Blog Archives
Emerging From the Cave
Well hello, WordPress…seems you’ve kept yourself busy with sprucing up your features and interface lately. Cool, and just in time for me to do that long-promised blog overhaul. Maybe next week.
See, I have barely emerged from the cave-like existence of graduate school and it is taking some time for me to regain lost mental footing. These days, I struggle with remembering to eat breakfast let alone tackle mentally-intensive tasks like writing or website design.
Stating that I’m “relieved to be done” merely scratches the surface of where I’m at in my post-graduate cogitations, however I do find myself grappling a bit with the change in identity…can’t slap that “grad student” label around willy-nilly anymore. Which honestly feels a little strange. And maybe more than a smidge terrifying, when I think about student loan repayment schedules and whatnot (trying not to hyperventilate here).
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/123004/
But at the end of the day, it is a tremendous accomplishment and something that for a long time, I abstractly believed would never end. The forward momentum required to initiate this degree and stick out some of the tougher moments while simultaneously wading through full-time career work, the parental mysteries of toddlerhood and preschool, and periodic bouts of crippling insomnia and grief-related depression. Anyway, lest I begin to verge upon the sorry state of “wallowing”, the reality is that I am one of the lucky ones…I had a lot going for me such as work-related tuition reduction, a supportive immediate and extended family network, and fantabulous colleagues I could draw on for expertise and assistance. Nor did I have to write a thesis, take advanced statistics, or wade through any disgusting math classes. So all in all, a smashing success, even if I am mentally toasted and emotionally wiped out.
Anyway, all the naval-gazing aside, last weekend we had a little family get together (with the generous help of Gmom and UB–many thanks!) at our house to celebrate graduation and also K’s first dance recital (another delightful future post in the barrel…stay tuned!). It had the positive side-effect of motivating us to clean the house to a semi-reasonable state and tackle some long-ignored projects (packing away 18 months worth of outgrown little-genius clothing, anyone?). The day was so lovely, filled with laughter, fun and a zillion kids running around like electrocuted cats [that is--noisily bouncing off the walls]. The weather was even “relatively” reasonable, at a mere 95° with a wispy periodic breeze. I’m more grateful than words can express for all the support and love.
So onward and upward…in the short term hopefully to some side-contracted instructional design work, or possibly some adjunct teaching; in the longer term hopefully a position upgrade with my current employer or barring that, a reasonably painless and successful job search.
Or there is always….
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Once More into the Fray
Nothing really world-shattering over here, so please don’t be looking for bloggy brilliance today. Just a super quick update / mea culpa [while I wait for pizza delivery - haha] before the insanity of My Last Semester of Grad School overtakes me and sucks out my brains. This is somewhat of a follow-up to the “survival” post, but yes, I am still feeling pretty anxious, overwhelmed, and hella burnt-out. Unfortunately I was not struck by any major academic epiphanies during the break, despite many sleepless nights laying in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to plan things out and avoid full-blown panic attacks. However, I did mentally work out a rough set of project plans (sexy they are NOT); for our purposes let’s call them “A” and “B”. I was banking on plan A because it was the least painful to execute but I just realized (now 4 days into the semester) that it was only a pipe dream…I won’t risk putting anyone to sleep with the details but suffice it to say the timing just wouldn’t work out. So back to plan “B”, which is (I am doing some serious sacrificial praying) hopefully going to be feasible with a minimum of pain. So. Now I just have to work out a million details, file my grad papers, line up a bunch of research, write a literature review, and start figuring out the details of execution. Joy.
So all of this has kind of put me into full-blown freak-out mode the last couple weeks. Uncle Bubba has been acting as my ad hoc unofficial therapist/sounding-board on the go (mostly because he is the one that is always available via phone/text/yahoo lately — sorry UB!). Aside from the academic challenges, I am seriously worried about the reality of student loans pressing in upon me; my ability to find better-paying work one way or another; and getting our general current finances in some kind of order because quite frankly, 2009 and 10 kinda kicked our asses and the ducks are coming home to roost. It’s all a mess right now, but operating under certain constraints makes it hard to plan for improvement. I think this will all become a little clearer once I have escaped from grad school and can get my head screwed back on properly for other important life-details.
We did succumb to one little pre-semester fun hurrah; since we minimized Christmas expenses and whatnot this year…we took a little MLK weekend trip to Vegas, just the three of us. It was actually quite a fun trip, althought very different from recent Vegas adventures because Gmom wasn’t there this time to offload some of the kid-duties. So a lot less drinking/gambling/related shenanigans, but more family-based adventures. K had a great time.
Have to put a shout-out to my awesome hubby for all his recent support, patience, and general steadiness in my life at a time when it feels like everything else is wobbling on its axis. Over the last couple days he has been painstakingly working on our @#$)(#!& master shower, so that I can finally be reunited with blisteringly hot morning showers which have more water pressure than a dog peeing on a bush. He also took on the Dad-ariffic task of taking the little genius out to buy her Long-Awaited-Tap-Shoes. She is THRILLED and tomorrow’s dance class ought to be a TOTAL hoot. Oh and he has lately been playing frequent victim customer to K’s “barber shop” ministrations. All this during a week when his dear daughter jokingly suggested replacing him with 1) a puppet or 2) a robot. (!)
