Time for the Annual Easter Fertility Rituals

My favorite part of easter is the odd contrast of ancient pagan fertility symbols with the celebration of the rising of the Alleged Son of God.
Gerald L. Berry, author of "Religions of the World," wrote:

"About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." _{(this quote is lifted from an article, "the pagan origins of easter" that you can read here at religioustolerance.org)}

 For hundreds of years before Christ, humans were having joyous celebrations of the spring equinox. Many scholars believe that the story of the resurection of Christ was modeled after the resurection of Attis, "to make Christian theology more acceptable to pagans". I can picture the arguments right now: "You see, Jesus is just like Attis, except, Jesus Christ is the true Son of God....no no no, there is only one God, your gods simply aren't real. What's that? OK fine, you can keep the bunnies but no orgies!". This probably seemed like arbitrary ad hoc arguments to the ancient pagans, while the ancient Christians steadfastly argued that the pagan gods were obviously an invention by Satan to confuse the pagans so that they would all go to hell. Classic. Its interesting to see that not much has changed today. We routinely celebrate Easter with bunnies, and eggs, and feasting, and whispering magic words, and joyous singing and God praising, all around the time of the spring equinox and everyone is happy (sort of). 
Since I tend to appreciate the more pagan side of things, I present to you.... the baby bump.

Later, we will have a bonfire and sacrifice a goat to coerce the gods into blessing our baby so that he or she will grow healthy and strong. Long live, Attis, and Happy Easter! 

The broken Ph.D. system

Anyone who has ever toiled away at writing a doctoral thesis knows a certain level of self-deception is neccesary to continue believing that earning your Ph.D is worthwhile, respectable, and will ultimately be a fruitful inellectual endeavor. In other words, you must convince yourself that your efforts will result in a J-O-B. At a university. Well-funded. With an office. And tenure. Just like everyone promised. As they must, since this is the only job that I have been trained for.

A recent set of commentaries published in Nature this week have just tipped my self-deception threshold over the edge.

There are simply too many science Ph.Ds being produced and not enough academic jobs to go around. The system persists, however, because the only way that tenured scientists are able to continue producing, is by taking advantage of the extremely cheap labor of doctoral students and the (only slightly less cheap labor) of post-doctoral students. Most Ph.Ds will not make it, or will be in a perpetual post-doctoral holding pattern for the rest of eternity. Not to mention the fact that the rapidly increasing pool of Ph.Ds only devalues the worth of any individual Ph.D. And the current system encourages the practice of pushing through less-than-stellar students that may not even be adequately trained for the only job they have ever been prepared for.

I'm screwed, and my Ph.D. is almost entirely worthless.

(aaaaannnnnnddddddd. back to work.)

Fetal-love breaks / My herbal pregnancy tea adventure

When I met with my Doula the first time, she gave me a bunch of literature and some advice about nutrition and how to take care of myself for the next few months. Included in this advice was to take "fetal-love breaks" intermittently throughout the day. The thinking goes like this; Your emotions occur as reactions to chemicals that are present in your brain and body (This is so radically oversimplified that I can't believe I'm repeating it, but we're talking about a fetal love break as explained by my beautiful and caring doula who knows a lot about pregnancy and babies. In just this one case, I'm ignoring the complex details). These molecules cross the placental barrier and affect the brain of your baby. So, when you are feeling anxious, stressed out, and frightened, you are sending negative chemical signals to your baby that cause your baby to have the same negative responses. And when you are feeling peaceful, loving and compassionate, you are sending positive signals that make your baby feel loved and secure. Basically, your body is the baby's universe and its brain will develop based on what the baby assumes the universe is like. The idea, then, is to cleverly trick the baby into thinking the world outside my body isn't such a crappy place. This is done by taking 20- minute breaks 3 or 4 times a day to relax and listen to some music, picture yourself on the beach or overlooking a mountain lake, and create a calm, peaceful, joyful mind set. This will help program baby's emotional temperament so that it expects peace and love in the universe for the rest of its life.

