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...

OK, here are some pictures!!

Leia with her new Hanukkah guitar (courtesy of Jeff's father).











And in her favorite hat (that she never seems to actually NEED due to global warming)

If you've got time on your hands...

Try these:


Weffriddles!

These are addictive. I'm currently stuck on level 35. I won't let Jeff play lest he zoom past me and ruin the fun for me. (As he tends to do with puzzles and, well, games in general, but that's another story.)

Don't blame me if you get sucked in.

She Blinded Me With Science!

This week on VH1 they're doing the Top 100 Songs of the 80s. Ahhh...I've died and gone to 80s heaven. If you're a sucker for all things 80s like Yours Truly, I highly reccommend!!

sick baby :(

Yesterday evening Miss Leia (who has had a cold with ear infection for the past few days) started wheezing and developed a fever. Today we found out that she has a case of bronchiolitis (totally guessing on the spelling) and is going to need to take medication via nebulizer for 10 days. Fantastic. Brought home the machine this morning after doing one round in the office. She is not exactly crazy about it - she has to wear a little mask and breathe in the meds for 10 minutes or so every 6 hours. She's out of day care for the week, too. I'm supposed to have a phone meeting with one of my committee people this afternoon, and Jeff is working from home so he can watch L for me while I do that. Leia herself is doing realtively well otherwise - the fever broke, and she's eating and playing as usual, so at lease she is not too miserable. Am getting used to the fact that this week is going to be totally derailed for me. Makes me wish I'd been more productive with writing last week when I actually had the time. Blargh.

One down...

One to go! Got one professor on the committee, now I just need one more...

*update*

OK, so it's not exactly a weekly update, but cut me some slack, I'm entirely self-motivated here (or non-motivated, as the case may be).

Operation: Form Committee is underway. Currently I am on a reconnaissance mission to find out which professors are good to work with and which ones I ought to aviod. I'm drawing up a list of people to ask and have been gathering courage and little pep talks here and there. And, I am learning all sorts of little details about what you can and can't do as far as committees go at my school that I am wondering why I never knew before, but that's another story...

I can't wait until this part is over.

Ugh, I have to deal with the D thing.

OK, so I really enjoy blogging about the Mommy thing, and apparently about my backyard as well (which is finally fenced on all sides, btw - very nice to have boundaries!) but I think I need to focus a bit more on the All-But-Disstertation stuff. And this is why:

I need to select a committee. For those who may not know, that entails asking two professors (I already have a chairman) to serve on the committee for my dissertaion. I am petrified of doing this. Absolutely petrified. It's classic fear of rejection, and not particularly rational of me, but it's there and I am having a lot of trouble working up the courage to ask professors to be on the committee.

I'm putting this out here to help me move past it. I figure the more I talk (type?) about it the more likely I will be to just shut up and do it. Afer all, I'm not going to get very far without a *&^%# committee!!! So I am going to update this blog weekly in regard to this Committee Conundrum I seem to have. There, I have set my intentions. I shall now go forth and eat some breakfast.

Far too long

Good grief, I can't believe I negelected my poor little blog for so long :(

Well, life is increasingly chaotic so there is lots to blog about. We made the decision recently to put the little one in day care three days a week, since the babysitter thing was not quite working for me (Turns out I can't stand having to hide out in my own house). If I ever expect to become something other than ABD I need to find a way to get more time to work, and this made the most sense. So far it's working out OK, except for when I drop her off and she says things like, "No, Mommy, I want you! Stay with me!" But yesterday I picked her up and she started to tell me about some of the other kids in the class ("I play with Ka-tee-na!") so I think that's a good sign.

And, tomorrow we're celebrating Leia's second birthday! I went full-on girly and bought her a play kitchen. I went nuts over the &*(%$ kitchen. I compared countless models over the course of 2 months or so, and then when the one I finally ordered got delayed I cancelled it and went out and got a more expensive one so I could at least get it in time. She's 2, for crying out loud. She'd be thrilled if we got her balloons and a bucket of acorns for her birthday. But I digress... Later tonight I'm going to stock it with fake food and she'll see it when she goes downstairs in the morning. I'm ridiculously excited about it.

Tenacious Trees

Unbelieveably, the cherry trees are sprouting new leaves. I thought for sure they were as good as dead, because those beetles ate every last green part off of them. Yay trees!

melting....