On the other family WIN front, we finally got the little genius in to see the dentist this week, which had been somewhat delayed for a variety of reasons. As first dental visits go, it was pretty positive and she seemed to enjoy it overall. For my peace of mind, I am so relieved to find out that the nightly teeth-grinding isn’t going to ruin her life, and her overall dental health is A-OK perfect right now. Hooray!
OK as exciting as all that is — on to the mea culpa. I had great intentions (and we ALL know where those are used for paving…) to get around to fixing the blog design layout and whatnot, and get some serious type-time in over the break, but somehow the allure of DVR and Wii frisbee golf and staying up all night doing nothing meaningful got the better of me. So. Maybe not so much on the redesign and playing catch-up, given that my next three weeks of academic/work life are probably going to be sheer hell, BUT I am planning to try to commit to one post a week this semester, because I feel a lot more sane and happy when I get some of the junk in my head OUT. Fortunately (?) you all are along for the ride!
So, onward and upward; on the road again; ready-steady-GO; once more into the fray….yada, yada, yada.
Pizza’s here!
I Survived*
Well, here I am back from the brink of fall-semester-induced insanity. I dearly wished to have kept up with the blog more actively, but it is unfortunately one of those things I’ve had to include lately in the complex time/energy equation of daily life. I hope to get things freshened up in a bit in the next couple weeks, design-wise, and to try and jam out a few miscellaneous update posts, and if I get really froggy I might even be able to pick up the threads on a couple of half-finished drafts! Won’t that be exciting…in a reheated-leftovers-kind-of-way!
So basically I thought I’d just try to capture some short-ish snippets from my current stream of consciousness, but be warned there is little organizational rhyme or reason.
Fall sucked. I tried not to be tedious here and whine-blog ad nauseum about my academic woes, but I gotta say, this fall was a ringer. I may have been a little more emotionally balanced than past semesters, but the two classes I took were incredibly demanding on my time and patience. After putting it off for two years, I had to take another class from the she-devil, that whorish instructor that nearly made me quit the program way back in my second semester. I’m pleased to report that (obviously) my stubborn persistence was more viable than her stupidity, but the consequence was having to take another class from her. It was every bit as obnoxious as I expected, but forewarned is forearmed. Or some shit like that.
I’m so fatigued. I presume this is not a unique phenomenon for any grad student but I am definitely feeling the drain of this academic adventure. I am lately beginning to look at the tally book to evaluate whether the trade-offs, financially, emotionally, logistically…will be worth it. I do value the experience and the opportunity, blah blah blah, but still. When viewed in scope with the rest of my life, I am just really fatigued right now…intellectually, emotionally, physically. It is sort of a numb feeling at times and I think some days it causes me to coast through other life-minutiae to which I should be paying more attention. Sigh. And ironically this causes my insomnia to flare up, so here I am blogging at 5 o clock in the morning.
One semester to go. Yes this is very exciting, but I am also currently experiencing a lot of trepidation and anxiety because I don’t have a handle yet on what the hell I’m going to do for my capstone applied project. I’ve been saying that for well over 6 months, with a sort of blind hope that I’d be struck with an academic epiphany (yes, this does happen to me sometimes), but as yet, I haven’t been able to dial in the picture with any clarity. I’m planning to do some serious thinking, and maybe some serious drinking, and then maybe some serious thinking-drinking over the next couple vacation weeks. The failsafe plan is to BS something or other that is doable but perhaps not anything in which I’m really personally or professionally invested. Less than ideal, but it offers an escape hatch from grad school, and ideally, I can pick up the threads of more-invested research projects a bit further down the career road.
Merry Christmas. This has been truly a less-than-engaged holiday season for me. I have been so drained that it’s been difficult to summon the mental energy for anything other than the basics for the sake of the little genius. Minimal decorating, minimal shopping, minimal excitement, minimal everything. We decided to stay home this year for Christmas morning, but I am a little bummed that Gmom, Uncle Bubba & co. won’t be joining us. Instead we will be packing up and heading to their place later in the day for Christmas dinner and to spend a couple days in the (hopefully) snowy northern reaches. So we’ll still get to spend some time together, but no Christmas morning follies and famous Gmom cinnamon rolls. The thing I am most looking forward to is a lovely Christmas eve feast that FF, kiddo and I are planning to cook together. I really wish it were possible to enjoy such a thing with all my siblings and their families too, but it is simply impossible to gather everyone for Christmas anymore. I wish it were important to them in the same way it is important to me, but I guess that is part of growing up and away from one’s immediate family.
