Category: life

a metaphorical filled pause (and a cute baby)

Ok, so I don’t have time to write tonight. I have lots of work to do, and am seriously sleep-deprived to boot. So I’m using this post to signal an expected delay. Think of it as an um.

But to distract you from my lack of writing, I feel compelled to show off this picture of Phoebe that I took at my sister‘s house, and that John cleaned up for me:

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Also, please note that Phoebe is wearing a hat. I tell you this as an excuse to share with you that Phoebe can now say [hætʰ]. And I finally posted a bit to the Phoebe Blog about her latest verbal accompishments. Ah, the perils she’ll face of having a geeky linguist for a mother. (I’ve already been chasing her around with a microphone. But she tends to clam up when I try to interview her. I may have to resort to bugging her crib. Catch every word she says to her dolly and stuffed puppy dog.)

back to the rat race

We got back home late, late Wednesday night (or early, early Thursday morning). I had an amazingly wonderful time on my trip, and felt totally decompressed.

Of course, the problem with decompression is the shock of re-entry.

I’m compressed again.

Compression happened pretty quickly. I was hit, knocked down, and run over several times by the realization that I’d gotten no work done at all for over a week. (I managed to read 2 pages of a book I need to read. Does that count?)

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Once again, I’m faced with loads of deadlines. Reading for my program requirements. Reading for class. An assignment for class. Stuff for my job. And not a whole lot of time. Rats.

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By the way, today marks fourth months of this here blog. And I have a whole bunch of things I meant to write about that I haven’t gotten around to. For example, I have yet to write an “about” page. About me, about this blog, about the term tokens, about about. Maybe I’ll get around to this in the next month or so.
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This post also marks my 100th post. Of course, I only wrote 99 of them. The first one was the auto-generated one I got when I signed up for a WordPress blog. And it got so many insightful comments, from a variety of fascinating personages, that I decided to keep it.

midterm mayhem

I have a midterm tomorrow. Which just feels so incredibly wrong.

But aside from that, it means I absolutely should be spending my day (or whatever available moments I have during the day) studying, reviewing my notes, and pondering the meanings of various tidbits of sociolinguistics terminology. And it means I absolutely should not be sitting here at my laptop goofing off. Because that would be wrong.

Here are some things I absolutely should not be writing today:

  • a school-related list of movies
  • my personal adventures yesterday, and our first post-Phoebe “party”
  • a description of the state of our home post-party (is there such a thing as post-party depression?)
  • a discussion of the unexpected spike in my blog hits during a couple of hours yesterday
  • a treatise on the comparative merits of ducks in various types of dishwashers
  • an in-depth corpus-based analyis of squid discourse
  • an advice column about the etiquette of exchanging bananas
  • anything to do with pants
  • a list of things that I should not be writing about

    • Here’s some of what I should be writing about:

  • the nitty gritty of calling a language variety a dialect or language (you say it’s a language, I say it’s a dialect, let’s call the whole thing off)
  • the distinctions among a pidgin, a creole, a koiné, and contact jargons (and not the distinctions among pigeons, crayolas, coins and contact lenses)
  • Acrolects, Mesolects and Basolects (oh, my!)
  • the monogenesis theory, the polygenesis theory and the bioprogram hypothesis (which sound straight out of scifi, but really aren’t)
  • dialect continua, diglossia, decreolization and relexification (which sound almost sexy, but probably aren’t)
  • killer languages

    • different

    Phoebe turns one tomorrow. Leading me to reflect a lot on the past year. I’ve been asked if having Phoebe has changed my life a lot. The answer, after I stop laughing hysterically, is more than I could have imagined. But while I’d expected my life to be different, I hadn’t realized how much I would be different.

    I always knew I wanted kids at some point. (Not many kids. One or two.) But I always thought of myself interacting with older kids. The kind that can walk and talk and feed themselves. Read books. Go to school. Have conversations about reading books and going to school.

    I was pretty indifferent to babies and small children. Actually, I had a slight aversion. I’d jokingly, or not entirely jokingly, call them small things. Smelly things. Noisy things. And all these things are true. Babies are small and at times smelly and at times noisy. This has not changed. What’s changed now is how I react to these issues.

    I used to work in a bookstore, and spent some time as children’s department manager. Not for love of children, exactly, but for love of children’s books. The kids themselves were part of the scenery. Almost a necessary…well if not a necessary evil exactly…a necessary hazard. I liked (some of) the older kids well enough, and enjoyed doing craft and reading activities with them. But babies? Toddlers? Well, quite honestly I learned to tune them out. I could actually pretty much ignore the the squeals, cries and other miscellaneous noise emissions from the smallest of bookstore customers. I once had an experience where I became aware of this power to turn out the sound of babies crying. I was on a long flight, and shortly after landing, some parents travelling with a small baby in the row behind me more or less apologized for all the crying during the flight. Amazingly, I hadn’t even particularly noticed.