It's crazy how tired I've been these past few days. Between "Jeff-Lag" (due to lack of sleep from husband's crazy annual roleplaying weekend event) and this heat I feel like a total slug. On the positive side I got myself a shiny new academic calendar that with any luck will be my last.

Japanese Beetle Attack!!!

First they had to recover from the shock of being planted, and now my pretty new cherry trees are being eaten alive by stupid Japanese beetles. Apparantly they can't resist nice juicy fruit trees. Yesterday afternoon I found them crawling all over both trees, munching away, leaving skeletal leaf remnants in their wake. I went to the plant nursery and they said I should try setting a trap, since I'd prefer to avoid spraying pesticides all over my yard. I just put it out. It smells like cloves. It had better work.

PhD2B?

Well, today I finally had a meeting with my dissertation chair. It's only been, oh, three years or so since I last saw him in person. Anyway, it went well, and he has 2 little ones that are very close in age (think Cocking Family child spacing) so he totally understands why I've been progressing so slowly. He thinks I have a decent draft underway and if all goes well I could propose this fall. And then all I have to do is collect data, and analyze it, and write it all up and defend it! No problem! Despite the mild sarcasm I am actually feeling encouraged. I really will do this and be finished sometime in this lifetime.

Go Away!

Yesterday morning when I told Leia it was time to have her diaper changed, I was told:

"I don't want. Go away!!"

She had a devious grin on her face when she said it.

Seems I'm getting some pre-two-year defiance. Fabulous. Of course I thought her antics were hysterical, which probably didn't help the situation.

Photo Onslaught

Wanted to post more pictures from the musuem...

Here's Leia driving a tractor and pretending to eat some corn:



And shopping (she needed lots of lemons, apparently)



And harvesting vegetables:



Great, fun place. I took her twice over the course of the weekend, since she loved it so much and the place is small enough that I could basically let her run loose and entertain herself. I hear there is something similar in New York. I'd totally be up for a field trip!

Scary story

I won't sleep unless I write about this.

I woke up just before 5AM this morning in our hotel in Philly. I looked over and saw Jeff fast asleep, and then I rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Now, we stayed in a suite (sweet!), and the bathroom had two doors. I was going through the bathroom to get into the next room where Leia was sleeping so I could check on her. There were no lights on, so it was pretty dark, but I could see where I was going. To my horror, I saw a person standing right in front of me, blocking the other door. And the person was moving toward me. And it was *not* Jeff, as he was sleeping in bed behind me. I ran back to the bedroom screaming. Jeff jumped up immediately, started screaming louder, and ran through the bathroom to check on Leia. He found her safe, so he stopped screaming and came back into our room. I was on the bed shaking. "What's wrong???" he asked. I asked him to turn on the lights and told him I thought I saw someone in the bathroom. Then the phone rang. (Just to add to the extreme spookieness.) It was the front desk, wanting to know if we were okay. I imagine it sounded like somebody'd been murdered or something. We scooped Leia out of her Pack 'N Play and put her in our bed, right between us, where she immediately went back to sleep. Neither one of us slept much more after that, though.

Jeff told me later that his worst fear is that something happens to Leia in the middle of the night, and that I find her and then come get him in hysterics. So that is why he started instantly screaming and running to her. I still don't know what I saw in that bathroom. A ghost? My mind playing tricks? Who knows. All I know is that I can't remember ever being more scared.

Many Leias

Just got back from a trip to Philly (Wizard convention) and I took Leia to a wonderful kid's museum called the Please Touch Museum. I am too tired to go into all of the details now but I wanted to post my favorite picture.

I'll write more about it after I've had some sleep...

Trees please

Having been in this house for 2 whole years, I decided it's time to get outside and do some landscaping in our little ol' yard. We bought all sorts of nice shrubs and plants and five nice-sized trees. The trees were being planted this morning, and I was very excited. Then I woke up at 4AM and remembered that I have no idea where the gas line is buried (or the electric, phone, or cable, for that matter). Probably a good idea to find out where that is before the poor tree planter hits a line and my neigborhood explodes or we lose cable or some other disaster. So this morning I called the "Dig Safely NY" people and they are going to have all of the lines marked for me. But I had to cancel the trees and reschedule for Thursday, which is a minor bummer.

On a positive note, our dream of fencing all around is being realized, as we've arranged to share the cost of some fencing we'll share with the people next door. When it's all done we'll have a nice, private, semi-enclosed backyard. And it will have trees!!