So, I'm feeling all good and all this past Wednesday afternoon, wrapping up teaching for the week, posting a little 'hey I'm off for a few days' post, gearing up for a little travel and a lot of talking, good friends, interesting projects, s'all good.

Then I head into the washroom to freshen up before heading home for the day - after an afternoon of lecturing - and notice. That. My. Fly. Is. Open.

Zipper. DOWN.

As it must have been for, oh, the previous couple of hours. During which time I:

1) Chatted with a colleague outside the student union building;

2) Met with three different students, seeking help on assignments;

3) Conducted an hour-long lecture on the thought of Karl Marx.

IN FRONT OF 50+ UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS.

NOT BEHIND A LECTERN.

So, of course, I had to spend the next half-hour in the washroom, assuming every conceivable lecture-posture and examining the effects of said postures on visibility of open fly (hands in pockets - fly gapes open; arms folded over chest - fly gapes open; pacing - fly gapes open.)

I ceased posturing when a faculty member from the Department of Economics came in and raised her eyebrows at me, and immediately set about washing my hands, quite unnecessarily.

It was at that point - my attention momentarily diverted from my crotch - that I noticed that I had suddenly sprouted a giant zit on the very frontmost tip of my nose. And became immediately obsessed with figuring out whether that zit had been there throughout My Afternoon of Zipless Stupidity or had just sprouted, and, then, whether the presence of a giant zit on the nose of a zipless lecturer might distract from her state of ziplessness.

I concluded that it all just sucked. I remain committed to that conclusion. Am silly, and slovenly, and none too happy about it.

So tomorrow morning I get on plane with my zit and travel to Kentucky whereupon I will meet good friends and speak publicly and generally expose myself to further opportunities for embarassment. Feelin' good about that.

Nothing like a double dose of the stupids AND the uglies to nuke one's self-confidence.

Tomorrow will be a better day. But I'll be sticking to skirts, just in case.

... the body electric.

Also, she loves New York. Too bad that Her Bad Mother is only going to Kentucky.


I'm so sorry for being such a bad blog-citizen (blogizen?) this past week or so. What with preparations for this weekend's conference and stacks and stacks of undergraduate political philosophy papers to mark and planning some super cool surprises (secret!) and working on some super faboo projects, I've had, like, no time to visit you all. But I'll make up for it next week.

I will also, next week, fill you in on the fantasticness that no doubt was our panel on mommyblogging. (Also, I will report on whether I was able to resist tackling Joy to the floor upon our first meeting.) Remember, if you've done a post about mommyblogging and what it means to you (and/or answered the questions that I posed in this post the other week), leave me a link so that we can consult you as an expert during our panel, and give you (linky) credit next week when we report back. Need inspiration? Check out Mad Hatter's epic series of meta-posts on mommy-blogging, or any of the prattle on BlogRhet.


Also, I need book recommendations. I've got some fourteen plus hours of round-trip air-travel time what with stopovers (Louisville ain't no direct flight, y'all) and I can't spend all of it marking papers on Machiavelli and Hobbes. (I am, as it happens, in the Super Coolest Book Club EVER, but the books that are currently under discussion are not my bag.)

NEED BOOKS. NEED GOOD BOOKS.

(Contemporary lit, please. I've read everything worth reading prior to the 20th century.)

(I'm joking about that. Sort of.)

WonderBaby is a girly-girl. A train-and-truck-lovin' bitch-slappin' thug of a girly-girl, but a girly-girl nonetheless.

(That bitch-slappin' thug part, I am not making up. You don't mess with the WonderBaby. She will take you down. Older or bigger children who see opportunity - easy! candy (or, more usually, toy trains) from a baby! - in her tiny form learn their lessons quickly and painfully: you try (try) to take her train and you will receive a shove or a thump or a smack and a loud, remonstrative NO. But that's a whole 'nother post.)

She's a girly-girl. And she's a girly-girl who loves her some glitter and glam. Ring-toys and stuffed snakes become bracelets and boas; beads become stroller-bling; all bags become purses, carefully slung over wee shoulders or into the crooks of tiny arms and toted proudly 'round the house.

She does not get this from me. I have never carried a purse in the crook of my arm in her presence (I'm a messenger bag kinda girl), nor have I ever angled my wrists just so, the better to let a bangle catch the light. Come to think of it, I have not slipped bangles on my wrists nor flung scarves jauntily over my shoulders nor traipsed or flounced in any way since she was born. I have been, for the most part, Frump Mom. (I am not proud of this fact; I am simply stating it for the descriptive record. Again, whooole 'nother post.) There is nothing glamour or glitz about me, nothing flouncy or traipsy or oooh look pretty shiny! And on the rare occasion that I have slipped on a pointy stiletto and jewellry and sashayed proudly around our living room (you know, for kicks), she has been long asleep.


So how is it that ten minutes in her presence would convince you that she's being reared by Tyra Banks? (Tyra Banks with boxing gloves and a penchant for pink strollers, but still. Someone fierce.)

I had always thought that I would not encourage any daughter of mine in frilly excesses. I would not push pink, I would not push dolls (unless two-headed or otherwise subverted in their preciousness), I would not push princesses. I would not peddle pretty pretty. If she was going to gravitate toward these things, fine, but she would do so of her own accord, and not because they were the only options available. So it is that WonderBaby has, since birth, been surrounded by books and blocks and trains and the odd odd dolly. And, since she encountered one during a visit with a friend, a toy stroller. A toy stroller that is now thoroughly be-blinged with makeshift costume jewellry and covered in all manner of small bag and scarf and inhabited by whatever stuffed comrade is deemed deserving of pimped-out pasha treatment.

Sure, she loves her trains. And she can work a soccer ball like nobody's bizniss. But that soccer ball is a shiny pink-and-silver confection of a thing, and those trains inevitably get tucked away in a twee little handbag and hooked over the handle of a bright pink stroller bestrewn with garlands of beads and ribbons (her own design, no less.)

Where did she come from, this wee, sparkly glamazon of a girl? And why do I - black-clad hipster doofus of a Gen-X/Y feminist - love it so much?