I'll admit I've been keeping my cards close to my chest lately

Well, I didn't intend to disappear for such a long time! At first, right after I wrote that last post, I got very sick (as part of a series of stress-related illnesses), and stayed sick until the New Year. (Also, I got to try all kinds of powerful antibiotics, and may have experienced some rheumatic fever! Fun times at Christmas.) (As another aside, I am your perfect sick party guest: hobbling around, whining about "my rheumatiz." You guys missed a magical time.)

After I got home from that second trip home, my life was divided between the Bloggable But Stressful (Get the crazy chapter under control and come up with a workable plan for finishing soon!) and the Very Unbloggable Thanks To IRL People Reading This Blog (Let's apply for work closer to home! What if we start a family now?). Some days, it felt like every decision we were facing were some of the biggest decisions we'd ever made in our lives. And somehow they seemed so much scarier than the Big Decisions we made before (or maybe we were younger and more flippant than we are now.) Get married? Sounds like a wonderful plan! Move across the country for grad school? Hey, why not? Sounds fun. (Oh, to be 24 years old again.)

But now, we've made some decisions, finalized plans, and have even announced them on Facebook (you know, after I told people in person first, because I'm not a monster). We're moving home, and I'm pregnant!

Dear goodness, those words are simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

I seriously can't believe this is all happening. And I know that "I'm pregnant and we're moving home to the prairies" sounds like the beginning of a novel about giving up on your dreams, but both of these really feel like the fulfillment of life-long dreams for us. We got Chris a good job in our hometown, in the same city as our entire families. And, barring something major happening, we're staying there. I'm insanely determined to get this dissertation finished, and then I'll figure out what I'm doing. It's been years since I realised that I wasn't cut out for the tenure-track life, but I'll carve my own path. I love working with students, and I'd love to do something university- or research-adjacent. There will be something for me (and it's not urgent for me to find it: the top priority is finishing the dissertation and having this baby; Chris will be making enough to support us until I find something).

There's this part of me that fears some people will think I'm crazy for having a baby right now (well, at the end of December), or that I'm somehow wasting all this education by not aggressively pursuing a tenure-track position. Or that I'm crazy for having a baby at a point when I don't qualify for EI maternity pay. (But do you know how long it would be until I would qualify? And seriously: we'll be financially fine.)

Okay. Enough (heading-towards-an-outie) navel-gazing. I'll save the crazy medical details (How I've Spent The Past Month In Doctor's Waiting Rooms, and Why I Keep Baffling Medical Professionals*) for another post.

In honour of the move back to the homeland, let's finish off with an old school Question Time!

Time? 1:39pm

Surroundings? I'm in my office, surrounded by dirty dishes, kleenex boxes, and scraps of printed off translation material. (By the way, I have a cold, and the inability to take cold medicine: pure torture.)

Tea? Murchies Library Tea. (Why no, I haven't completely cut out caffeine. Why yes, I do know about the risks, but I also have read a terrifying number of medical journal articles and stay well under the safe limit.)

Wearing? Pyjamas, rubber-soled slippers, TARDIS bathrobe, hair that is standing straight on end. (It might be time to bathe soon.) (Uh, you guys, I just found out how much my sister spent on my new bathrobe...)

Stuck in my head? "A Hundred and One Pounds of Fun" from South Pacific. Because I forced Chris to watched the movie with me this weekend, and this is what I get in return. Mitzi Gaynor's voice in my head for the rest of my life.

What am I most thankful for? My Christopher. He's been phenomenal lately, doing all the cooking and cleaning (in addition to dealing with the madness of the end of the school year), since I've been so sick, sore and tired for the past couple of months. He's a good'un.


* Working title.

I'm seriously thirty

This was a text message exchange between Ky and me this morning:

Ky: "I keep singing inner city pressure, but saying dragons instead of pressure."
Me: "If I could draw, I'd draw a cartoon of Inner-City Dragons for you."
Ky: "Try"
Me (seriously two hours later): "As soon as I get the scanner driver installed, I'll email you some Inner-City Dragons. They'll amaze your face off."

