until 7:30 pm). We talked until nearly midnight. Earlier in the day friends who had never visited called to ask whether they could come to spend the weekend and we said they could come.

• Friday 3/25: I drove three hours round-trip for my LASIK surgeon visit, stopping at the grocery store on my way back. After cleaning the house with K and preparing the guest bedroom downstairs, at 8 pm I went to the "consecration" ceremony of the academy's graduation where I met our guests (a couple & their daughter, the son stayed in the dorm with his graduating friends). They got home close to 11 pm and we ate a light meal and chatted until close to midnight because we hadn't seen them in two years and this was their first visit to our house since they moved to the U.S. many years ago (we visited them multiple times).

• Saturday 3/26: K's birthday -- we gave him his presents in the morning, then got ready to leave.
• 9 am: we drove 1h30 mostly on the highway, but then up the mountains to Brazilian churches' camp meeting. Kelvin felt sick in the mountain roads and vomited his whole breakfast out the car window. Luckily only the outside of the car got dirty. We had a nice day there, I brought a picnic lunch, but forgot a change of clothes or swim-clothes for the boys and they were mad that they couldn't play in the creek or pond.
• 3 pm: we went to hike part-way up Crabtree Falls (supposedly the highest falls on the East coast), but couldn't make it all the way to the top because of the wedding in the evening.
• 4:50 pm: began our drive back home, afraid that we'd be late for the wedding.
• 7:05 pm: we arrived at the wedding, just to find out that we were absurdly over-dressed and that folks in this rural VA area don't dress up for weddings -- especially outdoor ceremonies (most importantly, their kids don't dress up, so ours were really upset at us AGAIN!).
• 9:40 pm: we get back home from the wedding and K has to eat because he barely ate anything in the reception (there were plenty of refreshments: fruit, vegetables, sandwiches), but he didn't eat much.
• 12:20 pm: we were already in bed when we heard the front door open and our friends come in. 

• Sunday 3/27: After a good breakfast with our friends, I left to go to the commencement ceremony, the guests soon followed and K & the boys only got there close to the end at noon.
• 1:30 pm: our guests came home (this time with the son), with the intention of leaving right away, but we quickly prepared lunch for them with the leftover food from Thursday and some cans of beans and corn and we all ate lunch.
• 4 pm: they left.
• 5 pm: I got a call from our friends from Philadelphia saying they'd be arriving at 12:30 am. They had contacted us earlier to stop by over the weekend, but had said in their latest email from the week before that the drive from Atlanta, GA to our house was too long. Well, it looked like they'd changed their minds! 
• 8 pm: We did some cleaning and I changed the sheets in the guest bedroom. I started cooking beans (black this time, since we'd eaten pintos on Thursday and earlier that day) for our visitors the next day and two kinds of a tapioca dessert (with grape juice and passion fruit juice) that our Brazilian friends love.
• 11:30 pm: friends call to say they're running late and should arrive by 1 am.
• 1:10 am: friends arrive and we talk for about half an hour before heading to bed.

• Monday 3/28: my boys got up before 8 am, eager to play with their friend, who was sleeping downstairs. I groggily got up and asked not to make any noise and play quietly until the guests were up.
• 9:20 am: Guests got up, boys started playing with Legos and we had breakfast.
• 11 am: We all drove in their car to see the Academy and walked around in the buildings. They even got to see the Elementary School, since it was open because the custodian was in there cleaning.
• 11:40 am: we arrived back home and our friends left for Philadelphia. 
• 12:20 pm I called one of our Brazilian friends who said that they'd be arriving in one hour. 
• 1:30 pm: The first group of Brazilian friends arrived. One couple, their two toddlers, four young women and one young man.
• 2 pm: we all had lunch -- using all disposable plates and utensils, of course!!
• 3 pm: They left and a few minutes later, the second group of Brazilian friends arrived (two families of four whose kids are just a year or two older than ours). 
• 3:40 pm: after we chatter for a while and the kids played downstairs, we served them lunch (after I made a bit more rice). 
• 5 pm: they left for Philly and New Jersey. K went to take a nap
• 6:40 pm: K woke up from his nap and I called some friends so we could meet up in town and have dinner to celebrate K's birthday.
• 7:40 we picked up our friend J and on the way I called our dear friends who live in town -- they are a young couple who is moving away :( -- so we could meet up in about 20-25 minutes.
• 8:10 pm we parked in downtown and went to wait for our friends in the designated spot (they don't have a cell phone!), but they didn't arrive until 8:45!
• 9:10 pm: we went into this delicious tea and sandwich restaurant to eat and it was great!! It was a lovely day to end the weekend, but we were yawning (and the boys sleeping) all the way back home.

