More Light Moving Forward

My dad used to say the winter solstice was his favorite day of the year.  He hated the days of waning daylight that are especially noticeable in Portland, where I remember it being dark at, like, 4pm.  The solstice was his favorite day because it meant from here on out, every day was going to get a little bit brighter than the last.  I spent my solstice grading final exams.  Billy graciously took Nora up to his parents' so I could make my way through them at home.  I finished them before bedtime, thus bringing to an official close the semester that has felt so heavy.  Oscar's ill health and death have cast a long shadow.  I was due to sit for a translation exam on Dec 13 to satisfy our program's foreign language department, so the need to prepare for that loomed ahead of me all term.  Although these things are minor compared to the other heavy sorrows I've shouldered throughout my graduate career, they had an impact on me, and they have made it hard to see how much progress I've made. In the spirit of optimism about the future that the solstice represents, I wanted to write a post documenting all of the things that I managed to accomplish in this term.  Otherwise, I'll be inclined to forget, and that feeling of "I didn't get anything done!" that often plagues me will start to set in.

So, in no particular order, here goes!

• I finished revising my dissertation prospectus and filed it with our program!  Despite having completely changed my research topic after my comprehensive exam, I managed to get it in just in time to meet the "9 month" guideline our program has encouraged.  
• I made it through another semester working as a TA for a large lecture class.  There are advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement, but I love teaching and often feel handcuffed by being a helper in someone else's course.  I am fortunate to have worked with a professor who has genuine appreciation and respect for me, so that definitely makes a difference.  But next term I get to teach my own course, with my own curriculum, and I can't wait.
• I did my best to work 10 hours per week on the Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence project.  I finished getting all of the 5000+ pages ready for digitization, completed the inventory of them, and did the best I could to correct and complete the metadata records.  My rewards for all this work, so far, are being able to see the letter images together online and being promoted to "content expert" on the project.  This means that moving forward, I'll be doing less metadata work and more work that draws upon my knowledge of KAP.  In other words, I'll get to do the kind of stuff that could make a big positive impact on my dissertation and employment prospects.
• I hosted back to back birthday parties for Nora Jane.  What was I thinking?!  I guess I was thinking I wanted to give her family and friends a chance to celebrate her, and I wanted her to know how special and how well loved she is.  So, mission accomplished.
• I potty trained my not-quite-two year old.  She is now rarely having accidents, even at school.  She still wears a diaper overnight, but I LOVE not having to change diapers. And I love how proud my big girl is of herself every time she goes on the potty.
• I celebrated 10 years together with Billy.  Truly, none of the things on this list would have been possible to accomplish without him.  I hope people read this blog with that fact in the back of their minds at all times.  But sometimes it needs to be stated, explicitly.  My ten years with Billy have been the best years.  They are all helping me become my best self.  Here's a picture of us at Mythbusters Live, celebrating 10 years together while surrounded by a bunch of pre-pubescent boys in sweatpants: 

• I satisfied the foreign language requirement! THANK GOODNESS.  The saga of setbacks I've encountered in trying to get this requirement out of my way is very long, very annoying, and was ultimately very anxiety-inducing.  But it's over now, which means I no longer have to choose between working on my dissertation and studying a language that will not be mentioned in it.  It also means:
• I've advanced to candidacy!  Basically, this means that I have advanced to the status of someone who only has to write the dissertation-- all other degree requirements have been satisfied.  Most people advance to candidacy after passing their comprehensive exam, which I did last year, but the language requirement kept me from reaching this status until now.  
• I completed my first out-of-town research trip to Yale.  This deserves a post of its own, but since I haven't gotten around to that yet, I want to mention it here.  In early November, I drove up to New Haven so I could consult the Josephine Hersbt archive.  It was such a productive trip. I left Monday morning and returned Thursday, which gave me about 26 hours of research time in the Beinecke, which worked out perfectly.  I did a lot of work in advance to figure out what I wanted to see, so in my three days there I found all of the things I was expecting to find AND so much more material pertinent to my dissertation that has never been addressed in Hersbt scholarship.  Meanwhile, Nora and Billy did really well at home together during my 3 night absence.  I can't wait to have a chance over break to start working, in earnest, on the chapter that will incorporate this research!  Here are some pictures of my trip

So while I often felt like I was struggling to keep my head above water this semester, and I have a LOT to do over break if I'm going to have a decent writing sample to submit for my fellowship applications, I am proud of what I managed to accomplish this term.  Maybe next term I'll have a little more time for blogging?

New Work Opportunities!

Another reason for the lapse in blog posts lately is that we're in a bit of a transition period around here while Billy and I both adjust to exciting new opportunities at work!

Billy was recently named the Science and Operations Center Test Team Lead for the James Webb Space Telescope.  He has been working as a member of this team since he began working at STScI almost exactly five years ago, and in the past few years he has taken on an increasing number of supervisory roles.  He and his team work on making sure the "ground segment" portion of the telescope will work properly-- or, in other words, they test all the computer systems that will control the telescope and make sense of the data it collects.

I think Billy was a little unsure about how the news of his promotion might be received, since most of his coworkers are older than him and have been working on the project longer.  However, it sounds to me like the transition has gone very smoothly.  But since it's my blog, I will speculate for a minute: I would guess nobody who works with Billy on a daily basis could possibly be surprised when smart people put him in charge of more things.  Putting Billy in charge of things is what smart people should do.  And if you are a person who has to do smart things, and someone has to be in charge of them, you want Billy to be that person.  His work ethic came to mind a few weeks ago when my professor was emphasizing of a passage about a bull fighter from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. He writes, "Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line.  The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger.  Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling.  Romero's bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time."  Billy keeps an absolute purity of line in everything he does.  This is such a part of him, actually, that he sometimes fails to recognize that other people resort to twisting themselves like cork-screws in their attempts to achieve the effects that he achieves naturally.  But the spectators who get to spend a lot of time around him, like me and his coworkers, can easily see the difference.  I'm very fortunate to have a husband who is so smart, and who works so hard, and is employed by people who continue to foster his excellence.  To say I am proud of him is such an understatement.  I admire him and learn by his example so much every day, that most of all I am happy for him in moments when he is rewarded for being who he is.

