charmer

If he had his way, I'd never finish this degree... Id spend my days at Fairyland and the Zoo

Sigh... is he good looking or what?

Moving forward with Project Walk Toward the Light

I haven't been here in a month... i think that might be because i have found my groove a little more and seem to have some momentum building. This is good because I am about to activate what I am calling Project Walk Toward the Light.

My husband likes to say that grad school kills the spirit... and the light at the end of the tunnel they speak of when you get close to finishing is really just the finishing off of your soul. Oh I love that man. ;)

So I am just done. I want to be done. I am visualizing being done. My beautiful sister just got her MD this past weekend, and my equally beautiful sister in law finished her undergrad, so the spirit of matriculation is with me strong right now.

I've crafted Project Walk Toward the Light over the past couple of months and I think I am about ready to launch. The quarter is nearly over, so my work obligation (and pleasure really, i love teaching grad students) is coming to a close. My first chapter(s) of my dissertation is finished (in draft form- editing iterations to be completed). The last of the baby sweaters I have had to knit for friends babies is cast on. Cold season is finally passed and J has learned to say 'Im hungry' and 'all done' and 'blanket' and other such useful phrases, so the pain of sick or frustrated baby is subsiding.

Here it is:

• Following the close of the quarter, my last two weeks of childcare are devoted to finishing up the analytics for paper #2.
• Second two weeks of June to be dedicated to finishing up and submitting my prospectus. It's all there, just needs to be pulled together and updated
• Starting June 29, I am sequestering myself in the home of my parents. 3000 miles from my beloved. :( Jackson will have a summer of fun with the grandparents in the country and I will have all the childcare I need and use of a fabulous office my dad set up for me.
• For 6 weeks I hope to data crunch and write. My goal is write paper #2, complete the analytics for papers #3 and #4 and make progress on the vague idea I harbor for paper #5. If I can get some writing in, that would be great. But I know this is a tall order already.
  
• The final 6 weeks of the summer will be dedicated to celebrating my 5th wedding anniversary in Maui and writing paper #3
• Start the first quarter of my 5th year. This year, I hope to take one last econometrics class to complete the sequence for the emphasis, take what promises to be an awesome development class with our department's newest addition, attend lots of seminars, and write paper #4 and possibly (maybe) paper #5. I reeeealy wish a fairy would come bless me with enough money to not work this year. but that won't happen.
  
• To give me a fighting chance, my childcare arrangements have been increased from 4 hours to 6 hours per day 4 days per week, Christmas travel nixed in favor of another several weeks of isolated work, and I plan on requesting the same class assignments I had this year. (discussions already written, material already mastered, hard work already done ... )

One year from now, 3 additional papers, one more paper in my dreams, and maybe possibly three more letters after my name?

The big bummers are that this summer will be spent apart from J and i really will have to be strong to not just abandon work and do fun things with the wee one every day. summer time in my childhood stomping grounds could be so so much fun!

this is a reaaaalllly naive plan and goals that will never be met. But I figure this is my best case scenario. I have in the past worked like this (pre children obviously) and I have the support of my family on this plan. I am desperate to finish. I want another baby and I don't want to have another baby with this giant monkey on my back.


so there it is.

Things that are magical

1. that lovely time right after you've submitted a draft but before you've gotten the inevitably humbling and hard to swallow comments - this is what i am enjoying right now
2. evolutionary biology... so cool
   
3. childbirth (see this post)
   
4. magic balls of yarn from secret friends
   
5. the central limit theorem - amazing!
   
6. the way Jackson says banana, blueberry & jellybean for the first time in one day
7. pretty much anything sustainable babyish creates but especially the truly truly magic bamboo fitteds
8. goudas that are aged long enough to form those crunchy tidbits that yield the most incredible texture (pradera is the fave in this house)
9. Fairyland
10. the sound of my husband making cocktails at 10:30 on Wednesday night ♥
    

Anatomy of a magic yarn ball swap

This was a ridiculous amount of fun...

Fabulous coordinator matches a group of participants giving each member a super secret swap partner... we all go shopping for eachother....


Then all of this:

















gets wrapped up like this:















and tucked into a box like this:


















And sent off to a friend as a super secret surprise. She unravels it to find the treasures within!

