All done but the crying

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Okay, I think I’m done. Ish. I still have to write my paper, but the other stuff? DONNNNEE. I’m pretty sure. I’m kind of going nuts, but I’m really pretty sure I’ll be okay.I’m sure I’ll think of stuff I forgot, but I have the sitter on Monday, and was planning on working on the paper on Sunday, but that won’t be too hard as I have all the stuff done for that now, and it’s just a matter of putting it together.

And there’s so much else to do now! Like thank a certain kickass Brooklyn family for the tomato-red hat that Ingrid has been wearing every day, including to get her first Christmas tree, or to get stamps on our damn new year’s cards and get those mailed. Or to even, maybe, get a freaking December photo album up; our families have been politely quiet on this one, but I’ve heard from more than one that they are chomping at the bit for some more photos.  Oh, and to find a damn job, too.

See, i can reallly use a job now. How farking TYPICAL that i have a Master’s! Degree! and even more amazing than that, I have Childcare! Lined up! for End of January! and yet — no job. Today is Ing’s last day at the uni daycare, they all say she’s a great kid, and that she’s really done well, and I don’t doubt it a bit. She really likes going, there are BABIES THERE and COOL TOYS and she is just such a social bug that my fears of childcare have really melted away. I do wish I could stay home forever with her, but half of that is just wanting to be independently wealthy, period, enough to stay home even if I didn’t have kids, but those days are drawing to an end. And really, I can’t even believe how fortunated I’ve been to stay home THIS long, and if I do get a job, the new childcare opens in late January, so I will have had 8 months at home. I do love it, but our savings is circling the drain, my education is done (DONE!!!) (for now, I probably can’t stay away from formal learning for long) and I’m poised to start a Real Career …. if only one would have me.  I mean, my car’s inspection is 6 months out of date, and they just changed the laws, and we have an appt on the 30th to get it serviced, and I’m absolutely terrified that to get it inspectable will cost more then the actual car cost us to BUY. Our furnace died the other night while I was at work, and that cost just over 200 bucks to repair because of COURSE the furnace dies after business hours. I’ve consolidated my loans, but those are going to need to start being repaid soon, too — because my student status officially ended in august, my grace period ends in February. All important reasons to need a job, on top of "my glasses are beat to hell, and I could use new ones" and "ooh, pretty D70!" Ahem.

So, now I think I’m going to network a bit — fire off an email to former professors, letting them know I’m available for hire, will work for car repairs, and, holy hell, have a master’s degree and CHILDCARE taken care of. CROSS YO DAMN FINGERS. (ANd if anyone has any good leads for me — highly unlikely, considering the geography of my readership — let me know.)

(If anyone wants to check my work out, the url is folio.MyFullName.com — if you do, and see something missing or broken, please email me!!)

Quick anecdote, just because

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I consider this tangentially degree-related. (FYI, daycare/school all day, and working at night, means I’b subsisting off of vending machine coffee and cereal for the next week, OMG, it sucks, but it’s only temporary.)

4ish AM, this morning, our bed:

Dave: oh, your sister called last night
Me: Yeah? what’d she need?
Dave: She wanted to know how to put a link in an email.
Me: Nuh uh.
Dave: I taught her copy and paste. She’d never done that before.
Me: Jesus christ. How’d that go?
Dave: Pretty good. She asked where it copied it to.
Me: Oh fuck, did you have to explain the concept of the virtual clipboard?
Dave: Nah, I kind of glazed over that. She did it though, and she was so excited to have learned a new trick, she clapped.

I was so excited to see what the hell the link was, and checked my email this am to find this message:

Subj: Check out this amazing website!!

Message:  http://www.yahoo.com/
HAHAHA  Just kidding Dave just taught me how to copy
and paste an email address so I thought I’d send you
the practice run….See you in 11 and 1/4 days!!!!
Love, Kate

Seriously. And I get shit for not being a skier.

radio silence

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very busy! working almost every night, going to campus during the day! must finish! must!!!

however!