So far, I probably do this for about 2 minutes each day. The rest of my conscious hours are filled with FREAKING OUT. My body might be my baby's universe, but I currently live in the actual universe which has lately been a rather stressful place. I'm absolutely terrified that I'm programing my baby's emotional temperament so it will turn out to be some nervous psychopath. Ok, I don't actually think this will happen, but lets just say, I'm still working on mastering the fetal love break thing.

Luckily, I found something that is way easier to do; organic herbal pregnancy tea. I can guzzle tea all day! I'm good at that! And the pamphlet that my doula gave me had a recipe for the tea and even had a few pages listing all the health benefits of this concoction. So, I went online and ordered organic, bulk dried and cut  nettle leaf, red raspberry leaf, alfalfa leaf and oatstraw. I made the mistake, however, of ordering 1 pound of each herb, not realizing that this is a ridiculously enormous amount of herbs. After mixing the herbs together in the right ratios and filling up all the tupperware containers in the house, I have enough pregnancy tea to last me, ohhhhhhh another 3 years, perhaps. And that's if I manage to drink a quart of tea every day. I'd better get to work. It's actually pretty tasty stuff. After letting a big handful steep for an hour or so, it comes out a dark brown color and has a grassy aroma. It tastes like minty, boiled hay. Not half bad. Most importantly, with a large mug of my magical tea in my hands I feel like the healthiest and most virtuous mommy-to-be on earth, even if I don't spend an hour and a half a day in love-break mode.

Chris's new Blog

In case my blog is not enough to keep you occupied (all 10 of you that read this thing) Chris has been inspired to create a blog of his own called, "Not_Like_The_Beer". Check it out at this link!

Quote of the week

Chris Corona, while eating a lemon bar: "I wonder if powdered sugar makes a good deodorant?"

The answer is no.

Danger on the Kitty front! (or, The story of the $800 hairball)

This story starts on Wednesday morning. I was enjoying my morning herbal tea and having some toast when Oblioe (my friendly orangce cat, in case you don't know him) hopped onto the seat next to me and meowed. This is when I noticed that there was drool dripping out of his mouth onto the chair. Gross! My response was to push him off the chair and yell something to Chris about how Oblioe was drooling. Later that day, Chris came downstairs and noticed puddles of drool around the house and found Oblioe huddled under the table with a bunch of drool. When Chris asked Oblioe what was wrong (yes, we talk to our cats), Oblioe replyed with an ucharacteristic and abrupt, "mreh!", and Chris immediately whisked Oblioe off to the vet.

It turns out that Oblioe had an enourmouse hairball blocking the lower part of his stomach. This was causing his intestines to become twisted and inflamed. He also seemed very nauseous (hence the drool) and had a lot of poop in his colon. We had thought there might be some sort of string or rubber band that he swallowed, but all they found was a big hairball and a bunch of constipation. They did a surgery and removed the hairball and kept him overnight at the vet. After the surgery, and $800 later, he stopped drooling and now he's home and seems a lot better. He has a shaved tummy with a long slice down the middle. He seems very happy to be back and our little patient is doing very well. It even looks like he's pooping normally again.

When Chris told me he had Oblioe at the vet I almost started crying. I was expecting him to say that the vet needed to put him down or something horrible had happened. I thought maybe he had a stroke and that was what was causing the drooling! Anyway, I'm just trying to imagine something like this happening with our baby. I'd be going insane. If we care this much about a cat, maybe a baby would be 20x worse? 100x? I don't want to think about it. I'd like to think that this wouldn't happen with a baby, because A) our baby won't have fur to lick and B) we will probably take the baby to the vet, uh, I mean the pediatrician, a lot more regularly.     

Fashionable baby wearing

I think the thing that I am looking forward to the most is carrying around our baby in one of these super adorable wraps. I think Chris would even wear it. Or we could get him one of those baby backpack things. I read in fit pregnancy magazine that babies that are regularly "worn" rather than carrying them in a carrier actually cry 42% less. And they also are less fussy when you give them to other people to hold (like, Grandma and Grandpa). I can't wait!