• The End!

Scheduled... or Kissing Contact Lenses Goodbye (after 22 years!)

... if you've been wondering about last Friday, you might be surprised, or maybe not, but I scheduled my LASIK surgery for next week on Thursday.

I can't say I'm not a tiny bit apprehensive, but it's not like this was an impulsive, last minute decision on our part. I do feel somewhat bad for having bought a new pair of eyeglasses, but insurance covered most of it and in the end it cost about $100. Moreover -- that was my reasoning before, in case I were to have surgery -- I needed a good pair of glasses to be able to wear them non-stop before the surgery and I'm happy with them.

As for deciding, ever since my eyes were affected by really bad "giant papillary conjunctivitis" back in 2010, I knew that the only way out of wearing glasses for the rest of my life was eye-surgery and I discussed that here in the blog a few months ago.

When I learned about the cost after my examination by the doctor, I thought that that the surgery isn't that expensive, at a bit more than 3K, and K agreed when I called him. We mulled over it during the long weekend and decided to go ahead. We are going to pay in 24 months without interest through a special credit card from -- coincidentally -- the same bank that's our mortgage lender.

It's hard to believe that I will never again put a contact lens in my eyes... after 22 years and countless contact-lens themed nightmares... every kind of nightmare you can imagine. Giant soft lenses that I had to wash because they were full of sandy dust, ripping contacts, lost and missing contacts, you name it. It was a recurring nightmare (with multiply variations) that I had to put up with.

I hope that I don't get to have nightmares about LASIK! My friend who did it last July with the same doctor says she has them once in a while. (She recommended our current optometrists and this doctor -- he's the guy who did surgery on Tiger Woods -- my friend knows that because her prescription was really complicated, very similar to Woods' and the doctor commented on that).

My biggest concern is the requirement of not touching my eyes AT ALL for one whole week after surgery, but I'm practicing not doing that now, so hopefully I'll be "trained" by the time the surgery is here. I also want to buy some nice sunglasses and wear them often in the week after the surgery in order to protect my eyes.

Sigh...

I'll keep you posted, OK?

P.S. and I'll try to come back later and tell you about the busiest weekend EVER! ;)

LASIK Visit & Test Drive

Today I have an appointment to verify whether I'm an eligible candidate to have LASIK surgery. I'm glad that they don't charge for this visit as I don't know if I'm going to be able to have the procedure done anytime soon. I just want to know whether I'll be able to do it someday and take advantage of the fact that I haven't been wearing contacts for a month (one can't wear them for at least two weeks before this evaluation).

This short trip will also serve as a "test drive" for my long commute if I were to get the job I applied for. The commute is the only undesirable thing about this job, but it is in fact a "big" thing, since it not only means that I'll spend tons of time on the road, but away from my sons as well (not to mention money on gas).

So, let's see how the visit & the drive go. I don't feel very enthusiastic about them right now, unfortunately... sigh. And maybe I should have asked to teach a class this summer because I'm really depressed not to have a paycheck right now. I hope we can survive these summer months on one paycheck and still have funds left over to pay our credit cards. :(

Accomplished Husband Update: Ivy League Admissions, Grants, etc.

I sometimes like to joke that K is my "trophy husband," but given that "trophy wife" has really negative connotations (particularly in the issues of age and sexism), I suppose I shouldn't say that -- it's in really bad taste. ;-)

What I mean is that I married him for his potential (among many other reasons) and he more than achieved what he aimed for... and even things that he never suspected he'd end up doing, like working for a pharmaceutical company and subsequently giving his unsecure job up to go back to academia.* And unexpected achievements like his "ivy-league experience" and 75% job search success rate.

Anyway... this post here is to brag about my dear accomplished husband! A few months ago he was delighted to find out that one the students who worked in his lab in the past two years was accepted at multiple phd programs, including one at the ivy-league school where K did his two postdocs. Not coincidentally, K's former postdoc advisor hired him as soon as he was accepted!

