Last Sunday we went to visit Joel's parents, but before we arrived, we stopped at the local town square and perused the antique stores. One had an antique baby cradle, like this, and LG pointed it out and said, "What's that?" I looked down and smiled, fondly remembering my own that I had as a child that I subjected to many baby dolls. "It's an antique baby cradle, little guy. Or, you could put baby dolls in it." He replied, "Neat. I guess we'll need a baby next. We should get working on that."
It's been a lazy past few days. Sure, we've done a lot of activities, but in terms of actual work done, zip, zero, nada. On Friday I couldn't be convinced to work. I tried, boy, did I try. Unfortunately, I can get into a cycle where I want to take some time off, and then some more time off, and then how about I just go for one more bike ride, and oh, let me take the dogs out, and wait a second, I guess I should do the dishes, oh and look, there's some bills that need to be paid, and while I'm at it I should probably run to the Post Office, and you know what, I'd better go ahead and go to the grocery store, it's already 1 p.m., how about lunch?, and thank you very much now what movies are playing at the theatre, gee, I should play with the dogs right now, wait, let me get my camera, dinner time!, well now it's 7 p.m. and what do you want to do?
My days can go like that sometimes, without me even really putting up much of a fight. In order to stay on a reasonable schedule for my specialization paper (leading up to the dissertation), I have to force myself to work for several hours a day. And I know, those of you who have non-academic jobs are thinking, "ONLY SEVERAL HOURS A DAY, WHAT ARE YOU, CRAZY?" and my answer is absolutely.
You see, academia runs on a completely different time schedule than most, if not all, jobs. There is a reason a lot of students get trapped into the "I was supposed to propose my thesis six months ago, so, it can wait another day, week, month," and then soon it becomes they are a year behind. Or four. Especially if their faculty supervisors are more than lax with them. Luckily I'm driven to complete projects, AND I have an appropriately demanding mentor, so I can get by with goofing off for about 3-4 days before I feel incredibly guilty. Like I do today. And I plan to alleviate this guilt by working on what I need to be working on as soon as I hit "publish" on this post. And when I say, "I work for several hours a day," what I'm really saying is - I devote several hours a day to this big project. I've lots of other projects going on too that I devote time to, but this is the big one. So though my daily academic routine may seem a little lax sometimes - especially when I've put off the writing portion of it all - I start to nag at myself because I know I should be writing and not just prepping a new class and doing other things.
I'm certain that why people become discouraged about progress is that it takes so darn long to complete anything worth doing in academia. Thesis? Miniumum of six months, and that's if you are lucky. Dissertation? At least a year of writing. Easily. That's not even conducting experiments - that's just writing. The revision process is so brutal and headache-inducing, it is like writing your life's greatest work with the knowledge that maybe, maybe ten people will read the thing cover to cover. How discouraging is that? Knowing that unless you publish portions of the darn thing (hello, three more months of work!), your entire enormous bound dissertation that you poured hours and hours and sweat and blood and tears into will be resigned to sit on a library shelf, growing dusty with age. Yeah, that's a big spoonful of motivation right there!
I worked with Elmer's glue today. I'm not proud of this fact, but I'm certainly not blaming the glue or the brand. The reason I'm not proud is because I used it to create an academic poster - not a true academic poster, mind you, this isn't going to a conference - but it is part of a final poster presentation I am making in my last graduate class.
While normally I pay upwards of $80 for a slick, glossy poster for presentations, the instructor deemed this was unnecessary for the final class and encouraged us to be creatively cheap.
Elmer's, you are hereby deemed creatively cheap.
As I delicately applied you to the slides, flipped them over, and warmly rubbed each slide carefully and created heat to entice you to stick, I had a very strong sense memory from 4th grade.
4th grade was the first time I had a male teacher. I don't remember his name, but he was tall, brown-haired, in his 40s or 50s, and had clearly done time as a product of the 1960s. His favorite suit color was brown. His most typical clothing assembly consisted of brown slacks, brown overcoat, a yellow shirt, and a brown and peach striped tie. He was weary of teaching, and it showed. He liked to call out a boy named Jimmy in class, who smelled of dirt and trash and regularly burped loudly. Every time Jimmy would burp, the teacher would call him out and say how disgusting he was acting. Poor Jimmy, who clearly came from a harsh home, grinned at the only attention he received during the day. He would toss his tow-headed hair out of his eyes and wiggle in his seat. I sat across the aisle from him and can remember how putrid his smell was to this day.