I'm thirty. 

Confessions of a tea junkie

Nothing makes you stop and re-evaluate your life's priorities like realising that you were just proud of yourself for clearing out your tea cupboard and managing to pare down your collection to twenty-two varieties of loose tea.

Is this something that other collectors go through? Do they have moments of self-awareness where they think the other-things-people-collect version of: "Normal people don't consider twenty-two to be a small number, and they certainly don't own eight teapots"? And then there's the "there's no good way in which I can confess to having an entire cupboard devoted to tea" thought.

Eh, at least it's not an expensive habit, and it's nice having nice hot drinks available when people come to visit.

(To assuage my conscience, I ended up long-term-loaning out one of my eight teapots last night.)

I'm a little nerdier than I usually admit

I spent yesterday evening watching The Empire Strikes Back (original theatrical version, of course), while surrounded by all my Star Wars toys. Right after having finished (finally) reading Timothy Zahn's trilogy that follows Return of the Jedi.

I've realised that I might be on shaky ground when I tease my husband about being a Trekkie.

(I blame my recent watching of Fanboys for the resurgence of my old fixation.)

Time has no hold on me

Last week, when I was writing a cheque I accidentally wrote the year as being 2006.

And now I just realised that I've spent an entire week telling people that I'm a fifth-year PhD student. No, this is my fourth year. I was always correctly saying that I've lived here for three and a half years, but then I'd say that it's my fifth year here.

I don't know what that says about the current state of my brain, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good thing.

Getting my act together

Confession: on Wednesday, I discovered that I had accidentally missed teaching a seminar the night before. I found out in the form of an email from the prof, with several points in all-caps and mostly asking "WHERE WERE YOU?"

It freaked me out. I've never done that before. It was the result of a mix-up where I somehow thought that all of my seminars started next week (and I'm teaching a bunch of seminars this semester). Thankfully, the prof was there and was able to cover for me, but: bad. Very very bad.

And it consumed my brain for a few days (along with a bunch of meetings that all ended up being scheduled for the last half of this week). How had I gotten to the place where I was such a self-absorbed, disorganised hermit that I would forget about a class?

The good thing (other than the fact that the prof has forgiven me) is that it also kicked me into action. It helped that this occurred at the same time as I was meeting with professors about my teaching schedule and dissertation timeline. I've spent several hours sitting down with the university's online calendar tool and have entered in all of my commitments and deadlines. It also emails me whenever anything's approaching, so that I have no excuse. I've set some firm deadlines with my dissertation, with external motivators for meeting those deadlines (if I don't have this next written part in by spring break, then I'm going to have to miss out on a bunch of fun).

It was hard at first, forcing myself to face everything that made me anxious (and which I'd therefore been avoiding). It's easy to avoid dealing with everything, once you've started. And it's going to take some work not to get into another funk. But right now, I'm starting to feel pretty good. And I have enough energy that today we took down the Christmas tree and I'm baking muffins.

Bright Orange

Yesterday, in addition to all the other stupid things I managed to do, I tore my pants while I was on my way to a meeting with a prof. It was more like the seam came apart, on a brand-new pair of pants where I'd torn open the temporarily sewn-shut pockets rather than using a seam ripper. Apparently, that was a bit too much for the seam right beside my right pocket, and when I put my hands in my pockets when I approached the bus, the seam came right apart along my hip. Exposing two whole inches of bright orange underwear. And the tear kept gaping.

The good thing was that I could stretch my shirt to cover the tear, but I had to be vigilant to keep my shirt over my hip, or I'd be showing bright orange underpants to everyone on the bus, or to my prof. And I was so busy that it was a good couple of hours before I could go to the campus drug store and buy some safety pins.

Of course it also happened when I was trying to be all grown-up and professional and wear nice clothes to school, and then I spent a couple of hours of that would-be professional time figeting with my clothes and accidentally showing my underpants.

How I didn't win a car or a TV this weekend

Have I mentioned that Chris is the sort of person who enters contests and draws whenever he can? Of course, this is the only way you're ever going to win contests, but somehow he has this sense for the contests that are going to end up being a marketing strategy to try to force you to buy/sign up for expensive stuff.