It is very much worth noting that tonight, I had my very last class of my Master’s degree in the Ed building. I’ve not ended a semester without being ready to take another class in the next one, in five. freaking. years.

will finish on time. promise.

Ingrid’s photo shoot

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I posted this in my family blog, but I thought folks might appreciate it here, as well. We were working on a photo for a new year’s card, and these are the pictures we didn’t use. (There’s music, fyi.) Requires quicktime but is a small file as it’s just a slideshow. Also features the advent of Ingrid’s FakeAss Smile. Sigh.

Ingrid’s Outtakes

In other news, my cousin IMed me for help with his resume. He’s 23, had one job, which was working for my dad, and is just finishing a photography degree. He also has a bad case of Thesaurus.  On the one hand, it made me feel much better about my own resume to see a really… ungood one, and I cleaned up my cousin’s really well, but being him, and 23, I wonder if he used any of my revisions. For instance, I eliminated the sections of "Objective" and "Interests" because they said this, respectively:

My mission is to earn a challenging
position utilizing my exceptional communication, technological, and
listening skills to assist customers with any tribulations that might
arise.

and…

Mountain Climbing, Back
Packing, White Water Rafting, Swimming, Cooking, Fine Wine, Photography,
Mentoring, Fishing, Science, Anthropology, Archaeology, Landscaping,
History, Discovery, Travel, Adventure.

And for the one job he did have, working with my dad, well.. um, okay, well I wouldn’t exactly describe it as this:

   

Served as business facilitator
providing office clerical requirements, photographic laboratory and
service output responsibilities, as well as daily client interface requirements
throughout the business service spectrum. 

… and neither would my dad.

But, he’s young, and my resume at 23 probably sucked, too.

 

 

Just getting it out there

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Good lord,seriously? It’s been a WEEK since I wrote? Wow.

Daycare is going fine, Ingrid’s there now and I’m in the coffeeshop on campus. I’m ridiculously pleased to have realized they rezoned an entire lot for visitors, because my parking pass expired in August, and there used to be about 6 visitor spaces total, on campus, (or so it seemed) and they were perpetually occupied and located in the worst spots. The visitor lot is the most central to campus, which is such a good move — right on the Mall, and just steps from the library, the union, the ed building, so yay for no tickets and good parking!

Thanksgiving was fine — ate at my SILs, Ingrid napped in the wrap (new pics in the Nov album, btw) and aside from my SIL giving her a fingerful of coolwhip (SHUDDER) things were fine. It was nice and lowkey, which is always good.

I sent my resume in and haven’t heard, but to cover all my bases, I alsosent a deposit to the new daycare center by our house, just in case. And I DIDN’T get permanent p/t at my night job, which is really throwing me off — apparently they went by hire date, and there were seasonals from last year that wanted a regular position, too, so that leaves me out… which, sucks, because that was my Plan B. SO I need a Plan A, fast. FUCKING A. Anyway. More vibes to the library world,eh?

I jsut dropped Ingrid off, and came to the coffee shop to work, but ended up talking for over an hour to a classmate from last semester whose wife delivered 3 weeks after I did, so it was a lot of student/working/parent kvetching, which was nice, since in general the campus is overrun with undergrads who don’t get It, not at all. Of course, we both lost work time in our discussion of poop, daycare, and breastfeeding, but oh well… it was good. And I have a dentist appt at noon, si I’m going to have to leave in a few minutes ANYWAY, drive back to home, have the appt, drive BACK to campus and work then. … I guess. UGH.

So, brief catchup, more later…

Daycare, Day One

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Daycare went fine. I was nervous (who the fuck WOULDN’T BE?) but she did fine. The head teacher was there, who I hadn’t met before as she’d been out for a few days, and talking with her was very reassuring — none of this "oh, wow, you should let her stay up longer and she’ll sleep longer" crap, which, for the average baby, is exactly crap. It’s certainly crap for my kid, who has a 2-2.5 hour rotation of sleep/eat/play. I was nervous that my position of being the World’s Greatest Expert on Ingrid would be challenged, from sleep to how much EBM she eats, to the fact that we still use newborn nipples to keep bottle preferences at bay. 