And yesterday he found out -- after hearing weeks ago that people from another department had received a general rejection (they were notified as a group that nobody in that department had made it) and several of his department colleagues had received individual rejection letters -- that he was APPROVED for the very first grant he applied for. Isn't that fantastic?! I'm just so happy for him! He now had money for equipment and his summer salary will double.

I promise that I won't complain anymore as I did in my "The Grant-Writer Scientist's Wife" post from back in February -- it was all worth it! And it still is a good learning experience even if one doesn't get the grant.

* If you were reading me back in 2009 you will know that this misadventure was the one thing that went remarkably wrong in our lives until today; however, it helped us get our residency faster! Sigh... now it's getting easier to remember the past, but it's still painful at times. 

it went well

Thanks for asking, B*! The phone interview went well, I think. I was over-prepared, since K not only passed on to me all the questions asked in phone interviews, but made a mock-interview with me by calling me from his cell phone. I typed up responses to the questions, but they only asked half of the questions I was prepared to answer and some other random questions related to language teaching, such as the tricky "Which one do you think is more important when teaching language: grammar or writing?" (I totally compromised and said that they have to be taught concomitantly, that in order to write one needs to know grammar and in writing one can practice what they were taught in grammar)

I almost regret having applied, though, since I'm growing more and more nervous about talking to my department chair if I do get a job offer. I wish I'd had followed K's instincts and talked to my chair even before applying, because now it's just too late. I have this scary feeling that coming to my current employer and saying that I have this offer for a full-time job (because the job is definitely full time) won't really change anything, even if they really want to keep me.

And then there's the commute. Unless they were flexible to change the days & meeting times, I don't think I could manage to go 5 days a week...  (3h commute round trip).

Sigh...

So... in the end, I think this whole thing is only causing me trouble...

more later (I'm falling asleep over the keyboard)

Phone/ Skype Interview (!)

I've got a phone/skype interview (for that job application I sent). They actually wanted to do it tomorrow, but thankfully it'll be on Monday.

I haven't done ANY phone interviews, only an MLA hotel-room interview. Any advice? Anyone with experience wants to call me and do a mock interview? Thankfully my husband has just gone through two search committees, so he'll share with me the questions they asked. I think that questions in science are different from the humanities, however...

I'm not nervous, just a bit worried about what will happen if they offer me a job, how will the current people in my "almost-no-job" react and what will happen... so, please send advice my way and keep me in your thoughts/prayers.

TSA Waste -- outrageous!

Dooce posted this a while back and I've been meaning to post it. As a once or twice a year (this year will be more than that) air traveler, I have noticed the changes in the TSA inspection stations and it's outrageous to think that so money is spent for a still faulty system. Sigh...

(I was asked by the original website to remove the link, so I'm just pasting the image here instead)

robbed and stranded

don't be alarmed! it's not as bad as it sounds, but still pretty annoying and depressing.


Edited to add (11:13 am Friday): I think my brother will be able to travel thanks to our cousin in Curitiba, Paraná (state South of São Paulo) who is the head of that state/city's passport office. Phew! I don't know what was lost with the computer. Probably lots of his work files as well...

My poor brother is stuck in Brazil where he spent the last 4 days on a quick business trip. He was due to be back to New Zealand on Sunday, just in time to hug my parents good-bye and drive them to the airport so they could start their trip back to Brazil (stopping in Australia first).

This evening he arrived in the city of São Paulo (where we lived with our family for 11 years) and when he was unloading his suitcase from the taxi to the hotel, he briefly left his backpack behind and it was robbed. So now he lost his laptop and his passport, so he can't travel back home to his wife and 5 month-old baby. :(

The worst part about the passport is that next week on Tuesday he had an appointment at the Brazilian embassy in Wellington (NZ) to sign his passport -- he had already mailed all the documents to them before hand. THEREFORE, his documents are back in New Zealand and not at home, but in the Brazilian embassy... and how in the world is he going to get a new passport in Brazil?! The answer is, only if they decide to be kind enough to accept photocopies.

So... my parents are risking still seeing my brother in Brazil at the end of next week if everything goes wrong and he can't get a new passport before then... :(

And all *I* can think of is the possible lost of irretrievable photos if there were photos of the baby or my brother's travels in that laptop that hadn't been backed up elsewhere!! :(  I better not even ask him, his wife or my mom about that. Sigh.