Our little monkey
Little genius is 5. We did a combo-birthday extravaganza with K2 and it was a really fun, happy day. We rented one of those moon bounce inflatable things and everyone had a great time. They went with a Tangled (Rapunzel) theme, and we happened to also see the movie the same weekend, which reminds me…I’ll have to whip up another post one of these days regarding my reaction to such a weird Disney movie. Moving on. Recent kiddo developments:
- New antagonistic/argumentative/dramatic behavior swings. Um hello, where did THAT come from? It’s crazy and I haven’t figured out how the hell to respond to all that yet. Ugh.
- Yesterday she discovered her first loose tooth! This is exciting and yet it makes me feel a little nervous and anxious…which is kind of strange, but there you go. Hopefully this first baby tooth experience goes smoothly with a minimum of drama, and the tooth fairy comes through with some good loot.
- She was pretending to be a mommy giraffe the other day with 2 babies and couldn’t recall the word “nipples”. She called them “piffles”, and both FF and I nearly wet ourselves trying to hold back the hysterical laughter.
- This spring will be her last semester of preschool, and then it will be on to Kindergarten. Still makes me want to go somewhere and cry a little.
- This spring she is switching from the regular gymnastics class to a combo dance/gym class. Because my kid? she wants to DANCE! I think this is going to be a lot of fun for her (and us).
- We are going to get her started with soccer at our local Y sometime in the next couple months and she is very excited, yet anxious about “not winning games” and thus being ineligible to receive trophies. Uhh? I didn’t even TRY to explain the concept of non-competitive soccer yet. Will definitely cross that bridge when we get there.
- She randomly had a freak-out the other night around 4am when she came into our room to sleep, because she noticed while getting in bed that the fuzzy blanket caused a couple static sparks. You would have thought the kid was about to get hit by lightning. She was so wigged out that even after 30 minutes of patient (sleepy) discussion, she still wouldn’t stop sitting on her pillow plastered against the wall, cringing away from the dreaded, death-ray blanket. She simply couldn’t be reasoned with and she chose to go back to her own bedroom to sleep, rather than risk electrocution by killer blanket. Oddly by the next day, she was over this phobia and all was well again for her with our bedroom. WTF?
- She recently volunteered herself to help out with a project at my office, in which we needed a child to “star” in a brief educational video on measuring height of pediatric patients. She was willing to do this as long as we all promised NO shots or needles. Pretty pragmatic negotiator, if you ask me. Anyway, it went well and she was quite cooperative but halfway through production, a renegade spider appeared in the clinic room and she refused to commence acting until the media techs disposed of the offending vermin. That’s my girl!
I finally got to watch season 6 of LOST. I always wanted to watch the show but never connected with it during actual broadcast seasons, so I decided to make it my summer entertainment project, and consumed the first 5 seasons in short order. But due to various time constraints and Netflix availability issues, I did not get to start season 6 until last week. I gotta say, I tried to avoid a lot of the media/fan commentary since May so as to not spoil the ending but I was generally aware of a lot of fan heat following the finale. After impartially watching the season 6 episodes, I have to say I found them to be really confusing and lacking a lot of the little touches that captivated me in earlier seasons. And then…the finale. I had high hopes to get some questions answered and to generally just not be pissed off. On the one hand, it seemed pretty anticlimactic, and there were more unresolved issues than you can shake a stick at, but on the other hand, awwwww, who doesn’t love reunions! Still, I think it was pretty weak for a story that had so much magnificent potential, creatively-speaking, and such a strong cast. So I guess that leaves me thoroughly irritated, if not exactly pissed, and still kind of mourning what could have been but able to make peace with the way they closed it. I read one critical analysis which suggested that the weirdness might be easier to take if one viewed the final season storyline separately from the other 5, and I think there is something to that notion. For the record, I’m still totally in love with Des, and I’d certainly play footsie with Sayid as a reasonable second.
Before this gets any longer. So much for “shortish” stream of consciousness! This final bit is a multimedia box of holiday cheer…the few things that have actually brought a little Christmas spirit my way lately.
- Baby it’s cold outside – Martina McBride/overdubbed Dean Martin version. how is it that I didn’t hear this particular version until a couple weeks ago? Definitely the best I’ve heard and deliciously retro-glamorous! Just listen to that smooth, sexy Dean-voice surrounded by big sultry brass, and McBride’s crystalline, expressive voice playing along. Brilliant!
- I have to watch the Christmas Can-Can every year by Straight No Chaser because it’s just damn funny.
- Amazing light shows created by hobbyist dude in Utah. Really incredible and worth a few minutes of exploring on his website. Here is a sample:
*but I’m more burnt out than a flaming piece of toast.
Motivation, where art thou?
I seem to have hit the mythical ‘second to last week of the semester’ wall. My drive has driven off. Procrastination is the only language which I speak. I couldn’t complete the minimal amount of homework I’d assigned myself last night because I “ran out of soda.” Geez, I sound like a freaking undergrad again.