    But lately, I’ve developed heightened baby awareness. And I’m not annoyed by them at all. In fact, when I was on the train recently, a young baby around Phoebe’s age was making fairly loud babbling and howling noises. Not crying, but making loud happy noises. And I…enjoyed it. I felt warm and fuzzy. Me, who once would have tuned it out with some annoyance, or even changed seats to get more quiet.

    And this isn’t the only way I’ve changed. I’ve developed a new vulnerability. I’ve been devastated for weeks about news stories involving the deaths of young babies, and lost sleep over stories where a parent of a young child died. It’s even been when such stories were from several years ago. Don’t get me wrong. I was never exactly insensitive to such events, such stories. But they never used to make me feel destroyed. And my new sensitivity extends to fiction, too. I got choked up watching “The Incredibles”, for god’s sake, when I saw it a few weeks ago. An animated action movie. And I’d seen the movie before with no such effect. But in many ways I was a different person then.

    So, here I am. One year later. Almost one year ago today, the population of our household changed. We added one small new person. And small as she is, the difference she’s made is immeasurable.

    brand new Phoebe almost 1year.jpg
    Phoebe Lenore, 1 hour old (left) and almost 1 year later (right).

    home magazine feature

    Phoebe‘s turning one this week, and to mark the occasion, we’ll be having some people over this weekend. Which is very exciting. We used to have parties about twice a year. But due to some various new changes to our household and leisure activities, it’s been quite some time since our last fête. Anyhow, since we’ll be having people over soon, this means we should probably get out the rakes and shovels, and try to find the living room.

    Which reminds me. We recently had an interview with American Hovel Magazine, the magazine dedicated to lowering acceptable neatness standards in the home. I’m proud to say that they’ll be featuring our home in the upcoming April, 2007 edition. I’m sure you’ll all be running out to the newstands to pick up your copy (unless you already have a subscription). But since you must be impatient, I thought I’d share with you some of the highlights from the interview.

    Highlights from our American Hovel Magazine interview

    Alejna: Welcome! Please come in. [Ushers interviewer in through tunnel from front door.] Please have a seat. If memory serves, I think the couch is over here. [Dislodges items from the top of what appears to be a large pile of books, electronics and toys.] Yes! I thought so! Please, have a seat.

    American Hovel Magazine: Thank you. [Sits down, accompanied by sound of cat yowling.]

    Alejna: Oops! That was a surprise! We don’t even have a cat. [Pulls cat out from sofa cushions.] Hey, little guy! Did you chase the squirrels in here? [Cat jumps away to disappear under a nearby pile.] Sorry about that.

    American Hovel Magazine: Don’t worry about it. The last house I was in, there were raccoons in the sofa. Well, let’s get to the interview. First, let me tell you how impressed I am with your home. It’s rare that we see conditions like this that don’t involve natural disasters. Are you sure you didn’t have a bit of help from a tornado? You can tell me off the record.

    Alejna: [laughs.] No, no tornado. Though we did have a bit of help. [Sits down on a big pile of clothing.]

    John: [muffled grunting] Hey! [The pile Alejna is sitting on shifts. John emerges, standing up and brushing a few squirrels off his shirt.]

    Alejna: [standing] There you are! [kisses John on cheek.] I was afraid you’d miss the interview.

    American Hovel Magazine: It’s good to have you both here. Let’s get on with the questions. Tell me…

    Alejna: Oh, wait, you haven’t met Phoebe. I think she’s around here somewhere.

    [A small face with chubby cheeks and big blue eyes emerges from an otherwise empty toy box, and Phoebe crawls across a mound of plush toys.]

    Phoebe: mama dada yaya.

    American Hovel Magazine: Ah, yes. This must the help you mentioned. Tell me, how long have you…

    [ring, ring…the muffled sound of a phone ringing is heard.]

    Alejna: Excuse me a moment. John, could you find the phone? I think it’s on the kitchen counter. [John deftly pulls out a phone from beneath a tower of credit card offers, catalogs, supermarket flyers and handouts on compuational linguistics, but a passing squirrel causes the tower to topple, temporarily burying Alejna.]

    Alejna: [emerging from the mountain papers, several minutes later.] Okay, where were we?

    American Hovel Magazine: I was just about to ask you some questions. I’m sure our readers would absolutely love to learn about how you…

    Phoebe: Waaah. Dipe. Waaah.

    Alejna, John: We’ll just be a moment. Please, help yourself to some snacks in the meantime. There should be plate of donuts under that laptop. We hope you don’t mind the squirrels.

    American Hovel Magazine: Um…thank you.