Like my mom said to me on skype a couple of hours ago, nobody died, everyone is well, but we're still really upset (and I, silly me, upset about photos, :P). I hope things get sorted out soon for my brother and now I'm a bit more scared of our trip to Brazil, we have to be extra careful! (I must say I was always very lucky living in Brazil, I only experienced one small armed robbery, while my husband and other friends experienced multiple kinds of robbery...).

I'll keep you posted, OK?

Breastfeeding in the Media (AGAIN!) - Time Magazine Cover

I thought I'd just make very quick commentary on this week's Time magazine cover (although I don't want to engage in the "mommy war" discussion that the cover question wants to provoke, I fully agree with Katie Granju on this one, we're all "not mom enough"  at one point or another in our mothering lives).

The photo didn't bother me -- although anyone who has ever done extended breastfeeding, including the mom portrayed, will know that that's just a posed shot and NOT the way we normally nurse older kids, see my link below. And why/how would it have bothered me considering that I shared similar ones? Long-time readers will remember my own photos in this blog in this post and the ones linked within it. After 5 years and 5 months lactating the only thing I regret is that I didn't nurse Linton as long as I nursed Kelvin. In that post I talk about it very calm and rationally, but later I regretted it more intensely.

I won't really get into the discussion and I didn't much like the Time cover article (I haven't finished reading it), but I will say that Dr. Sears' The Baby Book was extremely helpful to me. (Laura @ 11D did a good round up of discussions of AP from around the web -- I really like Lisa Belkin's -- that Katie Granju followed).

One last thing that irks me:

Pediatricians have little or no training in breastfeeding in nutrition (just ask a pediatrician how many class hours he had about the subjects in medical school, I'd be surprised if they would say more than a few classes), who are they to say that breastfeeding has no nutritional value after 1 year of age and that it could be detrimental to the child's development!! Moreover, lots of pediatricians receive tons of free formula to give away to their patients and are in a way "brainwashed" by formula companies.

I liked this article in Mother Jones that explains "Why Mitt Romney is No Friend of Breastfeeding." Both of my sons were born in Massachusetts and we came home from the hospital with one or two hospital bags from two different formula companies. My pediatrician also had formula samples to give me as well.

So... yeah... I'm a "lactivist" alright, and when Laura (11D) asked her readers whether the cover was "Gross or Cool" I responded:

I dig attachment parenting and all, but... I don't know if a cover like that is good for breastfeeding awareness... maybe it actually does a disservice. . . . I'm generally in favor of anything that brings awareness to breastfeeding, but I hate it when they keep making it such an "extreme" choice when it shouldn't be so. :(

Yeah... but I know it's way more practical to formula feed and that for many moms breastfeeding is very hard at the beginning (it was awful for me, I had to pump for an entire month. It's been TEN years and I haven't yet had the strength to write a blog post about my experience!). But if one perseveres, breastfeeding can be just awesome!

2 months without twitter (March 16-May16)

Yesterday, after I received a "direct message" on twitter from my friend Anjali, I logged back into my twitter account after a long "twitter fast." It wasn't a conscious decision to stay away, it just happened and I didn't log back in day after day and I didn't miss it one bit...

When I went to check my last tweet, I noticed it was from March 16, so that means that I was off twitter for exactly 2 months! Wow... I'm sure I missed quite a bit from my Twitter friends who don't blog anymore or don't do it as often (one of the reasons I follow them on twitter to begin with): Scrivenings, LisaV and others.

Next month we may join the smartphone folks, though and then I know it will be hard not to be on twitter anymore. Sigh... I have mixed feelings about all this, but I want to write a separate post.

So, you should see me replying to your tweets regularly again... I'm even letting people know I'm back. Did they even notice I was gone? I wonder...

And in the end, twitter is WAY better than facebook in all kinds of levels, but that 's another discussion too.

Are you on twitter? On facebook? What do you think of them?

Catching up: parties, applications, surgeries

Today is effectively the very first day of my "summer vacation 2012" -  3 months of not much work & no paycheck. I didn't have a paycheck for 5 years before this, but somehow now that I'm back to the "workforce" (though still working in the margins), it does bother me a lot not to have a salary in the next months. Sigh...