For my part, I've picked up a new part time job with the Special Collections department of our library system.  As you may know from my earlier posts, the University of Maryland holds the personal archive of Katherine Anne Porter, one of the authors whose writing figures prominently in my work.  The libraries have received funding from her literary trust to digitize a portion of her personal correspondence.  Eventually, the hope is to secure outside funding so that all of it can be digitized and hosted on a sophisticated online database.  They've hired me to work as the graduate assistant on this project, so I'll put in about ten hours a week.  For the next few months, it will be my job to organize and itemize the letters, prepare them to be shipped out for digitization, check the letters and the digital files for quality and accuracy when they return, and help to get the digital images posted to our library's KAP site.  Thereafter, I'll get to help with helping to create web interest for the project and its contents. For this portion of the project, we'll only be starting with the letters Porter wrote to her family members, which is roughly 5,000 pages of correspondence.

Those of you who are interested in my academic work can already imagine how unbelievable this opportunity is for me.  It will provide me with invaluable access to the Porter collection, a chance to learn more about archival research and digitization, and help me get my foot in the door in the field of Digital Humanities studies.  Since I'm approaching the point where I'll have to nail down the topic of my dissertation, the timing is also perfect.  One of the most thrilling things about archival research, for me, is the likelihood that you can discover a tidbit of information at any given time that will radically transform your understanding of the subject.  The opportunity to spend this much time with the materials and the people who can help me learn how best to make use of them is something I couldn't have even dreamed up if I'd tried.  Once again, someone has agreed to pay me for something I would gladly do for free if time permitted.

A note to future Nora:  I sometimes worry about what you will think when you discover that the universe planted you in this house with these two nerdiest of parents.  This basically ensures that the things you will be wildly passionate about in your life will be perceived as super lame by a large portion of the population.  But I will promise you this: Here, in this house, you will be encouraged to follow whatever paths those wild passions lead you down.  For however long you want.  With the force of our combined nerdiness and passion behind you.  When you look back up, you will be surrounded by people who understand why those wild passions are super interesting and valuable.  And that, little one, is exactly where you deserve to be.

A view of the Katherine Anne Porter Room inside Hornbake Library; or, Where My Nerdy Passions and My Parents' and Husband's Encouragement of Them Has Led Me.

Rest Easy, Papa

A week ago yesterday, my grandfather passed away.  Earlier that morning, Nora, Vickie, and I had arrived in his hospital room.  The night before, my Aunt Carrie had called to let us know that because his cancer was inoperable, he had elected to stop receiving dialysis treatments, so Vickie and I decided to take Nora with us to see him one last time and say goodbye.  It had only been a week before that that he'd been admitted to the hospital due to kidney failure, which had been the first sign that he was seriously ill.

I will always count it as one of the great fortunes of my life that we got to see him only a few months ago, when he was still feeling mostly like himself, and that we got to see him again last week to say goodbye.  Nora was sick during that trip in July, but I could still tell how much delight he took in being around her.  And when we walked into that hospital room last week, and he was visible excited as he said "Nora, Nora, Nora!" I have never been more proud of anything than I was to make him that happy.

During that morning visit, Papa was cheerful and peaceful.  He told me he wished he could hold Nora but was satisfied to rub her leg and commented on how soft her skin was.  "She hasn't spent quite as much time in the sun as me," he joked.  He thanked her for coming to see him.  He had me bring Nora in really close so he could tell her, "Someday, when you are older, you will understand about the cycle of life, and then you will know why I am so glad you came to see me."  I tried to choke back the tears long enough to say "We are so thankful we got here in time," but I'm not sure it made any sense.  It reminded me of how, in Dad's final days, he somehow managed to say the things that would give me the strength to keep on going without him.  Throughout the day, Papa's condition deteriorated rapidly, but he bravely hung on until all of the grandchildren who were traveling to see him arrived.  When Nate and Ashley got there, he couldn't really talk but his whole face lit up at the sight of them.  That evening, we all got a chance to spend time sitting with him and saying goodbye before he passed away peacefully.

I've been sitting on this blog post for several days, trying to figure out how I can pay tribute to my grandfather, especially when I'm so pinched for time with my comprehensive exam rapidly approaching.  And then it occurred to me: the best tribute I can pay to him is to get back to work.  He taught us to believe that if we worked hard enough, we could achieve anything we wanted.  But he also helped us to realize that working hard enough means working really, really hard.  Nobody was a harder worker than Papa, and anyone who worked with him will tell you that his employees worked hard for him just because they liked him.  Mimi told me that before he fell ill, he was making plans to come east to attend my PhD graduation ceremony.  For him there was no question about if I would be able to do it or not.  He was just waiting to hear when.  I can hear what he would say: "Get back to work, Missy."

So in honor of my grandpa and the work ethic he taught me, I've been plugging away at my work.  Somewhere down the line, I'll take a break long enough to write about how the things I will miss the most are his affectionate ribbing and his stories.  In the meantime, I'll savor this stage of loss in which every little thing reminds you of the person who is gone.  And I'll share the pictures and video of Nora from our trip, because he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Okay, I have to say one more thing before I go: my family is the best.  I can't wait until we are all together again for a celebration rather than to mourn, but in the meantime, I'm proud to be a member of a family who comes together to hold each other up during life's most trying moments.

Goodybe, 20s. It's been great knowing you.

