I Didn't Kill The Damn Albatross, So Take It Back Now

This paper hanging around my neck:

It's not so much that I mind revising it (though I do), or that I don't care (though I don't). It's not even really the principle of the thing, though if you'd quit working for a company 11 months ago, would you still be working for them? (No. No, you would not.)

It's what it makes me remember.

It takes me right back to 6.5 very difficult years. Being told in public that I was incompetent. Knowing that, if ever I let my guard down, my colleagues and co-workers would jump on me like jackals. Sitting alone in lab, late at night, crying over an impossible experiment that I had to do to graduate. Knowing that whatever I did, my advisor's response would be, 'You need to work harder.'

Standing in a parking lot at 1 AM waiting for a bus that never came.

Walking home at night, alone, terrified that I would be set on by people with guns.

Laying in bed on a cold winter morning, too sick and too depressed to even get up.

Coming home every day for three years, and sitting on the couch and crying, unsure if I could do it for one more day.

Being done doesn't erase the memories. And so I want to never think of it again. That's what I mind.

Things I Will Not...

... tell my former advisor in response to his increasingly annoying shrill panicked urgent emails, regarding our poor little doomed manuscript from six months ago:

1. What... think I CARE?
2. S-the-grad-student can do whatever he darn well pleases.
   
3. If you take my name off the paper, will you stop asking me questions?
   
4. I no longer remember if I tried X, Y, or Z. Want my lab notebooks?*
5. Tell you what: you pay my salary and I'll answer your questions!
6. Die. Die. Die.

*My lab notebooks are completely incomprehensible. Even to me, at this point.

Except for a note from 2006 reading "PI Wears Chairman Mao Hat To Lab Meeting!!!"

Sometimes You Feel Like

Babies? Are weird.

Pumpkin nursed, thrashed, pulled my boob out of his mouth with his grabby little hand, thrashed some more, cried, bit me, thrashed, and thrashed again.

I threw up my hands in despair and put him in his crib..... and....

.... he rolled over and went to sleep.


I'll take it.

In Which I Enjoy Myself, And Also Meet The End Of My Rope

People, I still (or possibly again) have a !@#$! case of thrush. HELP! I've taken fluconazole six times, tried the nystatin cream (useless), cut all sugar out of my diet, and I do mean all sugar- fruit, dessert, chocolate, everything, and it SUCKS- and painted on gentian violet approximately 5,000 times, and I take a probiotic every day and drink lots of water and try to wear loose shirts. And I put the gentian violet in the kid's mouth too, though he's never otherwise been treated. What do I do? Other than lay in bed and cry.

On a more cheerful note, one of my work-friends is a kind and understanding woman who invites me over regularly even though I never come. Except! Last night I went over to her house and played DDR and ate a little soy ice cream and talked about crafts and had a fantastic time. It was lovely.

The end of everyone's rope, unfortunately, is still near: the Pumpkin is getting his first top teeth in. And we all want to die.

One More State To Cross Off The List:

FLORIDA.

Of course, my home state tried to make it a criminal offense to not report your miscarriage.

The South. Lord love 'em.

In related news, my dear spouse has been trying to decide whether to apply for academic jobs this year, or not. He called me yesterday from work. (Yes, he works every Sunday until I go back to work full-time. Why yes, it does suck.)

"Guess who wants a junior faculty member in [the exact thing I do] studying [the exact thing I study]?" he said.

And apparently the universe said YES, because it's a gorgeous, small, teaching school that one of my best friends from high school attended, exactly 30 minutes from my parents' house. Hell yes, he's applying for academic jobs.