A Clean House

Some days, I think I should rename this blog to "I Understand my Mother Now". How she managed to keep us un-buried from all our assorted toys, clothes, papers, and other assorted stuff with 8 entropy generating factories (7 children and one Father... love you Dad, but you know it's true) is honestly amazing to me. I mean, we were slobs. Every one of us. And there were SEVEN children. I have one. ONE. He barely walks, and we keep him mostly confined to two rooms in the apartment. And yet... the mess... it builds...

We managed to keep it from looking like this, but how Mom did is a wonder...

This weekend, Husband and I significantly rearranged the apartment, swapping our bed for the futon. Imp seems to sleep so much better in his own room, and we were getting serious old-person-aches from sleeping on the futon mattress, so we decided that as odd as a queen bed in the living room might look to outsiders, it was well worth the weirdness to have a comfortable night's sleep. Of course, moving such large pieces of furniture means you find all sorts of nasties that have been hiding -- as I commented to Husband about one of the dust bunnies "I didn't know we had another cat."

They were everywhere...

Imp was out with Aunt Nanny while we rearranged and cleaned, and we managed to get the place in some semblance of order, at least for the bedroom and the living room. But it was really only those two rooms. We have issues with the others. The kitchen, despite Husband's best efforts, always seems like it's struggling to empty all of it's cupboards onto the counters and table and cover them with food; the bathroom, despite my best efforts, is a long term refuge for soap scum; let's not even get into the dining room table or desk. Those two horizontal surfaces, strategically placed in the center of the apartment, are often chest high in mail, Amazon.com shipping boxes, pacifiers, socks, and whatever else finds it's way there (currently there is also a sewing machine, which I have manged to practice on, but not actually gotten to using for it's intended purpose). 

Kinda like that...

I used to not care. My bedroom as a child was typically one of the most disastrous. But somewhere in my mid-twenties, I developed a need to have clean space to work and live. Maybe it was because I started entertaining people. Maybe it was just that I finally got tired of wading through clothes on the floor to get out my bedroom door. Whatever it was, I really started liking having clean living space. When I moved in with my Husband, we managed to keep the place relatively clutter free, and frequently had people over. Now, I live in fear that a friend will stop by and want to use the bathroom. People have suggested splurging on a maid, but I don't really think most cleaning services deal with clutter, which is a good portion of my problem. My mother always said "a place for everything, and everything in it's place". I really do try to follow that mantra, but where did she ever find the time, especially once she started working again when I was in high school? Again, I only have ONE kid. How did she do it with SEVEN? 

I'm sure she longed for this kind of discipline.

So, Mom, I now understand one more thing about why you got so frustrated with us when we didn't clean our rooms. I am in awe of how the house managed to stay as clean as it did. I apologize for my part in the entropy. We have already started trying to train Imp that cleaning up his toys can be fun. Maybe, we can instill a love of a clean living space in him before he's in his 20s. I'm sure you tried, Mom. Entropy is not our friend. 

Dream of Stability

One of the most frustrating things about choosing a career in academia is the long wait to become settled. You start off with these ideas that getting to a stable, tenured position is perfectly reasonable and attainable. You push on through the seemingly endless trudge of graduate school, thinking you just have to get that PhD and then do a postdoc, and then you're there. Reality kicks in sometime near the end of graduate school, as you have seen people come into the lab on their second or third postdoc, or those who went into industry to a short time and then came back to academia, and you begin to realize that figuring out what you want to do, and getting a stable job doing it, is not so easy. Then, maybe your project doesn't work that well, or you get scooped, or you end up on a long detour to your eventual completion. Even those that work long hours at expense of any sort of life have their rough times. You find that even after your PhD, in your postdoc, that those rough times can add up.

Then you want to have a family. Everyone tells you that having kids in academia can be rough. There is really no good time. Some even suggest that you should wait until you have tenure to start family. You wonder if at that point you'll even be biologically able to have kids. So you make a choice, at some point, that you're "stable enough". You start that family after all. Then things get even more scary, because now you've added another life to your unstable situation. You just hope that at some point, things will settle out.

Husband and I are in our 30s. If you count postdocs as continuing education (they are not really "real" jobs), and you count from kindergarten on, we have been "students" for about 85% of our total life span. Over 25 years. We want a house. We want to be able to know where we're going to be in 5 or 10 years. We want to be able to set down roots and commit to a life in a place where we know Imp will grow and learn and call "home". We are tired of the fear of uncertainty.

