Sanctimonious Cow

I just got lectured about how hard it is on children to only be in daycare one day a week by some yuppie daycare cow. Yes, because stowing my child in their baby warehouse five days a week like some business-hour orphan is so much nicer for him, I am sure.

And I suppose the massive cost of Monday-Friday daycare has nothing to do with their concerns over my child's one-day-a-week arrangements. I am sure.

Gah!

Well, that Stung

You know what's great? When you ask someone for a recommendation letter and they get back to you saying they'd be happy to, but warning you what a long shot it is.

Thanks, I really needed that shot in the arm! Good work, there.

Why bother? There are like 6 positions in the whole world, and a thousand PhDs, with about 20 hotshots and the rest of us are just sessional fodder.

Whatever. I'm sticking to community college want ads from now on.

Sometimes it's just best to know your level, I guess.

***

ETA: On the bright side, though, her honesty just cut something off my to-do list this term, so that is certainly a plus.

The Life of an Article

This is the true and very frustrating story of a recent article that has been hanging over me for basically ever.

• April 2006: I write a paper for a graduate class that I really like. I file it away for future publication.
• April 2009: I pull out this paper, and dust it off for publication. I send it to a quarterly mag I know in the field. They say they love it, and will get back to me with edits.
• January 2010: I email again to inquire as to what is happening with that article. They respond - so sorry, it got missed in the process, etc etc... We'll get on it.
• April 2010: I receive and do a series of edits. Am told it is done, and to please send suggested illustrations, which I do.
• May 2010: On my birthday, the week of the biggest event of my career (requiring a lot of preparation), I get an urgent email - Please do this huge gob of edits for us, and please send illustrations, as we need to run this article this week. I do the edits (ON MY BIRTHDAY), and re-send illustrations.
• June 2010: Am told the article was bumped from that issue, due to some mid-east crisis, and it will run in the fall issue.
• September 2010: Get email from a different editor, and am asked to do whole new set of edits, which I do. Am also asked to send illustrations suggestions, which I re-send. Am told again that the article is fine, and will run in November issue.
• October 2010: Get an email (at 8pm Saturday night) from yet another editor, and am asked to do a whole new round of edits - largely putting back in the stuff that ED1 and ED2 gutted out of the thing in the more than a year and a half these people have had it. Am asked to do these by Monday, as they are running it the following week.

Well, I did the edits and sent them in, so now I guess it *may* run. I emailed and asked if they need me to re-send the illustrations, as I assume they will. I mean, why not make it four times I have been asked, right?

ARGH.

So Very Screwed

The money that I was expecting to finally come in today (after not coming last month) now will not likely come until November 20, at the latest. Now I do not have money for the rent, or bills, let alone the back fees I owe the university for which they are holding my degree ransom. Never even mind about the stupid grad gown fee, as that is not even on my radar screen any more.

I am going down in flames.

icky sticky

Just got back in from outside - our morning trip to the park was scuttled by nasty weather. At 9 or 10, it was already in the 30s with the humidex. ugh.

Why. Won't. Summer. Just. Die?

computer error

RAWR!

Broken Make This Bed

OK, my frigging bed broke.

Luckily, my dad taught me how to make rope beds as a kid, so I was able to jerry rig something up using the frame.

But this is officially the worst week on record.

I am so very fucked. All this summer, I have been trying to survive until summer was over, in the hopes that I would have work in the fall. Now, to find out the finish line has been whipped away and moved four months back... How the hell am I supposed to survive?

I've lived on a hope and a prayer for months now, not having had a permanent job since December 2009 (!), and now it turns out finishing the degree was for nothing. I'm no better off, except now I am set adrift and left for dead.

Drowning, here. I'm drowning.

Imma Barf Now

Memorial Day - to me, one of the most significant weekends in my life, since my son was conceived on or about Memorial Day weekend in 2007 (sorry for TMI, but I feel it's a powerful anniversary to keep in mind).