A few days later... I get this :

















SQUEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Delicious Elliot Elephants dyed on Marr Haven by Western Sky Knits, lip balm, hand balm, caramels, stitch markers and fabulous yarn bits for a project Im currently knitting ... THANK YOU KIM!!!! ♥

More Perspective

If I wasn't already well on my way out of last years funk between this blog and the onset of Spring and the astute observation of the book reviewer mentioned in my last post .... yesterday just put it all to rest. I am really terrible at articulating my thoughts, but I will try for nobody's sake.

I saw the business end of baby being born yesterday.

It was without a doubt the most amazing and magical thing I have ever seen. Granted I have birthed a baby myself, but something about witnessing this wonder as a fly on the wall, with no job to do other than to witness, allowed the enormity of the event to just wash over me. I was so stunned by the beauty of it... I sat in my car and tried to think of anything else that could instill such a sense of awe - and I thought for sure the only comparable experience must be the witnessing of the first sunrise or the first time a polar explorer saw an aurora or something. It was that incredible to me.

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic... I mean babies are born constantly all over the world. But that commonplaceness (prolly not a word) only adds to the stunning reminder of how incredible life is... how much beauty there is all around us all the time. I know there is also tragedy and not every birth experience is magical... but for today, I am thinking only of the beauty.

Ive been walking around all morning feeling so inspired and renewed and, well, powerful. I can make a person, I can grow a miracle, my body knows how to push that person into the world, and my body can sustain that person long after he has come into the world. All of this can happen without my brain having to think or reason or enable... I can do this in the most fundamental capacity. That is powerful. That is perspective.

I know I can do that, and I know my intellect is sharp on top of that ... I no longer doubt my ability to master all these roles I am playing. I just will do it, day by day... like my friend pushed that baby out last night moment by moment, like my mother mastered her many roles, year by year, without overthinking it or paralysis by over reasoning things.

I want to thank Jen for allowing me to witness those moments.

made me laugh

this was a line in a book review that made me laugh out loud (literally, not like the figurative LOL) because i think it totally sums up this blog:

"...Her book is a bit whiny and filled with too much "me generation" angst. "

The book was about a feminist trying to live a hundred lives and finally finding peace in being mom...

Editing this post to revisit this thought a bit. I am someone who normally tries not to take myself too seriously... so I think that is why this comment made me laugh. Suck it up and get the work done sort of thing.

At the same time, I don't want to belittle the struggle of academic moms, or my own struggle for that matter. These are valid and difficult problems... but I think I have tended to over think and over analyze this funk and I just need to put it behind me and move on.

PS. i knitted these:

On the bright side...

I have spent the first three months of this year trying to get myself out of last year's extended funk by putting one foot in front of the other and setting weekly goals. I've been making space for Jackson and for creativity along with my work/dissertation goals - figuring that would be a sustainable path...

It has been quite a cathartic process helped along by reading about other mothers in academia, and talking to the academic mothers around me. I think it has really validated my struggle and helped with the sense of isolation.

The last couple of weeks I have been thinking a lot about the brighter side of all this, which I suppose is a good sign... maybe I am coming to some sort of peace. These years have been tough in a lot of ways. But at the same time, it has really been an extraordinary time with Jackson.

I have been lucky enough to get by with part time childcare... meaning I have been able to at least do some work while spending half of every day with my son during his infancy and into his super-fun toddler years.

I got to take my son around the world - me and him together during the fieldwork process... it was hard on me with the nursing, the responsibility, the fear and the exhaustion. But at the same time... it was a pretty amazing experience to be there with him. I will always have that time in my memory - me and my buddy out in the villages doing surveys.

And I'll always look back on my dissertation writing years with a giant smile thinking about how I am doing it between readings of curious george books and trips to the park. Ill always remember walking around the department or having my office hours with Jackson in the backpack...

And I haven't been too busy to be the kind of parent I want to be... I've indulged in the fun of knitting for my little boy, cloth diapering him, making his first solid foods at home, breast feeding, Friday fun days at the park and Fairyland, the zoo...

It is tough to be a mom and be a grad student, but it's always going to be hard to be a mom and have some sort of career pursuit. I don't think I made the wrong choice to enter parenthood smack in the middle of grad school. I think I made just the right one, in fact. And I think I have been pretty lucky.

Sorry this is not a very well written post (as if any of my posts are ever well written)... just a string of thoughts I guess.





Here is the sweater finished for baby Helen who will make her appearance any day now... it is called "Little Boy Blue" in pink coventry cashmere. Heaven to knit... heaven in pink fluffy softness.