A little inspiration

Today, my block had a big yard sale (a yearly event organized by our Block Watch Association, intended to help us get to know our neighbours), and in our classic style, Chris and I made a profit of -$3.75.  Our landlady, Joyce, already knew this was going to happen.  When we got outside this morning, she shouted across the yard, "I'll keep an eye on Chris! He always spends more than he makes at these things. Then you just have more junk to sell next year."

He was behaving himself remarkably well this year (meanwhile, I was trying to unload whatever I could at 25 or 50 cents apiece).  While I was getting to pack up the rest of our stuff and get it ready to haul to the thrift store, Chris came over and said, "I need to consult with you about something I found. It only costs $5, but it's big."  I may have rolled my eyes a little, because you have no idea how many pieces of archaic technology and how many semi-broken telescopes he has brought into our home.  I should have noticed how proud of himself he looked.

Our next-door neighbour had offered him their 1926 electric Singer cabinet sewing machine for $5.  (Which works!)  Both of our moms have Singer cabinet sewing machines, although both of theirs are treadle-style.  It's surprising how many women in my family have Singer sewing machines as side tables.  It feels like home, having one in my home.  It even smells like home.

It turns out that the only place in our apartment where it fits is next to my (new!) desk. I'm leaving it open for now, because what better inspiration for writing about working women in the late 1920s than this view:    

Moments in the kitchen

I'm back in Victoria, back in the land of moderate temperatures and occasionally remembering I live by the ocean. I'm wearing long pants but no socks, and actually wore a light jacket this morning.  Classic late summer in Victoria.

It's so good being home after being away for seven weeks.  The fact that I'm in my own home and that I'm away from the high temperatures means that I feel like cooking and baking all the time.  It's not that I didn't have access to a kitchen while I was away: on the contrary, I even made this on my last week staying with the in-laws:

(The little-sister-in-law's wedding also played a major role in my being a little too busy to blog for the last part of our SK trip.)

But I didn't realise how much I had been homesick for my own kitchen until I made my porridge here on Sunday morning, and was all "Hello, My Own Measuring Cups! I missed you so much!"  And so, between the cooling weather, the overwhelming joy about being reunited with my own utensils and appliances, and my need to work through some challenges with my current chapter, I've been finding myself retreating to the kitchen.

I've also been thinking about what I love so much about preparing food.  I got reflecting on it again this afternoon, as I started making some polenta for our supper.  And I started making an incomplete list of my favourite moments in cooking and baking (in no particular order):
1. That instant, when making polenta, when the cornmeal I'm whisking in the boiling water suddenly thickens, and instead of having a loose mixture of cornmeal and water, I have this gloopy cornmealy mush that's sputtering everywhere.  (This is also one of the more exciting parts of my cooking process.)
2. The moment when sugar becomes caramel, and I have to pay close attention to the colour of it, so that it gets to be a satisfying dark colour but doesn't get burnt.
2a) The satisfying way in which caramel bubbles up and hisses when you add butter and cream to it, when making caramel sauce. 
3. (2b?) Turning a crème caramel out on a platter, and discovering that the caramel really did turn to liquid while the egg mixture hardened into a custard.  Simultaneously! In the same pan! Science!
4. Lifting off the lid of the heavy dutch oven and finding that a once-tough piece of meat has turned into something tender and wonderful, like pulled pork.

Those sorts of moments (along with that one when you open the oven and and see the golden tops of baked bread or pies) are what drive me to the kitchen, they're what get me finding excuses to make caramel sauce (admittedly more than my love of consuming caramel sauce): these physical and chemical transformations that, even when I understand the science behind them, seem like magic. I really still haven't lost my sense of wonder in the kitchen.  (Okay, one more moment like that: when I first try something that I have made, and discover that it actually tastes like food!  I still can't believe that's possible.)

I need a little more of a sense of wonder in my day.  Because there's not a lot of wonder or magic in the process of trying to get the words in my head to cooperate with the words on the computer screen, or in trying to make some sense of this current chapter.

You know, I used to have a sense of wonder about history and about writing.  Maybe it's time to reconnect with that.

(And now I'll stop rambling and eat one of those cookies that I made today.  Chris sure isn't complaining about the time I spent in the kitchen today.)

Two more weeks...

...and then we'll be in Saskatchewan!  And we'll be leaving in less than a week. (Which reminds me: we have nowhere to stay in Edmonton so far.  I'd better deal with that.)

I can hardly believe it.  Chris finished teaching last week, and this week it's all exams.  I have so much to do before we leave.  So much to do.  I need to write as much as possible before we leave, because it's going to be hard to get work done in July. 

and yet I'm not frozen by anxiety, which is good.  I'm taking each task one at a time, and am trying to get real work done without burning myself out.  It helps that it's June and it's gorgeous outside. And much of my busyness right now is happy busyness: I'm baking a pink birthday cake for a certain silly person, we're preparing for some more house guests, and I'm going with Chris to his high school's grad sometime soon.  And the chapter isn't unhappy busyness: it's an enjoyable chapter and I have so many ideas. 

It's just so strange when I realise that June's more than half-way done, and I'm going to see my family soon.  (That weather in Saskatchewan had better clear up soon: I'm dreaming of sunny skies, and the news tells me that I get to look forward to flooding and mosquitoes.)

