If I could've recorded the smell, I would have.

The dog would have loved it, probably. But as for us humans in the house - the smell of whatever the backed up drain was spewing into the kitchen sink, from the plumbing direction of the washing machine, wow. Intense. And not a good intense like balsam or orange blossoms. Not even the "depends on your personal taste" intense like some people's liberal application of perfume or aftershave. We're talking puuuuuutrid. Foul. Rank. Disgusting. Nauseating.

You get the point. Third time this month the repair guys have had to come clean the kitchen plumbing. This time, they came with an electrical camera and snake. Let's see how long the freshness lasts this time. And yes, repair guys, I know about not putting grease down a drain. I also know I was half-expecting you to pull out a whole, belching goat with that snake and say "Well, see, here's yer problem. Ya gotta goat in the pipes. Ain't nobody got time fer that. Always gonna have problems when there's a goat in the pipes."

The goat might even say that. This kind of goat would. 

Didn't happen. But I did sit in my living room for hours. On my laptop. Attempting to be productive. Checking everything I walked near the pantry whether Computer Guy was at work.

See, we have a view from the dining room into the courtyard of our building. And all the apartments. I think their dining rooms face ours. And there is this guy. First time M noticed him - well, the first 20 times - it just bummed him out. Here was M, drinking a coffee and feeding a toddler and not getting work done, and here was Computer Guy, again, working at his computer. Typing while leaning towards a screen, looking at the keyboard, looking at the screen. On and on for hours.

We come up to have breakfast at 7am or 8am, he's sitting there working. We have lunch on weekends, ditto. Us dinner, him typing. The man rarely stops. But then M realized, the man rarely stops, and pointed him out to me, and I'm now convinced that either he's hiding out and trying to crack some code (a wormhole may appear at his apartment soon) and it would have been better that I not report on him like this on the internet, or he's addicted to some role playing game.

That latter option is not very likely though, as he can still seem to afford rent for that apartment and is never shouting at the screen or doing joystick moves. So, the part of me that watches shows like the Mentalist is thinking we should not even try to figure out what he's doing because in the season finale we're going to wind up hostages in some Swiss bomb shelter, wishing we'd payed attention to the other apartments instead.

Having to ask for every dance

Two calls of "maaaama" at 3am just got me out of bed and out of one of those disturbing dreams where you can't find your way out of somewhere you don't want to be (this time, a hospital, a really big one with suffering people all around, but in a science fiction film, less human, more focusing on the fear of the diseases sort of way). And I had just been trying to drop off an ex at his bicycle before I headed back to my time machine. It just went all wrong and I never got back to my time machine.

Aaaanyway, my daughter called my name twice and then went silent. Must have found her pacifier. And now I'm up, in part trying to drain off the disturbing, lingering emotional state-of-mind from that dream.

As I was laying in the dark, trying to fall back asleep at the same time as not remember the dream, a striking similarity between two parts of my life struck me for the first time ever. My current employment, in which I am constantly needing to hustle, to cold call other researchers, people who work at the university, or anyone who I think might help me think through some of what I think through in academia without a research group to call my own (either above or below me), feels like being at a huge swing dance night, in a new city (yet again), in a scene I know no one in, and having to ask for every, single, dance.

No wonder I find work so disheartening sometimes. Because let me tell you how many car rides I've been a part of where a bunch of us women were coming home from a dance that just made us mostly feel like crap. Where no one asked us to dance, and since we weren't there to hook up (on that particular night or in general, say), and didn't know anyone, we had to ask for dances or just sit there. Yeah, I know, women and liberation, blah blah blah. Having to ask for every dance is painful, no matter who you are - guys, don't think women don't know what that feels like when someone who accepted a dance acts like it is a big favor they are doing you.

And it can just drain your enthusiasm for the activity, no matter how great the band or the venue was. So much hope and excitement goes down the drain. Self-esteem tried its best to do that, too.

How great it was to be driving home in a car full of people who experienced the same thing and to laugh, swear and, by the end of the hour, have some of the hope back and think "maybe I'll try dancing there one more time." And how lonely and disheartening it is not to have the same kind of support group right now as I ask for every dance academically these last few years.

I just went to a local swing night, in fact, and it was kind of the same - I knew no one, most people came in pairs or groups, all first contact was going on in German (my language skills do not include the subtleties of asking for a dance), there were many more followers than leads, and being 40 years old isn't exactly the quality one desires to have to get more dances. It was a pretty bleak night, emotionally. M had even insisted since I was going alone that I leave my wedding ring at home in hopes of playing the flirting angle. Sweet husband. Let's just say I might have been better served giving off "I'm married, just here for the dancing, don't worry, I won't follow you after this dance" signals at 40 than "I might be a cougar" signals.

And the band wasn't all that great, either.

The trailing spouse.

It makes me sound like the toilet paper stuck on M's shoe that he forgot to check for before leaving the bathroom.

http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2010/05/20/spousal-hiring-is-unethical-puhleeze/

There are a lot of spouses of university faculty who work where I work. I'm one of them. And although I have been trying to go from being embarrassed by the fact to acting like it is okay, it is definitely a situation fraught with complexity and needing a lot more active consideration than it gets. So far, most of us are just left to separate (or not) our home and work relationships as we see fit. But the resulting range of spousal situations is extremely diverse, including in the variable of "how well you leave your home life at home."

But there is no way to do this. Not completely. If A is sick, and we can't use the babysitter, one of us will have to stay home. And if both of us has a deadline that day within the same department or unit, one of those deadlines will not get met. But even in day to day interactions - of course I'll be more likely to act towards M in a way that reflects our, um, frankness with each other as husband and wife. Now, sometimes, this means I'm the only one in the workplace who tells M he's wrong about something. And some of the time, I even have a valid point! But other times it means I exert more influence on him than others can, and vice versa.

What I am most confused about in this situation is just what a good balance is. We are married, and we have a certain relationship with each other. While we will not have a marital fight in a university hallway, there are parts of this relationship that it would be impossible to change. Especially in exchange for some sort of perception of a less closely familiar relationship. In the same way that close friends in academia will interact differently, and a very sympathetic advisor-advisee relationship will lead to different behaviors. And for the latter, I don't mean a romantic relationship, I just mean one in which an advisor has a personality match better with some advisees than others.

I'd love to hear some stories from the workplace of better ways of working with spousal colleagues than just pretending it isn't a special situation. Of acknowledging the relationship as something that has an effect, but doing with more subtlety than just requiring one spouse is not responsible for work evaluation of the other spouse (although, in some places, I'm sure that would be a good start).