Next year I will have it for at least a month when I teach for the study abroad in Brazil which reminds me that I do have to work this summer planning that. And I am being paid (my airfare to Brazil and some other expenses). I am grateful and I will plan this diligently in spite of the fact that the application that I sent on Monday afternoon makes me uneasy as to my future at either place.

Regarding the application, I emailed several colleagues and by the end of the weekend I was not so sure that it was an internal hire anymore. And when K read the posting he thought it was for a one year position (although that is not in the text), so... we'll see. I did send it with pretty minimal stress (phew!) and my former co-advisor thinks the materials look great and that the new class I designed is creative and good. It's always good to have positive feedback, especially from her (if you're a longtime reader you may remember how tough her feedback was when I was writing the dissertation).

OK, on to the next topic, the parties... I still want to post photos of the small wedding shower we had for our friends and... on Sunday we had a HUGE party for Linton's 8th birthday, I have to come back and blog about it and post photos of him finding out about his big surprise (after an exhausting 16 stop treasure hunt with all 20+ kids running around the yard).

Surgeries:
I never gave you an update on my mother-in-law's thyroid cancer, did I? She had surgery and then radioactive iodine treatment (last week, so she couldn't be close to the two grandchildren who live in Brazil for mother's day :( -- the stuff lingers in your body for a while and it would be harmful for the children). We now wait for the result of the full body CT scan she had, but we're confident that nothing will be found, like my in my brother-in-law's (he's doing great, the surgery incision and the burning in his leg from the radiation healed beautifully, but his leg still swells up frequently). Last, but not least, my father-in-law is having his gall bladder surgically removed today. I hope it goes well!

I guess that's it for updates. I need to post a recent photo of my cute nephew who lives in New Zealand. My parents are still there visiting my brother's family, but on Sunday they return to Brazil via Australia (will spend a few days there) and South Africa.

Oh! It's probably an "inside hire" search!

The day I learned about the position I emailed a couple of colleagues/friends who know a bit about the school in questions. When my colleague emailed me back there was a comment in her email that should have been a red flag but which I didn't pay much attention to until yesterday when I was re-reading the email to K. She said that our mutual friend who has worked there before said that they usually hire informally, and that "someone must have made them post that ad."

I just emailed both friends regarding my suspicion and my colleague says we cannot know whether that's the question, but that there must have been some review of their hiring practices and a request for more transparency. I suppose that transparency in hiring is always good, though the formal process to formalize an "internal hire" is annoying for those applying from outside because we cannot know if there is an insider waiting to be hired. I'm wondering now if there's a "rumor mill" for my area.

I'm still planning to apply for the position, which was advertised very late and for which they're starting to review applications a mere nine days after the ad was posted (but maybe such a tight time frame is not unusual for late postings). If I send an application, it will be on Monday, though, the day they're starting to review it.

The result of these thoughts and conversations is that now I'm much less stressed out about it, which is great! The pressure is off (in my head) and I can see this as an opportunity to start a conversation with my department chair. I hope it's going to be a productive one and the beginning of more conversations about my future. Wish me luck with that, OK?!

Amazon just did WHAT??? Get refunded and keep the book?

WOW... I'm blown away right now, seriously. I only buy books at Amazon* (I know, I should be supporting local bookstores, etc... but I love books and I need to buy affordable books) and I always use their free saver shipping (though I've recently decided to dump netflix and get an Amazon Prime account so I can get free shipping always and be able to watch streaming video).

If you're not familiar with it, the free shipping requires that you buy 25 dollars in books, so I always need to buy "tag along" books with any purchases. This time, I was buying one of my favorite cookbooks of all time, Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone as a wedding shower gift to a friend, and I needed to spend about 5 more dollars (a very hard thing to do), so I bought Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles Survival Guide for my son as a surprise, since he'd been asking for it for a while. Well... when we received it, it was a great disappointment to him because he had already bought the electronic book and I didn't know about it! :(

Today I went to Amazon to get the refund process started and... guess what? They told me they're giving me a refund and I can keep the book!! What???!!... these guys are making such big profits that they can afford to give me a book for free? Seriously?! I don't know if I should be happy or appalled, but the thrift-addict in me is cheering and jumping up and down! (and, best of all, my dear "thrifty person in training" son will be very relieved that we just saved 10 dollars -- he'll probably want to claim it to spend it in Legos!). What do you think of that?

