Bethanie's Brain

We’ll file this one under: Things that Make Me Go ‘Eh?’ So the university I work at has a baseball team. The baseball team has a field. The field has grass. I walk by it every day on my way to and from my cube. Now I’ve never liked baseball. I just don’t get it. Part of this has to do with the rules and a traumatic, elementary-school-gym-class experience with the rules. I got out running from first to second base, see, even though I made it to the base before the stupid ball did. Why? Because some schmuck caught the ball, which meant I wasn’t allowed to run to second base in the first place. No one – and by that I mean the frikkin’ Bruce-Jenner-look-alike gym teacher – bothered to explain this ahead of time. I suppose he assumed that everyone loved baseball and already knew this rule. And apparently, everyone did. Except me. Add to this that running is about the only school-sports thing I was ever good at – and suddenly I’m being told NOT to do it – and you’ve got one pissed o...

Sometimes. Like today. OK, so I've been bitching and moaning for months (basically since I got the thing) about this monstrosity of a printer that they made me buy for myself. It's a laser printer with a scanner, which means it takes up about 14 cubic feet of space in the already very limited cubic space of my cube. (Didja follow that??) I hate it. It's huge. It also beeps constantly to complain about every little ache and pain that it has. Lately, it's favorite ache is that it has no paper. Even when it's STUFFED FULL of frikkin' paper, it will beep every time I try to print something and tell me that it has no paper. Well, last week around about Wednesday, it started doing this. No matter how many times I pushed on the paper drawer and jiggled it the hell around and prayed and swore and cursed the bloody thing to hell and back, it just kept telling me it had no paper. I finally gave up and started using the communal printer up front by the receptionist...

I'm not sure why this is happening NOW, but I'm reverting to adolecence and the care-free days of my 20s. Perhaps it's the pregnancy... My belly button popped out last weekend and my first thought (after cleaning out all the gunk you otherwise don't even know is there) was: "Wow, I'd really like to pierce it." Pierce it. As in, stick something sharp and metallic through perfectly intact skin and wear it around as jewelery. Eh?? Wierd for me these days, to say the least, and that's not even the end of it. I also want another tattoo. And not a polite little tattoo like the one on my ankle, either. I want a fat green dragon coiling across my back, around my hips and lying in wait underneath my belly, kinda like this one (uh.... minus them knarly fingernails...) Eh?? I'm not opposed to body art or anything, it's just that I thought I got that all out of my system years and years ago. I mean, I have 11 or 12 holes in my ears and had my nose pie...

Check it out! Baby Surprise-Surprise turns out to be a Ms.!!

So dinner this evening was entitled “Assorted Things that Annoyed Me by Falling out of the Freezer”. We have a crappy, 10-year-old, needs-to-be-drop-kicked-from-a-high-window fridge that is missing some of its freezer shelves. Consequently, there are occasional frozen-food slides (somewhat akin to your land- or mudslide), which result in “interesting” dinners when the mood is right (i.e., I’m annoyed – or injured – by said slide). Like tonight. Tonight we had frozen corn-on-the cob, garlic bread, jalapeño poppers. And what we decided to call “Smeat”. Smeat’s official name, according to the cardboard box it came in, is: Bar-B-Q Flavored Boneless Pork GRILLIN’ RIBS [ sic ], which is announced in inch-and-a-half bright yellow letters. In smaller type – still bright yellow – beneath this auspicious title appears the following description: “rib shaped pork patties” and in even smaller type – no longer yellow, but an inconspicuous gray: “smoke flavor added”. The directions instruct ...

It's finally happening.The Porcelain Goddess has answered our pleas and Ms. Three-Years-Old is finally, finally parking her ass on the toilet and doing her business there. OK. I'm getting ahead of myself… well, ahead of her. She hasn’t made it all the way to the actual toilet yet. She’s still working on the plastic potty chair in her room. But all the same, I’m all kinds of happy about it. Because to this point it’s been nothing but World War frickin’ Three. Now the husband and I, we’re both over 30, so you would think we could outsmart a three year old.You would think. Naturally, it doesn’t work that way at all. We’ve tried everything. Everything. Threats, of course, get you nowhere, really fast. Bribery was no more successful. I even bought a huge glass canister and filled it with snack-sized packages of M&M’s. All she had to do to have one was pee on the potty. No luck. The husband told her he’d take her to Toys R Us and buy her anything she wanted. No luck. ...

What is it with men and their automatic assumption that what they do is way more important than anything that women do? Why, specifically, is it OK for the husband to assume that his job - which pays less than mine and has no benefits - takes priority over his child care responsibilities? Why is it OK for him to blow them off and automatically assume that it's OK for me to be late to my job to take care of it? I don't get it. Why the fuck is that OK?

I don't know what's wrong with me. I've been looking forward to the sequel to NaNoWriMo since I finished the silly vampire novel in November and now that March - the month set aside for editing the silly vampire novel - is here, I can't get motivated to even LOOK at it. I'm supposed to be shooting for 50 hours of editing and so far I've logged 15 minutes. I am so disappointed in myself. I mean, pregnancy or no pregnancy, I should have at least some gumption to work on this thing since I've been looking forward to it for so long. Shouldn't I? Granted, it can be hard to concentrate on anything when every time I sit still I get thumped by little Mr./Ms. Surprise-Surprise. And I do get tired easily, not to mention worn down by Ms.Three-Years-Old. And there are two grant deadlines this month and I have to mail my homework for the workshops I'm going to in Ohio on the 24th by tomorrow and there will be posters to edit and print for all the postdocs ...

I am not a big liker of rules, so I am embarrassed to admit that I have come to a place in my life where I respect and value The Rules. Not all the rules, of course, just the ones about commas and apostrophes and restrictive clauses. Granted, it took most of 35 years and I was dragged here kicking and screaming. Nevertheless, I am here. My first experience with The Rules was one I avoided completely: 4th grade. All summer between 3rd and 4th grade I dreaded getting stuck in Miss P’s class because she had a reputation for drilling students in The Rules. I had it on good authority, my best friend from across the street who had had her the year before, that you didn’t make it out of her 4th grade unless you memorized all the prepositions and could use ‘whom’ correctly. I got lucky and got Miss C, instead. (Sort of lucky – she terrorized me for not talking, but that’s another story.) So, I didn’t learn The Rules in 4th grade (we hatched chicken eggs in an incubator, instead). My nex...