Today is the last day of my 20s.  I guess this begs some reflection, considering how much apprehension people generally have about turning 30.  I don't dislike getting older because my life gets better every year. These days, I think it's common to feel like you spend your 20s figuring things out and trying to get to where you want to be, and then you get to spend your 30s enjoying where you are.  I certainly feel that way.  I generally prefer to avoid boasting in favor of letting my actions speak for themselves.  But I'm really proud of everything I accomplished in my 20s, and before bringing them to a close, it feels appropriate to take a minute to acknowledge how hard I've worked and how far I've come.

Far and away, the best thing I did in my 20s was seek out and cultivate relationships with the very best people.  I met, fell in love with, and committed to a man who is smart, funny, hardworking, and supportive.  I've never had to question his love or loyalty, and I have never given him a reason to doubt mine.  We created a spirited, resilient, curious baby girl whose mere existence brings smiles to our faces and joy to our hearts.  I come from a good family, and though I decided to move across the country and made some mistakes along the way, I have worked hard at maintaining positive relationships with my family members.  I get along with and actively enjoy the company of all of them, especially my mom, sister, and brother.  My dad died knowing how much I loved and appreciated him.  I also married into a good family.  I've worked hard at learning how to be a member of a family who does things differently than I'm used to and how to learn from what they have to teach me.   I've appreciated being embraced by them, and I hope they feel, as I do, that we're all better off for having been brought together.  And every step of the way-- college, teaching, and graduate school-- I've managed to find and befriend women who are smart, insightful, honest, and supportive.  I've tried to return the favor of their friendship by displaying the same qualities in return.  I've loved all these people with my whole heart and I've tried to put their needs ahead of my own when circumstances called for it.  I've worked on fostering open, honest, and productive communication with them.  I've tried to encourage them all to tell me when I'm being unreasonable and use honesty to help me become better than I am.  These relationships are the crowning achievements of my 20s.

So while I'm about to list my other proudest accomplishments from this decade, please know that these people I've mentioned above are the ones who've made everything else I've done possible, and they're the ones who've made all of these things feel worthwhile instead of empty.

Academically:
-Graduated from Valparaiso Summa Cum Laude.
-Convinced my professors and classmates that I belonged in graduate school even before I convinced myself.
-Completed my Master's Degree at the University of Maryland.
-Earned the departmental prize for best MA level paper.
-Was admitted to the UMd PhD program, with full funding, in a year when approximately 5% of qualified applicants were accepted.
-Completed a Critical Theory Certificate from the UMd Graduate School despite beginning graduate school with no idea how to describe what critical theory actually is.

Professionally:
-Earned the respect of my fellow teachers and administrators in the four years I spent as a high school teacher.
-Succeeded in convincing my students to give extra effort to their English studies, which I know because they made comments like "I think my brain will explode if I think any harder," they greeted me in the hallways with a smile, they came to me to talk about their lives, and they improved their test scores despite my refusal to "teach to the test."
-Gave countless extra hours of my time as Student Government advisor to enhance for my students the aspects of the high school experience that were the most meaningful to me.
-Was offered and accepted a graduate assistantship at UMd that paid me a stipend on top of complete tuition remission for my master's degree; brought a positive attitude to that job and did my best to be good at it, even though desk work was outside my comfort zone.
-Made the dedicated effort to serve my students as an instructor at UMd despite the vigorous demands of my own academic curriculum.

Personally:
-Lived within my financial means.
-Dedicated myself to giving back to my community through teaching and other charitable acts.
-Lived in Oregon, Indiana, and Maryland.
-Traveled to Ireland, Mexico, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
-Attended and participated in the weddings of many friends, all of whom remain married.
-Took care of the things that needed taking care of following Dad's death.

Physically:
-Ran a marathon, a half marathon, several ten milers, and countless shorter races of various lengths; earned third place in my running club's yearlong championship series.
-Conceived, carried, delivered, and nursed a healthy baby girl.

Emotionally:
Learned a decade's worth of lessons, the most important among them including:
-Being right is less important than doing the right thing.
-As an educator, the most you can do is give your students the very best of yourself and your talents.  You have a responsibility to try to engage all of them, but once you've done that, you have to focus on the ones who want to learn from what you have to offer instead of dwelling on the ones who don't.
-The true value of a good education is not in the facts it teaches you, but in the way it teaches you how to learn, how to evaluate different pieces of information, and how to use the new knowledge you've acquired to improve your life and the lives of others.
-The only way to maintain a meaningful long-term relationship of any kind is through open and honest communication.
-Loving someone doesn't mean giving them what you want to give; it means doing the work to find out what they really need and figuring out how you can give it to them.
-If I dig deeper, I am always capable of a little bit more than I think.
-Through preparing and persisting, I can endure misfortune and be ready to capitalize on any good fortune that comes my way.
-I am at my best when I know when to ask for help.
-When you lose someone you love, one way to move on is to keep the best parts of the past close to your heart as you continue to look forward to the future.
-Some aches may never go away.  And you may not want them to.
-What's right for me is not necessarily right for everyone else, and I have no right to try to dictate how other people choose to live their lives.
-If you can't or don't acknowledge the position of privilege in which you sit, it's difficult to give anything meaningful back to your community.
-You should only compare what you have to what someone else has if you're looking to make sure the other person has enough.
-If you treat others with fairness and respect, most of them will give it back to you, and the ones who don't will not have the power to get you down.
-It is wise to be emotionally, intellectually, professionally, and financially generous. It makes you feel good to give with no strings attached, and people remember the things you do for them.
-If you don't like the way things are going, it's up to you to make some changes.
-There is always so much more to learn.

With all that said and done, I'm excited to start another decade.  It might seem hard to imagine that my 30s could top my 20s, but when I look at the people I have around me these days, it's hard to imagine they won't.

