the floor is made of lava

toothpastefordinner.com

How Babies Are Made 10/30/08 is a blog post by Natalie Dee that has significantly influenced my life. Hopefully the link gets you there. If not, I believe I have provided enough information for you to find it.

How Babies Are Made has cured me of my "baby wanting" for the time being. This is good, because the idea of babies seems very appealing when compared with the drudgery of my graduate program-- however, the Hell written about in How Babies Are Made is significantly worse than grad school.

In other news, Tino has requested that I post some pics of the pups. Previously, I have refrained from posting any photos of my dogs because it could be incriminating evidence of my true identity. But now, I say: Bah! I am taking the risk.

The first photo is of Herman; I have titled it: The Floor Is Made of Lava, because he is walking from the chair to the couch as a kid would if they were playing the game.

The next photo is of Diego. He is our little Red Headed Step Child.

And finally, we have them both together on the couch in Together On The Couch.


Training Success: A Review, Days 1-5

The book says that we are supposed to do 2 training sessions a day of 20 repetitions of click and treat for 3 days. That didn't quite happen. I do think that my dogs get the idea of their current training sessions now, though. Here is a review of our progress:

Wed (day 1): 1 session PM
Thurs (day 2): 2 total sessions: AM and PM
Friday (3): 1 session AM
Saturday (4): 1 session AM
Sunday (5, today): 1 session AM

Today I actually have time to do more sessions with them but I am going to try to move on at this point. So far we have had 6 sessions which is the same number we would have had in 3 days of twice a day.

In Chicken Liver news, I have decided to trash the remaining livers. The livers have a grainy texture that fragments in my fingers as I try to feed them to Diego. On top of that they smell horrible. Chicken Livers have been the bane of my training existence.

I am also looking forward to moving on to the next training exercise because Diego has a problem of being over-zealous about food so that he scrapes my fingers with his teeth every time I try to put a treat in his mouth. I have cut up longer strips of centimeter cheese to help with this, but the box game that comes next will solve the teeth scrape problem.

my ass feels like i'm gonna die

make that my ass and back and shoulders.

On Monday, I did a wee bit too much of teh exercise.
Today I took a nap.

Earlier today I felt like quitting graduate school. Not only am I completely disillusioned with Academia, but I also feel that I lack the enthusiasm I once had for my subject. Now, there is a possibility that this disregard for my work stems from my overall state of being sleep deprived and sore. While there exists an equal likelihood that my spiritless state has arisen from the purgatory known as My Graduate Program.

I fantasize about being a stay at home mom. I daydream of having four kids. (In reality, I know we will probably end up with 2.)

Postsecret from Sunday:

I am weary of this stage of my life.

Clint Eastwood is as much a part of our family as my out-law aunt

"Family" as a topic was not always peaking my interest. For young Fermi, life was family with a side of school. And at that time I was interested in relationships. I was afraid of divorce. I needed to know how to have a good relationship and not get divorced. Looking back now, I'm not sure where my divorce obsession came from other than the fact that I found it hard to trust people in general add my interest in relationships and you get divorce, betrayal, and cheating spouses.

Some time later, I am married to an incredible man who is my one, and when I think of the future it is of us with toddlers and then as old grandparents, and I think: He will most probably die first. Fuck.

Now my interest lies in family, specifically of the sort that you do not choose: Mothers, Fathers, Aunts, Uncles, Sisters, Brothers, Cousins, and Grandparents. Families and extended families interest me now because they are so different. Generally I see individual human beings as mostly being the same, but (biological) Families are a situation where there is a small pool of DNA that the individuals share. With this come tendencies, and tendencies can be influenced by environment so that you as an individual are "different" with your family (than with a group of randomly selected people) because their predispositions to certain behaviors tend to highlight and enhance those same inclinations in yourself.

---

I mention this because tomorrow is the memorial service for my dead grandmother. I am going to see Aunts and Uncles and Cousins that I haven't seen in 8 years. I don't think I saw my (now dead) grandmother in the past eight years either. This side of my family is an anti-social bunch. I type that with a smile because even though I am looking forward to seeing these people, it seems perfectly normal for me to not see them very often.

This is the first time that my husband will be meeting most of them. Surprises are not my favorite things, so I tried to warn him about what it will be like. In this family we call the people who are married to the siblings, "the out-laws." And this is a perfectly accepted and embraced term. Looking back now, I believe the term origin came from the mix of "in-laws" with our usual activity of watching old Clint Eastwood films together. Do you feel lucky, punk?