    [Alejna, John and Phoebe return several minutes later]

    Alejna: Sorry that took so long. We had a bit of a laundry landslide. But the good news is we found that we have another room that we’d forgotten about.

    American Hovel Magazine: Ah, how wonderful for you. I’ve just been dying to ask you about…

    [ding, dong…]

    Alejna: Excuse me just a moment…

    wearing my late-night cranky pants

    We’re down in New York again, to visit John’s parents. John’s father has been in and out of the hospital since July, when he (re)broke his hip. So we’ve been coming down here to visit quite often. (Actually, this summer, we estimate that we spent more time here than at home.) I’m glad that we are able to come down here pretty easily, as it’s only a 3 and half hour drive for us. And it’s so important to be with family, especially in difficult times.

    Anyhow, John’s father is back in the hospital again, and here we are. To offer help and support. My main job is to offer Phoebe, who offers much cuteness and huggage. Never underestimate the power of distraction.

    But, while I’m glad we can be here, and even pushed for us to make this trip down this week, I also (selfishly) am going batty. Because I have even less time to myself than I have at home. I don’t know why I expect to get things done on these trips. I had in mind all sorts of work I’d get done, and packed accordingly. Book to read for my class. Stationery for writing the last of my seriously overdue thank you notes. Soundfiles on my laptop for annotation. Microphone to do some recordings for work. Articles to read for work. But the days slip away with socializing with John’s mother, visiting the hospital, and caring for Phoebe, who is going through a tough teething period. The most I’ve gotten done of my work was to start the reading for my class, and then get distracted…

    And once again, here it is really freakin’ late at night. And rather than sleeping or getting to any of the work I should be doing, I sit here with my laptop writing about the work I should be doing and the sleep I should be getting.

    behind

    The passage of time seems to be a recurring theme in my life these days. Or perhaps a running theme. I always seem to be running late, or otherwise running behind schedule. (At the same time, I do very little actual running. Since I’m mostly sitting on my behind.) (Sorry, I can’t resist a pun. It’s a sickness.)

    So here I am. Doing my reading for my sociolinguistics class. Which is not until Tuesday. It’s Friday night. So that means I’m way ahead of the game, right? Well, I should be. I mean, I’m reading the right chapter for this week. But here’s the deal. I’m reading from an old edition of the textbook. So far, it hasn’t been much of an issue. But now we’re reading the chapter on Language Planning. And it’s a little bizarre to be reading about language policies in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia “today”. So you see, even though I’m a couple of days ahead, I’m still more than a decade behind. This edition came out in 1992.

    15 years ago.

    This has lead me to reflect upon a number of things.

    As I mentioned before, the class I’m taking is mostly full of undergrads. Probably mostly around 20 years old. At that time my edition of the textbook came out, I was 20 years old, and an undergrad. At that time most of the other students in this class would have been in kindergarden. In 1992, they would have been reading, what, Dr. Seuss? Books in the “I Can Read” series? The Berenstein Bears?

    And what seems particularly striking to me, as I read this outdated chapter, is that these folks probably have no firsthand memories of the existence of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. And they grew up without knowing the Cold War.

    Anyhow, I don’t have much time to write more about this now. The reflections I’ve had about growing up in the Cold War era. About the impact of the Cold War on U.S. culture and pop culture. But at some point I may write more…and maybe even make a list.

    Ok. Back to my reading. And I wonder why I’m running behind?

    getting over V.D.

    blahblah.jpgI have reasonably fond memories of Valentine’s Day from my elementary school days. Craft projects with doilies. Decorating pink and red construction paper hearts. Exchanging enormous quantities of little cutesie valentine cards with all the other kids in class. Eating little candy hearts.

    I don’t remember when our relationship went sour, mine and Valentine’s Day. I don’t think we had a fight. And Valentine’s Day didn’t exactly run out on me. I think it’s more that we just grew apart as I got older.

    Elementary school days passed into junior high days, and Valentine’s Day stopped bringing me those special treats. No more craft projects or bags full of valentines. The little candy hearts lost their magic.

    Those were awkward times.

    Then came high school, and suddenly Valentine’s Day was all about the pressure. All Valentine’s Day pretended to care about was romance. And while Valentine’s Day was off having romantic interludes with so many other girls in my school, I was left feeling lonely. Rejected. I wasn’t getting the cards and flowers, or the heart-shaped boxes of candy. It was hard to believe that we’d ever had that connection, Valentine’s Day and me.

    Perhaps it was then that bitterness set in. Followed by jaded cynicism. I knew that Valentine’s Day was shallow, all about greeting card sentimentality. Valentine’s Day pretended to care, to be about love. But really, it was all just for show. I knew Valentine’s Day was full of crap.

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    Little candy hearts courtesy of ACME heart maker.

    This post is being submitted to the //engtech monthly contest, under the topic “why I hate Valentine’s Day.”