Day Care Dilemma

Last semester, when I returned to school, I was able to do a pretty good job managing my teaching responsibilities and mothering duties thanks to help from Billy and Patti, who watched Nora while I went to campus for lectures and discussion sections.  I kept hoping I’d be able to accomplish more of my own academic work as the semester went on, but I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere.  “I feel like I’m stuck in the mud,” I told one of my mentor professors.  “Your mud will dry, Liz.”  When I asked her what she meant by that, she said “You’re smart enough, but more importantly, you have the self discipline it takes to be successful.”  I had to ask myself: was she still right?  What had happened to my self discipline?  Why, when the clock struck 9 every night, was I crawling into bed instead of cracking open a book?

I kept thinking that once Nora got onto a somewhat regular schedule, I’d be able to manage my time better.  I’ve always gotten a lot of difficult work done because I’m good at forcing myself to do necessary things before allowing myself to do fun things.  That prioritization approach to time management doesn’t work when you have a baby, though.  I can’t put off playing with her or feeding her until I get through another chapter. And though I tried staying up late and waking up early to get my work done, I was just way too tired to do any good, quality work during these periods.

About a month ago, I realized that despite the fact that Nora was finally keeping a fairly reliable schedule, and I was getting quite a bit of work done, that amount of work was nowhere near enough.  Further, I began to realize how impossible it was to do the type of really serious thinking and focused reading my job requires in the one hour chunks that Nora’s schedule allows.  It is remarkable how much more I can accomplish if I can sit down for two uninterrupted hours than if I can sit down for one hour two separate times. 

So we started considering the possibility of finding a day care placement for Nora.  Initially I was hoping to find a part time solution, but that is difficult to secure, and I realized that putting her in full-time care would buy me significantly more time to work.  I was nervous about making the full time suggestion to Billy, but all he said was “If that’s what it will take for you to get your work done, that’s what we will do.”  I should have known.

I spent about two weeks searching the web, making phone calls, and visiting day care facilities.  I was hoping to find a place that was reasonably priced, conveniently located, and made me feel comfortable, but I quickly learned that given the limited availability starting in late August, I wasn’t going to be able to meet all those requirements.  In the end, I feel thankful to have found a place we can afford where I know Nora will flourish, even if it’s farther away than I’d like and costs more than I was hoping to spend. 

One of the facilities upset me: none of the babies or workers seemed happy.  Others seemed fine, and I didn’t think leaving Nora behind there would be too bad.  But the one we chose feels like a place she might actually enjoy attending.  It’s a “school,” so they use education language for everything.  We’ll pay “tuition,” she’ll have two “teachers” who write daily “lesson plans” for their classes, we’ll get a daily “progress report” on how she did, etc.  This choice of words is effective.  Even if they weren’t any different in practice, it would be easier to talk myself into taking Nora to “school” than to gear myself up for leaving her at “day care.”  But I do think this school offers a lot of things she’ll enjoy.  The teachers have backgrounds in early childhood education, so they know how to foster her development. She is fascinated by other babies, so I know she’ll enjoy having the opportunity to socialize.  She takes in new surroundings like a little sponge, so I imagine the curriculum of “pre-ballet,” baby yoga, “tiny tennis,” language lessons in English, Spanish, and sign language, and the like will keep her little brain occupied.  And she’ll even get to keep her own schedule until she starts walking steadily, when she’ll be upgraded into the classroom that attempts to establish a routine for all the kids to follow.

For all of these reasons, taking Nora to “school” for a few days each week actually appeals to me.  It’s the idea of taking her there full time that makes me feel anxious about this impending change in our lifestyle.  When I left her with Patti and Billy for as long as six hours, I didn’t really feel like she missed me.  Even so, I was home with her every other day, so she got plenty of mama time in between babysitting days… and I got plenty of Nora time.  The timing also makes it tough.  I’ve gotten to see all of her milestones so far, and I love watching her learn new things every week, so it makes me sad to think I might miss her first steps or her first real words. 

When I start to feel really anxious or nervous about it, I run through this list of things to remember:

-It’s only going to be for about four months.

-I’ll still get to spend a few hours with her every evening before bed.

-It is a necessary means to an end: leaving her full time for a few months will help me clear this major hurdle in my program, which I hope will mean I can scale back to part-time care in the future without jeopardizing my academic standing.

-Being in graduate school is not costing me time spent with my daughter; it has given me much more time with her.  It’s not fair to think of this change as something I “have” to do because I’m a graduate student.  If I was still teaching high school, Nora would have been in full-time care since she was 12 weeks old, and I would have had to return her to day care after a summer off at the exact same time.

-I get the most work done when I’m under pressure or highly motivated.  If expensive, forced separation from my daughter doesn’t push me to become highly efficient while we’re apart, I’m not going to be able to finish my degree, and I might as well learn that now.

Most of all, though, I try to remind myself how fortunate I am that after I drop Nora off, I get to go do work that I enjoy.  After we made the decision, I actually began looking forward to having the chance to sit down and do some serious work.  The fact that it’s still over a month away means I can try to soak up all the extra time with Nora in the interim.  And in the meantime, I’m trying to finish my syllabus and make all of my lesson plans so that once the semester starts, I can focus the majority of my time and energy on preparing for my exam.

Here goes nothing?

Seriously, how cute is she?  Now that she can stand, it's all she wants to do.

Back in the Saddle

My first week back to work went better than I could have imagined.

On Monday, Nora and I tried our best to savor our last day at home together before things began to change.  She just seems to get more curious all the time, and it is unbelievable to me to see how much comprehension she seems to develop in just a single day.  I have to be careful with her in her Bumbo seat because her head control is still developing, but here she is sitting in it and inspecting her toys from a new angle.