I went to school, and got some work done (eventually, lots of FTP WTF?! that led me to entirely scrap a subdomain and start new) and focused on that to avoid worrying about Ingrid, and oy, I totally forgot to eat, drink or — gasp! — pump. At 2:30, I realized this, and found a closet to pump in, but no food or water for 6 hours meant that I only got 2 oz… and then I went and picked up Ingrid.

When I got there, she was about waist deep in blocks and a dump truck, cooing away, and when I walked in and said "IIIInnnggrrriidd!!!" she beamed at me. The head teacher said "You weren’t kidding about her being like clockwork!" which made me think "NO SHIT!" and also "THANKGOD." They’d also moved her crib to the darker, quieter side of the room, and she’d napped fine over there. I think they really heard my concern about her being asked to sleep in the playroom skybox suite with babies! right! there!, and hey, she slept great, so that’s cool.

Of course, we also got offered a spot at the new center around the corner, where we want to eventually end up. But that is all kinds of confusing; I got an email saying she was enrolled in the young toddler program, 11-18 months, but the center opens in January when she’ll turn 8 months. I emailed* the director back to say that I thought it was in error, and then got another mass email with a ‘clarification on infant/young toddler slots’ which said that to try to accomodate everyone as they open, they adjusted the range on young toddlers to 9-18 months, but… still, Ingrid is only going to TURN 8 months in January. I do really like the infant/young toddler split, though — the regulations classify 0-18 months as infant, with specific rules, like setting their own schedule, crib naps, held for feedings, etc… and most places have a 0-18 room. The uni does, actually, and hanging out there, the 17 month old in the program is really wanting to play with the 19-30 month olds next door.  And, IIRC, the young toddler program at this new center is a step down in cost from infant care, so it would be infant care for a little less money. AND, if I were to get this job at the library, we could AFFORD it, which is key. So, now there’s a matrix of job/childcare that I have to interpret:

Get library job –> enroll at local center
Don’t get library job –> waitlist at local center
No day job—> work part-time nights, continue to look for worth-it job during the day, and hope that stars align for employment and childcare at the same time

A worth-it job is one that pays enough to make it profitable (after childcare) and is a job I’d WANT to spend time at. So, working at Dress Barn is not a worth-it job to me. Working at the library is.  Working p/t at night is straight profit, but takes away from time with Dave, mostly, since Ingrid is asleep by 7.

Either way, I’m going to fill out the paperwork and give a deposit to local center, since it’s applied to future tuition, and I figure I’ll have a better read on the worth-it job situation by the time it opens, in late January.  Commuting the uni daycare if I work in town will be a huge expensive pita — it’s at least 20 minutes between here and there, so it would be 20 minutes up and back in the am, and again in the pm, and with the price of gas, oy. (If a worth-it job turned up on campus, than that would be moot….)

Anyway, so much to think about! Argh.

*I totally love that the new center uses email. My cell phone is completely unreliable, so I asked the uni to email me if there was an emergency, because I’m a thousand times easier to reach that way, but they don’t have a computer at the center. As it stands, if I don’t answer my cell, then they call dave, hope they reach him, and he IMs me. Sigh.

6 months

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Dear Ingrid,

Today you are a whole half-year old. We can hardly believe it!  It seems like the last 6 months have flown by…. and that they’ve lasted forever. I can hardly believe that my little Buggy-Girl is you, and that you are so wonderful.

This month, you started to sit up on your own, really well. Of course, now that you can sit up, you have no interest in lying down or rolling over, so we figure you’ll go to college at UM and one of us will come by at night to turn you over when you need it.

You also started solid foods. We still aren’t sure what you think of those — you’ll eat them, but every spoonful makes your face wrinkle in a manner that clearly says "what the hell is that?" but you continue to open for a few bites.  I took pictures of you, just before your first cereal, though, because I can hardly believe that my body has brought you from 2 cells, dividing, to this laughing, happy, wonderful baby that I have today.  I wanted to document the little rolls and your ‘spare knees’ and those big soft cheeks, just ripe for the kissing.