One of the out-laws doesn't shave her legs, smokes, is a bit overweight, and is somewhat loud and abrasive. I like her alot, but I still cannot get over the fact that she doesn't shave her legs.

1 magazine you think will make you happy... but won't

I finally feel like writing, but I am not sure if I have anything to blog about... That means it is time for THE LIST!

8. Magazine Obsession
The Fourth of July marked our one year anniversary with My Coke Rewards. Last year, MCR had better prizes than they do now. Jips would get video games and we could get free Blockbuster movie rentals. But now, they have run out of all of the good prizes. Even the Women's Diet Coke tank top! I ordered one tank top to see how it would fit and I LOVED it. But then when I went back to get more, they were sold out! So Sad.

Just about the only thing that is left to get are free magazine subscriptions. So I started getting those. If we add the free magazine subscriptions to the fact that my sister gave Jips a script to GOLF, Jip's aunt gave me a script to Southern Living, and Jip's mom for an unknown reason gets Rolling Stone so she sends them to me, we now receive the following magazines:

1. Golf
2. Southern Living
3. Rolling Stone
4. Cosmo
5. Fitness
6. Redbook
7. Wired*
8. Self*
9. O, The Oprah Magazine*

Wired, Self, and O haven't come yet, but I have gotten at least one magazine from all of the others.

FUN FEARLESS FEMALE
I got a cosmo mag first. That was a huge disappointment. The first one I got was July 08, with Carrie Underwood on the cover. I had never seen her before in my life. The cover says "7 NEW ways to be happy" so I flipped to page 142. And the title of the article is actually: "7 Things You Think Will Make You Happy...but Won't." I think: I already know what does not make me happy, and I feel like there was some false advertising on the cover. I already feel like I have gotten better *happiness* advice from Penelope Trunk: Having sex more often makes you happier than having more money. This was good news for me as I have a willing husband but not alot of income. Ahem. Let's get back to cosmo, Here is the list with my comments:

1. A Ton of Cash and Luxe Stuff In the small print they tell us we need to appreciate what we have. Yes, but I knew that already. Maybe gold-diggers read cosmo and don't know that. But still if you look at a previous post, I say that I want to be rich. That is because, in our current society, money helps you get out of sticky situations. In many cases having a monumental sum in the bank gives you choices that you wouldn't have otherwise had. For me Money *grants* Freedom, and Freedom tops my list. To clarify, I want to be rich, but I don't want to live rich. I don't want anyone to know of my future money that I will have in the bank.

2. Blowout Celebrations for Major Milestones At the end of this section they tell us that routines make us happy. I am a living example of this one. I did not attend my high school graduation, needless to say I didn't have a graduation party either. Under 30 people witnessed my wedding. That includes the judge and photographer. It was romantic and casual, on our beach. I had a short dress and jips wore shorts. We ate together at a restaurant afterwards. It was great. Routines make us happy. Personally, I need so much structure I don't know if I could survive without my routines.

3. Being Upbeat 24/7 Wait, you mean having a fake bubbly personality (and pretending everything is awesome all the time) isn't actually going to make us happy on the inside? SHOCKING!

4. Reading Cosmo Right, so let's stop even talking about Cosmo.

While I was blogging about (8 Magazine Obsession) I mentioned 14. Penelope Trunk's Writing. Penelope Trunk (links above) seems like a normal person, not terribly educated, not terribly wise, but sometimes she gives good advice. Like this: close friends and family make us happier than being alone. This is true even if you get paid tons of money to be alone. She also says that we have to find out who we are and what we want and then make career choices off of that. It seems obvious, right? But it gets confusing when you get advice from people you respect but that have very different desires in life.

A professor who desires to have a successful academic career, who obviously puts her job first told me that taking off of work to stay home with my kids (for 5 plus) years is a very bad idea. The truth is that it is possible to work with a company and work part time or even full time if you are a mom. But I don't want to do that. It is incredibly hard to be a working mom when your kids are young. And I believe that I can be a better mom if I just focus on my kids.

So why am I getting a PhD in chemistry? Because I want one. Is it a waste for such an educated person to stay at home and take care of kids? Is it a waste for me to clean up poop, and make dinner for my family? No, it isn't. Because even though someone else *could* do the same job that I would do, they won't do it in the same way that I will do it.