On Tuesday, I had to attend an orientation for new teaching assistants, so I took Nora to campus with me to meet my colleagues.  She took a nice long nap in the morning, so she was in rather pleasant spirits all day.  It was nice to have a reason to get properly dressed and leave the house.  We were met with so much enthusiasm when I showed up with Nora, and it was a delight to introduce her to many of the people I've been working with for the past several years.  

Billy began working from home on Wednesdays this week so he can watch Nora while I'm on campus.  I enjoy his work from home days because he gets to be there for Nora's golden hour.  In the first hour after Nora wakes up, she is often at her most curious, inquisitive, and happy.  I always put her in her play gym during that time, and each day we can see that she is getting closer and closer to rolling over.  She was getting such good rotation on Wednesday morning that we joked she is already much smarter after one day at college!

I had a really hard time leaving Nora that morning, and the car ride to College Park has never seemed so long.  Nora seemed un-phased, though, and she behaved well for Billy.  Once I got to campus, I was distracted enough that being apart from Nora for the longest period yet did not feel so bad.  In lecture on Wednesday, I realized that in all my anxiety about being separated from Nora, I managed to overlook how fortunate I am to have this teaching assignment.  Twice a week, my "job" is to attend an interesting lecture about my own subject area taught by a professor I like and respect.  Once a week, my "job" is to meet with undergrads to talk about books.  Aside from all the grading this entails, it is a job I would gladly do for free.  I felt better after making this realization, and Nora smiled and giggled for me when I got home, so that first day of the semester felt like a success.

Since the class had not yet begun in earnest, my professor cancelled the Friday discussion sections, giving me an extra week to prepare to teach.  On Thursday, I savored the chance to be home again with Nora for a "normal" day.  Evidently, she did too; she took a three hour nap!  She normally naps for around 30 minutes, she sometimes naps for an hour, and on a few rare occasions she has napped for up to two hours.  So a three hour nap is unprecedented... but it was also reassuring.  I think Nora must have been worn out after Tuesday and Wednesday, so it was nice to see that she is finally able to sleep longer when she is tired.

The cancellation of Friday's discussion sections also allowed me a chance to do a "practice run" of having Patti watch Nora for the full day.  Being away from Nora is hard enough; I can't imagine what it would be like if I was also worried about the type of care she receives in my absence. On Friday, the thing that comforted me enough to get some work done was knowing that Patti was taking great care of Nora.  Chuck and Brian were home when I went to pick her up, and it was fun to see how excited they were that they got to see her that day.  I was also relieved to find that Nora hadn't given Patti trouble with eating or napping, and that the two of them had fun playing during Nora's waking periods.

After all that, it was great to be home with Billy and Nora yesterday.  There were several signs that things are finally falling into place, which meant it was the first day I really felt like we are doing a good job as parents.  Nora has started reaching for and holding her toys, she is beginning to tolerate tummy time, she holds her head up much higher these days, and she is getting closer to rolling over.  She is learning so much now that it's easy to see how getting enough sleep is fueling her brain.  She's getting better at self-soothing and she's continuing to nap for longer periods.  Now that she barely puts up a fight before relaxing and falling asleep, it's hard to believe that only a few weeks ago she was screaming and writhing every time we started the nap routine, or that a month ago, it was literally impossible to get her to sleep without holding her for the entire nap.

An added bonus from yesterday was getting a visit from Aunt Vickie and Tres, who leave for their Bahamian cruise today.  After bringing us lunch and patiently waiting for the little sleepy head to wake up, they were treated to a fairly pleasant mood and a few hours of playing.  A while back, I finally found a onesie that said "aunt," which I had to buy immediately because Vickie does not want to be called "auntie."  Nora was also decked out in her little Gap skinny jeans, so naturally I had to take a photo of my two favorite girls.

Tres was last here right before Thanksgiving, before Nora got sick with RSV. For us, that time has really flown by, but having him visit again really drew attention to how much Nora has grown and how much she has developed in the past couple of months. It was great to see him and hear about their plans for the cruise... even before we opened the gift he brought, which could not have been more adorable.  These Tiny TOMS are still a little big for Nora, but that's perfect, since she isn't really wearing shoes yet.

In fact, I loved them so much I had to buy myself the matching pair!  So you can be sure that photo will be forthcoming. : )

Besides a considerable amount of peace of mind, the main lesson I took away from all this is what a difference a week can make.  When you're in your 20s, the weeks all blur together, and it's easy to turn around and realize a whole month has passed unnoticed.  But when you're approaching 4 months old, one week is long enough for an amazing amount of growth and development.  In addition to trying to take things day by day, I hope that next time I start to feel frustrated or clueless, I can say to myself: Give it a week and things will be different.  Surely we will have some weeks ahead where things are as bad as they were good this week, but now that I know just how quickly Nora can change, I hope I have an easier time getting through them.

Today, after we watched the last two hours of the Australian Open final, we took Nora to the mall to make some returns.  She was a little skeptical about having her photo taken. : )

Posts are likely to be shorter and more sporadic from here on out, since I really need to be doing academic work, but I'll try to share pictures and a few thoughts once in a while. : )

Mother/Daughter Bonding

This is a big week in our house because Billy had to return to work on Monday.  After we got up and ready on our first day of mother/daughter bonding, Nora and I took this photo to send to Dad at work and to share with Clara in celebration of her 3rd birthday.

Thankfully, the end of Billy's paternity leave coincided with Nora's nearly complete recovery from RSV.  She's still sneezing a bit, but she's no longer congested and she is sleeping really well.  And as you can see, she is still getting plenty to eat! Not so thankfully, Billy's return to work also coincides with Nora's newly adopted colicky temper tantrums.  She used to fuss infrequently, and when she did, picking her up was enough to calm her down.  Now she can be much more demanding.  Thankfully for me, the fact that she lets me sleep enough at night gives me enough energy and patience to spend most of her waking hours carrying her in her sling and bouncing her on the exercise ball.  Since she was born, I have been surprised by how quickly she goes through different phases, and this is definitely a phase that I hope ends quickly!