We’ve settled into a nice little life, the three of us. Every day, Daddy comes home at lunch to see his girls, and after that you and I usually do something — go to Target, or the post office, or to the grocery store. We go to Mother Goose every Wednesday morning, and that is a highlight of the week. We like to sit near Jackson, and this week we cheered him on as he practiced his lurching crawl. On Fridays, we usually go to baby massage, where the mamas talk and the babies look at each other, and sometimes, babies get massaged.

Tomorrow, though, you start at the university daycare so that I can finish my master’s degree. I’m nervous (they have your crib on the lit, baby filled, playside of the room, and I worry that you’ll never sleep with that view!) as I should be, but I think you’ll be fine. I worry that they’ll overfeed you, or mess with your sleep, or just ignore you for no good reason. That’s fairly irrational, but I DO know that once my degree is finished, I’ll be about 90% less anxious in general, and that will be good for all of us.

Your first thanksgiving is this week, and grampy will be letting us borrow the good camera to capture it. Grammie bought you a winter dress, and we’re going to take some photos for a New Year’s card, and I know that by the time those get sent, you’ll be a newer version of yourself, again. Every month, every week, every day you evolve and change and miraculously get even better than before. It is amazing to watch.

I am so lucky to have had you all to myself for six months, so, so lucky. And I will be so happy to see you tomorrow afternoon — your two bottom teeth, your open-mouthed grin, your little hands waving in the air as you pant with excitement.

I love you, Ingrid!

Love, Mama

Done

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With jeanne’s help, I polished my resume and drafted a cover letter, and — this is kind of funny, really — because I don’t have a printer, I took it to Staples to get printed. I don’t know, I’d probably find it humorous to print off someone’s resume for a tech job if *I* worked at Staples! Damn, though, I’m never buying a printer, since it was 16 cents per copy, laser printed on 24 lb crisp white resume paper. Seriously, I made 3 copies of each — of the letter for my records, and in case I frigged up my signature and signed it "OH FUCK!" or whatever, and copies of my resume just to have on hand. It was 1.01. AND, the chick used a penny from the tray, so it cost me A BUCK. I signed it, stamped it, and it was out in today’s mail…. either way, whatever happens is supposed to happen, I firmly believe, so now I wait and see. Truly, though, this is the first job I’ve applied for that makes me feel like my graduate degree was a worthwhile endeavor.

And, hee, I liked the "sounds great, but the pay sucks!" comments, because, um, here? That’s really good. Seriously. I made 23k as a teacher, and I wasn’t in the lowest paying district, not by a long shot. The town I lived in before here, they pay new teachers 17k. SERIOUSLY.  And, uh, the starting for this job would basically double our household income. Actually, if I got Ingrid to the spendy daycare, that expense would make starting salary for this job about what the same as my first year teaching was, and we lived pretty well at that time — I put money into my retirement account, I did groceries and was fairly aggressive with saving, while Dave did household bills, and we still pretty much shopped for what we wanted, when we wanted it. (I mean, of course, for us that means replacement sea monkeys and jeans from Target, but it works for us…) Dude, we took a VACATION with that kind of income! (No vacation for a while, but it makes our roof/windows goal infinitely more attainable.)  And honestly, when I went back to school for my M Ed, my goal was to get a job starting at about 30, so this is inline with that. And, it’s DOWNTOWN. I was just telling Andy, on Wednesday, i think, how much I miss being downtown every day. (You know, back when I was in Americorps, doing help desk type stuff at THE LIBRARY.)

Oh, oh, oh, the geekiest part? You knew there was a geekiest part. If When I get interviewd, I plan to follow up with a thank you note, using the cards that I made from this picture.  God, seriously, how geeky is that?

Anyway. Whatever will be, will be. How many times have I said that? If anything, I’m feeling recharged, and reassured that grad school was not a colossal waste of time and money, and that’s a good thing.

