On the job front, it…

On the job front, it looks like things are finally settling in. But it's all a bit complex, so I'll lay it out in calendar form:

• now - May 2007: final semester teaching at Roosevelt. I have every hope to be able to finish out the semester, assuming baby cooperates. I'm teaching one grad-level fiction class, focusing our discussions on structure (using Delany's On Writing as the primary critical text), as well as standard workshopping, of course. Also teaching two lower-level composition classes, which are so far going fine.

• mid-May 2007 - end of August 2007: No teaching, still on salary at Roosevelt, may try to do a bit of MFA program admin work from home, but will mostly be trying to figure out how one copes with screaming infant who refuses to sleep.

• September - early December 2007: Go to the Bay Area! Kevin is likely to be teaching at a math institute there for a semester, so assuming that happens, then baby and I will be mostly living in Los Gatos at his parents' house, letting the grandparents do lots of babysitting. :-) No teaching, try to get some writing done. (Yes, I am optimistic.)

• late December 2007: visit the East Coast for Christmas and let my relatives ogle undoubtedly gorgeous baby who might even be smiling by that point.

• Jan - Mar 2008: come back to Chicago and hang out with baby. Kevin goes back to work at UIC and I try to juggle baby and getting some writing done. Probably with a day or two of childcare to help make that feasible.

• Apr - mid-June 2008: Teach one creative writing and one literature course (probably with some S. Asian lit.) as a Writer-in-Residence at Northwestern's Center for the Writing Arts -- an exciting opportunity! (Pays nicely, too. :-)

• mid-June 2008 - late August 2008: Off. Play with baby. Try to write.

• late Aug 2008: Start three-year part-time position at UIC (renewable), as a Clinical Assistant Professor. Yes, it's a goofy title -- it's because the position was originally created in the hospital complex, and then adopted for this purpose. I'd actually be teaching creative writing and some general ed classes, and what's particularly nice is that they're being tremendously flexible about the position; as long as I let them know in advance, I can teach anywhere from 1-4 courses a year, which should be very helpful with managing book projects and baby.

And that's the plan! We haven't completely signed onto that last one yet, but it's looking likely at this point. We're still waiting to hear on a couple of other jobs that Kev's applied for, but it may be some time until those fully sort themselves out. And in the meantime, it's nice to know that we have a good, solid option here, that's likely to be a financially viable way for us to manage (we can afford to keep our condo with this plan, which is very nice), and which should hopefully give me at least a decent chance of juggling baby, writing, and teaching, without dropping any balls.

Yes, I know, if I have to drop one of them, I probably shouldn't drop the baby.... :-)