BUT - the little gems around the net about how Americans should feel this day keenly this year for the sake of all those HEROES OVER THERE FIGHTING AND DYING FOR *OUR FREEDOM* makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

Sorry to be political, but really? Freedom in North America depends on this war, does it? Honestly?

Since when did illegal actions fought over misinformation, grudges and the free access to pipelines constitute *OUR FREEDOM*?

Oh, right - our freedom to drive SUVs.

OK, carry on - enjoy the fact that another Iraqi baby was likely just melted to death by spent uranium in the time it took me to type this post, and have a great Memorial Day weekend.

sigh.

$90

Goodbye, $90.

You could have been food.

Or a paid bill.

Instead, you will be four copies of a crappy dissertation I never should have even started, and that will be good for absolutely nothing.

sigh.

Sorry, $90. I would have loved you, but, instead, I must sacrifice you.

Who the hell requires paper copies of anything any more, anyway?

Oh, balls.

nuts

I am going absolutely crazy. It's been about 30 hours since I submitted my changed draft, and still no word from the advisor - not even an acknowledgement that she received the thing. What do I do in this situation, do you think? Nothing, I am afraid. Just wait some more.

But the thing is, if she waits until tomorrow sometime to tell me I have to re-do a bunch of stuff, there will be no free printing, and the sad fact is I have no money for printing unless I go without groceries until the 20th of June. I don't think that's much of an option.

Or, even worse, she might tell me to do a complete over-haul, and there's just no way I can swing a whole term's tuition. If I can't afford a $90 print job, I surely can't afford a couple grand in school fees.

She knows all this, so it would do no good to say it again. One rule of Pre-Zombieland: Never, ever trust anyone else to go out of their way to save you money, no matter how much you are hurting. You can ask - just don't expect.

So, I wait. And every email that comes in makes my heart race and then deflate when I find it isn't her. WTF?

MY hamster wheel is getting really squeaky here.

Holy Hannah!

Well, I am pretty near through that list, if you can believe it. I want to be done the essentials today or tomorrow so I can do the typographical/proofing edits before I have to send it to my advisor.

BUT - here's my annoyance, so pardon me if I vent... I ask my advisor for clarification for a point from the carefully negotiated list of things to do, so she directs me to the member of examination committee who suggested that one, so I email that member, who then gives me SIX HUNDRED other things, saying, "Oh and you could do this or that, while you're at it..." WTF?

So, I am waiting for confirmation from my advisor that I am only obligated to do that official list, and not chase down every whim any of these [s]uckers come up with from their comfy, well-paid positions.

What is so hard to understand, folks? I get this done before Monday, I don't have to pay $3,000 and actually get to officially finish my program. I take longer than Monday, and I just don't finish because I AM BROKE. Where's the issue here, folks? Has it really been that long since you paid tuition?

Luckily, my advisor seems to understand, but her "don't bother me until it's done" thing is getting old.

ARGH.

Anyway, the TLDR version is that I am nearly done edits, if I can convince these guys not to start adding crap whenever they come up with a sudden brainwave.

sigh.

&%^*!$@#^#&!!!!!

ARGH!

My student ID/bus pass is YET AGAIN missing. The tot got a hold of my wallet, and I guess it was in there. Now it is missing YET AGAIN.

Another $20 blown on missing ID - plus, the price of the bus to get to campus in the first place, and I have to replace the thing pronto before I finish the degree and/or they ban me for non-payment. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that I can't renew my library books until I find it.

ARGH!

So... pissed... off.

ETA: Found it. Bugger had it well hidden, but this time mommy wins. (Jeesh - am I going to have to turn into one of those special lanyard kids? Maybe.)

The Price of Books

Sorry, but let me have a "when I was a kid" moment, here. I remember when I could pick up a new book and a snack for well under $10.

I mean, jeepers - $35 for a book? Really? That is 5% of my rent!

For a book.

