Death To Leggy Things

My basement, like many basements - especially basements in houses that have sat empty for a year - suffers from infestations. (If I should ever again buy a house which has been unoccupied, I shall demand an exterminator.)

The worst of the critters were, I thought, spiders. Dozens and dozens of spiders. A childhood spent around black widows has given me a horror of spiders. Also, one of them bit Dr. S on the arm and he got a nasty, nasty infection.

So, I sacrificed my hippie-granola-organic principles and bought some Death To Bugs Spray. I sprayed it diligently around the entire exterior of my house and then around every single corner in the whole basement.

It did not appear to do anything to the spiders. I sprayed it again.

Now EARWIGS are crawling out of my baseboards, turning up their little earwiggy legs, and dying by the dozens.

So which is worse- live earwigs in your walls that you don't know about, or dead ones everywhere?

How To Make Sourdough Challah

• Mix up a sponge.
• Realize 5 hours later you have no flour.
• Go to bed.
• Next day, go to the store and get flour.
• Mix up bread.
• Let rise.
  
• Punch down. Go to garage sale.
• Punch down again. Loaf out.
• Put in cold oven to rise.
• Feed dinner to screamy toddler.
• Bathe screamy toddler.
• Nurse screamy toddler.
• Go to party.
• Forget bread.
• Remember it 12 hours later.
• Bake it anyways.

Does it still count as challah if it's flat?

Transitions, Part 5: In Which I Become An Ambivalent Housewife

There I was, with a fancy job in Big Industry. The first few months, in which I learned to build a bicycle starting with ore and a furnace, were a little tough, but eventually, I got better at it.

I was older than a lot of the employees, and a lot more professional: I never got upset in public, I never said anything rude to the clients, and I always tried to find a diplomatic way to let others save face. I also knew the most important people-managing skill: To get people to do what you want, make it the easiest thing to do.

I was really good at my job. Within eight months of finishing my training, I was in charge of a team. I was working on a big new bicycle design. Important people called me and asked me what to do. I was calm and efficient and effective and well-paid.

At the same time, it was hard. To work in such an intense place all day, then come home and try to have something left for my husband after baby dinner and baby bath and baby nursing and baby lunch packing and dishes and laundry and cleaning.* The baby got sick all the time, at daycare. He got so sick he went to the hospital for three days.

I thought my spouse and I were going to kill each other.** I thought it couldn't go on. There was a part of me that just wanted to... give up and take an easier path for a while.

Next: Hard In A Different Way.

*My spousal unit does the dishes and the cleaning, mainly. So it went both ways, in the no-energy department.
**Although, between the house renovations and the in-laws visiting, we may kill one another anyways.

On Nursing, Or, La Leche League FAIL

At this week's LLL meeting I asked about gradual weaning. "I can't take it any more!" I said. "I just want him to nurse a little less. Because he eats a ton, and he doesn't need it as much, and it's making me crazy."

The leader looked at me disapprovingly. "Well, the idea is that you nurse as long as the baby needs it, and if he still wants it, it means he still needs it."

What am I, CHOPPED LIVER???

Transitions, Part 4: Hire Me, I'm Not Qualified, But I'm Smart!!

So there I was, bored as anything, thinking that maybe a job would be nice.

I applied to all the biotech companies in the area. One offered me $40,000 for a full-time job and told me that all their staff had done postdocs (WHERE? South Florida Tech and Motorcycle School??) and the maximum salary was $45,000. I laughed in their faces and hung up.

I applied for a part-time editing job for which I was exquisitely well qualified, prepared to accept a ludicrously low salary. They had decided whom to hire before they advertised (bastards).

I applied for a writing job at Big Bicycle Company. "We don't pay the writers that much," they said, "but how about being a Bicycle Repair Specialist?"

"I know nothing about Bicycle Repair," I said.

"Oh, well, we'll teach you," they said.

What the hell.

Next time: Screw Working, Housewifery Here I Come!

Transitions: Sidebar

Say it, sisters.

Science PhD and postdoc training is not all it's cracked up to be:

For the great majority, becoming a scientist now entails a penurious decade or more of graduate school and postdoc positions before joining the multitude vainly vying for the few available faculty-level openings. Earning a doctorate now consumes an average of about seven years. In many fields, up to five more years as a postdoc now constitute... the “terminal de facto credential” required for faculty-level posts... Nearly every faculty member with a research grant... now uses postdocs to do the bench work for the project. Paid out of the grant, these highly skilled employees might earn $40,000 a year for 60 or more hours a week in the lab. A lucky few will eventually land faculty posts, but even most of those won’t get traditional permanent spots with the potential of tenure protection.

Also known as a Ponzi scheme:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent [academic] operation that [pays peanuts and makes people work ridiculous hours] to separate [scientists] from their own [time, blood, sweat, and tears], rather than [returning] any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee... The perpetuation of the returns... requires an ever-increasing flow of [PhD students] to keep the scheme going. The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments to investors.

And it hurts whenever you leave it, anyways, even if you know all this:

I think Science-with-a-capital-S was just a pretty different place when all of the current faculty were coming up through the ranks. There were some reasonable expectations for employment in science when you were done. For current postdocs, it's such a different atmosphere. Not only are there not enough academic jobs to go around, but leaving academia is usually a pretty ego-shattering experience.

(I don't regret leaving. And I'm not distressed about leaving in any way. But I *do* think it's a Ponzi scheme. The number of PhDs and postdocs greatly exceeds the number of faculty openings; most PhDs and postdocs are 'groomed' for academia; someone with an R1 requires >>1 grad student/postdoc. Ponzi scheme.)

On Mommying

It's been two months since I said farewell to my fancy job. I don't want to go back. Not even a little. (I also didn't miss science benchwork for even one little minute.) At the same time, hey, this is kind of lonely! Who knew!

I have no real friends in Cold City. Transient, academic, was working, no time, etc. I go to mommy things but I only have acquaintances really. I miss my mama. I miss my dad. I miss my sisters.

I miss my friends from home, even though we've all changed a lot over the years. My friend A is divorced, a single mom, become very brittle. My friend C is a SAHM; her husband is getting a PhD on the same usefulness level as "History of Lost Atlantis", and they have 2 kids and food stamps, and writing gives him panic attacks, and he wants to be an academic. I still love her, but I don't respect her. My friend R has a newborn. I think I'm mourning the loss of how it used to be in some ways.

The Bug is teething. This means hours of screaming every day ("Do not hit Mama with a spoon. Gentle. Gentle. I am taking away the spoon." "AaaaaaAAAAAAH!").

The 15,000 half-finished house projects don't help much either.