So, last week I got a call from some contest saying that Chris was a finalist for winning some kind of Lexus SUV. (Because, you know, we really need a Lexus.) They said that they'd be mailing him a key that he'd try in a locked box. Also, because we were finalists, we were guaranteed one of their secondary prizes; they asked us which of their list of prizes we'd prefer and I said we wanted the 50" TV.

...the only thing is that we'd have to sit through a 90 minute talk first.

And yes, my gut instinct was right, and it was for (glorified) time shares. And Chris's key didn't work in the locked box, and in the end they gave us a scratch-and-win card to figure out which prize we got. At least it ended being a $100 gift certificate for a restaurant (which you can use it at several different restaurants in the city). So, it wasn't an entire loss, even though I had to spend part of my afternoon arguing with a salesman that, no, spending $20,000 on the right to stay in resorts around the world is not the same as saving for retirement.

We'll use the gift certificate on my birthday, ordering whatever we want at one of my favourite restaurants in this city.


In other news: all my Canadian readers who have cable TV should be watching Canada's Worst Driver on Discovery. It's seriously the best show ever. I was worried that I'd get stressed out watching it, being aware that there are people driving that are as bad as that (or that I'd discover that my driving is as bad as theirs), but the show is downright satisfying. The host is funny, and the episode where everyone learns how to drive standard is just plain good television. (And this week everyone learns how to drive in reverse!) And it's an actually good reality TV show: everyone's trying not to stay on the show, by trying hard and graduating before the finale.

Procrastinatory Confession

This time of year always gets me digging out everything that will make me warmer while I work: the space heater, the rubber-soled slippers, the hot water bottle that has its own fleece jacket, all my teapots, and the knit fingerless gloves that my friend Kat gave me for my birthday one year (she told me that they'd prove to be useful when my hands got cold while I was typing).


I've found that these fingerless gloves has many side effects: a.) feeling like a hobo, b.) continually punching the air while singing "Eye of the Tiger," c.) jazz hands, and d.) weird self-portraits using my webcam.

Further confession: did you notice that I absolutely can't stand wearing my wedding ring when I'm typing? I also can't stand wearing a watch while I'm working. But, for some reason, fingerless gloves and hats are a-okay.

I'm not as saintly as I've been implying

The last two posts have made it seem a little too much like I've been behaving myself. Of course, I know you aren't deceived.

The counter-balance that, I'll tell you a little story:

This week, I get the car to myself. Chris's school is trying out a school bus for the kids (and one teacher) who live in the city and not out in Langford (the suburb where the school is). According to this new scheme, they'll use a bus that belongs to a private school in the city; this other school already sends its bus out to the suburbs to pick up some of its students. According to this new plan, their bus will pick up our kids (plus Chris) in the city, drive them out to Langford and drop them off at our school while the bus is also picking up the other school's suburban kids and bringing them back into the city. This way, that bus isn't empty while it's driving in and out of the suburbs, and our school's parents aren't spending half their days on the highways.

At our school's last general meeting, we got all fired up about the cost savings and environmental benefits of this plan. Huzzah! We're saving on gas! Huzzah! Chris (and all those parents) won't be driving an hour (or two) a day!

So, we're test-driving this scheme for a week, to see if it'll work as a permanent arrangement starting in September. And the only problem is that, the moment I dropped Chris off at the bus this morning, my next thought was, "Hey! I have the car to myself for a whole week! I won't have to walk to the bank anymore! I think I'll go shopping this week! I'll get around so much faster without the bus!"

I might single-handedly nullify the benefits of this plan. It's like brushing your teeth with Jell-o.

Since the rumour's been going around already

Yesterday, I got two phone calls that included the phrase, "So, a little birdie tells me you've been running!"

(My first thought was that more people are reading my Twitter than I thought, but that wasn't how these two heard: they're both in Saskatoon, and in both cases "little birdie" = Ky.)

Well, it's true. Last week, I went running four times. And three of those runs happened at 6:30 in the morning. I even bought new runners last week!