True, it's a trendy hardcover, and not the pulp novels I used to buy, but even those are creeping into the double digits, slowly but surely. But, even then, I should not consider $20 a "good price." It's a book, for the love of Mike.

I do have the option of buying it in phantom electronic data bits form for around $17. Because, you know, I love to pay double-digits for 1s and 0s.

Shouldn't we be more upset about this, really? Or do we, as a culture, no longer riot when the price of bread (or books - both essentials) go too high for the masses to afford? Are we really ok with education, enlightenment and perspective belonging solely to the elite?

I suppose, one could say that only the elite want to read now. I think this is bunk, though - if the non-elite no longer want to read, the fact that they can't do so and still buy groceries might have something to do with it.

Is it a wonder people no longer read? I am not sure I can afford to do so any more.

And, if Igon was right and print is essentially dead, then lord have mercy on our pathetic souls if we as a culture (and a voting populace) are left to make do with Spike TV and Fox News.com.

Venice may finally be sinking, folks.

/end self-important, pretense-filled rant that really stems from the sour grapes of not being able to afford a book I want. Translation: wah-wah-wah.

On Second Thought...

I refuse to concede defeat to such a raging douchebag.

He can cram it with walnuts.

SCOWL

Every Email Brings New Pain

ARRRGGHH! Sent the "final" draft of chapter 1 off last night, only to receive MORE notes from my advisor this morning on yet another scholar I should look into.

Do these people not realize I am trying to finish this damn thing, something that will not happen if they do not stop making suggestions!?!?!?!?! ARGH!

OK. Back to work...

ETA: Figured out emergency edits here - reduce the three paragraphs on the major Jewish streams' attitudes towards intermarriage and add a paragraph on the waining influence of the Jewish denominations on Jewish Americans. Hopefully, this will be a half hour/45 minute task.

But, I swear, further emergency edits at this stage, and some advisor is going to get such a... a... frowning at my monitor while I thank her and do what she says. But, man, what a SCOWL I will have on my face. That'll show her. GRRR.

Savaged

My third reader is a brutal son of a bitch. "Is this your attempt at being clever?" he snipes snidely in the comments. He clearly doesn't think this work is worth a PhD, as if that was some precious thing that needed to be guarded by his asshole version of a Vestal Virgin.

His position is that I don't know what I'm talking about, and that I execute it all poorly. He is rude, nasty and smug. And just plain mean.

All of this while, of course, making a slew of comments he could have made back in December. But, no, he chose to wait until two weeks before the thing is due, after the rest of the committee has read and improved it all along. He is late to the party and wants to make sure he gets to throw his weight around, I guess.

I HATE HIM... SO MUCH.

Losing My Brain

I have student loan forms to get in today (to keep me from having to make $800 payments every month while still in school - I sent these in only to get the "missing some information" letter), a stupid workplace safety certificate to get the paper work in for which I thought was taken care of (mandatory to save my job), bills suddenly due (didn't expect that today, and have not enough dough to really cover this - paying credit cards with credit cards now), 50 papers to mark (with some reading to do before I can do this), teaching apps due on Monday, a public lecture to finish by Wednesday (upon which my degree's completion depends), a NEW draft of my introduction to be done (this from the third reader who has given me no feedback the last three months who suddenly contacted me today with this bright news) - just two weeks before I have to submit the completed dissertation to enable me to defend and graduate, an article to submit for publication this upcoming week, a rough draft to edit for my tutoring student, and RA work that must be done ASAP.

OK... Not... to... panic...

I want to smoke from every orifice I posses.

Calm Blue Ocean

Harassed at every corner, by aggravating students and bill collectors and student loan paper work and dissertation crap, along with that stupid poison control certification thingy through campus which is pretty damn stupid for someone who never uses chemicals in her work, the intrepid student/mom sallies forth into the world to try to sort her life out. If, that is, she can get away from the overdue vital email exchange with one of her readers that seems to be suddenly crucial to her submission deadline...

F********************************CK!