Sorry that I don't have kids...

I've recently become quite the broken record.  I didn't mean for it to happen.

Usually it starts with a coworker or friend (or both??) asking me if I had a relaxing weekend.  These days, my response is some variation of the following:  "It was good, but really busy.  I had ____ to grade and ____ to prep, and the dog got me up early."

If the coworker/friend that I am talking with has kids, I *always* follow up with my No-Kids Disclaimer.

You don't know the NKD?  It goes something like this (and always veryveryfast):

I mean, I shouldn't complain 'cause it's not like I have kids so I can't imagine-how-you-do-it!!




I never really mean to use the NKD.  Why do I invoke it?

But it does make me wonder:  do people with kids have their own disclaimer running through their heads?  When you hear someone without kids complaining about not sleeping or being busy, do you thing gee, and you don't even have kids, you lazy nitwit?  

Chicken vs. eggs

I've been in a documentary state of mind.

Last week, I only lasted six minutes into the bad science of Food Matters.

I immediately followed that with Babies, a French film with no narration.  I couldn't stop watching the infants as they cooed, gurgled, and pooped for the next 79 minutes.

Seriously.


Is this a sign that my biological clock is getting wound up?

Kids vs. dogs (or kid owners vs. dog owners)

It occurred to me the other day that I have never seen a puppy sonogram posted as a facebook profile picture.

GMP recently wrote a post entitled, "Of Dogs and Kids and Judgement Abound."  It might be my favorite post ever.


I don't have kids.  I don't particularly plan to have kids.

I *do* have a dog.  I do refer to my dog as my child, largely to remind my kid-owning colleagues that yes, although I am sans children, I do not always need to be the one representing the department at evening or weekend college events.

So who are more annoying: people with dogs or people with kids?  Is it ever okay to consider your pet your child?

Most appropriate professorial accessory: pacifier or zit cream?

On one of my recent posts, Dr. McFabulous compared my facebook usage to that of an "exhibitionist teenager."

That got me thinking.

*Am* I like a teenager?    It's true that I have the occasional zits and emotional outbursts.

Come to think of it, so do some of my colleagues.  Perhaps professors are like teenagers!  Certainly some might argue that the seating arrangements at faculty meetings evoke that of a high school cafeteria.  We can be moody, detached, and--dare I say?-- hormonal.

Or perhaps faculty are more like babies, with their temper tantrums of very vocal demands?

Are your colleagues more similar to college seniors, those burned out darlings who have a penchant for not giving a shit and being very vocal about it?


So what do you think?  Are professors mature members of society?  Or are we more similar to our students than some would like to admit?

Things I Don't Think My Male Coworkers Have to Hear

Some of my coworkers insist that men and women are treated the same at my college.

Really?

'Cause I'm pretty sure my male coworkers have never had any of the following told to them / asked of them:


- I'm glad you don't have kids; you really have your work priorities in order.

- Breast feeding isn't that big of a deal.  You can do the...uh...pump thing in your office just fine.  (Said by a male coworker to a female coworker)

- X (a female) must be hormonal.

-  Why is X (a female) asking for a sabbatical?  Didn't she just get maternity leave a year ago?

- I don't know why X (a female) needs maternity leave.  When my wife had a baby, I was back to work the next week.  (huh??!)

- I can't believe X (a female) would bring her child to work this one time!

- I think X (a male) is AMAZING for bringing his child to work this one time!  What a lucky wife he has!

- Don't have kids until after tenure.  Of course, I legally can't tell you that.  Wink wink.

- Have kids soon before you get too old to carry them.

- Can you go talk to Undergrad (a female) about her boobs?  (Seriously)






Okay, please share.


Oh, and men: please share the things that female coworkers DARE to say to you, if you're feeling brave.

pets as children, part 2

Puppy is my child. Coworkers, deal with it.

Despite referring to Puppy (mostly in my head, mind you) as my kid, I promise to refrain from the following behavior:


- posting ultrasound / the-second-after-birth pictures of Puppy on facebook

- entertaining (read: horrifying) my coworkers with Puppy's successful house training stories....or accidents

- giving the hour-by-hour details of Puppy's twenty-four hour bug

- bringing sick Puppy in to work because Doggy Day Care won't take 'em until 1 day without a fever

- discussing every behavioral milestone of Puppy's




(no offense if you have done any of the above. I guess my dog just isn't "child" enough to me to blast facebook/work/the bus with it.)

pets as children

I've been watching a lots of Weeds lately. In one scene, Celia mocks a neighbor for calling their pets their children.

