Mama(e) in Translation

I thought I'd just make very quick commentary on this week's Time magazine cover (although I don't want to engage in the "mommy war" discussion that the cover question wants to provoke, I fully agree with Katie Granju on this one, we're all "not mom enough"  at one point or another in our mothering lives).The photo didn't bother me -- although anyone who has ever done extended breastfeeding, including the mom portrayed, will know that that's just a posed shot and NOT the way we...

Yesterday, after I received a "direct message" on twitter from my friend Anjali, I logged back into my twitter account after a long "twitter fast." It wasn't a conscious decision to stay away, it just happened and I didn't log back in day after day and I didn't miss it one bit...When I went to check my last tweet, I noticed it was from March 16, so that means that I was off twitter for exactly 2 months! Wow... I'm sure I missed quite a bit from my Twitter friends who don't blog anymore or...

Today is effectively the very first day of my "summer vacation 2012" -  3 months of not much work & no paycheck. I didn't have a paycheck for 5 years before this, but somehow now that I'm back to the "workforce" (though still working in the margins), it does bother me a lot not to have a salary in the next months. Sigh...Next year I will have it for at least a month when I teach for the study abroad in Brazil which reminds me that I do have to work this summer planning that. And I...

The day I learned about the position I emailed a couple of colleagues/friends who know a bit about the school in questions. When my colleague emailed me back there was a comment in her email that should have been a red flag but which I didn't pay much attention to until yesterday when I was re-reading the email to K. She said that our mutual friend who has worked there before said that they usually hire informally, and that "someone must have made them post that ad."I just emailed both...

WOW... I'm blown away right now, seriously. I only buy books at Amazon* (I know, I should be supporting local bookstores, etc... but I love books and I need to buy affordable books) and I always use their free saver shipping (though I've recently decided to dump netflix and get an Amazon Prime account so I can get free shipping always and be able to watch streaming video).If you're not familiar with it, the free shipping requires that you buy 25 dollars in books, so I always need to buy "tag...

please bear with me today as I throw a small pity party for myself. It gets a little better towards the end of the post (I hope!)I told my husband that it would be a disaster -- the fact that I'd be forced to look at my evaluations in order to submit an application for the possible job that took my peace away. I generally don't  read my evaluations -- though I know I should (they didn't required us to do it in graduate school and I did it only  to submit job applications years later...

I just wanted to let you know that I endorse this Brazilian product of my own will and have not been sponsored in any way to write this. In fact, it's been years since I've reviewed a product in this blog -- I don't think that marketers turn to "small" mommy bloggers anymore, just to the big and influential ones. I don't mind...My first "Melissa" shoes were not the ones I wanted, which were the polka dot ones (these are recent, but the mid-eighties ones were similar, though in paler...

I just pinned it in Pinterest, but this deserves a blog post too. A quick one as I take a breather from grading. It's going well, but it does take a long time even when it's just "quick" no annotation and no rubric-filling grading.So this is the product I found out about this week from the catalog that kohls sends to my door every week: It's Fiesta's (I didn't even know this brand existed until Jenna blogged about it a few weeks ago) Masquerade Flatware set: This photo by Tempest Tea...

I love to live dangerously, OK, irresponsibly, and I finished grading less than a couple of hours before final grades were due. I checked everything carefully and reviewed the grades.And then I was FREE!! To enjoy my three months without work (OR PAY ! :(  )... I felt relieved and free for all of... say, half an hour'And then I got the email that told me that I have to apply for another teaching job (which has the possibility of being a non-tt full time, though!), one for which I have to...

I'm grading papers like crazy, but have to share this here before I forget!My student obviously meant "eavesdropping," but I thought that the ease of droppings was hilariously great! It made me think of the multiple piles of droppings I saw in the safari in Africa. The rhinos most certainly were at ease with droppings on neat piles that marked their territory!Edited to add: Seriously, look at this gem of a sentence!!! "she would simply linger an exceptionally long period of time ease dropping...