New Schedules

It's Friday night. LG is in her room, asleep or not (I'm not checking). I need to work (read the novel I'm teaching next week, write an abstract for a conference with an upcoming deadline). I had a good day but one in which a minimal amount of work took place (yoga, acupuncture, a meeting, a departmental lecture, and groceries filled up most of the day). So here I am.

LG and I haven't yet had a full week of our new schedule, and my own daily calendar is becoming full of doctor's visits. I know this is a short term thing (IVF will be done no later than Oct 15) but I still don't like it. My work time is valuable. But the bottom line is, if I had to choose, my priority right now is family building. There's a lot of talk at Dr. Crazy's and Profgrrrl's and elsewhere (and if I wasn't an HTML idiot I'd link to their names; instead I refer you to my blogroll if you don't already travel there) about issues related to academic parents and the question, in particular, of whether academic parents are "shirkers." That's not a conversation I want to rehash or take up here, other than to say that when I say I'm not doing my work, I mean the work that I am really paid to do (45% of my work load, theoretically): WRITE. I do prepare for my classes and teach them (well, I might add), and the same goes for departmental meetings and activities. The only one who might be affected by my choice to prioritize family is ME, as I go up for tenure next year. Right now, with multiple book manuscripts at publishers looking for homes and a tenurable set of small pieces, that's a risk I'm prepared to take. But like I said, I'm not happy about it. I'd much rather spend the morning at the computer than having my ovaries examined.

There are some small graces in our new daily schedule (and some inevitable glitches). Right now I'll focus on the positive: that I get 30 minutes more in the morning (class prep, writing time), as I'm not LG's mode of transportation. I also learned a trick from a seasoned academic mom who shares our bus stop: bring something to read, in case the bus is late. And now, I'm going to have to turn to work for a few hours, turning the day in reverse. It's going to be a long weekend with Crabby Kid, but that's a subject for another time.