In any case, I'm waiting for the refund now, I'll let you know if it really happens, but I think it will and now I'm really curious to know if this has ever happened to you before.

* And in two discount places/"warehouses" in our area. I hope that is OK, since I can't afford to support small independent book sellers.

"She's sweet, but scatterbrained..." or how can one teach with a neurobehavioral issue?

please bear with me today as I throw a small pity party for myself. It gets a little better towards the end of the post (I hope!)

I told my husband that it would be a disaster -- the fact that I'd be forced to look at my evaluations in order to submit an application for the possible job that took my peace away. I generally don't  read my evaluations -- though I know I should (they didn't required us to do it in graduate school and I did it only  to submit job applications years later and oh... how I hated looking at them! It brought floods of memories of those semesters, how hard I had tried, how long those summer course afternoons were...).


I didn't/don't read them because I know that it's just too devastating for me, I can't handle it. I am fully aware that I have issues, tons of them and I know I need tons of therapy too, and that I need to "grow up" -- I know, this is true, don't tell me it's not! -- and that I'm a pathetic human being -- I know that this isn't true so you don't need to tell me either -- but it does feel that way a lot of the time when you're a "faulty" human being with ADHD.

So... I had to make copies of some of the evaluations, so I had to read, and... well... it was and is pretty disastrous in my head right now. 

The truth is that I can't (and have never been able to) handle criticism -- though I'm a really harsh critic of myself, all the time. I don't know why, but I just can't deal with it at all!! It poisons my entire life, it makes me want to quit and never do a thing again, it proves my point that I can't do anything right and that I'm just really horrible at what I do. (OK, not entirely true, I know).

And I know you have to student evaluations with several grains of salt, but... ultimately? They are writing the TRUTH. They know who I am and I truly am not a good teacher at all. I should be doing something else with my life. (OK, that's extreme again, but still... maybe I should, who knows?).

Those of you out there who receive glowing evaluations semester after semester -- you know what you're doing and how to do it well. You've been well trained (or learned from experience how) to do a good job, you prepare for teaching as you should (and perhaps, unlike me, you're actually paid decently). Well... I'm not you, I don't know what I'm doing, I haven't been well trained to do it, I don't have ANY confidence in my abilities, I just can't do it well... MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, *YET.* oh, and I'm paid next to nothing and I seriously am not going to give more than the minimum necessary time to teach these classes. seriously. (so it is partly my fault and I recognize that without regrets in the way that has to do with dedication of time).

The worst part for me right now is that now that I know for sure that I have ADHD, it's much, much more painful! Because now that I have it, I'm stupid enough to mention it to people, without thinking. And the main thing several students wrote was what's in the title, and that I'm disorganized.Other than that (and a few attacks on the irrelevance of the material -- their fault, not mine! some really didn't care to learn about Brazil at all), they weren't that bad, but it's the bad that stays with you.

One last thing. I know what one of my biggest problems is that I'm too transparent. (and I've always been and I value that a lot in me, I really can't stand hypocrisy). For living in society, though, this trait is a very negative thing because it means I don't know how to "fake" and pretend that I know it all, that I'm really prepared (or, in other circumstances, to pretend that I'm not upset, or mad or disgusted at something).  Regarding the classroom don't know how to look serious and collected and authoritative. I'm just plain old me... all the time. Sometimes frazzled, sometimes more confident, most of the time, pretty insecure.

I remember that one time Professing Mama wrote about her persona and how she posted a photo of her wearing glasses in her blog and how that was part of her "persona" and looking smarter, more professional. I just can't do that. 

OK, pity party over now!! please don't throw rocks at me!! I wrote most of  this hours ago (minus the transparency comments above), about 4:30 pm, but I won't delete a thing, I need to process this.

The post is already too long, but I promise to write another one letting me off the hook and totally blaming the students for their lack of interest and laziness...

P.S. I hope someday I can blog about this whole inferiority complex I have because of how absolutely brilliant some Brazilian professors I had were/are. Oh, and I've had students who were way brighter & more insightful than me in my classrooms. And I felt inadequate.