The List
6. Black boys catcalls
7. Harlem Shakes Vampire Weekend vs Bonaroo Music Festival
9. Cake Therapy
15. Things that make me happy
16. Feeling happy vs Feeling Powerful vs Feeling Superior
17. Jips comes home
18. Flowers and Presents

Summer of Blog

I haven't written since Tuesday.
I tend to not write when things are going shitty.

(skipping the shitty parts for now or perhaps forever)

We rented Bucket List because my mom told me it was great. I bet she loved it because she is an oncology nurse. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman were funny together, but the whole film seemed external. They go on these adventures and die, and they are supposed to change on the inside, but I guess I didn't buy the change. One truth of the film is that people need some time for themselves where they don't have to give of themselves, where they can just be.

I made a red velvet cake. This was my first experience with red velvet and probably will be my last. It is not delicious without cream cheese frosting.

Booton got married this weekend. I am waiting for A. to post photos on facebook. I got a beautiful invitation for her wedding, and I didn't even send in the reply card. Nor did I send a card and gift yet. Maybe I will get that done today.

Gayface Facebook and Maturity

Here goes an attempt at The List.
12. Gayface's (GF) baby sister has an infant. I found this out Sunday I think, via Facebook. GF and I were good friends in high school and college... In a very previous post I mentioned that I had a friend who stopped talking to me after I got married, remember? That is gayface. So he has a sister who is 20 years old now, and I gave her some private tutoring in science and math when she was in high school. She still had the spirit of youth in her, and I enjoyed our time together.

So Sunday I check facebook because I hadn't visited it in forever, and one of GF and my mutual friends had an updated "about me" section. Those either are fun or dumb, and their new "about me" was dumb, but GF had written on their wall and so there was a small thumbnail of GF and this baby! I mean last I checked GF was still single... What if he impregnated someone!? I click over... And, yes, he is still single, but on his wall said some bit about "uncle." What! His 20 year old sister is too young... But yes, it is hers and the kid is now FIVE MONTHS OLD. How could I miss this for five whole months!? (She is living with the guy but they are not married.) But it is true, (and this leads us to 13. Lack of Facebook) In the past five months I have spent MUCH less time on Facebook, and MUCH more time on work stuff, which is good, but also means that I have missed out on the gossip of old friends, and their birthdays... Now I am concerned with more real things like hanging out with girlfriends and working out and running experiments. This is probably good, and it probably means that I am growing up or maturing or something like that.

Maturity will start us off again when we continue the list.
(hopefully tonight.)

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1. Zazu Pimple
2. Boss Anger Group Meeting Communication
3. Maru, Katu, and Arum Rae (also Jed, THE FAN)
4. Parents visit
5. Experiments working
6. Black boys catcalls
7. Harlem Shakes Vampire Weekend vs Bonaroo Music Festival
8. Magazine Obsession
9. Cake Therapy
10. Safety is my goal: Please Call
11. Absolute Pear billboard = Georgia O'Keeffe Vagina Flower

14. Penelope Trunk's writing
15. Things that make me happy
16. Feeling happy vs Feeling Powerful vs Feeling Superior
17. Jips comes home
18. Flowers and Presents

Mommy Porn

Can you tell that Jips is out of town from how often I have posted today?

heh.

I just read this: mommy porn. Check it out. I loved it mainly because I know people are different and not everyone wants to stay home with their kids. At the same time, some people are totally loving and patient and want to stay at home with the young'uns.

I also hate celebs. And cosmo. Maybe I don't hate those things. Let's say I just am not the type of person to get anything out of celebrities or cosmopolitan magazines. Maybe I get something from cosmo, On the weeks I read it I have more sex than the weeks when I read science blogs. That's obvious though: If I am prompted to think about sex I will have it more often.

I bring up celebrities because of the mommy porn link (above), and why the hell do I get cosmo? Well, mycokerewards.com has shittier than ever prizes now so I just signed up for all of these magazines that I can get for free. Should I order GQ? Should I? Popular mechanics? Magazines seem like such a waste of time, especially since they are from the corporate world with all of the truthless editing.

Reading blogs on-line that are not edited by big corporations trying to sell something I find to be much more enjoyable. Which brings us to the MOMMY PORN link. I love it because it is truthful. And because I have this elaborate plan of how I will be a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) for 5-7 years and then go back to work. So what are your plans? Kids? No Kids? SAHM? working mom? How did your nanny/housekeeper thing work when you were growing up, Novella? Did the rest of you kids have SAHMs? Do you think you can do it all?