I hardly recognise myself at this point.

I'd been thinking about taking up running for a while. I really missed how good it felt, back when I'd go running on the treadmill when Shannon used to make me go to the gym. I hadn't managed to run since I'd injured my hip five years ago. Even with help from the chiropractor, ever since the injury, any time I tried to run, I'd end up hurting my hip. However, I just got orthotics and my chiropractor was really insistent that this meant that I could run all I wanted now. He was also really insistent that I should start running -- my muscles really atrophied while I sat and read books for a whole year.

Actually, what finally got me out running was the fact that I was having a lot of trouble getting up and getting going in the morning. Since I've finished my exams, it's gotten a little too easy to spend most of the day in my pyjamas. I'll procrastinate from getting showered and dressed, which then means that I won't end up doing anything with my day at all (other than play on the computer, watch TV and talk on the phone) until Chris gets home. That's fun for a few days, but it gets depressing in a hurry. And so one day I asked Chris if he would wake me up when he got up to go running. Of course, at 6:00 the next morning I was sure that I was a big old crazy person for ever suggesting I do this, but I did it and it felt fantastic. (Okay, it felt fantastic when it was over, but my lungs also went on riot, because apparently my cardiovascular system isn't used to exertion anymore?) And it helped me get out of my funk: since I was showered and dressed by the time Chris had left for work, I had no excuse to sit around the house all day. (And it was a good thing that this happened when it did, because it turns out that I'll be spending much of June TAing a course that begins at 8:30am.)

So, I'm running for the sake of my mental health. But it sure helps my physical health too.

Hope I can sleep tonight

One day during my MA coursework, my supervisor (kindly Dr. B) asked me why I was so sleepy. I told him that I had had trouble sleeping, because at bedtime I had been reading a book for research, which had ended up going into detail about how Magda Goebbels poisoned her children in Hitler's bunker. The book had included some family pictures, and the combination of it all was enough to keep me awake that night.

When I saw him next, Dr. B handed me a book of poetry. He told me: "This is for reading before you go to sleep. Leave that other reading for the daytime."

I am thinking of Dr. B's advice tonight, as I am up too late reviewing too many books about the Holocaust, before my review meeting with my twentieth century Europe professor tomorrow. I apparently didn't learn my lesson back then.

More confessions

I think reading for the comps has turned me into a caffeine addict. No, wait. I'll take ownership of that statement: I've turned myself into a caffeine addict during the latter half of my comps reading.

Last spring, when I was reading in the office at school every day, I ended up drinking a cup of coffee a day. It was always the same story: someone else had made coffee and then offered me a cup, and it just smelled so nice and I was trying to stay conscious through just one more book.

But then the coffee was starting to make me jittery and I'd be crashing in the late afternoon, and so I cut out the caffeine for a while.

But then I later started drinking tea more. Mostly green tea, the high quality kind where you have to drink a whole pot of it to equal a cup of coffee.

And then I started drinking a pot of tea a day. It was a nice way to structure my reading: put on the kettle, and drink tea while I read. It was so comforting.

And then it became more like two pots of tea a day.

(I've cut to the chase and made coffee today.)

Lesson Learned

This weekend, Chris took his students to Mt. Washington (which, it turns out, is not in Washington but is actually on The Island -- Up Island, in fact), leaving me home alone for the weekend. Okay, I could have gone if I wanted to. But: a.) I'm preparing for my exams; b.) it would have cost us a bunch of money for both of us to go; c.) I didn't think I could handle a full weekend of teenagers. And so it was my choice to stay home alone.

With Chris gone for the weekend, I learned a big lesson: I've become a big wienie. I was completely non-functional when Chris was gone. I was so lost without him. I couldn't even go to bed at a decent hour, because I didn't feel like it and there were half-interesting shows on the Food Network.

And apparently I'm a paranoid mess when I'm home alone at night. Okay, I knew that one already. I haven't had to do that much ever, because I've never lived completely alone. Every night, I had to check to make sure the windows were locked. And I couldn't watch scary things on TV, or else my brain would take that and run. (Which was a shame, because Turner Classic Movies was showing Hitchcock movies this weekend. At least I'd gotten over myself by Sunday afternoon and watched Rear Window, which I love.)