Husband is on a fellowship that ends next summer. He is trying to figure out if his boss will pick him up on a different grant or if he should look for a job. My fellowship goes until the following February, and I'm pretty sure my boss will pick me up for a few months after, but we are looking at the possibility of having to live in two different places -- for maybe as long as a year. We're lucky that we have Aunt Nanny to help, but we have to make a decision about things by January. The fear that we once again may have to drop down to one salary, as we had to do when Husband was waiting for grant funds to be released when he first started his current job, is very present. 

So we keep on moving on, doing our best, hoping that Irish luck will once again win out, and things will work out in the end. We dream of the day when we will look back at this time with a sigh of relief and say "well, thank God we never have to go through that again". We fantasize about the simple joy of knowing where Imp will attend school in 4 years. Just to be settled, to be done with "training" seems like such a far off thing. Someday, I suppose, we'll get there. 

THAT look

Mercury had nothing on Imp yesterday. The boy woke up in a funky mood, vacillating between giggles and fusses -- and remained that way for most of the day. One of those "do what I want when I want or I'm going to make your life very very difficult" kind of moods. One of those "Momma can't want for you to take a nap so she can have a beer" kind of moods. Moods like that aren't so bad when we can just let Imp roam free, but we had to go to Home Depot and Costco yesterday. And while he wasn't so bad in the first store, by the time we got to the second (Costco) he was done.

The winged feet are coming soon...

Biggest issue with Imp in a mercurial mood during shopping -- shopping carts only come equipped with a simple belt to strap your child down. Imp is pretty good at wriggling out of three-point restraints, so two-points do nothing. At one point in the aisle at Costco, we suddenly found him hanging off the back of the cart seat, reaching for the contents of the cart, struggling to dive head first into the cart basket, while still being supposedly held in the seat by the worthless two-point strap. Determining that it might be less safe for him to be in the strap, we undid it and continued through the store, always with one of us holding him in the seat. He seemed happier that way -- not having a restraint seemed to make him want less to get out of it. And we were still holding him down -- he wasn't going anywhere.

Even as an infant, he resisted restraint...

But of course, going through a store with a wriggling child seems to bring out the advice giver in everyone. At one point as we stopped for a sample, the sample-lady commented "Oh, he really should be strapped in". I briefly tried to explain to her that it was actually safer for him this way (we were keeping a constant hand on him, after all), and she gave me THAT look -- you know the one that makes you feel like both a blithering idiot and a horrible mother? Yes, I realize that strapping a child in is safer -- but as my husband was apparently tempted to tell her -- the ******* straps on the Costco cart were doing nothing to actually restrain my child. Later on, as Imp rolled around in the seat in spite of my efforts to hold him still, and tried to chew on the back of it, we got another comment "Oh, he really shouldn't be chewing on that." "I know," I replied, "I'm trying to stop him". And then came THAT look again. What I really wanted to say to the man involved much more cursing. I had wiped off the cart in anticipation of the wayward chomp, and I was obviously trying to deal with a very active little boy. Did he really think I was so stupid that I thought my son chewing on a Costco cart was a GOOD thing?

Eventually I gave up on the cart and then just had to figure out how best to carry my son so he didn't continuously attempt to dive out of my arms. I tried putting him on my shoulders while holding his ankles, which he sometimes likes, but he kept alternating between attempting to remove my ears or chew on my face, so I resorted to holding him in a cross-body front facing hold something akin to some strange wrestling move. He seemed content for the most part -- and while I got some strange looks still, at least I knew I had my son somewhat under control. We were able to complete our shopping, and as soon as we got home, he had a bottle, went down for a nap, and I promptly cracked a beer and tried not to feel so frazzled.

Not quite like this -- but close...

While I try to be understanding with other parents, I'm sure there have been times when I've given THAT look too, but I really do usually try to accept that I don't know what that child or parent has been through, and unless they are outright ignoring their child, they are probably trying their best. Sometimes even the best children can have bad days -- we certainly do as adults. But when you're already dealing with an active, frustrated child, it's amazing how much more frustrating the situation gets when you keep getting unwarranted advice and obvious derision from outsiders. I give my parents a whole lot more credit now than I ever could have before -- there were SEVEN OF US for goodness sake.

Imp is only 11 months old. I'm sure I will get plenty more of THAT look as my inquisitive, active little boy grows. I don't think I'll ever not want to punch the person giving it, though.