Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

A few days ago, the governor announced that Boston would be in a state of emergency this week. I found this amusing because, in my mind, he Jacob household had already planned to be in a state of emergency on January 26 long before any satellites had begun promising signs snow. My amusement was short-lived however as the reality of the situation began to sink in and I began to picture my wife giving birth in the back of a hospital bound Toyota Matrix that has gotten stuck in the snow. Fortunately, before full panic set in, my aunt called me and offered to put us up in hotel just half a mile from the hospital. That is where we are now. Right now, Jessica is sleeping, sprawled out, stretched in ways that are only possible when you aren't sharing a bed. I count six different pillows, each positioned strategically to alleviate her burdens.  Pregnancy has not been gentle on her, and different discomforts have disturbed her slumber for the past three or four months now. Seeing he...

Waiting. That is what it is has come down to. At any given moment, a cocktail of emotions mixed around inside me, varying the ratio of apprehension and expectation, of dread and delight. It is a weird thing to know that your days are numbered, that life will forever change in the matter of a week. On one hand, I feel like I should take advantage of this last week and go crazy, but on the other hand Jessica's pregnancy has been so miserable that we have already been introduced to long sleepless nights.  The feeling of waiting didn't really start until recently for me. This past year has been so crazy that I have mostly just been caught up in a current of change and uncertainty and spent most of my time trying to stay afloat. Instead of waiting for the baby to come I was scrabbling away from the inevitable, hoping to delay things as much as possible until I could find a job and some stability. But recently, as things have settled down, I have started looking at the calendar mo...

It is weird that the most common way of expanding your family is by growing another member. "I want a child." "OK, why don't you plant one? Wait some months till it's ripe."  Like a zucchini. My wife's belly is a single-fruit garden. It is bizarre when you think about it. But maybe everyone thinks this way. All the pregnancy blogs always refer to the size of the embryo/fetus/baby in relationship to fruit. No one seems to be fazed by this idea. The same girls that cringed and squealed when hearing campfire stories about seeds getting stuck and growing in ears or noses somehow say "aww" when the internet tells them: "Congratulations. Your child is the size of a cumquat." You would think that we would want comparisons to things that are actually cute, fuzzy things, but for some reason that just seems worse. "Congratulations! Your child is now the size of a young badger" just seems terrifying. Fortunately, the chil...

The potential for rapid change is always amazing to me. A winning lottery ticket or a car careening into oncoming traffic can forever change the course of someone’s life. While this past year didn’t hold anything nearly that drastic, it was a year of upheaval. It began with despondency, was filled with uncertainty, but fortunately ended in hopeful resolution. Last January, I was in the doldrums of my professional career. I was stuck in a teaching job I abhorred, but was still struggling to admit that I needed out. Now, 2015 dawns with a new career outside of the classroom, in an administrative position at Harvard. Between then and now: finishing up my last year of middle school; trying to balance my teaching job with a new job search; making ends meet with menial temp work for 5 months; spending my free time applying to -and getting rejected from- hundreds of jobs… and finally, after 9 months of searching, landing the full time gig where I am now. Of course, my professional life ...