On the positive side, though, she's also developing more endearing habits at the same time.  When she wakes up in the morning she usually has a happy, content period of about 30 minutes during which I can fix myself breakfast.  It's fun to interact with her when she's in this mood, but I also enjoy watching her look around and amuse herself while she's sitting in her chair.  She is smiling more than ever and has started making cute little cooing and squeaking noises to accompany her smiles.  It's hard to capture these high points of our days on video, but here is a short clip of one of her more content moments.



Happy or sad, she feels more like our little baby all the time, and we both enjoy greeting Billy when he gets home from work each day!

The Summons

I've survived week 1 of a my super-busy three week span!  Though most of the campus is quiet during the summer, this is actually the busiest time of year for my job.  I'm in charge of processing the paperwork and computer data for all of our adjunct lecturers and graduate assistants by July 31, which, not coincidentally, is the final day of my own appointment in the office.  We have about 80 graduate assistants and 80 adjunct lecturers in our department, so you can imagine that this process is pretty time consuming.  For the past year, I've been filling in for my old full-time officemate, who accepted a job in another department.  Several months after she left, they replaced her by promoting another one of my officemates, and then they finally hired someone to replace that officemate, so after I go they will have a full-time person to occupy this job again.  I've been trying to do a 40 hour job in 20 hours per week, and though I'm glad I've been able to help the department, I'm thankful to be moving back to teaching in August.

These three weeks are extra busy because in addition to my office job, I've taken on a 6 week Intermediate German class which meets four days a week.  I'm taking it to try to reacquire my German proficiency, and after I complete the course, I hope to be able to pass the foreign language exam that's required for my PhD degree.  Ultimately, I'd love to get a firm enough command on my German to be able to read German-American immigrant texts from before, during, and after WW1 (though the language was officially outlawed for a while, the stuff is still out there).  For now, though, I'm taking one hurdle at a time.

I am really enjoying the German class.  I was hoping to audit it, but the German department is forcing me to take it for credit and the grade will show up on my transcript, so I feel some extra pressure to do well.  I took four years of German in high school and one semester in college, and though I never reached the level of fluency that I might have attained if I'd traveled to Germany, I was a fairly capable German speaker back then.  When I arrived to class on Monday and was handed a "placement quiz," I realized just how much of the language I had lost.  I couldn't remember how to conjugate any verbs and I couldn't even think of how to write the plural form of "you."  It's really fun to see how quickly it is coming back, though.  It's fascinating to me that I can pull words I had all-but-forgotten out of the cobwebs of my brain.  Shortly after I answered a yes or no question with "si," I correctly used the word "Schauspieleren," which is German for "actress."

There is a "culture" portion of the curriculum that is essentially unrelated to my reasons for taking the course, but I find it really interesting nonetheless.  Some of the more surprising things I've learned in the first week of class include:
-My instructor, who is my age and is working on her PhD in Germanic Studies, was born in East Germany (DDR) and got choked up talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall.  She told us that before the wall came down she had never seen a grape or a banana, that her father waited 20 years to be given permission to buy a car, and that she was almost expelled from her school at age 7 for asking what all the blank spaces on the map were.  (She says only Communist countries were labelled.)
-She did say she misses the camaraderie her old neighborhood had before the fall of the DDR.  She said "we had no money and so everyone was kind."
-My instructor also claims that nobody in Germany flies the German flag or demonstrates German patriotism except during the World Cup, when German flags hang from every window and people paint their faces on match days.  She says that if you hung a German flag at any other time, people would think you were a Nazi.
-On a related note, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin was seriously damaged during WWII, but the Germans did not repair it, and it stands as a war memorial.  My instructor said they left it alone "so we can never forget what we did."
-She also told us that the US planned to drop an atomic bomb on Dresden but changed their minds.  Google hasn't helped me verify the validity of this statement, but when I asked her why we targeted Dresden and not Berlin, she said "because the Germans love Dresden most."  This rationale seems to stand up, at least-- my web surfing reveals that the fire bombing of Dresden is believed to have achieved so little military advantage that it is considered a war crime by many and an act of terrorism by others.
-If you are a young American man who would like to date my beautiful German instructor, and you take her to see "Inglorious Basterds," that will be your last date with her.
-The German word for diarrhea translates roughly as "it falls out."
-UMd undergraduates in 2010 make the same jokes about drinking alcohol in Germany that WLHS underclassmen made in 1998.  If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard someone say "Bier ist gut!" I could finance a trip to Germany.
Another thing I'm noticing about myself and the German class is how fun it is to work on something completely different than literary studies while still working on my degree.  It feels like I'm taking a "break," but at the same time, I still feel productive because I'm being proactive about my degree requirements.  I hope it continues to be interesting and fun.