It was in the class that I learned what sex was, what humping was, and why girls don't shave their forearm hair. Johnny Campbell, the red-headed kid with freckles, innocently asked what sex was one day, and the teacher overreacted by throwing his hands up in the air and started yelling, "YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT SEX IS, HUH?! DO YOU? Because we'll get the school nurse in here RIGHT NOW!! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?? She'll explain sex to you ALL DAY LONG! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? HUH??" I didn't know what sex was, but it must have been important because our teacher was sure mad. My friend Sarah, an early developer who wore a bra, told me that that sex meant you humped. I listened to her with rapt attention as we played Connect 4 over the lunch period. She also told me that she shaved her forearm hair and that I should too.
My mom and I had a lot to talk about that night after she found me in the bathroom with a razor on my arm, delicately trying to determine how to use the device.
My memory though, of you, Elmer glue, is one I'm sure many students expertly tried. With our hands under our desks as our teacher was spelling out "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (just so you know, I totally spelled that correctly on the first try. Our spastic teacher evidently taught me something.), we would slyly twist open your top, squeeze a few precious beads of white goo onto our hands, deftly twist your top closed, and then slide you back into our desks where we stored our precious pencil cases and rubber erasers. Slowly we'd press our sticky hands together, bringing the drops together. Some liked to keep their hands pressed tightly together and experience the satisfying 'crrrrchkssss' sound once you had dried and they pulled their hands apart, but not me. I was unimpressed with this trick. My favorite trick was to allow my hands to dry separate from one another, and once they had reached a satisfying level of dryness, deftly peeling off the edges until I could get an imprint of my skin. Looking at all the cracks and crevices in my skin that you had copied was one of the more fascinating things to me. I would lay my precious glue grafts on top of my desk for observation, intent on knowing these secrets of the universe that you and my skin imprints must contain.
It's a tradition, established more than a year ago, that I'm trying to keep up. I started rewarding my students for finishing their final exams by offering them my scrumdilly-dilly-umptious homemade chocolate chip cookies. This means that during my own final exams, I would slave away in the kitchen until late at night making my dear class their cookies. I call this selflessness and thoughtfulness. Others may call this procrastination.
This semester, I just couldn't stomach the thought of making batches and batches of chocolate chip cookies. I decided to make cake pops instead. And I don't know if you are familiar with the wonder that is cake pops, but basically it's sheet cake mixed with cream frosting, rolled into a ball, stuck with a Lollipop stick, and dipped in chocolate. And they are pretty much amazing. I am making 150 of them, which means three sheet cakes, three packages of whipped cream frosting, 150 sticks, 150 treat bags, and 150 twist ties.
This gets a little messy. And I'm more than neurotic when I'm in the kitchen. I prefer all surfaces to be clean and tidy as I'm cooking. Home ec, 6th grade, taught me that I should wash my dishes and clean as I go, and boy, I have never remembered a lesson as well as that one. I'm currently - yes, like as I type - balancing the baking process, the whipping process, and the dipping process all at once. And somehow I've got to keep chocolate cake off the floor, because I have dogs, and they like to eat what's on the floor. They aren't picky, and these are prime pickin's, but a girl's gotta watch where cake falls. Like where it should: INTO MY MOUTH.
In approximately 6 more hours, I should have 150 beautiful cake pops, ready for my students to devour them. What I most look forward to is the cognitive dissonance that flashes across their face like, damn, these are good...and I gave you a bad evaluation last week. I shouldn't have been such a shithead.
Actually, I have yet to get a bad evaluation -- but it is fun to think about what they are processing as they bite into that cakey goodness.
I think that the County Courthouse Commission in charge of Jury Duty is just so darn cute. Adorable! I want to give them a big hug and tell them how much I love them.
I received my jury duty notice a few weeks ago. In other states I have lived in, you can ask that you be 'excused' due to personal or business reasons. Here in this state, and in many I suppose, we have a bit of a problem with people 'excusing' themselves often. There was a little section that was available to write in to the court explaining why you feel you would be unsuited to serve as a juror. I not only wrote in the 3 lines provided, I also drew an arrow to the back and wrote a paragraph. I wish I would have remembered exactly what I wrote, but it went along the lines of something like this:
I feel I am unsuitable to serve as a jury member for the following reasons: I have an M.S. in Industrial Organizational Psychology and I am working on a Ph.D. I have explicit and specific knowledge in the field of social dynamics, group influence, leadership, and power. In fact, I'm an instructor and I teach a class on these very topics in organizations. Individuals who are in my field are not allowed to serve as jury members, simply because of the ability to successfully wield social influence in group settings. Additionally, I teach during the weeks specified, and I have no one to cover my classes.
