These are the days of our lives...

IRB approval!

I am happy to report that I got my IRB approval today, after minimal revisions. (Basically they made me re-word stuff...gotta love red tape!) Now I am free to collect data!

Overdue Halloween pic

Here is Miss Leia in her Cinderella outfit (minus the tiara, which lasted for maybe 5 minutes). She loved trick-or-treating, and if she hadn't been sick with a cold and wheezing like crazy she could have gone on for hours. Oddly enough she had the exact same illness last year, and I kept her in, but good luck keeping an excited three-year-old from the magic of Halloween!

On an unrelated note, my IRB stuff got submitted today. Now all I have to do is anxiously await approval...

Yay!

I finally had my proposal meeting today, and I passed! That means my topic is approved, and pending IRB approval I can collect my data. Unfortunately the University's IRB approval process has gotten much more complicated since the last time I had to do it.
You see, it used to be that the "IRB" was one professor - you filled out a 2-page form and gave him a copy of the materials you were using, and he approved you. Now it is a proper IRB committee, replete with deadlines and procedures and all that nonsense. Oh well. I am a little stressed about that, but hopefully I can get it done relatively quickly.

I was right...

It's a boy!!
(That's his hand, for those who may be ultrasound-image-reading impaired.)

Oh my...could it be?

Could I actually graduate?

In this lifetime??

I found a third committee member, and I have a proposal date tentatively set. It is in less than 2 weeks! Once the proposal goes through I can collect my data, and then analyze it and write it up and...dare I say it...FINISH!!! I can't think about it too much or I get nervous.

Oh, and tomorrow we find out if it is a girl or a boy. Assuming the baby decides to give us a good view, of course.

News

Now that I've heard an actual heartbeat, I figure it's time to fill in those who don't already know about my latest deadline: March 18!!! And I am convinced it's a boy.

Leia's big day

Hi Mommy! I'm ready for my first day of preschool!


Check out my Ariel lunchbox!


Mommy can't believe how big you're getting...

Jeff gets a bite!

For those who may not know, Jeff finished his manuscript and has been sending out queries. The way it works is you send out "partials" of varying lengths to agents, and based on that small piece of your work they either reject you or get interested and ask for more. He's been accumulating the usual pile of rejection letters (10 and counting)...but this morning he also got a request for the whole manuscript!! Especially on the heels of the rejections, it is very affirming for Jeff that an agent finds the book potentially interesting and wants to see the rest. I, for one, am excited. We'll see where it goes from here...

OMG, there is a kitten in my engine.

So this morning I heard loud meows coming from my garage, and both my kitties were looking at me in my kitchen. I opened the door to the garage, and saw a tiny kitten under my car!! He was stuck in the garage all night, poor guy. I opened the garage door to let him out, but he didn't go out, he disappeared. I looked all over the garage, still hearing the meow, which sounded like it was near the car but I couldn't see the little guy anywhere.

So I popped the hood. And saw a little kitten head staring back at me. Which then promptly disappeared as he burrowed himself deeper into the engine. Now what? After a few minutes of searching the engine and poking at it with an umbrella I couldn't find him, so I thought maybe he ran out. I closed the hood. About a half hour later, I took Jeff into the garage with me and he opened the hood, just to be sure, and THERE HE WAS, right on top. Had I been expecting it I could have grabbed him, but he wriggled off into the depths of the engine once more. We decided to leave some food out and leave the hood up in hopes that he would come out. I was trying to go to the gym I just joined (free childcare!), so I had to lug the car seat out of my car and wrestle it into Jeff's.

When L and I came home, the food had been eaten, so I *guess* this means the little bugger found his way out. But I am petrified to start my car. I really needed a visual confirmation on this one, you know? Let the paranoid checking begin...

Cutie and the Geek

It's all in how you dress 'em.

Stupid genetics...

So Leia was with my parents, and she ate a small amount of cereal that had peanut butter in it. (It was my nephew's Reeses Puffs...don't get me started on the fact that he was eating *that*, but anyway...) She develped hives and later started coughing and wheezing pretty badly. After a few phone calls, my father rushed her to the doctors office and she ended up needing an adrenaline shot. Ugh. So now we need to carry an epi-pen and join the ranks of parents with a peanut-allergic child. I am thankful that she does *not* get the "throat closes up and you die" kind of reaction, but it is still scary. I swear, she inherited all of her daddy's genetic anomalies. (He is not allergic to peanuts in particular, but is definitely the allergic type, and toted around his own epi-pen for years.) She even has his feet. Poor child.

Niagara Falls

For our 8th anniversary (yikes!), Jeff and I drove up to Niagara Falls for two nights without the child (that alone is a vacation in and of itself...the destination is just gravy). Here is Jeff in the smurf suit they give you for the Maid of the Mist










American falls from the boat...Jeff was determined to get a shot with a bird in it.








After Jeff told me I smile like a dork for pictures.








Here are Jeff's hives from being on the Maid of the Mist. He's a freak of nature, I tell you.





All in all, it was a great little trip. There's lots of campy tourist stuff near the falls that is fun to do, and the falls themselves are one of those things you really ought to see at least once in your lifetime.

Rant...