Melissa: The Shoes of My Childhood & Present, Now Available in NYC! ;)

I just wanted to let you know that I endorse this Brazilian product of my own will and have not been sponsored in any way to write this. In fact, it's been years since I've reviewed a product in this blog -- I don't think that marketers turn to "small" mommy bloggers anymore, just to the big and influential ones. I don't mind...


My first "Melissa" shoes were not the ones I wanted, which were the polka dot ones (these are recent, but the mid-eighties ones were similar, though in paler colors):

but the "spider" one (in red):

A Melissa Store just opened in Soho, NYC and Jarbas Agnelli made this ad for them (other stores sell them too, here's the link to Melissa Stores):


Plastic Dance from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

 Another of his Melissa ads -- I have this exact shoe, but grayish (lead color) blue, the design is made by the Campana brothers. I'd write more, but this post has been in my draft folder for months, enjoy:


Melissa Corallo from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Enjoy! More later, OK?

Free!! Just to be immediately perturbed...

I love to live dangerously, OK, irresponsibly, and I finished grading less than a couple of hours before final grades were due. I checked everything carefully and reviewed the grades.

And then I was FREE!! To enjoy my three months without work (OR PAY ! :(  )... I felt relieved and free for all of... say, half an hour?

And then I got the email that told me that I have to apply for another teaching job (which has the possibility of being a non-tt full time, though!), one for which I have to drive for a while, but which would probably be worth it. Both for the pay and for the institution.

And my peace was gone. Just like that! :(

Rainbow Love or... I wish I didn't know this existed and that I weren't so "in love" with it :(

I just pinned it in Pinterest, but this deserves a blog post too. A quick one as I take a breather from grading. It's going well, but it does take a long time even when it's just "quick" no annotation and no rubric-filling grading.

So this is the product I found out about this week from the catalog that kohls sends to my door every week:

 It's Fiesta's (I didn't even know this brand existed until Jenna blogged about it a few weeks ago) Masquerade Flatware set:

 This photo by Tempest Tea is lovely, isn't it?

I wish I didn't want it so much. Now I'm wondering whether this is a "permantent" product of whether it's temporary like Jenna's marigold dishes. Sigh... My love of rainbows is absurd and visceral... I don't even know where it comes from. All I know is that I LOVE colors and the rainbow combination just makes my heart soar, or sing, or something, whatever it is!

ease droppings

I'm grading papers like crazy, but have to share this here before I forget!

My student obviously meant "eavesdropping," but I thought that the ease of droppings was hilariously great! It made me think of the multiple piles of droppings I saw in the safari in Africa. The rhinos most certainly were at ease with droppings on neat piles that marked their territory!

Edited to add: Seriously, look at this gem of a sentence!!! "she would simply linger an exceptionally long period of time ease dropping on others" :)

And hoping for more future fun typos, I'm creating a new label: "Students Write the Darnedest Things!"

She should know that ALL PhD Dissertations are basically "Irrelevant" and will be only read by a few people and that's how it works!

I'm not a reader of the Chronicle of Higher Ed [after all, one has to pay the subscription to read most content], I only read when colleagues or blogger friends provide links in their blogs or on facebook (I'm not on twitter anymore), so I'm not really familiar with Naomi Schaefer Riley's columns and/or her qualifications.

Two days ago, Laura linked to this piece by Riley's, provocatively titled "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations" and, ironically in Riley's response she wrote, shooting herself in the foot: "It's Not My Job to Read Entire Dissertations." (the title of Laura's quick post)

I really like the comments in the response, which disparage Riley's argumentation, particularly this by Aron Bady and this one by Ed Lessard, among others.


Now, I don't really know much about the field of  "Black Studies," but in the end Riley is right about a couple of things -- that new fields are created all the time in academia, studying more and more obscure things. Is that a bad thing? If one thinks of "real contributions" for the "real world" -- whatever that means!! -- sure, one can argue that these obscure fields are irrelevant, but MOST academic fields in the humanities and most phd dissertations that are written are equally "obscure and irrelevant" in a sense! and that's the whole point of academia... we want the freedom to study anything, authors that are known only in their country or area, people who were significant historically only in a certain part of the country, etc.