It's official: I'm a wienie.

Signs that I'm well into grad school now

Chris and I were driving to the University library this evening so that I could return a 3-day Reserve book. As we drove, I fretted that I would probably run into everyone I knew this evening, as I was looking a little more like a crazy person than usual (well, mostly I was leaving the house with fairly pronounced bobbly pigtails in my hair). That's when Chris pointed out that there was no chance I was going to see anyone at all at the library.

Seeing as we were going to the University library at 10:00 on a Sunday evening at the beginning of our Spring Break. Yeah, that place was a ghost town.

Is it sad that Spring Break has absolutely no effect on me? My work load is exactly the same. No, wait. It has one small effect: I'm actually feeling more inclined to go to campus this week, excited that fewer people will be around. And this will be a good week for going to get my build-up allergy shots, because no one else will be at Health Services.

I think I've officially become a Stereotypical 3rd Year PhD Student. (Now I just need to get past these comps and be a Normal 3rd Year PhD Student!)

It's 10:26pm on Cheap Candy Day...

...and my mouth hurts from all that sugar. But I'm afraid to completely stop with the sugar yet, because I have to get this [sounds like "shirk"] application done to hand in tomorrow morning. And I'm afraid that if I stop now, I'll crash from the sugar rush and all I'll want to do is go to bed.

I bought a little too much candy today. When we were driving home, I told Chris that his job was to hide most of it, and only dole it out gradually. (My robot husband has the self control to be able to resist eating too much candy.)

Unfortunately, he thought I meant "hide it as soon as we get home." When I clearly meant "tomorrow we'll hide the candy." And so I made him dig it all out again. Because today is Cheap Candy Day! And what better way to celebrate than to bury oneself in candy and watch Ugly Betty and The Office! And then to edit a grant application while listening to shoulder-shimmy music! And to write with exclamation marks!

Maybe I should do one last edit of this application tomorrow morning.

P.S.

My new personal theme song: "C'mon Marianne" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I shoulder-shimmy to it.

You've been forewarned.

The music contained inside my head

You know, it's really weird for me to listen to music over headphones. I know that I used to do it, back when I lived at home and had these headphones with a cord that stretched clear across my room and had this little volume control knob on them, so that I could lay in bed and listen to my music without bothering my parents.

But, since then, I've gotten used to having my music fill my space. And I interact with music. I'm singing along. I'm harmonising. I'm chair-dancing (badly). Frankly, I'm embarrassing. (Ask anyone who's shared a car with me.) In fact, it's frequently difficult for music to be a casual background thing for me; frequently, when I'm sharing a car and if I am planning on talking, I shut off the music. I just can't divide my attention like that.

And so now I'm sitting, plugged in to this new iPod. And it's weird to me. I can't sing along without sounding like a complete crazy person. My bad dancing has no context.

And it's difficult for me to listen to enjoyable music without singing and dancing.

Well, maybe this will keep me from being like 70% of the university population, plugged into music and hostile toward outside contact. (Of course, right now I'm saying "Maybe this just means that I won't listen to my iPod while I'm in public." But I also claimed that I wouldn't be That Person Who Talks On Her Cellphone While Walking. And that didn't last long.)

Foreeever

Until today, I'd never seen The Sandlot before. Even though most of my friends had seen it about eighty thousand kabillion times. I'm watching it right now, even though I'm totally the type who gets far too worried when people are in trouble and want to hide or make it go away. (See: my childhood watchings of Curious George, where I would run away and hide whenever he was in trouble.)

Further confession: in spite of the fact that my best friends have watched it on roughly a daily basis, I also have never seen White Christmas. Holiday Inn, yes; White Christmas, no.

...I confess

My neighbour is playing the bagpipes in his backyard. And it sounds gorgeous. We opened up all the windows and we've been sitting in silence, listening to him play.

(Apparently I enjoy the bagpipes, when they're played well. Also: I love a well-played accordion, as long as it's played Parisian-style and not polka-style.)