The other highlight of my week was my trip to traffic court.  Did I really just write that?  Yes, I thought it was BS when I got pulled over just off campus for "running a stop sign."  I believe I stopped.  Both officers who approached my car peered into my vehicle while they were speaking to me, so I assumed they were looking for someone/something else and would let me go with a warning... but a $90 ticket and 1 point on my license later, I found out they were serious.  This marks my first traffic violation since 1998.  I decided to go to court, and figured I'd plead guilty in hopes of getting the point taken off my license.  After watching a few people go ahead of me, I decided to "explain" that I thought I had stopped but I may have failed to come to a complete stop.  The judge issued me "probation before judgment," my fine was reduced to $9.50 plus $25.50 in court costs, and the point was suspended.  If you don't care what happened in traffic court, feel free to stop reading, but I find these kinds of interactions very intriguing, so I thought I'd share a few things I learned in court.
1) If you're ticketed by a UMd officer, expect him to show up in court.  They seem to have more spare time than other police officers in PG County.  Mine entered the courtroom and fist-bumped two bailiffs, the court reporter, and the Spanish translator.  At this point pleading guilty felt like an even better idea.
2) When the judge begins his directions with "Make sure your shirttails are tucked in and your pants are around your waist before you approach my bench," he means it.  The first guy walked up with an untucked polo shirt and khakis and was promptly instructed to "exit the courtroom, tuck in your shirttails, and return to your seat.  Your case will be called again after we've gone through the rest of the docket."
3) When the judge explains how the proceedings will go, listen.  He didn't say "If your officer is not present, don't plead guilty," but he said everything short of this to get the idea across.  My benchmate was called up after Mr. Shirttails was excused, told by the judge that his officer was not present, and asked how he would plead.  His answer?  "Um, guilty."  Poor kid.  The judge told him to sit back down.  I said "Did you just plead guilty when your officer is not here?" to which he responded "Oh, God."  The officer sitting in front of us turned around, gave him a "What is wrong with you?" look, and gave him some suggestions about asking to change his plea.  Everyone else who plead guilty was asked for an explanation and then issued a reduced fine, so I think the judge told him to sit down so he could call him up again at the end after giving him a chance to realize his mistake.  I felt bad for him.  It's awful going first.
4) If you get a ticket for "operating a bicycle with earphones in both ears," do not: a) claim you did not know it was against the law, b) explain that you're a musical theater student and were listening to classical music very low, c) suggest that you were listening to the music to study for a test that you were going to take when you arrived at your destination, d) claim that the University is responsible for not offering a bicycle safety course, e) answer "the volume was turned down" when the judge asks you "even if you didn't know it was illegal, does it seem safe to ride with headphones on?"  Certainly do NOT do all of these things while also adopting an "I'm better than this garbage" attitude.  If you do, the bailiff will moan, groan, roll his eyes back in his head, shift his weight, etc.  The judge will tell you that ignorance of the law is not an excuse and reduce your fine by only $10 (which will mean your fine has actually gone up due to the court costs).  Then, if you snatch the form out of the annoyed bailiff's hand, he will follow you down the aisle and whisper loudly "If you do that again, I will knock you out."  (When I went to pay the cashier, this student was registering a complaint about the bailiff.  I wish I could have stayed to see how it was resolved.)
5) Beyonce might be in her late 20s, but her "booty is popping like a teenager's" and therefore "Jay-Z knows what he's doing."  At least according to the gentlemen discussing it behind me.

I also had my one mile track race Saturday morning.  I was hoping to run it in under 7:45 so I could beat my PR as a 13 year old track star (ha!), but it didn't go according to plan.  I ran a 7:51 last weekend on the track, and two separate miles in the 7:40s on the treadmill this week, but I finished the race yesterday in 8:01.  Like last time, it was about 80 degrees with humidity above 90%, and I could feel the extra heat emanating from the fieldturf surface inside the track.  Awful.  I've decided that yes, it's hard cardiovascularly to perform well in these conditions, but they ruin my mental approach, too.  Normally, I hate getting beaten, and I love chasing people down at the finish.  This time it was like I could feel the heat sapping away my will to compete and I just didn't care.  I'm not horribly disappointed with 8:01, especially given the conditions, but obviously I feel like I could have done better.  After seeing the standings in the Championship series this morning, yesterday's race can be classified as "mission accomplished."  I only went because I didn't want to fall behind in the standings, and since most of my "competitors" didn't participate, I actually moved up from 3rd place into 2nd.  The girl in first place consistently runs much better times than me, so I don't think I can catch her, but my paces are pretty competitive with everyone else below her, so this was a good boost.

I have another 8k race in about two weeks, and I am crossing all my fingers and toes that the weather cooperates.  My good friend Kelsey from back home is visiting, though, and her visit coincides with the run, so it will be fun to have run it with me even if she beats me by several minutes.  It would be nice to have cooler weather for her visit in general.  I love the heat more than most people, but I'm getting tired of being trapped inside when it looks beautiful out but is so hot that the NWS advises you to avoid being outdoors.

(The Summons is a 2002 novel by John Grisham.  In 1994, when I was 12, I got ahold of someone's copy of The Client and then promptly moved on to A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief.  Thereafter I read The Chamber, The Rainmaker, and The Runaway Jury, and The Partner before I lost interest.  I don't remember much about them, outside A Time to Kill, which was always my favorite, but this evidently amounts to over 3,600 John Grisham pages read before I was 15.  I think this classifies as one of a long line of events which indicated that my reading habits have always been fairly unusual.)

Cliffs Notes: My Ántonia

My dad thinks he is pretty clever. Today I was excited to receive a package from him in the mail, but I didn't even have to open it up before I realized what it was. I'd recognize these severe black stripes juxtaposed against a gold background anywhere.

He sent met the CliffsNotes for Cather's My Ántonia to remind me that next year I'll have students again, and some of them will prefer shortcuts. : )

I actually don't have a problem with Cliffs Notes. Right inside the cover there's a message from Mr. Cliff Hillegass which concludes, "A thorough appreciation of literature allows no short cuts. By using Cliffs Notes responsibly, reviewing past criticism of a literary work, and examining fresh points of view, you can establish a unique connection with a work of literature and can take a more active part in a key goal of education: redefining and applying classic wisdom to current and future problems." Sounds good to me, Cliff. (I'd like to ask him to elaborate on what he means by "classic wisdom," but he's dead, so I can't.)