Where I'm at in my dissertation right now:

Fighting off the urge to describe the phrase "moral parrot-sickness" as being "both awesome and wonderful." 

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.

With my freaky annotation powers

I don't understand how my brain works. I've been working on an annotated bibliography since the beginning of December. It was my major project for last semester's directed reading course, but it took way longer than we expected, especially because my supervisor expected so much of it (in this one bibliography I had to come up with one of my comps lists, and also figure out a novel way of "framing" European cultural history). I froze. I spent December stuck.

And then, I just started working. I started looking through bibliographies and collecting sources. Last Saturday, Chris sat with me at the library while I waded through a heap of books, weighing which ones deserved to be on my list. The next day I figured out how to organise them. But then the annotation process freaked me out: I have to have this done by tomorrow, and at one point there were more than sixty books on this list.

By the end of yesterday, I had ten annotations finished. Now, I only have six left, and I only started working today at 5:00pm. It was like something suddenly clicked on in my head, and I was able to figure things out just from book reviews, rather than trying to read through introductions and chapters of every single book. I started intuitively figuring out which books didn't belong on the list and were just filler. Honestly, at this point it's looking really good. And it's almost finished.

When Chris joked that I'd need to write one annotation every five minutes, he didn't think I was actually capable of doing so. He's a little freaked out by me, at this point.

(However, the prospect of finishing this is also a little freaky. When I'm done this assignment, I'm officially done my coursework and have to start comps reading. Starting tomorrow. Eek!)

My options

A week ago, I had a meeting with my supervisor. We established that I had two more assignments left in our directed reading course: one (short, but still complicated) essay and a major annotated bibliography. We decided that I would try to get these finished before the history office closed for the holidays (this Friday). I also mentioned that I had four hours' worth of finals marking coming to me this week.

Here I am. I am half-way through the finals, and will be finished them this evening. After that, I want to finish off that essay. Only then can I begin the bibliography. That means, logically, that I'm not going to be beginning the bibliography until Wednesday.

I have the option of getting an extension until after the holidays, which seems like a wiser option than trying to bring together all of the major research in European cultural history by Friday. But part of my brain keeps saying "But you want to be able to take Christmas off! You want to be done! And you have finished so much research already!"

I've been wrestling over my options for the past few days. And I think I know what I'm going to have to do: tomorrow, once I have the finals and my essay ready to hand in, I'll ask my supervisor if we can get me an extension. Then, I'll still use Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for working on the bibliography. I'll still spend all of Thursday in the library. Maybe I'll pretend to myself that I'm still trying to finish it by Friday, just for the purpose of lighting a fire under me. But I want to make sure that this assignment is done properly and is well thought-through and analysed.

I already have been punishing myself far too much based on my false assumption that I'm able to knock off a short essay in less than a week. How about I learn from that mistake and allow myself the time that I need for this final assignment?

(And now: back to finals!)

How this essay will know I mean business

Here's a photographic variation on an old (QoWP) classic. I'm trying to be really productive today: this morning, I edited that last essay and handed it in. Then, I came home, planned out the next one, and have written the first two sentences. My plan is to have this essay written by Thursday, so that I can move on to the final assignment in my directed reading course, the annotated bibliography. This essay only needs to be 5-6 pages long, but I've been taking a notoriously long amount of time on these short papers. I need to maintain the momentum that I set last night and this morning, and have two pages written before I go to bed. (I'm tempted to say "I want to have most of the first draft written by the time I go to bed," but I'm starting off with baby steps, and I only have three and a half hours until Chris gets home from work.)

But I've decided that it's time to start busting out the old productivity tricks.

I am wearing:

From top to bottom - navy zip-up bunnyhug, knit handwarmers by my friend Kat, grad dress (it was from Value Village and I think it was a bridesmaid's dress from the '70s), wedding shoes, painted toenails.

My workspace:
I'm set up at my desk again, with lit candles (in the lanterns). I'm only consuming water right now, because that makes me even more clear and energetic than tea does.

To my right:

Space heater, keeping my silly feet warm, and depressing carpet. (To my left: the ever-present rubber-soled slippers, in case my feet get too cold.)

My hair:

The ubiquitous bobbly pigtails. It is very difficult to take a picture of the back of one's own head.

Music (not pictured): my entire iTunes library. I'm feeling like variety tonight.

With these forces combined, the essay won't know what hit it!

Conversation in the Procrastination Household

"Chris, can you make this essay go away? I don't want to write this essay."

"Sure. We'll just call up your supervisor and tell him that you're quitting the program. The only problem then will be money. The way I figure it, I couldn't get another teaching job in Saskatchewan until the fall, and so we might as well stay here until then. But I have a plan: even though there aren't a lot of jobs in your field in this city, I could get you a job at the call centre. You know, they'd start you off at $10/hour, but after a few months, you'd be up to $12/hour! And that's forty hours a week, which is way more than you're getting now!"

"A job...?"

"You know, this plan just might work! Because after you've worked at my centre for a few months, I'd get you to fill out a referral form and I'd get $300 for referring you to that job! And we'd need it, because with you not being a full-time student, we'd have to register the car in BC, and we'd have to get BC health care, which we know is not cheap..."

Chris knows how to put everything into perspective for me. He didn't try to convince me to get back to work. He didn't try to convince me that this essay's going to be life-changingly good. He just reminded me what real jobs are like, and that I'd far rather write an essay than get a job.