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...

OK, so get this: In November, I write this silly vampire novel and one of my girl vampires – entirely without my permission – gets herself knocked up. In December, I start a short story in which one of the characters, you guessed it, gets herself knocked up (by an evil supernatural creature, no less). And let’s not even going to get into my strange fascination with the resident Mama Spider and her reproductive proclivities... In any case, a couple days after starting the short story, I spend a day home from work on the couch because I’m sick. And starving at the same time. And my period is late. Yeah, yeah, you’re very smart: got myself knocked up. Creepy, just plain creepy... No really, it’s eerie, I’m telling you. It’s like my subconscious knew all about it, while the rest of my brain was occupied cranking out NaNo-muck. And non-NaNo-muck, for that matter. The timing is really weird, too. I mean, we had always sorta planned on two and I didn’t really like the idea of Ms....

Alas! Jack the Spider Mama is no more. She departed our living room window during a violent storm in early November, washed away, I fear, by the pounding rain which was hitting that side of the house pretty much horizontally. She did not, however, leave us without performing one final miracle. Here is the story of her final days. While it never really gets cold this far south of the M-DL* (the natives will tell you it does, the rest of us know better), we do get the occasional heavy frost. I had been watching Jack closely over the previous few days, because nighttime temperatures were dropping into frost territory (even though it was still 80 and 90 during the day - no joke - but that’s another story), and I thought she might be on her way out. She seemed sluggish, lethargic and she had been hanging around her first miracle (the egg sack) and not rebuilding her web. I assumed the approaching cold and the fact that there weren’t so many bugs to eat anymore were responsible. As evidence ...

Wow. It’s over. I wrote ‘THE END’ in big capital letters at the bottom of page 169 today. Weird. I think it was both easier and harder than the novel I wrote in March. Easier because I didn’t feel like I was the only crazy idiot doing it. I had the forums. I knew I wasn’t the only one suffering the 25-30K Doldrums. I had people cheering me on when it took me ALL DAMN DAY to write the 700 most miserable words of my life – the 700 words between me and 50K. But it was harder in some ways, too. I actually felt pressured – which is ridiculous – to get to 50K by the 23rd - because that’s how long it took me in March. Stupid. I also felt guilty for being ahead of other people, which was weird. There was also a lot more going on this month: funerals, holidays and, oh yes, let’s not forget the fucking grant deadline that so very conveniently got moved to the middle of the month. I learned an awful lot, though. Here’s a few of the lessons I’m taking away this time: 1) Outlines are useless. Well...

Who knew? Who knew that plot ninjas could sneak up on you 5 days before NaNoWriMo starts and render your original, carefully planned story completely useless in less than 24 hours? Not me. That's who. See, I had the whole thing planned out: I wrote the original outline - in July , fershitsake - and very intentionally did not look at it until this week, because I knew that if I did, it would explode and I'd end up with 1,000 terribly interesting characters and 14 very complicated plot lines and the thing would never get written. But I thought I'd be safe taking a peek this week to re-familiarize myself with the characters and the story. Maybe work out a few plot kinks - what could happen in a week? A lot. That's what. Like 1,000 terribly interesting characters and 14 very complicated plot lines... OK, I'm exagerating, but I did go from 2 characters and 1 plot line to 4 characters and three plot lines (each of the two new characters has their own agenda). It's all...

I did it! I finally, finally did it – I reached ‘The End’. For three months now, I’ve been trying – and failing – to get there. No, I haven’t read the entire Oxford English Dictionary. No! I haven’t finally mastered the art of eating a five-pound cheeseburger in a single two-hour sitting. And, no, of course not! Why would I even want to finish the novel?? Sheesh! I’m talking about short stories. It wasn’t that I didn’t have ideas. I had lots and lots of nice ideas, but none of them was willing to stick to the diet and stay around 5,000 words. See, every one I’ve started since I started ‘trying’ to write a Short Story has turned into a Damn Novel and had to be abandoned when I realized that ‘The End’ was nowhere in sight. And then the vampire showed up. Followed by his girlfriend. And her psychopathic father. OK, yeah, so none of them had any intention of keeping to the program either. As usual, they each in their turn started telling me their entire life history, which I was – natura...

