Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Anybody know what a “racially visible group” is?

Sydney

Life is comprised–at the moment–of job search stuff, teaching prep, occasional dashes at dissertation work, final garden clean-up, and, of course, Katherine play.  So you won’t hear much from us until that scene changes.

But on Thursday we’re going to be making an expedition to Montreal, where I’ll give a paper and attend a conference in a downtown hotel, dashing upstairs to my room every few hours to see how Katherine and Sydney are faring.  Now that the initial job materials have been sent out (with a few things lagging behind) I’m getting excited about this conference–and nervous.  I realized that pretty much everyone I know in the field and nearly all of my advisors will be there.  I want to make sure I deliver well in case my advisors–who just wrote me letters of recommendation–or potential employers show up to my panel.   On the other hand, I’m excited to sit in on papers from professors I haven’t seen since college and be surrounded by people who know my area of specialty better than I do.  Let’s hope Katherine lets me get enough sleep to take advantage of the opportunity.

Erin

In Katherine’s new teething stage she’s taken a liking not only to spoons, but to books.  She’s lunged after Sydney library hardcovers more than once, and he’s starting to get worried about this new fascination–particularly when combined with her developing motor skills. When she starts to crawl, are we going to be in real trouble?

Everyone’s getting into Halloween around here, but my interest is in Sunday, not Saturday: November 1st is the deadline for nearly all of the jobs I’m considering.

Erin

Katherine has kept us from sleep for the past week.  As in, waking up crying every two hours or less.  We have gotten pretty sunken-eyed and I started wondering whether she was deliberately trying to hijack my job applications (all due this week).  But we think we may have finally established that she’s cutting her first tooth (white bump in the front of her mouth, anyone?), so we’ll cut her some slack.  Poor thing.  She’s perfectly happy the rest of the day, although her favorite toy is decidedly spoons–the sharp end, rather than the bowl.  Not interested in teething toys, but her mother’s wedding silverware works quite nicely.

Erin

Today was the first day of teaching Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury to my freshmen.  It’s the most challenging book I’ve ever read (I think, though Joyce’s Ulysses comes close), so you might have some pity for my freshmen.  But I think they will eventually find themselves appreciating all that they’ve gleaned from the book through their hard work.  Fascinating book, and one that I think very nicely gets my hurried students to slow down and be sensitive to subtleties for which they may not normally make time.

I’ve forgotten how many sensitive subjects come up when teaching Faulkner: how to refer appropriately to someone with severe mental and physical handicaps, race relations in the South in 1928, class issues, and sexual mores.  All in the first three pages of the book!

Erin

The following things have happened to me in the past week:

– The professor in charge of reading over my application materials strongly suggested I publish something.  Yes, I’ll remedy that in the next week!

– After having two professors, Sydney, and me read over my dissertation abstract I looked at it once more just before sending it off . . . only to realize that I’d misspelled a character’s name.  As in, I spelled it correctly elsewhere in the paragraph and then misspelled it later in the same paragraph.  You wouldn’t have had to read the book to catch that one.  And we all missed it.  Scary!

– The internet service I’m required to use to send off all of my materials insists on “converting” all of the pdfs I upload . . . and it messes up the format.  So now, each time I submit a new pdf I have to sit there, combing over it one letter at a time, making sure there isn’t another bug in the system.

Grey hair before I’m thirty . . .

Erin

Here’s how we established whose girl Katherine is:

Yes, that’s a big chunk of beet that she’s chewing on. She really liked it. I’m really proud of her.

Sydney

If one waited to takes pictures of one’s child until the child had 1) gotten over the cold 2) stopped scratching herself 3) refrained from drooling all over the shirt–and until Ithaca gave us some good light to work with–one would never get pictures taken.  That means that you will see Katherine with scratches on her face (yes, I trim her fingernails, but it doesn’t seem to matter) and whatever new body part she’s discovered: yesterday it was ears, and today it’s her feet.  Can’t say I’m looking forward to those times down the road when she’ll have given herself a good black eye on some piece of furniture or other and I’ll have to brave the glares of other moms in public.  What fun!

Erin

Although it seems like we’re at the height of busy times around here we took things a bit easier this weekend, carving out some down time.  We’ve been in triage mode for almost two months now, racing from one deadline to the next, and we all needed some time to recover before we return to the application process.  We also used the time to try to shake the colds that have been plaguing us all for the past month or so.  I had a sinus infection, Sydney a recurring cough, and Katherine the sniffles.  Quite the house!  But we’re all on the road to recovery and feeling much better.  We’ve loaded up on orange juice and peppermint tea in hopes that we can fend off any more germs that come our way.

Erin