I used to be like Celia. (If you've seen Weeds, you know how funny that declaration is.)


But now.


Oh, now.


Now, I'm one of *those* people. One of those obnoxiously pretentious people who refer to their pets as their children. Who talk about their milestones with their friends.

But before you judge, consider this: my coworkers get to leave to take care of a sick child, do a day care pick in between classes, or bring a feverish rugrat to work. No one complains.

Do I get the same treatment as a child-less prof?

Of course not.

So for now, I will continue to talk about my child, Puppy.



What are the odds I can start complaining about not having PermaU-provided Doggy Day Care without anyone batting an eye?

Ovary test: FAIL

These is perhaps no greater test of motherly instincts than a Christmas church service packed with infants, middle schoolers, and children of every age in between. I gazed around the church during an especially uninspiring sermon, observing my fellow parishioners as they kindly smiled at a squirmy four month or pulled faces at a two year old.

That many kids in one place should have, at least according to many of my peers, caused at least *some* reaction from me.


Nothing. Not even a twitch of an ovary.


While my college roommate is pregnant with her fifth (FIFTH!!!) child and my unmarried colleagues curse their ticking biological clocks (can we please talk about something else at lunch?), I'm unconcerned. I'm not yet 30. Should I be feeling the urge to reproduce?

Holiday Awkwardness

As our holiday celebrations continue to expand each year, the potential for awkward moments expands exponentially with each added significant other, spouse, or kid. Family outsiders = people unfamiliar with our many, MANY uncomfortable family stories.


What's the most awkward holiday moment you've witnessed (or instigated)? Please, help us all feel better about our own WTF holiday moments.

Moving never sounded so good

My apartment complex is having a pool party right now, and someone decided that it would be a good idea to have a sound system.

With a microphone.

And turn it over to preteens.


For the last hour, I have been treated to (through the rather thick walls of my apartment building) "shout outs" to their BFFs. I have also been asked, rhetorically I think, "Wad up?" They each also find it necessary to perform sound checks every time the mic is passed off.


Need.

More.

Beer.

Scary TV

I've been on my couch, eating bon-bons, and watching TV for the last four hours. I know-- rough life.

I've been watching some episodes of Flip Your House. That is some scary shit. Watching the short cuts that these lowlives take is more frightening than most of the other reality offerings (even worse than Birth Control Central).

Oops, Survivor* finale is on, gotta run.






*Yes, I watch reality TV. I *DARE* you to tell me why I shouldn't.

A note to parents everywhere

If you are going to buy your kid a Nintendo DS / iPhone / weird techie game thing I've never seen before, then please buy them the matching headphones. I don't need to spend my bonus time at the airport (read: flight delayed 2.5 hours...and counting) listening to their game plink, boing, or clang.

Thank you.


(although with this delay, there should be no chance of my bags being delayed, right? For those of you keeping count at home, I was reunited with my bags 4 days, 23 hours, and 8 minutes after the baggage carousel stopped turning.)

"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." ~Robert Fulghum

Now you know I'm not one to criticize others' child-rearing skills (ha, ha), but I feel like the following warrants (at least a little) judgement:

At the laundromat last night, I watched (with the occasional eye roll) a woman play pinball through three loads of laundry all while her toddler ran about, dodging open dryer doors, bumping into strangers, and, my favorite, alternately smacking his hands on the floor and then licking them. Did I mention that he punctuated all of these activities with piercing shrieks?

None of this behavior warranted a glance from the (not-so)attentive mother (who admirably played on, even despite the very distracting plead from her seven-year-old, "Mommy, can I play?).

Not until the toddler ran into the single person bathroom and promptly fell into the toilet.

unfortunate urchins

I'm back from a bit of travel, including a conference at which I gave a talk. At the conference I saw something that I'd never witnessed at a conference before. I've attended, oh, somewhere in the ballpark of 18 regional and national conferences while I've been in graduate school, but I've never seen this:

Children at a conference.

Okay, so the reason I haven't encountered rugrats at science conferences previous could be because

1. People in my field don't have kids.
2. People in my field that have kids have supportive spouses.
3. People in my field that have kids have 100% reliable childcare.