‘Nother Job

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We did daycare orientation today, which was fine. They seem really genuine up there, which is nice, and of course I couldn’t turn off my snark-o-meter, so when the director pointed out the lockbox for payments, I just freakin’ HAD to say "oh, rolled quarters won’t fit in there, will they?" Luckily, she laughed.  And to the "if you’re later than 5:30 rules," I responded "If I’m later than 5:30, I’m under an anvil somewhere and you need to call my husband and tell him he’s a single father." They agreed not to charge him extra if I’m crushed to death, so that’s good.

ANYWAY. So, there’s a job. I KNOW, I KNOW, I’m always saying "so, there’s a job" but SERIOUSLY. THERE’S A JOB.  It’s not at the university, it’s at the library, downtown. You know, where this whole crazy ride to M. Ed in IT-ville started, lo, those many years ago, as an Americorps volunteer. And anyone who read during the Americorps years knows how much I hated *that,* RIGHT?? (Err, I pretty much was heartbroken when the government didn’t fund my project again, and count my Americorps experience as one of the most valuable I’ve ever had in my life, and as the experience that set the rudder for the rest of my education and career. And I *LOVE* the library.)

This job is almost freaking perfect. Almost. See, I don’t have an MLS…. but I do have an M. Ed. (Um, almost.) AND, this job was basically created when Americorps got kicked out of the office under the stairs, because they found that technology instruction was really valuable. This, also, was my Americorps supervisor’s job, and she didn’t even have an M-anything, she had a BS in education, and left as she married a guy down on the coast and sold her house and works there. That was a while ago, so I don’t know who’s been doing it since she left, but that is totally her job.

When it was her job, her evening was Wednesday, which if it’s still that way, or could be made that way — that I could still do storytime with Ingrid. (!!!) If I got this job, we could probably afford the local daycare when it opened up,  because driving to the campus daycare, twice a day, back and forth, would cost the same in gas, I’m thinking. (Plus add about an hour+ of just DRIVING to the day… urgh.)

I emailed Molly, who used to have this job, to see if it would be wrong to apply, despite my lack of MLS.  I mean, READ THAT DESCRIPTION. What do you think?

I CAN DO THIS!

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Even knowing that I have A Plan to finish my degree, and not yet BEING finished, I still feel like a weight has shifted.  In fact, as part of the "this is fated" childcare situation, my advisor emailed me on Friday to check in. I responded, explained the "I’m so not done, but now I have a PLAN!" situation, and she responded to ME to say that I am not the only one in This Situation (her caps) but that I seem "poised to finish ahead of anyone else…" Damn, I’m freaking out and none of my practcium-mates are as far as me?!? And they don’t even have BABIES!!! So, I feel really good about that.

I’ve also been working to cook more Real Food, instead of bag dinners and the ol’ standbys, so I made a menu for the week. A MENU! And I went grocery shopping while Dave took ingrid to MILs for a visit, which is awesome IN AND OF ITSELF, as it was their first time flying solo and everyone did well. Anyway. I made a plan! for the WEEK! And bought three types of meat that I’d never tried before. Tilapia (which we ate tonight — yum! We like!) pork tenderloin, and kielbasa. I know. I’m so pathetic. Tomorrow is the pork tenderloin, the kielbasa is for a chicken and sausage crockpot stew for wednesday.

When I got home, Dave had to race to Tom’s to shoot, so Ingrid and I made cookies. Baking with my mom is one of my most favorite memories, and Ingrid sat in the highchair while I read her the ingredients and explained all the steps. She blew raspberries at me, mostly, or cooed and ‘talked’ to me while I mixed, but it was just, awesome. I’m so glad we have the peninsular countertop, and that Ingrid CAN be part of the action, already. And when she’s big enough to stand on a chair, she can do that, too, without worry of bumping her head on a cupboard or falling into terrible danger or whatever while we cook. (Also, Ijust saw photos of Miss O cooking with her mama, and was so excited to realize that Ingrid at the counter is really not as far off as I first thought!)

Anyway. Today? I felt like I CAN DO THIS. I will finish my degree. I willbake cookies with my daughter. I CAN DO THIS.