I personally think that my dissertation would be relevant for anyone interested in Brazilian literature (I don't want to get more specific because of my "semi-anonymity"), but the truth is, probably less than 20 people will ever read my dissertation. So what?!!! I'm OK with that! That's what happens to most dissertations, it doesn't mean that they were not as meticulously researched as possible and bring into light unique aspects of a culture, a historic period, a person, etc.

OK, so these are my thoughts on this subject. And, contrary to Ms Riley's work as an opinionated journalist, as someone who truly enjoys being a scholar, it is my job to read entire dissertations and I love doing it!

Wired

brought to you courtesy of "iKelvin" ;)

This afternoon I took some time to talk to my firstborn son while laying down at his bed.

After we'd been talking for a while, I asked him:

"How do you feel being a 10 year old now?"

"Wired," he answered.

"Wired?" I said, looking at him quizzically, to which he smirked.

"I don't feel any different,"  he responded.

"But you're now a decade old!"

"A decade? A decade is nothing! You've been around for almost half a century!" 

Talk about a sense of perspective! ;)

(sigh... and then I had to remind him that I still need one more decade 'till I reach half a century).

I love my "wired"  boy. What's fascinating him right now is Ninjago Legos. And Rick Riordan books, but I want to try to write a whole post about the latter.

P.S. I obviously should be grading, not blogging. bad, bad me!

Because I should be grading right now...

... I'm going to write this post. Obviously. (warning: it's full of exclamation marks. At least it's not caps like Dooce ;)

In any case, I've been busy and I haven't blogged because blogging is in my list of "forbidden" procrastination tactics and I try not to "go there" although I do all the other things I shouldn't do. Including those that I legitimately need to do around the house, but which I shouldn't because there's so much grading to be done.

before I go back to talking of work, what are -- you might be asking -- these things that need to get done around the house?
Well, well, well, this weekend we are going to have guests from Brazil (my former music history teacher, her husband and her mom -- their son is studying in the boarding academy in our town) and... if that weren't enough, I'm also hosting a small wedding shower for two of our friends who are getting married in a month.

so... I need to clean, clean, clean, do laundry (accumulated in the last 2-3 weeks to2 months, if you count table-cloths, which reminds me that I was going to buy this beautiful tablecloth yesterday and I forgot! But it was 20 bucks... but it matches the decor... whatever), try to clean the fridge. Plan the menu, shop for food, etc. etc.

And I also WISH we could paint the hall bathroom before Friday. I should go do that right now. I think it's a great and legitimate procrastination tactic, unlike blogging.


But this is not the worst, the worst happened last week. After I taught my last day of classes, I knew I should get right into grading, but a friend (from grad school, no less!) posted a link to PBS's Masterpiece to facebook, saying that she just couldn't help it when it came to Downton Abbey. I commented back, saying that after a marathon watching season one back in February, I hadn't had time to see Season 2 yet. I knew it wasn't available for watching in the pbs website anymore, but I went there anyway.

Guess what? I ended up watching all of Great Expectations, whose episode 1 expires today and 2 on the 8th. This is one of the two books by Dickens that I actually read (the other is David Copperfield -- I wish I could follow in my friend Jamie's footsteps and read all of Dickens, sigh...) and I thought it was a really interesting and pretty disturbing work. I wish I could re-read it because it's obviously much superior to the adaptation... but, of course I don't have time.

Then, instead of working all weekend long -- and it was a long weekend because our sons didn't have school on Friday (the school is using up its unused snow-days) -- we went to the Brazilian consulate in Washington D.C. to get our passports (only not for Kelvin) -- D.C.'s Brazilian consulate is infinitely better than New York City's!!! And then... we went to Pennsylvania to visit our friends, stopping for one delightful hour at Longwood Gardens (where I forgot my camera in the CAR!!!).

The weekend was lovely, but we were talking to our friends until 3 am on Friday and then again until 1 am -- almost falling asleep over freshly made sushi -- I was SO excited I got to teach them how to make sushi!!! And then on Sunday we had an almost 4h mad-dash from PA to VA to get 1/2 hour late to soccer...

So, yeah, I guess I'm all caught up with my three blog readers now, right?

Well, except for all the cooking I did two weeks ago (some last week) and all the craziness trying to buy pillows for the living room, but these will be later posts!! (and I haven't forgotten about my bathroom's before and after).

Now... back to grading! I'm sure I'll be way more productive now that I've finally relented and blogged!