I like that Cliffs Notes get students to begin thinking about the implications of a text instead of just focusing on plot points. Obviously, I would much rather have my students read the original texts in their entirety, but I'll definitely take a student who has consulted a study guide over one who hasn't prepared for class at all. Students who are familiar with the book's content can at least participate in discussion. After a good classroom discussion, students who skipped the reading sometimes go back and read the source text. I think it's my responsibility as an educator to make them want to read the text rather than just requiring them to read it.

I do have a funny story, though, about SparkNotes (the free online study guides). When I used to teach Huck Finn, one of the questions on a reading quiz required the students to name a character. I used to tell them that if they couldn't remember the character's name, they could describe the character and still get partial credit. On one question, they kept writing "Tom's cousin." I had no idea where this came from. I looked back at the text to see if I had missed something, but it didn't say anything about the character being Tom's cousin. I went to the SparkNotes summary, though, which identified the character as Tom's cousin. I guess that relation is explained in Tom Sawyer, which I have never read, and so whoever wrote the Huck study guide added that info. I really enjoyed letting them all know that I caught them, and I left the question in every year. Showing the students that I was "onto them" was one of the things I enjoyed about being a high school teacher.

Mostly, though, my dad's gift reminds me that next year, I WILL get to have students again. I can't wait. My first year out of the classroom felt like a nice break because I could focus on my own interests again... but now, I really miss teaching. I'm thankful for the office job I have on campus that has funded my Master's degree, but I can't say I'll miss cross-referencing spreadsheets or pestering faculty members to approve their timesheets. I hope to have the opportunity to begin teaching undergraduates, but high school students have their own special charm, too.

This long, difficult journey all began for me back in 2000 because I really wanted to be a teacher. I left the classroom because I wanted to get better at teaching, and I can't wait to try my hand at it again now that I've done two straight years of advanced thinking about these texts.

Before I can get back to the classroom, though, I have to get through this Master's project. For the next week, it's back to Miss Willa. I think I have settled on which specific issues my paper will address, so now I just need to re-read The Professor's House before I can sit down to pound out the third installment of my Willa Cather Great War project.

(Cliffs Notes actually have some interesting parallels to Willa Cather. Their creator, Cliff Hillegass, was born in 1918, when My Ántonia was originally published. And guess where he lived and worked? Nebraska!)

Work

I have a confession to make: my job is really easy. Although I have been busier in the past six months than I was before that, it's never hard work. I like the people I work with, and going to work usually means giving myself a break from the mental exhaustion of my schoolwork. Also, Billy and I usually spend the entire day chatting on gmail messenger.

This means that for me, the weekends are generally much more exhausting than the weekdays, because they are devoted to real, hard work. Friday, we decorated our tree, so it is finally beginning to look at least a little bit like Christmas. Yesterday was also nice break; we watched Navy beat Army AGAIN and went out in Baltimore for a friend's goodbye party (he's moving to Alabama to pursue his PhD). But today has been work, work, work on this Anne Askew paper, which is the only thing that stands between me and my winter break from school.


So, truth be told, I am looking forward to going into "work" tomorrow and relaxing for a few hours before I return home to tackle this Early Modern Martyr. And I cannot WAIT for this coming weekend, when I will get to really enjoy some rest and relaxation, at home with my husband.

(Work is a little-known novel by Louisa May Alcott about a young woman who (gasp) has to work. I confess to only having read about it, and though I hear it is a little Horatio Alger-esque, I like the premise.)

Moving Out!

This past week has been a busy week at work as we prepare to move out of our old, run-down building and into our brand new one. The English Dept has been in its current location for about 15 years, so that means fifteen years of garbage has piled up. My friend Katie and I were given the job of going around to all the desks in the building and emptying them out. They were supposed to be cleaned out before the professors and teaching assistants left, but in most cases, that did not happen. Among other things, we found shoes, hats, a Devo cassette, a George of the Jungle vhs, teabags, every norton anthology, mouse poop, loose pills, love letters, divorce papers, a hatchet, a hammer, pay stubs, and a bottle of scotch. And probably enough paper clips to stretch from here to the west coast.

On Friday, I distributed the trash cans to all the rooms in the new building, so I got a good feel for how nice it is. I think our whole program is going to have a much different feel now that we're in an up-to-date facility. The location of the building is also much more convenient; it eliminates the ten minute walk I used to make from the parking lot, and the building is directly adjacent to the library. I am not looking forward to the process of unpacking everything we've packed up in the past several weeks, but once we get settled in, it will be great to be in our new home.

I have also been watching as much of the French Open as I can fit in, and I was excited this morning when Roger Federer finally claimed the title which has eluded him. I wish Soderling had played more like he did when he beat Nadal, and would have liked to have seen a more competitive match, but it was fun to see Roger win all the same. I am hoping that Rafa Nadal's rumored knee injury doesn't keep him out of Wimbledon, as that title will be Federer's chance to surpass Pete Sampras's record for Grand Slam titles. A rematch between the two of them would be pretty exciting.

I also watched the first installment of the Lord of the Rings on film, and it was interesting to see how the story was handled in comparison to the book. I felt like it differed in quite a few ways, so it is kind of surprising to me that people who love the books so much also love the movies. I'm looking forward to seeing the next two installments to see how they compare, as well.

Billy and I went to a goodbye party on Friday evening for our friends Erin and Brent, who are moving to New York later this month. We are attending their wedding in July, but besides that, we are not sure when we will get to see them again, so getting together with them before they go is fun but also kind of bittersweet. Last night Billy and I went to see "The Hangover," which was pretty funny, and we don't go out to movies very often, so it was fun to do something a little different.

I don't have to work tomorrow or Tuesday (the movers will be transporting all of our stuff to the new building), so I am looking forward to spending some time reading and hopefully getting a little bit of sun. I also have to clear out the laundry room for the delivery of our new dryer after the heating element went up on ours last week. As my dad says, "The joys of home ownership!"