It was longer and a bit more detailed, but that was the general message. I received a notice in the mail today that my duty had been postponed until 6/22, as a provision of the Jury Commission Act allowing jurors to temporarily delay service. Additionally, "If you are aware of a conflic with the newly assigned date, please contact our office immediately. Waiting until the new summons date to make a request is unaccepatble and will be denied."
I didn't want my actions to be unacceptable, so I immediately called and explained my summer teaching situation. I will be teaching an intensive four-week summer session class right around the postponed time, so I asked for an extension at the very least. I succesfully postponed until July 20, 2009.
I don't really mind being asked to serve. I don't even really mind doing it. But willfully ignoring my explanations about my experiences in groups, and teaching people how to function in organizational groups, makes me scratch my head. Seems they are counting on an ethical populace that would not stand for one person swaying a decision one way or another.
Well, I'm ethical. Sign me up. But darn, it's going to be very hard not to want to screw with people, just because I could. Why don't you have me serve in a way that would be mutually beneficial? I can do data analysis! Look, numbers!
This slacker pulled up next to me at a stop light last weekend on a Saturday morning. This guy looks like he had a really hard night the night before, you know, gotta take a drive and shake it off. Can't shake skank, though. Gotta make better choices next time. No more Pomeranians, man, I'm done.
Fresh-picked wild blackberries. Made the best cobbler I've ever tasted.
Taken 6/2005.
Dear Little Guy,
Happy 5th Birthday! Even though you entered my life only a short while ago, I feel as if I know you very well. I just wanted to let you know how extraordinarily special we think you are. You keep us smiling, and you draw us closer together. Your favorite thing to do right now is play Legos, Transformers, go hiking with us, pester the dog, and have books read to you. And, movies. You love watching movies. If you could play legos, watch a movie, pester the dog, AND hike all at the same time, you would be in 5-year-old heaven.
Your skills at eating and not complaining about what is set in front of you never ceases to amaze me. You are willing to try most anything, and hey, it's fair if you don't like something. For instance, tonight you resisted a little bit when we asked you to try the restaurant's dumplins. As soon as you tasted a bite though, a smile spread across your face and you couldn't get enough. And, oh, your smile. Oh, your smile. That smile of yours is going to win over so many people in your life. You use it when you are being coy, but my favorite smile from you is when it is genuine. A big smile will light up your entire face when you realize you have made someone laugh. You also have the cutest giggle. I love tickling you and hearing your joyful giggles and seeing your adorable smiles.
Tonight we celebrated your birthday with cake and presents. Just the four of us, Cosette included, enjoying cake having a pow-wow on the floor together (well, Cosette abstained from the cake). I had a massive headache, unfortunately, so after we had eaten our share of cake, I crawled back to my comfy spot on the couch and curled up to watch you and Daddy play Legos. You were building a pirate ship, and you took interest in the instructions but ultimately decided to just build the pirate ship yourself. And you know what? It turned out pretty good. Sure, there were extra pieces leftover, but I thought your ship was more creative.
But what I wanted to tell you was the feeling that came over me. Maybe it was the headache. Maybe it was the sugar rush. As I laid there watching your small hands picking up even smaller pieces and manipulating them confidently, watched you interacting with Daddy, and saw Cosette nestled among us, her family all in place -- I was overcome with such a feeling of fulfilled happiness. I don't think it was sugar or delusions from the headache. It was love.
You bring us joy and so much love.
Love,
Me
After more than a year of hiking, water retrieving, getting dirty in the mud, snow, rain, dust, dirt, camping, it was time for Cosette to have a new collar! Landy had also just joined our family, so I searched around on Etsy and found these awesome dog collars from The Mod Dog. Landy is one lucky dog (since he was adopted!) and so we went with this stylin' collar. I chose this collar for Cosette since she's so glamorous. :)
They are awesome collars so far and have been performing beautifully out in nature. Falling through ice? No problem! Hurling muddy tennis balls? No problemo! They even resist the weird dog collar smell that some of 'em start to develop. Priceless!
I have really been enjoying rosiemusic's etsy site. I love the watercolors and whimsical style she has. I ordered two prints recently, Computer Love and Too Shy (though not in wood) and love them!
 Computer Love.
|
RSS Feed