Ah, Fall! The season of seasons! Crisp, cool air; clear, jewel-blue skies; gold, ruby and fire-orange leaves on trees. Where are the hats?! Where are the mittens?! Why am I still wearing SHORTS?!?!?? Welcome to October. October, that is, South of the M-DL: It’s 85 frikkin’ degrees. It’s humid. I still have to use the gorram air-conditioning in the gorram car so I don’t arrive at work smelling like a gorram construction worker who’s been out in gorram sun all gorram day. FUCK. ME. That’s how I fucking feel about that. ‘Cuz, see, it’s exactly THIS that drives me fucking crazy about this place. It’s soft. It’s warm. ALL the fucking time. I CAN’T TAKE IT. Seriously – it gets down to 20 degrees and people Think They’re Going To Die. Shit, it gets down to 50 and they’re breakin’ out the frikkin’ parkas like the goddamn Arctic has Come To Town. It’s fuckin’ ridiculous. I mean, c’MON! When I lived in Wyoming, I once walked the mile to work when it was 27 below. As in, 27 frikkin’ degrees BELOW...

Small Miracle #1: Once again another grant deadline has passed and I have, despite all the odds against it, survived. This one was particularly heinous for a number of reasons. For one thing, one of us helper-types had the audacity to get married right smack dab in the middle of September (how dare she?!), which meant she wasn't there for the flurry of budget-prep and editing that preceeds Submission Day. It also meant that I worked twice as many hours as I actually get paid for for a couple of weeks. That part I don't mind all that much, since I get it back eventually, but for the moment I am Burnt Out. The second thing that made it bad was that NIH - in its infinite frikkin' wisdom - says that if a grant deadline falls on a holiday or weekend, you have until the following business day to postmark your submission. In this case, that meant everybody had an extra weekend to work on their proposal. In my case, it meant another weekend chained to my computer. Joy. Finally, we...

(WARNING: Contains graphic photos of arachnids in ....erm... positions.) I am terrified of spiders - terrified. They make me scream like a girl – which is OK in some ways and not entirely unexpected, since I am a girl. However, it’s not really the thing to do in front of the three-year-old. First of all, it seems to make the three-year-old scream too, and we get plenty of that already. Second of all, she really doesn’t need to be terrified of spiders. Logically, anyway. We are people. People are bigger than spiders. We can easily squish them. They are more scared of us that we are of them. (You know that line – your mother told you that one. I haven’t actually said it to my daughter yet, since I’m not convinced of it myself and I’m a terrible liar). In any case, I don't particularly want to pass this terror – or whatever bit of it isn't genetically programmed - on to the tyke, so I've been working on it. Working on it means that I try to tone the decibels down a notch or...

(WARNING: Contains every word in the book. Feel free to advise me of any I forgot.) People don’t cuss properly in The South. Especially women. Women in The South hardly seem to cuss at all, as a matter of fact, and most of them look at me funny when I do. Which is why I can’t cuss at the office (I work in a hospital, and they sorta frown on that anyway). The husband, on the other hand, gets to swear like a sailor all day. Which isn’t even remotely fair, since most of the guys he works with are pigs and they know some really good ones – in other words, I’m missing out. What it all boils down to is that I have no place to vent my potty-mouth - except here, I guess, which is why I’m just going to let it all out right now and hopefully get it over with. Yeah, so, on to other places I can’t cuss. Having cured myself of road rage (with music and NPR) I don’t cuss when I’m driving much anymore either. I mean, yeah, there’s the occasional jackass trucker who needs me to lay on the horn and ...

I don’t belong here. I don’t fit it. I don’t even WANT to fit it. I’m actually am starting to feel like I did in fucking high school. Because there are a lot of similarities between me in high school and me in exile in The South. High school was all about appearances – who had the best clothes, the best – and highest (hey, it was the 80’s) hair, the best car, the best boyfriend, on and on and fucking on. Ad. Fucking. Nauseum. Well, The South, is just like that. I can’t go to the fucking grocery store in sweat pants anymore, because no one else does and I get fucking stared at if I do. Most women here can’t go out of the house without make up on (thankfully, I’ll never cave to that one, too much fucking trouble). And they’re all so fucking polite – to my face – that it makes me ill. OK, it’s not all bad. We have family here (his, not mine). That’s nice because it means free daycare and the occasional child-free night to ourselves. But his parents are divorced and there are politics an...

I had no idea, of course. No one does. And no one can explain it to you beforehand. No one can warn you. I read a lot of things about becoming a mother before I became one – and there is just one passage that has stuck in my head as the “most true” thing I read, the closest approximation in words of what it’s like to become a mother. I don’t remember who wrote it, but it goes something like this: having a child is signing an agreement to allow your heart to walk around outside your body for the rest of your life. That about sums it up. But it still won’t prepare you. Nothing can – there is just a billion universes of difference between reading something like that, sniffling through the inevitable, empathetic tears and having your heart exit your body from between your legs and handed to you wrapped up in a towel. Having experienced all of the above it’s fairly inexplicable that I didn’t instantly fall in love with my baby like a lot of women say they do. And maybe they do, I’m not doub...