Since Jeff has left the full-time workforce, we have had to foot the bill for our health insurance directly. This is not a small bill, and since we are paying out the ass for coverage I have decided to get everybody current with their checkups. Last week I had an appointment with a dermatologist to have my skin checked, and I had to have a couple of biopsies. Yesterday I got "the call" from Oxford...the one where they are "just wondering" if I might have some "other" insurance coverage so they can weasel out of paying my claim. They then proceed to withold payment until I verify that I'm not forgetting to charge my secret backup health insurance company instead of them. Heaven forbid Oxford should have to, oh, I don't know, PAY for something. Honestly, this happens every time I go to the damn doctor, and I am really sick of it.

Rant over. Oh, and my skin is fine :)

Spider Man 3

A Synopsis:

Particle Man, Particle Man
Particle Man hates Spider Man
They have a fight
Spider Man wins
Particle Man

How did I end up on this track???

I have been really struggling over the past several months with the dissertation. I've been researching and reading and writing but I am not really getting anywhere, which I am very frustrated with and seem to deal with primarily through avoidance. (And crochet...wait until I post pictures of the blanket I am finishing up for my Mom for Mother's Day...but that will come later.)

Part of the problem is that I am so removed from the community at school. I live far away, and everyone I know has already graduated. But I think the real reason involves the little epiphany I had last night: Ever since I became a mother, I don't take myself or my potential career all that seriously, and as a result, neither does anyone else. Oops...I've mommy-tracked myself. I have been reduced to continually reminding everyone involved that yes, I still exist, and yes, I do intend to graduate someday. It's not unlike running inside a hamster wheel and it's predictably exhausting.

I'm not sure what my point is in posting this, and I'm not sure how I intend to climb out of this little hole I seem to be in. I just needed to put it out there, I guess. It's been on my mind for a long time now but I couldn't put it into words.

Lazy afternoon

Leia settles down to paint, while Max hangs out to watch.








Of course paint feels great on your nose.








And your face...











And your eyes...
Maybe now would be a good time for a bath.

Crochet on display

Recently I taught myself how to crochet, and it turns out I like it much more than knitting. So much so that I have to limit myself to evenings only, lest I hook my way through writing time! Here are some pictures of things I've made, on the only model in my house that stays still:

R2 in his Garden Scarf

R2 Rocks the Granny Shawl

He he...I'm such a dork :)

Freaking out...

I just found out that a group of 4th graders beat up a kindergartener on the school bus in my neighborhood. The child was apparently found unconscious in the back of the bus and had to go to the hospital. WTF is wrong with those kids? And their parents??

I am just so shocked and upset by this. I mean, part of why we moved here was for the excellent safe schools. And the presumably safe school buses. I know, mine is still little, but still...it's scary.

Jeff's New Digs

We spent the weekend moving Jeff's office into the guest bedroom across the hall. We did this because that room is bigger, so it will accomodate a home office plus a futon for guests. Plus if we ever have another child we won't have to hear the "But why is HER room BIGGER???" argument (the other 2 bedrooms are identical and significantly smaller). Also, Jeff wanted a fresh start for the writing. Hmm...maybe I should scrap the plans for Leia's bedroom and claim the old office for me...

I painted the room on Saturday and today we moved about 75% of his stuff in. We still need to move around some bookshelves and whatnot in order to finish, but it's close enough for now. I'll post a picture once I hang some stuff on the walls.

Yay! Procrastination Rules!!

New day, new template! How exciting...

Spent this morning getting ready for my in-law's couch to arrive...they are giving us their old L-shaped sectional because it won't fit in their new house. Since we've always wanted more seating in the family room, we were glad to take it off their hands. Anyway I spent the AM vacuuming under , in, and around the ol' Purple Couch and Big Purple Chair. I found a box's worth of crayons plus many assorted game pieces. Then I got to play House Tetris to find a place to stash the current couch and chair before we figure out what we're going to do with them. Then the movers showed up and tracked mud all over the universe so I had to clean the floor, and clean up the new/old couch and rearrange more furniture.

This is all WAY better than, oh, I don't know, actually WRITING or something. Having a great day so far! What else can I clean?? Off to do laundry...

Oh, my poor abandoned blog...

How I've apparently not missed thee all that much...but I clicked on my dashboard bookmark by mistake and now I feel compelled to update.

For those of you that a) still visit this link (maybe? somebody?) and b) do not know this already, the husband up and quit his job so he can take a stab at making it as a writer. This is good news! I am very excited for him, and I am secretly hoping that he inspires me to write some more myself. I am slogging along revising my proposal. Still need one more prof for committee (first choice for third member is too busy right now so I have to find someone else). But I have a solid lit review going and if I can just get out of my own way I ought to be able to propose before the semester is out.

In other news, my cat Max almost died a few weeks ago :( but he is OK now. Turns out he is diabetic and was ketoacidotic (code for: nearly dead) and had to be hospitalized for four days. But now he is on twice daily insulin injections and an all-new diabetes friendly diet and is looking 1000 percent better. Later this afternoon we have to wrestle him into the box for a vet visit to see how he's doing on the current insulin dose. And I do mean wrestle. He was always a beast about getting into the box but now it is much, much worse, as he thinks we're going to leave him there again. Poor guy.

I'd promise lots more regular updates but I don't want to set myself up for feeling guilty if I flake out again. So on that note I say goodbye for now...