Now one child I could understand. If a female was stuck with them, I would have felt sorry for her. But, double-standard applier as I am, I was mildly horrified that it was the father that brought the little tykes along. Yes, plural: two kids. To an 8 am session.

So if I was only mildly horrified by the morning munchkins, you can imagine my reaction when the numbers increased to a total of SIX kids by the end of the afternoon. We were in a largeish room with about 80 chairs for the 50-odd people in our session, but the noises of the kids-- slamming the water pitchers up and down, crumpling papers, chasing one another about, opening the door, shutting the door, opening the door-- was grating on the nerves.

Now perhaps I'm being insensitive. After all, isn't one of the challenges I am likely, as a soon-to-be female professor, to be faced with is finding reliable childcare?

Blogger, interrupted

My recent absence from the blogosphere is due to a wicked combo of graduation festivities and a much needed vacation abroad. I'll be back to the States next week.

Posts to look out for:

* Key observations of and reactions to all that is the PhD graduation

* Interactions with The Boss post-doctoring

* Thoughts on why I am pro-drugging children (note I did not say infants) on trans-Atlantic flights


Hope all is well with you! I look forward to catching up on your blogs once I'm back home to my steady internet, scattered sleep, and semi-crappy food!

But what about the fathers?

I've heard about this phenomenon (or whatever one might call it) before, but I've never witnessed it until today. What phenomenon am I referring to? The one of, when ticking off a successful female scientist's amazing qualities (in a rec letter, introduction, etc), the list often looks like this: Dr. Female performs groundbreaking research, publishes numerous papers, advises amazing students, teaches the best class ever, AND is a terrific mother. Yet male counterparts' lists of achievements never include mention of fatherhood.

So this all came about because I'm serving as a graduate student representative on a faculty awards committee. (While I'd like to think that this is because I have such a great departmental reputation, I suspect my name came up because The Boss owes the head of the department and/or dean of the college a favor.) I was reading through the nomination packets, which include 6-8 letters of support from other faculty members and current/former students. One of the five nominees is female. The first of her six letters mentioned that she accomplished so much in teaching and research and "was a terrific mother of two, to boot." That raised my eyebrows, but I continued on. Five out of the six remaining letters had some variation of the above!! Did any of the male nominees' (all of whom have children) letters mention their families? No.

Any thoughts on this? I'm sure others have posted about this topic before. I don't know what to make of it. Is it just a commentary on amazing women that balance lots of aspects of their lives, and this is surprising? Why are men being left out?

Have you witnessed this "phenomenon"? What are your thoughts? Are men ever granted the same kudos for raising kids in spite of a career? Is this because they are all slackers? (surely, not.....?)

let kids be kids!

So Supernanny is going on about how parents need to monitor their kids' (aged 11 and 15) usage of the internets.

I think the parents shouldn't be buying their 11-year-old spaghetti-strap tank tops, short skirts, and highlights.


Just sayin'.

Shhhh!

I'm the oldest of a large-ish family. My mom had kids in diapers for 8 years, one year off, and then another 2ish. (I'll blog later about being raised Catholic in the heart of the bible belt...) So obviously, she had very little kids for a number of years (actually, it wasn't until 1995 that we were all in school).

From a very early age, we learned how to sit still for an hour at a time. Church will do that for you. My parents would march us to the front of the church and plop us down in the very front pew. My mom claims now that our front-and-center status was to keep us kids involved in the mass, but I think she actually placed us there to ensure that the 450 eyes on us would peer pressure us into silence. We knew that we had to sit quietly for the duration of mass. (Once we got back into the car...well...that was another story)

So why is it that every time I actually go to church, I always end up getting poked in the back of the head by an overactive four year old, or distracted by a whiny six year old.

Don't think that I'm a psycho child-hating bitter woman. I fully understand that infants cry and toddlers fidgit. But please. There is a cry room for a reason! (For the uninitiated, the cry room is the room at the back of the church with a window to see in and a sound system piping in the priest's words.)

Of course, if any of you can explain to me why it is acceptable for three year olds and older to NOT know how to sit still, please feel free....and I will gladly eat my words (in addition to all the Christmas ham, cookies, and mashed potatoes currently contributing to my holiday gut).